The political leaders of EU Member States should “create projects” and shape the “future” of the Union but also “be honest” and “not always blame the Brussels establishment for everything”. Klaus Iohannis, president of Romania and current holder of the six-month presidency of the EU, said this to his colleagues as he spoke at the State of the Union conference in Florence today. Answering the questions put to him by Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung), he spoke about enlargement, saying: “it is a major positive step”. Not only has enlargement “improved the situation for the new countries”, but it has also brought about “significant progress in the old Europe”, making it “bigger, stronger and more competitive”. According to the president, we have to make Europe “larger and stronger”, not only in economic terms, but also in terms of security and better procedures and integration. What lessons do we have to learn from Brexit? “We have to give Europeans a feeling of security and safety”, to “make them feel they matter” and that their vote counts: “None of the leading positions in the EU is voted” directly by citizens, the president remarked. “The British did not feel that they controlled what was happening in their country”, and political leaders failed to “show the people what had been done”, and what the “next steps” would be.

In his address on the state of democracy in Europe, political expert Hanspeter Kriesi focused on the threat of populism: “There is reason for concern, but no reason to dramatise”. Mr Kriesi argued that “voters represent democracy’s power of self-correction” and that populist movements “may be just a temporary phenomenon, characteristic of a crisis of representation and of restructuring party systems”.