Further alignment than currently planned would create new issues around steel, cars, genetically modified crops and other substantive issues, diplomats said.
She didn’t just come up with it on the spot. It was leaked in advance of her delivering it, so it was clearly language selected with intent and then preserved with intent even after having been leaked and causing some controversy. What the intent is, we still don’t know for sure, but it’s obviously something carefully prepped even if it is not yet fully baked.
I didn’t mean to say she improvised it on the spot. Just that what she said is not something that the EU actual movers and shakers (the member states leaders) have discussed and agreed upon. It comes from the Commission presidency, nothing more. It does shape public discourse of course and creates a “fait accompli” (the phrase is now out of the bag), but it can go down in history as “that thing Ursula said”.
She didn’t just come up with it on the spot. It was leaked in advance of her delivering it, so it was clearly language selected with intent and then preserved with intent even after having been leaked and causing some controversy. What the intent is, we still don’t know for sure, but it’s obviously something carefully prepped even if it is not yet fully baked.
I didn’t mean to say she improvised it on the spot. Just that what she said is not something that the EU actual movers and shakers (the member states leaders) have discussed and agreed upon. It comes from the Commission presidency, nothing more. It does shape public discourse of course and creates a “fait accompli” (the phrase is now out of the bag), but it can go down in history as “that thing Ursula said”.