EURONEWS Rubio talks to Meloni and Tajani about US, Italian and EU relations: from the Iran war to Trump's tariffs Copyright Screenshot video di Governo.it By Gabriele Barbati Published on 08/05/2026 - 20:19 GMT+2

 EURONEWS

Rubio talks to Meloni and Tajani about US, Italian and EU relations: from the Iran war to Trump's tariffs

Copyright Screenshot video di Governo.it

By Gabriele Barbati

Published on 08/05/2026 - 20:19 GMT+2

The US Secretary of State in talks in Rome with Meloni and Tajani. The Italian minister reiterated his readiness for a mission to Hormuz after the war and Trump's no to tariffs. Rubio promised developments in negotiations with Iran and that "not being able to count" on Allies "is a problem"

Marco Rubio's visit to Rome, after an audience at the Vatican with the Pope on Thursday, saw talks on Friday with the Italian government: a ‘positive meeting’, during which it was reiterated that the "American presence in Europe is important" and that Italy "does not want trade wars", announced Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, who received the US Secretary of State before before he proceeded to Palazzo Chigi to meet Giorgia Meloni.

The conversation with the Italian premier lasted an hour and a half and touched on international current events in the Middle East. "We await a development in the coming hours" on the peace negotiations with Iran, said Rubio, who reiterated to Meloni how US President Donald Trump "has not yet decided on the withdrawal of troops" in Italy, but that he personally is a "strong supporter of Nato" and the possibility of having forces in Europe "that we can deploy in other emergency situations."

"With Meloni we have not talked about bases," the US secretary of state said at a press point at the US embassy in Rome, "but some countries like Spain by denying use have created unnecessary dangers for us.

As for Lebanon, there will be talks "probably next week" and "Italy can do something more in helping to resolve the situation because of its expertise and presence on the ground," Rubio continued, who also returned to the "very positive" visit to Leo XIV.

"It was an important meeting to exchange our views and explanations on what we are doing. I updated them on the situation in Iran and expressed our views on why this operation was important and the danger Iran poses to the world," he said further.

Tajani and Rubio's conversation at the Farnesina

"I reaffirmed Italy's full support for diplomacy as the only way to avoid further escalation in the Middle East and ensure freedom of international navigation," Tajani wrote on X after the meeting, "when conditions allow, in Hormuz we are ready to contribute to a multilateral naval initiative, and of a defensive nature, to ensure freedom of navigation."

The Italian minister also reiterated 'that it is important to have an American presence in Europe to strengthen NATO and of course it is also important to have a strong commitment from Europeans in this regard, which the Europeans are doing'.

It is necessary 'for Western nations to protect their economic interests', the US State Department announced in a note at the end of the meeting where 'bilateral cooperation as well as global and regional security challenges were discussed', wrote the Secretary of State's spokesman, Tommy Pigott.

On the agenda of the talks at the Farnesina were the strengthening of Italy's and the EU's relations with the US, the crisis in Iran, the future of the ceasefire in Lebanon and the Unifil mission, the situation in Ukraine, Venezuela and Cuba.

"Italy is in favour of 'a big market' that includes Europe, the US, Canada and Mexico," Tajani finally said regarding the new threat of tariffs on the auto sector launched by US President Donald Trump last week.

During his meeting with Tajani , Rubio presented a family tree attesting to his Piedmontese, as well as Cuban, origins, in the presence of the president of the Piedmont Region and the mayor of Casal Monferrato.

POLITICO - May 8, 2026 8:22 pm CET By Sam Blewett - UK elections 2026: 5 takeaways from Labour’s drubbing

 

UK elections 2026: 5 takeaways from Labour’s drubbing

Populists on both the right and the left turned the prime minister’s unpopularity to their advantage.

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British Prime Minister and Labour leader Keir Starmer reacts as he speaks to supporters and councillors following local elections at Kingsdown Methodist Church on May 08, 2026. | Leon Neal/Getty Images

May 8, 2026 8:22 pm CET

By Sam Blewett

LONDON — Britain’s electoral map is being redrawn once again by Nigel Farage. His Reform UK insurgency is fracturing politics — and Keir Starmer is emerging the biggest loser of it all.

