Meaning of Bratislava Summit outlives Slovak EU Presidency

The Bratislava Road Map on the EU's future, adopted at the informal EU summit in Bratislava last September, was mentioned several times at the General Affairs Council meeting in Brussels on Tuesday, Foreign and European Affairs Ministry State Secretary Ivan Korčok later told TASR. The first formal meeting of the council under the Maltese EU presidency chiefly focused on preparations for the March EU summit, which is set to feature a debate on progress made in security and defence and external aspects of the migration agenda, along with economic issues. According to Korčok, references to the Bratislava summit indicated that its significance has extended beyond the six-month Slovak presidency and that it is viewed as the beginning of a process that should culminate in Rome in March with celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome. "I stated today that it's crucial to make progress on specific legal projects concerning the internal market, including the common digital market, Energy Union and the capital market union," said Korčok, adding that the EU can't invent anything better than the internal market to bring tangible benefits for the public. As for migration, Korčok noted that Slovakia helped to create pressure to include in the Malta Declaration more powers for individual member states to govern the migration process. Korčok praised the fact that the Malta summit paid attention to Libya as a transit country used by migrants, but he added that the March summit must clearly point to the success of individual measures as well as the lack thereof in order for more effective steps to be taken.