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Hurt by Britain's planned exit, European Union leaders are making a pilgrimage to Rome this weekend with the hope that a visit to the cradle of their project of unity can somehow rekindle the vigor of youth.

Saturday marks the 60th anniversary of the signature of their solemn bond, which started with six founding nations but steadily grew to 28. But the biggest setback in the EU's history looms next week when Britain officially triggers negotiations to become the first nation to leave the bloc.

"Ever closer union" long the mantra of the EU pointed toward a seamless continent and an economic and political juggernaut. Now others, beyond Britain with its divorce plans, are looking for more of a "living apart together" relationship.

The climax of Saturday's ceremonies will be the adoption of a Rome Declaration, a blueprint for the way ahead. But at least two countries continued to have objections to what many would consider a harmless statement to rally all member states.

Poland, which seems poised to take over Britain's mantle of the most recalcitrant member, wanted more assurances that all its requirements were met and only agreed to the text on Friday, the eve of the summit.

Greece, scarred by the financial crisis and the tough conditions the 19 nations sharing the euro currency imposed on Athens' bailout, is also balking.

"This isn't our Europe," Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said in Rome. "We want to change this Europe, to say no to the Europe of fear, of unemployment, of poverty, and say yes to the Europe that takes care of social needs."

The EU's Rome summit, while vowing unity, could instead be a watershed moment in moving away from it and toward a more practical road of partial alliances on certain issues.

The bloc has proven in the past to be less than unified in decision-making on issues such as the single euro currency to the Schengen zone of unfettered travel, but it always left a taste of being less than perfect.

Now, when projects languish all too often because of a lack of unanimity, even founding nations realize things have to change.

"Different paths of integration and enhanced cooperation could provide for effective responses to challenges that affect member states in different ways," the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg said in a joint statement earlier this year.

Some call it a two-speed Europe, or a Europe of concentric circles, but it would allow nations to move ahead and no longer be held back by others.

Last month, EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker told the Belgian parliament that "I no longer want member states to block others that want to go further."

It is that concern about paralysis that pushed the EU to look for other options.

If Britain does not show up this weekend in Rome, leaders will be looking at France with concern. With French President Francois Hollande leaving in May, there is the specter of a possible election victory by Marine Le Pen, the far-right candidate and another anti-EU populist.

Further down the road are the elections in Germany in September, where the far-right Alternative for Germany could become a factor.

Even in the heart of Italy, another founding member, the EU is no longer at peace. The 5-Star Movement founded by comic Beppe Grillois riding highest in the polls and wants a referendum on whether to stay in the eurozone. It has been highly critical of most things EU.

Laura Agea, a member of the European parliament, said that what the EU's founders set out to do with the 1957 treaty has been turned upside down.

"It's exactly the opposite. The drift under the eyes of bureaucrats and great financial powers has created a market anything but united," highlighting the north vs. south divide created by the financial crisis, Agea said.

This weekend's largely symbolic events won't change that, said Luigi Di Maio of the 5-Star Movement, the vice president of Italy's Chamber of Deputies.

Associated Press writer Frances D'Emilio contributed from Rome, Monika Scislowska from Warsaw, Poland.

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European Union Leaders Mark Past but Assess Uncertain Future - Voice of America

European Council President Donald Tusk, panel right, speaks to EU leaders during an EU summit meeting at the Orazi and Curiazi Hall in the Palazzo dei Conservatori in Rome, on March 25, 2017. Alessandra TarantinoAP

(ROME) European Union leaders marked the 60th anniversary of their founding treaty on Saturday as a turning point in their history in the knowledge that Britain will officially trigger divorce proceedings from the bloc next week.

Desperately trying to portray that sustained unity is the only way ahead in a globalized world, the no-show of British Prime Minister Theresa May was a symbol of the cathartic crisis the 27 other EU nations are going through.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker called Brexit "a tragedy."

EU Council President Donald Tusk said that sustained unity for was the only way for the EU to survive.

"Europe as a political entity will either be united, or will not be at all," he told EU leaders at a solemn session in precisely the same ornate hall on the ancient Capitoline Hill where the Treaty of Rome founding the EU was signed on March 25, 1957.

"Only a united Europe can be a sovereign Europe in relation to the rest of the world," Tusk said. "Only a sovereign Europe guarantees independence for its nations, guarantees freedom for its citizens. "

In a series of speeches, EU leaders also acknowledged how the bloc had strayed into a complicated structure that had slowly lost touch with its citizens, compounded by the severe financial crisis that struck several member nations over the past decade.

Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, who was hosting the summit, said that over the past dozen years the EU's development had stalled.

"Unfortunately, we stopped" he said, and "it triggered a crisis of rejection."