But even as the right prospers, left-wing populists in the Green Party are also making big gains off the back of the prime minister’s unpopularity.

All in all, a chaotic picture is being painted as votes are counted in elections for a swathe of English councils as well as devolved parliaments in Scotland and Wales. Here are the five key takeaways from Thursday’s elections.

1. Fragmentation across the board

The one thing Labour knows is that it’s hemorrhaging popularity. But what nobody will agree on is the remedy.

That’s because Starmer is losing votes in every direction. In Brexit-voting regions Reform has been the benefactor. But in progressive urban hubs the Greens have made gains. And in some cities the mix is even more complex.

Just look at the north-east English Newcastle-upon-Tyne for one. Labour lost to Reform and the Greens in near equal numbers in every ward they contested.

Not only will that pincer effect lead to Labour infighting about how to restore their chances, it will add to a sense of disorientation for the electorate.

2. Labour has no heartlands

Wales has been red for more than 100 years. Now Labour’s on course for near wipeout there, as the left-wing Welsh nationalists in Plaid Cymru and Reform sweep the board. It was so bad in Wales that Eluned Morgan, the Labour leader there and the serving first minister, didn’t even win her seat.

The “red wall” that formed Labour’s core in northern England and the Midlands is plumping for Farage’s party. Scotland has refused to return, instead extending 19 years of Scottish National Party rule. 

Then there are major inroads for the rejuvenated left-wing Greens in London, where they have already won the mayoralties in Hackney and Lewisham and are on course for big gains in councillors. 

If Labour could be sure of anything in recent decades, it was that progressives in the capital would vote for them. That is no longer the case.

3. Even Labour bigshots stare down barrel of defeat

To judge how bad the elections are for the party in charge, just look at which MPs have just seen their local councillors ousted en masse.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has seen Labour lose control of Leeds. In Wigan, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy watched all 22 seats Labour was defending go to Reform. Farage’s party also won Sunderland, which is Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson’s back yard. 

Keir Starmer’s Camden constituency was narrowly held by Labour — but his party shed swathes of support to the Greens and Liberal Democrats.

Then potential leadership challenger Angela Rayner will also be uncertain of her prospects in a general election. Reform won 18 of 19 seats available in Tameside.

4. A trickle of calls for Starmer to go … but the dam hasn’t broken (yet)

As of Friday evening, more than 10 Labour MPs had either called for Starmer to either outright go, or demand his departure unless there’s urgent overhaul of the government.

Louise Haigh, the influential co-chair of the soft-left Tribune caucus, was first to make the veiled call for Starmer to go.

That was couched in the language of being necessary unless there is “significant and urgent change,” a phrasing echoed by Anneliese Midgley to POLITICO. 

So far no ministers have publicly called for a change of leadership and with numbers being as low as they are right now Downing Street will be hoping this doesn’t represent the breaking of the dam.

5. Reform triumphs — but the Tories aren’t dead

For all of Reform’s successes and Nigel Farage’s cries of a “truly historic shift in British politics,” this was no runaway victory for his party.

Sky News’ extrapolation from the results to estimate national share actually projected Reform’s support as being down on last year.

Farage has long threatened to replace the Conservatives. But that hasn’t quite happened yet. Kemi Badenoch’s party — still the official opposition in the U.K. — won Westminster council from Labour, nudged the party out of control in Wandsworth and managed to hold onto the Fareham area represented by one of Farage’s most high-profile defectors from the Tories, Suella Braverman.

There’s no doubt that Farage is the big winner of the day, but his opponents shouldn’t believe all is lost.

FP - Argument - May 1, 2026, 9:49 AM - The Deeper Pattern Behind China’s Military Purges Xi’s new commanders are the men his last generals blocked. By Christopher Nye, a nonresident fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, and Charle

 FP  -  Argument

An expert’s point of view on a current event.

The Deeper Pattern Behind China’s Military Purges

Xi’s new commanders are the men his last generals blocked.

By Christopher Nye, a nonresident fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, and Charles Sun, a Sinovation fellow at Yale School of Management.

Central Military Commission Vice Chairman Zhang Shengmin raises his right hand in a salute to Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is walking a level lower in a red-carpeted auditorium.

