MNI: Draghi's 'Pragmatic Federalism' Gains Support- Official

Mario Draghi's call for "pragmatic federalism" among varying subsets of European Union states in order to accelerate the completion of the Single Market is finding support among some EU leaders ahead of Thursday's "brainstorming" session in Belgium, a senior EU official said. 

"This is not an entire novelty," the official said, noting the agreement on the December accord among countries on a EUR90 billion loan to Ukraine, which did not have the full backing of the bloc’s 27 states.    

EU treaties allow for groups of countries to move forward on important objectives even when aims are not shared by all the EU27, the official said.

"If there is a critical mass of states willing to move forward in areas that do not put the unity of the EU at stake, if that is what Professor Draghi had in mind, then that is the vision we share." 

Strengthening governance and EU decision-making has also been put on the agenda of Thursday's brainstorm by the ECB in its "checklist" of needed reforms.  

While a German initiative to organise a group of the largest member states (or E6 comprising Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland and The Netherlands) to drive forward progress on the Draghi Plan on the bloc’s competitiveness has yet to be further outlined, the leaders of Belgium, Germany, France and Italy are to meet in Antwerp in a pre-summit gathering ahead of the meeting in Alden Biesen in Belgium. (See MNI: EU Leaders To Seek To Protect Firms, Build Scale)