EUROPE - While the British are tying themselves into knots of Gordian proportions over their leaving of Europe, the leaders of Germany and France have been meeting, now laying the stage for their political domination of the European Union (EU). Indeed, it’s these two nations that began this whole European project nearly six decades ago, and it is they who will shape the course for the remaining 25 EU members — and for any other nations that will join the club — in the decades to come.
And now that the Brexit matter has been fixed — the UK is leaving one way or another in nine weeks’ time — German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron are looking to the future. The pair met in the city of Aachen earlier this week and agreed to a 16-page document that aims to limit the growth of Euro-sceptic parties that are on the rise across the bloc.
In Europe, symbolism is all-important, and Aachen was chosen to make a statement. It was there during the 9th century that Charlemagne, the king who united much of western Europe into his Holy Roman Empire, made his home. Britain was never part of that empire.