Central Military Commission Vice Chairman Zhang Shengmin salutes Chinese President Xi Jinping in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on March 4. Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

May 1, 2026, 9:49 AM

On April 8, China’s Central Military Commission (CMC) convened a “rectification” training session for the remaining senior officers in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Chairman Xi Jinping delivered the opening speech. On the dais beside him at the National Defense University in Beijing sat a single colleague: Zhang Shengmin. The CMC’s discipline inspection chief had become, alongside Xi, the only other member of China’s top military body, after two of its most powerful generals were placed under investigation in January.

Most outside readings have treated this scene as a purity ritual, another turn of the screw in Xi’s decade-long campaign to make sure the army is under the total control of party leadership. The content of his speech, which urged officers to maintain “the purity and glory of the people’s armed forces,” invited that reading. But the more interesting text that day was not the speech. It was the seating chart. In past sessions of this kind, the front row overflowed with full generals. This time, only two sat there, flanked by lieutenant generals.

Over the past 18 months, Xi has dismantled two of the most powerful networks in the Chinese military. Given the PLA’s extreme opacity, networks are analytical shorthand that observers reconstruct from career patterns and shared posting histories, rather than formal factions. But they describe a real feature of an army whose “mountaintop” mentality predates the People’s Republic. The first was the so-called Fujian faction, built around officers whom Xi had cultivated ties with during his time climbing the party ladder in the southeast between 1985 and 2007. It was anchored by He Weidong, who served as a CMC vice chairman, and Miao Hua, who as Political Work Department director had spent nearly a decade controlling the personnel files of virtually every flag officer in the force. Miao was suspended from his job in November 2024. He disappeared last spring. Both were expelled from the party and the military in October 2025, along with seven other generals linked to their circle.

The second network, the old ground-force establishment based around CMC Vice Chairman Zhang Youxia and Joint Staff chief Liu Zhenli, fell this January. Their formal investigation marked the high point of a purge cycle that had left the active-duty general bench nearly bare. Many inside the system considered Zhang’s combat record and esteemed background—he was the senior princeling in uniform, with multigenerational family ties to Xi—a shield against purges. As it turned out, however, belonging to either network was a dangerous place to be.

The conventional read is that Xi is installing loyalists, officers chosen for political reliability as the external environment grows more demanding. That answer is not wrong, but it is hollow. Miao and Zhang Youxia, after all, were selected on that criterion. Before they were purged, who would have judged them disloyal? In theory, Xi could subject every remaining officer to a fresh loyalty audit. But time is not on his side. He is bound by earlier commitments, including, most pointedly, the “strategic imperative” of building a “world-class” PLA ahead of its centenary in 2027. A senior command in ruins cannot meet those goals triumphantly. Xi has been forced rebuild it according to a simpler pattern.

Across CMC departments, core services, and theater commands, roughly 20 senior billets are now filled in an acting capacity (what the PLA calls “hosting work”) by lieutenant generals waiting on formal appointments. Given the shortage of experienced replacements and the impending deadline, most are expected to be confirmed in the same posts. Almost all share one critical feature: Their careers were shaped by networks that the now purged factions never controlled. In other words, it appears that Xi has been promoting the officers his last generals had kept down. But what has made these officers politically safe—years on the periphery—has also left them without the prestige, trust, and experience that joint warfare requires. The cohort that earns Xi’s confirmation may be the cohort least equipped to fight the war he is preparing them for.

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Xi’s promotions are pulling from two primary networks. First, the discipline inspection track. Discipline inspection is a single branch in the broader political-work tree. That one branch has now pushed its way to the top of the tree, two of the four services, and the heights of the CMC. Zhang Shengmin, a newly minted vice chairman of the CMC, is a career political-work officer who built his career in the Second Artillery (now the Rocket Force) and later took over the CMC Discipline Inspection Commission, a post he has held since 2017. Xiong Zhaoyuan, now a deputy director at the Political Work Department and a principal organizer of the latest training session, served with Zhang in the Second Artillery a decade ago. The acting political commissars of the army and air force, Zhang Shuguang and Shi Honggan, respectively, are both discipline inspection secretaries who report directly to Zhang Shengmin.

