Barroso defiant in the face of adversity

The President of the Commission, José Manuel Barroso, this morning delivered his keynote State of the Union address to the European Parliament.

He spoke of the severe test that Europe faces in the form of the sovereign debt crisis but reaffirmed that ‘Greece is and will remain a member of the Eurozone’.   Mr Barroso called for a central role for the Commission in European economic governance, stating that the intergovernmental model could not succeed there.

He mentioned the need to bolster both European common foreign policy and defence policy ‘if we want to count in the world’, and he rejected the idea of there being a ‘G2’ composed of the US and China.  However, on the question of Palestinian statehood, he merely repeated the line that Europe wished to see a Palestinian state coexisting with Israel, without reference to the EU position on the UN membership vote.

The speech concluded with a resounding rallying cry to defend the European social and political model in the face of international criticism.