At the same time though, the summit in sun-splashed Rome, where new civilizations were built on old ruins time and again, there also was a message of optimism.

"Yes, we have problems, yes there are difficulties, yes there will be crisis in the future, but we stand together and we move forward," Gentiloni said. "We have the strength to start out again."

At the end of the session, all 27 leaders signed a new Rome Declaration saying that "European unity is a bold, far-sighted endeavor."

"We have united for the better. Europe is our common future," the declaration said.

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The European Union Just Turned 60. Now What? - TIME

The worlds most complex democratic experiment took shape 60 years ago this week in the lingering shadow of the worlds greatest, ugliest war.

From those early days of six members through to todays 28 and soon to be 27 members, its been a rollercoaster ride all the way.

Once harshly divided, Europe is now far more united, and undeniably richer.

Yet as the EU turns 60, just how much of that success is due to the EUs existence and the directives and regulations fashioned in Brussels and adjudicated in Luxembourg is still a matter of fierce debate.

Here are the key moments:

The original Six Nations (the post-war peaceniks, not the rugby tournament) of Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg refashion their coal and steel community into a customs union and the beginnings of a common market based on free movement of capital and goods. They do this via two Treaties of Rome, which establish the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM). There are plenty of Founding Fathers, but no Founding Mothers.

Delegations attending the talks before signing the treaties creating the European Economic Community in March, 1957 | AFP via Getty Images

The Committee of Permanent Representatives (COREPER) is established. This is the beginning of six decades of multilingual non-intuitive European acronyms, made-up words, and other forms of cruelty to language. Citizens everywhere, to the extent that they ever pay attention, are flummoxed. From semesters to comitology, from Antici to trilogues, the citizens of Brussels now stumble, punch-drunk, through such sentences as this: The new MPCC for CSDP will be there in the EUMS. Fonctionnaires receive nothing more than a 40 percent tax break to compensate for this hardship.

Throughout the 1960s EFTA exists as a viable (and more worldly) rival to the new European community, and with more members: Austria, Britain, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland. Its lower and looser ambitions hold back the growth of the European Economic Community that will later become the European Union.

Fifty years of ceaseless scrapping over the Common Agricultural Policy, sovereignty, Brussels-driven taxation and the use of majority voting in the European Council crystallized for the first time in 1965 when a petulant Charles de Gaulle withdrew his permanent representative to the EEC and stomped away from summits until he got his way. The Great National Sulk is now firmly established as a European diplomatic ploy.

French President Charles de Gaulle, in 1966 | AFP via Getty Images

Fearing a dilution of their highly prized sovereignty, won and lost and won again in Arctic conditions, the Norwegians turned their backs on the euro tribe in a referendum on membership. Decades before Tinder was invented, the Norwegians swiped left on the EECs profile before theyd even had a chance to get to know each other. It would be decades before a second date took place. The United Kingdom, Ireland and Denmark had no such qualms (possibly because they skipped the pesky referendum part), and jumped straight into bed with the frisky EEC.

Auschwitz survivor Simone Veil becomes the leader of the first elected European Parliament, and Margaret Thatcher takes over as U.K. prime minister. It will be another decade before anyone thinks to nominate a female European commissioner, another two before there is a second female Parliament president, and three decades before Cathy Ashton and Catherine Day become the EUs chief diplomat and the Commissions top civil servant, respectively. There has never been a female Commission or Council president.

mile Nol retires as secretary general of the Commission after 30 years on the job, dating back to the very first day of the new European Commission. As many as five people hold the post over the next 30 years. The principal legacy of Nols bureaucratic marathon is the influence of French administrative methods and the widespread use of the French language in the European institutions.

The dramatic moment ushers in a new era for Europe, in which East and West converge. Not only that, it leads to the reunification of Germany and reignites the debate over how the rest of Europe can keep Germany now the Gulliver in Lilliput pinned to the ground. One of the solutions will be the euro, as much a shackling device as it is a currency.

West Berliners crowd in front of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 | Gerard Malie/AFP via Getty Images

Jacques Delors great achievement, the EU single market, is born the culmination of a tortured six-year pregnancy that began with the Single European Act. Although the policy was partly inspired by Thatcher, she fought Delors on it anyway. Despite its occasional growth spurts and being the apple of the eye of its Europhile parents, the EU single market has suffered from arrested development throughout its young life. In her 1988 Bruges Speech, Thatcher inveighed against a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels. The Sun newspaper brings its destructive panache to the EU debate with its front page Up Yours Delors. (The British tabloids have been at war with Brussels ever since.)