The operational side tells a parallel story. A critical mass of the officers now running the CMC’s central nervous system are lieutenant generals with air force backgrounds, including Dong Li, the acting director of the Joint Operations Command Center; Liu Di at Training and Administration; and Chen Chi at Logistics Support. Lei Kai, the acting commander of the Rocket Force, is not a missileer at all. He led fighter formations over Tiananmen Square in the 2009 and 2015 parades. The two newly promoted three-star theater commanders, Yang Zhibin in the east and Han Shengyan in the center, are both air force generals, a break from the long tradition that ground forces should hold those seats.

These officers trace the legacy of Xu Qiliang, the air force general who served as a CMC vice chairman from 2012 to 2022 before his death in 2025. As executive deputy group leader of Xi’s military reform commission, Xu pulled joint operations and air power to the center of the PLA’s future. He was also the patron of a generation of air force officers promoted during those years. After he retired, that cohort lost its high-level sponsor. Miao’s Political Work Department was the institutional channel for senior officer promotions across the force. Zhang Youxia held his own recommendation pipeline to Xi on the command-line side. Neither man had to actively block the Xu-vintage aviators; he only had to not advocate. The aviators did not disappear. Their careers simply stopped moving—until now.

To illustrate the pattern, consider two officers, Lin Xiangyang and Yang Zhibin, who reached the rank of lieutenant general within roughly nine months of each other, in April 2020 and March 2021, respectively, at around the same age and career stage. A year and a half after his promotion, in September 2021, Lin ascended to the rank of general. Yang had to wait four years and nine months, rotating through three theater deputy postings, before reaching general in December 2025. The difference was Lin’s home network, the 31st Group Army and the Eastern Theater Command, anchored by Miao and He, respectively. Yang’s was the air force aviation cohort, cultivated by Xu and sidelined after his retirement; his promotion only came after Miao and He were out of the picture.

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Taken together, the promotion pattern emerging from the aftermath of Xi’s military purges is hard to miss. The discipline inspection officers now occupying political-work slots and the air force generation now running joint operations and interservice portfolios share a common history: Both spent the Miao-Zhang Youxia years watching promotions flow to other hands. Xi has not built a new cohort from scratch. He has intentionally promoted the officers those newly dismantled networks had passed over.

Read More

• 

  Xinjiang Party Secretary Ma Xingrui speaks at the Xinjiang delegation meeting during the 14th National People's Congress in Beijing on March 7, 2024.

  Why Xi Is Kneecapping His Own Top Men

  Targeting the inner circle of leadership shows no one is safe.

  Analysis 

  |

   

  Deng Yuwen

This reading is narrower than the “loyalty test” frame, but it offers sharper predictions. It suggests that Xi’s talent pool was never as shallow as the volume of disappearances implied; it was just buried. As the PLA approaches its centenary, the expected wave of formal confirmations will likely favor officers who can document exclusion from the old networks, not merely allegiance to the new one.

Of course, there is a familiar counterargument. Purged networks always leave behind rivals who benefit from their fall; the aviators and the discipline inspectors were simply the largest available pools of noncompromised senior officers. That is always true. But specific appointments mean more than pure residuation. Air force officers now run five central billets. Discipline inspection secretaries are simultaneously acting commissars of two of the four services, crossing a branch line within the political-work system that is usually respected. A passive shuffle of untainted officers does not produce that pattern. The selection is discriminating and intentional, not merely residual.

What remains unknown is whether this cohort will cohere under operational stress. The aviators who developed under Xu spent their final active years waiting out networks that outranked them; the political-work officers now filling commissar billets spent those same years inside an apparatus built to watch other officers, rather than to fight alongside them. Neither background produces the kind of cross-service trust that joint warfare requires. That deficit doesn’t show up in peacetime parades. It surfaces in wartime command. Will a hardened ground force commander defer to a theater commander whose career was in the air force, a service long treated as peripheral in the army-dominated PLA? Will an operational commander speak candidly to a political commissar whose entire career was spent finding leverage on other officers? These are the moments when cross-service trust either holds or breaks. By promoting the officers his last generals blocked, Xi has bought himself a politically safe high command. Whether he has bought himself one that can fight together is a different question.

