“ It is very important that Europe decides better and decides faster”

O President of the Republic, António José Seguro, today argued at the meeting of the Arraiolos Group in Slovenia that the European Union (EU) should consider dropping the unanimity rule because it needs to decide “better and faster”.

In statements to journalists at the end of what was their first meeting of the informal forum of EU Heads of State without executive powers held in Brdo, in the vicinity of Ljubljana, Insurance, giving a summary of his speech in plenary, he stressed the need for Europe to “decide at the right time” to be “more competitive and more autonomous” in an increasingly “accelerated” world.

“ In my view, it is very important for Europe to decide better and decide faster. This means that in areas which at the moment require unanimity, Europe should reflect whether it is not better to move on to qualified majorities and to abandon unanimity, because unanimity causes one country to prevent everyone else from walking,” he said, pointing to the domain of defence as an example.

The President of the Republic pointed out that “there may be countries that do not want to participate in certain political deepenings, and that is why there are enhanced cooperation, which is provided for in the Treaty”.

“ Enhanced cooperation allows, as long as it is open, all States that want to cooperate in a particular area, for example defence, energy or social area, can do so, without others who do not want to participate hinder this deepening and, above all, what is essential, and what is essential is to solve people’s problems”, he stressed.

Insurance reinforced that “today there are common problems that in the past were national problems, and for common problems Europe must put its resources in favour of a solution that is also common”, pointing out that “the housing crisis is a clear example of how this can and should happen”.

In his view, the unanimity rule in the EU “is causing Europe to move slowly in some areas”, commenting that “when walking more slowly it is left behind”.

“ When the world was moving at a lower speed, Europe, say, had enough ‘stocks’ to be able to decide what Europe was called the small steps. Today it is completely different: the world is much faster, the changes are made at a quantum speed at the same time, and Europe has to adapt and have a decision-making capacity that follows the pace of problems, to find solutions to these problems,” he insisted.

The Head of State said that this was the position he defended in front of the other 11 counterparts present at the meeting, because he considers that “this is the way, the choice that Europe should make to solve people’s problems”, because only then “its accession and its support for the European project is more relevant”.

Commenting, at the end of her debut in this forum, that “the spirit of Arraiolos is consolidated”, she revealed that, in the margins of the meeting of the Group of Arraiolos, she held three bilateral meetings with the President of Ireland, dominated by the current Irish presidency of the EU Council, with the President of Austria, marked by the fact that the two countries took over in the two years 2027-2028 seats on the UN Security Council, and with the German President, focused on the internal situation in Germany, “with the importance that this has in the EU as a whole”.