Yugoslavia falls apart and war and genocide return to Europes doorstep. The EU, a body set up to ensure peace, watches impotently as its neighbors massacre each other in a series of atavistic meltdowns. The U.S. steps in to knock Balkan heads together and negotiate peace accords. The ethnically motivated conflicts peter out only in 2001, and the EU starts to bring the region under its wing.

Two Bosnian Croat soldiers pass by the corpse of a Bosnian Serb soldier killed in the Croatian attack on the Serb-held town of Drvar in western Bosnia, August 1995 | Tom Dubravec/AFP via Getty Images

This treaty, thrashed out in a snoozy little town at the intersection of Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, is a high-water mark of euro-optimism, laying the groundwork for the euro and for ever greater union. Maastricht established clear rules for foreign and security policy as well as justice and home affairs. The European Community officially became the European Union.

Seventy-five years after Austria lost an empire, it is accepted into the EU. Having come to the party far too late, Viennas grand state buildings cant be put to EU use, and the Union is stuck with dreary Strasbourg and Luxembourg as its homes outside Brussels. The next day, Hungary the other wing of the former Austro-Hungarian empire becomes the first former Soviet satellite to apply for membership.

The Schengen Accord is concluded. No more border checks! No more hassle! Europe will live life in the borderless VIP lane. While the EU captures the popular imagination with this step forward, its a shame no one stops to create a coast guard, or a unified software system to monitor those coming and going in the Continents visa-free travel zone. (In a sign of things to come, the U.K. scoffs at Schengen and says no thank you.)

The Schengen Accord was concluded in 1995 | Charles Caratini/AFP via Getty Images

With the establishment of the European Central Bank, the EU joins the global race to elevate central bankers to the status of pinstripe-wearing Gods. The move follows on the heels of the rise of former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and the Bank of Englands newly granted independence.

Commissioners quit en masse in the wake of allegations of widespread fraud, including against dith Cresson. The French commissioner paid her retirement-aged lover as a staff member and oversaw the disappearance of EU research funds. Under siege, Cresson developed a newfound interest in civil rights, but failed in her effort to establish the right of political elites to sleep with their own kind while sending the bill to taxpayers.

The European Commission recommends that Greece become the 12th member of the eurozone based on falsified economic indicators. Economists everywhere warn that the eurozones governance is incomplete, akin to a half-built house that wont be able to weather a cyclone.

Travelers everywhere celebrate not having to pay extortionate cambio fees while traveling, thanks to the euro, which quickly gains the status of the worlds No. 2 currency behind the U.S. dollar and hands itself a financial time-bomb in the process. Germany, which can cope with the debt, borrows more cheaply than ever to become a global export powerhouse that will dominate other European economies. Others also borrow like the Germans, but fail to remember that they are Spaniards, or Italians, or Greeks.

The Commission blocks a proposed merger between American companies GE and Honeywell, and proves it can set the global agenda on competition policy. The power play infuriates the Americans, who invented the field of antitrust and now see their companies become dartboards for Brussels. Fifteen years later, a string of billion-euro fines, repayment orders, and multi-year investigations will leave the worlds biggest companies, including Microsoft, Apple, Google, Gazprom, Heineken and Saint-Gobain, thoroughly dazed and confused.

There are scenes of exalted celebration in eight former Soviet states, as well as in wee Cyprus and mini Malta, which join the clubs ranks as part of the EUs biggest enlargement effort. For the first time, more than half of European countries are members of the Union. Old Europe starts to get jittery.

A European constitution is drafted with great fanfare. Some of its authors hope it will become Europes version of the U.S. constitution a template for democrats worldwide. But voters in France and the Netherlands ruin the dream, rejecting the constitution and throwing the Union into a period of reflection. The EU emerges from its depression by crafting the Lisbon Treaty which is again rejected, this time by the Irish.

The global financial crisis, which the EU initially blamed on American cowboys, hits home. It sees the EU supervising the rescue of one bank a day, puts the Unions single market at risk, and sends unemployment soaring, growth plummeting and several countries into humiliating EU-funded bailouts. Most European governments have blithely neglected to implement structural reforms that would have helped their economies absorb the shockwaves, but they find it easier to blame Wall Street, George W. Bush and Brussels.

Europe was battered by the 2008 financial crash | Dominique Faget/AFP via Getty Images

The Union strengthens its arsenal by establishing a bailout fund and banking union. It is ruthless in spanking countries that have broken the EUs budget rules and need a bailout, especially Greece. But there are successes in Ireland, Portugal and Spain, which take their bitter medicine and turn their budgets around.