Christopher Nye is a nonresident fellow at the Jamestown Foundation. He previously served as a professor and directed a university think tank in China.

Charles Sun is a Sinovation fellow at Yale School of Management, where his research focuses on Chinese strategic, military, and technology policy.

Germany Federal Foreign Office - 08 May 2026 - Speech by Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul at the 13th Adenauer Conference – “shaping the future of Europe with courage”

 

Federal Foreign Office Speech 08.05.2026

Speech by Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul at the 13th Adenauer Conference – “shaping the future of Europe with courage”

Coal and steel: Two raw materials and resources that, for centuries, served as both the catalyst and the rationale for war in Europe.  In 1950, they formed the foundation of one of the most successful peace projects in human history. The ninth of May is dedicated to this – Europe Day, marking how the Schuman Declaration got the European ball rolling in 1950. Just under a year later, 75 years ago, Konrad Adenauer, Robert Schuman, Carlo Sforza and their counterparts from the Benelux countries signed the treaty in Paris that established the European Coal and Steel Community – the beginning of a new, united Europe.  Konrad Adenauer immediately recognised this historic opportunity for the young Federal Republic of Germany: a chance to ensure lasting alignment with the West for the free part of Germany, which could thus act as an equal partner in a new Europe.  The economy made Europe great and capable of action. This principle holds true today just as it did back then. But the era in which coal and steel formed the economic backbone of Europe is over. Seventy-five years later, materials such as dysprosium, samarium and lithium are the order of the day – key raw materials, rare earths that are essential to our industrial base today. But they’re not readily available in Europe.  Europe sources 97% of its heavy rare earth needs from China.  Within 25 years, China has increased its share of global industrial production from 6% to 30%. During the same period, the European Union’s share shrunk from 19% to 15%. In 2025, we lost more than 300 industrial jobs in Germany. Every single day! Last year.  China’s trade and industrial policy is distorting global markets to a massive degree. And this approach is set to intensify. With its new five-year plan, China is spelling out its ambition to become a global economic leader.  But that’s not all. At the same time, European exports to other markets, particularly to the US, are plummeting. We’re currently not keeping pace with developments in AI and the digital economy. Europe’s capital markets are too small and fragmented to adequately promote technologies of the future. At the same time, we’re contending with serious security crises as we’re currently facing two wars.  Ukraine is already braving its fifth year of resisting Russia’s illegal war of aggression. We’re continuing to support Ukraine’s battle to defend itself with substantial economic and military resources as it is also defending our freedom at the end of the day. The freedom of Europe.  And since late February, the war in the Gulf has been challenging us politically and economically, and will perhaps also do so militarily in the future. Even though we’re not directly involved, this war is having a direct impact on our European interests. It is a reflection of a world order that is being realigned, that is changing. This, incidentally, also includes transatlantic relations. The US is now giving much clearer expression to how it pursues and prioritises its interests. At the same time, the Americans continue to view the transatlantic alliance as one that also benefits them, that must benefit them.  We can, indeed we must, shape this change as Europeans. The potential for this is enormous, and the prerequisite for this is clear, namely European unity and solidarity.  After all, only the clout that Europeans bring to the table together – as a Union – enables us to find effective, substantial and impactful responses to the major issues of our time. We have the resources that we need. Let’s put them to use! The single market is one of the three largest markets in the world. It can give us the clout to compete on an equal footing with the US and Chinese economies. But we still need to exhaust its full potential.  For example, start-ups founded in Germany or Lithuania must be able to do business in Estonia or Italy without facing legal obstacles. They must receive the financial support they need in Europe in order to conquer the global market.  After all, there are plenty of brilliant ideas in Europe; they just too often end up elsewhere. The Commission is driving forward an ambitious agenda that will further strengthen the single market. A single market for defence equipment could provide a significant boost to cooperation in planning, development and procurement across Europe. It can accelerate the development and procurement of capabilities that are vital to us, and it can reduce costs.  The groundwork for this has already been laid, of course. We need only think of the omnibus packages, the 90 billion euro loan for Ukraine, the SAFE (Security Action for Europe) initiative for investments in joint procurement and the European Defence Industry Programme, which aims to close critical military capability gaps. No one could have imagined any of this just a few years ago. In terms of technological dominance, however, the EU has fallen significantly behind the US and China in recent years. It will counteract this through its competitiveness agenda and our considerable potential for innovation. In a nutshell, European patents must translate into European companies. The aim is to strengthen the EU as a geo-economic actor. We’re doing this as a reliable trading partner that respects the rules-based international order.  