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The UK may not be leaving the European Union until 2019 at the earliest, but the EU's 27 other member states are, politically at least, already moving on. On Monday, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi will host German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande on Ventotene, an island off the coast of Naples.
The meeting comes ahead of an EU leaders summit – without Britain – that will be held in Bratislava in mid-September.
Ventotene is a symbolic choice of venue. Two Italian intellectuals, Altiero Spinelli and Ernesto Rossi, were imprisoned on the island by Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. There, in 1941, they wrote what came to be known as the "Ventotene Manifesto", a call for the political unification of Europe.
Seventy five years later there will be no grand calls for a European superstate. The message the leaders of the eurozone's three largest economies hope to send on Monday is more down to earth: "A Europe that restarts from Ventotene," a senior Italian official told BuzzFeed News.
Italian sources suggest the government wants to push for a shift in Europe's focus: "more investment less austerity, more talk of jobs and families less finance and banks, a eurozone that is not just a common currency but works together on culture, defence and security issues too." Brexit is just one item on the agenda.
The EU's other 27 member states have been unanimously clear that the UK will not be able to stay in the single market and at the same time restrict freedom of movement – a red line that is unlikely to be erased. The onus is now on the UK government to work its way through figuring out what type of relationship it hopes to have with the EU in future before invoking article 50, the mechanism to formally leave the EU.
Still, handling negotiations with the UK will come at a complicated time for Europe with ongoing economic situations in the eurozone, Ukraine flaring up again, crises stretching from Libya to Syria, security threats at home, the fallout from the failed coup in Turkey, and ongoing refugee flows. Most of these topics are expected to be discussed on Monday.
But on some critical aspects of these issues there is no common position among the 27 governments. The divides over the balance of powers between member states and institutions, between northern and southern states in the eurozone on expansionary policies and greater budget flexibility, and between east and west on dealing with the refugee crisis, are especially wide.
Agreement on greater cooperation in defence and security, and measures to boost youth employment, will be easier to reach at the Bratislava summit next month.
There is also an all-Italian subtext to Monday's meeting that the Renzi government is keen to let it be known. Five years ago at a press conference in Brussels, Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, the then French president, sniggered when asked a question about former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. "The era of when France and Germany laughed at Berlusconi's Italy is no more", a senior official told BuzzFeed News.
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For Renzi, Hollande, and Merkel, Monday's meeting takes place against a backdrop of uneasy domestic fronts. In France and Germany there is a heated debate over identity and integration. A string of French towns have banned burkinis in recent weeks, while in Germany the interior minister called for a partial burka ban last week. Both the offices of Hollande and Merkel come up for election next year, with the German chancellor also facing several state elections before then.
Meanwhile, Renzi is set to call a referendum on constitutional reforms in the autumn, which the prime minister has billed as critical if Italy is to stick with his path of reforms. Votes are also due in Austria, where a far-right candidate may win the presidency, in the Netherlands where a right-wing anti-EU party tops the polls, and in Hungary in the form of a referendum that is expected to overwhelmingly reject EU refugee resettlement plans later this year.
Between now and the Bratislava summit several other meetings between blocs of EU leaders are likely to take place, while European Council president Donald Tusk has said he will consult all 27 leaders, on both form and substance, ahead of next month's gathering.
Public opinion in all 27 countries will be a key factor in Brexit negotiations with the UK.
LINK: How Will Brexit Actually Work?
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