The Heads of State and Government will meet tomorrow in Brussels to discuss European Defense, Brexit and immigration: this will be the focus of tomorrow's summit.
The summit will open with a discussion on cooperation with NATO, which was also invited to take part in the secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, reconfirmed this week in his post until the 2020.
Concrete results are expected for the Defense and Brexit issues: ie the launch of the permanent structured cooperation (Pesco) and the transition to “phase two” of the negotiations with the United Kingdom.
Important for European defense is the agreement, reached by the twenty-eight member states, on the proposal for regulation by the European Parliament and the Council to give life to the European defense industrial development program (Edidp). The objective of the proposal, an integral part of the European Defense Fund, is to create a program aimed at supporting the competitiveness and innovation capacity of the European defense industry, with a budget of 500 million euros for the two-year period 2019 -2020.
Negotiations between the Council and the EU Parliament will begin in 2018, with the aim of financing the first projects under the program in 2019.
The immigration point will be discussed by the Twenty-eight but no conclusions are foreseen.
Before tomorrow morning's summit, a meeting of the heads of state and government of the Visegrad countries (V4; Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia) is scheduled with the Prime Minister of Italy, Paolo Gentiloni, and the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker. According to European diplomatic sources, the four countries, during the meeting, will undertake to contribute to the “North Africa window” of the EU Trust Fund for the African continent, with a total sum of 35 million euros. Specifically, the resources will be directed to the implementation of programs in Libya, in particular as regards the management of the country's borders, within the framework of the Trust Fund.