This is paying dividends. The trade agreement with our Mercosur partners has been in force since 1 May, and the agreement with India is strategically important for linking our economies more closely together. No other actor has yet been able to achieve the market liberalisation negotiated with India. The agreement with Mexico is scheduled to be signed in a few weeks’ time.  These successes are also thanks to the fact that our trading partners – like us – want to reduce dependencies and make their supply chains more sustainable and resilient. We will seize these opportunities to tap into new markets.  Ladies and gentlemen, We’re witnessing right now just how important diversification is with respect to the Strait of Hormuz and elsewhere.  Yes, we’re reliable and steadfast. But we must also become more agile, more flexible and more innovative. The European Union must adapt to reality. It must change – fundamentally.  Just as Adenauer and Schumann once sought and found responses to a new world order – with conviction and courage. We want to build on that courage. Because it’s up to us Europeans.  I would like to mention six specific points. First, we want to achieve more in Brussels through “enhanced cooperation”. This means that in policy areas where joint progress with all 27 member states is unlikely, we will move forward with a smaller group of states.  And we will implement the necessary measures “European-style” within this small group – without everyone having to join in straight away.  Experience has shown that other countries tend to follow suit later on. That would be the ideal scenario.  We want to extend this principle to common foreign and security policy. Unanimity is indeed still required for enhanced cooperation.  My proposal is this: countries that do not want to – or perhaps cannot – be involved will initially be left out, but they will not stand in the way of those who wish to move forward.  A group of countries should also be able to move forward more easily as far as common foreign and security policy is concerned.  It goes without saying that we will continue always to strive to act by consensus among the 27 – because that is indeed one of the EU’s strengths. However, it’s important that we as the EU are also able to move forward pragmatically even when perhaps not all 27 member states are 100% in agreement. The deadlocks, particularly those of recent months and years, which have held the EU hostage to national or extraneous interests at times, are well known.  We saw this as recently as last week with the release of funds. It only takes a few member states – or even just one – to block everyone else from taking action. I want to say quite clearly that when it comes to security issues, the principle of unanimity can put us in existential danger. Because this is a matter of life and death! We see this every day in Ukraine. In its common foreign and security policy, the EU regularly falters due to its outdated architecture. Now, conservatives are often wrongly accused of wanting to stubbornly preserve the old ways. That’s not the case with my foreign policy.  Conservative foreign policy is geared towards the country’s interests. It changes what needs to change in a world in flux in order to protect the achievements of civilisation. This brings me to my second point: qualified majority voting. Germany wants to bring about change and make a difference in the EU. Brussels must pick up the pace in order for this to happen, especially with respect to common foreign and security policy.  The most important lever for this is quicker decision-making through qualified majority voting. We will not abandon efforts to achieve consensus, but we will make things significantly easier by eliminating the possibility of deadlocks. Our goal remains the greatest possible unity among all 27 member states. However, the path to that goal does not lie in the lowest common denominator. It lies in the courage to take the first step. “The Q-Word”, as the High Representative recently described qualified majority voting, has the potential to enable the EU to act where it is as yet at a standstill.  Incidentally, we’re not alone in our desire for change. Under our leadership, 12 member states have already come together to bring about this change.  And we will reach out to all member states, including those that remain sceptical.  Let me be very clear when I say that it’s up to us, the decision-makers in the European Union, to use this rapid decision-making tool. The legal framework is in place; the EU Treaties already have provisions to this end. In the defence sector, we were able to demonstrate that this works with the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO). At the time, a group of EU member states took the lead and established a successful instrument for joint action. We must always ask ourselves this: what is the actual purpose of the principle of unanimity? The principle was once introduced to guarantee the most sensitive core of national sovereignty – foreign and defence policy. But what remains of this national sovereignty if its exercise can be blocked by a single member state? Nothing. It is as naught. This must also involve a shift in mindset. If, as a member state, I disagree with a proposal, the answer in a community of 27 cannot be “well, I’ll just block it then”.  