Renew europe leaders meet before the meeting of the European Council, at Bozar, in Brussels.

Renew leaders meet ahead of the European Council (23/06): arrivals and statements

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External shots of the Bozar centre, Bruxelles

St&eacute;phane SEJOURNE, President of the Renew Europe group

Janez LENARČIČ, European Commissioner for Crisis Management

Thierry BRETON, European Commissioner for Internal Market

Mark RUTTE, Prime Minister of the Netherlands

Robert GOLOB, Prime Minsiter of the Republlic of Slovenia

Charles MICHEL, President of the European Council

SOUNDBITE (English), Kaja KALLAS, Estonian Prime Minister, We have been always supporting Ukraine's. We have been actually working quite hard. We're going to discuss this later on because. To understand what is the situation actually exactly as Lithuania is just implementing the decisions that we have, we have made, but we will discuss later on.

SOUNDBITE (English), Miche&#225;l MARTIN, Irish Prime Minister (Taoiseach), We've been looking forward to continuing discussions in relation to the historic nature of today's decision at the European Council, where candidate status, the application from Ukraine and from Moldova will be affirmed at the Council meeting today, and the European perspective of Georgia.

SOUNDBITE (English), Miche&aacute;l MARTIN, Irish Prime Minister (Taoiseach), We had very good discussion this morning and with our Western Balkan colleagues. A strong desire there also for a significant movement and hopefully progress can be made, particularly in relation to North Macedonia and Albania, and other countries in the Western Balkans in terms of the pathway on the journey to belong to the European family.

SOUNDBITE (English), Miche&aacute;l MARTIN, Irish Prime Minister (Taoiseach), I think there was a strong sense of the need to accelerate the close engagement with the neighbourhood on behalf of the European Union. From my perspective, I'm a strong advocate of accelerated enlargement, but it's the right thing to do, as a country Ireland 50 years ago this year voted in a referendum to join the European Union. It was the most transformative event in modern Irish history, and in our view, membership in itself becomes a catalyst for progressive reforms and economic advancement.

SOUNDBITE (English), Miche&aacute;l MARTIN, Irish Prime Minister (Taoiseach), And that's the prism through which we should see the applications for enlargement from countries within the European Union. That's our perspective. My perspective as a teacher and Prime Minister of Ireland. And I will look forward to further discussion of those issues with my colleagues of Renew shortly. Thank you very much indeed.

Alexander DE CROO, Prime Minister of Belgium

SOUNDBITE (French), Emmanuel MACRON, President of the French Republic, We will see in the next few hours and the next few days will be important if we reach a final agreement between North Macedonia and Bulgaria. It's still a bit early.

Renew leaders meet ahead of the European Council (23/06): arrivals and statements

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European Council, 23-24 June 2022