Next month, life after Brexit begins in earnest. Britain hasn’t yet left the European Union—that will take years—but it is effectively out of the club already. In Bratislava on Sept. 16, leaders from the EU’s other 27 members will meet to discuss the future of European integration, and the UK isn’t invited.
Ahead of the summit, ministers are already starting to shuttle across Europe for talks laying the groundwork for life after Brexit. But all eyes—as ever—are on Angela Merkel. Today the German chancellor kicked off a week of intense diplomacy by meeting with Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi and French president François Hollande, core EU allies she will need on her side for the negotiations to come.
They are meeting on the symbolically important Italian island of Ventotene, where anti-fascists penned an influential manifesto calling for a federation of European states while imprisoned during World War II. And as if it weren’t clear enough that the leaders are mounting a defense of the European project, in the evening they will have dinner aboard an aircraft carrier.
In the coming days, Merkel will meet with more than a dozen other EU leaders in six different cities, sketching out a roadmap for where the union goes from here. This is her itinerary.
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