Rather, the focus must be on actively seeking the most widely acceptable solution in such a case.  Third, a clear foreign policy profile for the EU. We need to be able to make quick decisions with concrete results in Europe. The President of the Commission, the President of the European Council, the High Representative and the many competent commissioners are doing sterling work right now in this regard.  At the same time, foreign and security policy responsibilities in Brussels must be both clearly delineated and pooled. The European External Action Service must be closely dovetailed with the Commission to this end. After all, that is where the resources lie that shape foreign policy today – such as trade, development, neighbourhood policy, energy, climate and sanctions enforcement. Interconnected security requires interconnected action. Are we equal to the task in a European Union that must assert itself in the world in a very different way than we did 10, 15 or 20 years ago? Does anyone seriously believe that? Our goal is to make Europe’s external action more coherent, more effective and more strategic.  The EU is, after all, not a static entity. Let’s consider the path we’ve trodden in recent years – from the diplomatic wrangling over the Strategic Compass as a joint threat assessment to the tangible coordination of extensive European arms deliveries to Ukraine and the financing of member states’ defence projects. A great deal has happened in the EU. It has demonstrated its capacity for innovation several times over, a quality many claim it does not possess. All of this has taken place in just a few years. Because it had to.  Fourth, the rule of law. Amidst all efforts to forge ahead, we must also pause and take a look at ourselves, at the state of our Union – at member states who knowingly violate the Union’s values. After all, the rule of law is one of the highest values that we Europeans hold, informing our image around the world. We therefore want to strengthen the rule of law in concrete terms – within the framework of the negotiations on the next multiannual financial framework, and also by strengthening Article 7 of the Treaty on European Union. We’re committed to further developing the conditionality mechanism. EU funds must not go to those who violate our common values.  Ladies and gentlemen,  Fifth, the ability to act means that institutions must continue to be able to function even as the Union grows. And grow it must.  However, a Union with 33, 34, or 35 member states cannot simply continue to operate according to the same approach that was designed for a much smaller group of members. Should we have 35 Commissioners in the future? I don’t think that’s a good idea.  The Treaties do provide for a better solution, namely a smaller Commission comprising only two thirds of the number of member states.  The same goes for the European Parliament. We can see at the national level the kind of challenges that are posed by an oversized parliament. We therefore want to adapt the composition of the European Parliament and the number of Commissioners to the needs of an enlarged Union. This requires decisions by the European Council, and is yet another issue that we must address. We want an enlarged EU at the end of the day. But it must also function effectively as an enlarged Union. And I understand the great frustration caused by protracted accession procedures. On the one hand, we want to integrate new members into a strong alliance. On the other, the candidate countries also need to undergo substantial change. Enlargement is a transformative process.   And this brings me to my sixth point: the enlargement process. I propose structuring the path to the admission of new member states as a step-by-step process in the future.  One possibility is enhanced gradual integration, moving through preliminary stages towards full membership. Such a mechanism would also make it possible to address the reservations that some member states have regarding early full membership. In the future, accession treaties could also include clauses that stipulate conditions for the disbursement of funds, thereby further strengthening the principle of sincere cooperation.  But I want to make it absolutely clear that enlargement is part and parcel of our credibility. The people of the Western Balkans, for example, were offered the prospect of EU accession decades ago. We owe them results. To deliver on this, we must finally make concrete progress together with reform-minded countries. And it’s evident that enlargement to include Iceland and Norway would also be more than welcome.  With these six proposals, I want to try to make our European Union more resilient and capable of taking action. Ladies and gentlemen,  The Schuman Declaration reads as follows: “World peace cannot be safeguarded without the making of creative efforts proportionate to the dangers which threaten it.” In view of the crises of our time and the existential threats that we face, our creative effort can only lie in enhanced cooperation in Europe.  And all of us must be aware that we ourselves are writing the future of our nation, and we’re also doing this in Brussels.  After all, the key to Germany’s future in security, a future in prosperity and a future in freedom, lies in Europe.  As it has for over 75 years.  Where would we be today were it not for the courage of its founding fathers?  This must be both a source of inspiration and a call to duty for us going forward.