EU leaders meet at Alden Biesen to boost growth and competitiveness

EU leaders met on 12 February for an informal retreat at Alden Biesen castle in Bilzen, Belgium to discuss ways to deepen the single market, reduce economic dependencies and boost competitiveness. The meeting was chaired by António Costa, President of the European Council.

The leaders were joined by Mario Draghi for a working session on EU competitiveness in a new global geoeconomic context and by Enrico Letta for a working session on how to better leverage the single market in a fast-changing world.

Upon his arrival, President Christodoulides made the following statement to the press:

"I consider today’s meeting to be extremely important. It has been convened by the President of the European Council, following the joint letter signed by 22 member states, including the Republic of Cyprus.

I am approaching this informal EU leaders' retreat in exactly the same way as I approached the informal EU leaders' retreat we had last year in Brussels on defence and security issues. That leaders' retreat was instrumental in enabling us to achieve significant progress within the space of just one year, with tangible results on defence and security issues that we had been discussing for decades to no effect.

I therefore hope that today's informal EU leaders' retreat will lead to clear decisions with timetables for their implementation, so we can improve EU competitiveness, something we all agree needs to happen.

I am coming to this informal EU leaders' retreat with eight clear and well-thought-out proposals from the Republic of Cyprus covering all areas, to improve the EU’s competitiveness and, by extension, that of its member states.

I also want to point out that competitiveness is one of the Cyprus Presidency’s key priorities, with regard to strengthening the EU's strategic autonomy. We cannot talk about increasing the EU’s strategic autonomy without being leaders in terms of competitiveness. And in this context, we have sought to effectively prioritise all the dossiers, both legislative and non-legislative, currently before the Cyprus Presidency. Important decisions will have to be taken during our Presidency, and I repeat that this informal EU leaders' retreat has to pave the way for certain decisions. We have done enough talking, everyone agrees on the goal, and it is now time for results.

That said, I would like to address two other issues. I will meet with the Greek Prime Minister to be briefed on yesterday's meeting and the discussions he had with the President of Türkiye. We will also discuss, principally with the EU’s Mediterranean member states, a common approach regarding the invitation from the President of the United States of America (USA) for the meeting to be held next week in Washington. We are focussing on the EU’s Mediterranean member states because, as is easily understandable, these are the states that have a particular sensitivity, a special interest, in the issue of Gaza. The Republic of Cyprus has in fact already submitted specific proposals for implementing certain aspects of the US President’s proposal during the Summit that was held in Egypt, in the presence of the President of the USA. We will discuss with the Mediterranean member states to ensure we adopt a common approach regarding our level of participation, and that we continue to talk about Gaza’s interests."

Photos

See photos from the event on the Cyprus Presidency's Flickr account.

Find more information about the main results on the official website of the Council of the EU.