Greece has struggled to climb out of an economic hole | Angelos Tzortzinis/AFP via Getty Images

The EU has a visa-free travel zone without any real migration policy or effective external border. This calamitous oversight becomes apparent in the summer of 2015, as refugees and economic migrants flood into the EU, skirting makeshift border fences and heading for Germany. Mutti Merkel establishes herself as the new face of global liberalism by welcoming them with open arms. Brussels is sidelined as national governments initially come to an agreement on refugee relocation and resettlement, then largely refuse to implement it.

The U.K. votes to leave a union it never fully embraced, setting off an existential crisis among the blocs 27-member rump. Britains vote comes to symbolize a strain of nationalist populism that imperils the Union ahead of a string of national elections. As officials on both sides of the Channel mud-wrestle over the logistics and implications of untangling Britain from Brussels, Brexit becomes the EUs obsession, with negotiations threatening to drag on well past the two-year limit set out by Article 50.

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The rise(s) and fall(s) of the European Union - POLITICO.eu

By Tim RossBloomberg News

Britain will have to pay a bill of about $62 billion when it leaves the European Union, Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker warned as Britain prepares to trigger the start of Brexit negotiations.

While there is no desire to punish Britain for leaving the bloc, the EU must deter other countries from following, the head of the EU's executive arm told the BBC in an interview broadcast on Friday. British Prime Minister Theresa May's government knows they'll have to pay what they owe, he said.

"We have to calculate scientifically what the British commitments were and then the bill has to be paid," he said. Asked if the bill will be $62 billion or about 50 billion pounds which is about 58 billion euros, Juncker replied: "It's around that."

May plans to launch Britain on a two-year process of negotiations to quit the EU on March 29, by triggering Article 50 of the bloc's Lisbon Treaty. The size of Britain's exit bill will be among the first and most contentious topics for discussion, with British ministers indicating they do not believe Britain is liable for such a large sum.

Juncker's statement is the clearest indication from the commission of the size of the bill, and is in line with an estimate cited by Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern last month. So far, the EU's chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, has argued that the terms of the divorce, including the size of the bill, must be settled first, before any negotiations over the new trading relationship between Britain and the EU can begin.

Britain wants talks on the exit and a new free-trade deal to run simultaneously and its argument received a boost on Friday when the Italian government said the two sets of talks could "overlap" to some extent.

"We will be at the end of the exit negotiation and at the same time we can start the new deals on trade, and we hope also for example on security," Italian junior minister for European Affairs Sandro Gozi said in a Bloomberg TV interview.

The EU's remaining 27 member states are preparing to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the bloc's founding Treaty of Rome, without Britain, on Saturday. Asked if May's absence from the gathering would be an elephant in the room, Juncker responded: "She is not an elephant," adding that he likes her "as a person."

Juncker insisted the EU is not "in a hostile mood" on Brexit because it wants "a friendly relationship" with Britain. "But I don't want others to take the same avenue because let's suppose for one second that others would leave two, three, four, five that would be the end."

The clash between Britain and the EU over the size of Britain's exit bill covering liabilities such as pensions for EU officials, infrastructure projects, and the bail-out of Ireland is shaping up to be one of the first major obstacles in the talks.

The British government has floated the idea that Britain could leave the bloc without paying anything at all and Liam Fox, one of May's most senior ministers, described the notion of a 60 billion-euro exit charge as "absurd." Her aides have said any payment will have to be negotiated.

An early deal to guarantee the rights of Europeans living in Britain, and British nationals in the EU, is also a key priority for Juncker. "This is not about bargaining, this is about respecting human dignity," he said.

May has also promised to work for an agreement as soon as possible to end the uncertainty of millions of EU nationals living in the Britain who fear they will be forced to leave the country after Brexit.

The EU 27 member states will find ways to separate with Britain in a peaceful, friendly and mutually beneficial manner, Dalia Grybauskaite, the Lithuanian President said before leaving for the Rome celebrations. "True, it is hard to talk when we lose one member state but Britain will remain our partner, the country will never become our foe," she said in an interview to LRT, the Public TV channel, broadcast on Friday morning.

Meanwhile, the European Central Bank downplayed talk of risks to financial stability from Brexit but raised concerns about the costs to Britain of withdrawing from the bloc. "We have learned from the crisis how to handle dangerous situations," ECB Executive Board member Peter Praet said in interview with VDI Nachrichten. "What concerns me are the massive costs that the withdrawal will cause for the EU27 and, above all, for the U.K.," Praet said.

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Britain could face $62B penalty for leaving European Union - The Providence Journal

Ordinary voters who had gathered to listen to two top European figures speak in Rome gave a less than confidence-inspiring verdict when unexpectedly quizzed on their own opinions.

The toe-curling moment was captured on camera at a presentation by Malta prime minister Joseph Muscat and top eurocrat Federica Mogherini to kick-start this weekends crucial summit in the Italian capital.

It began with the pair speaking openly about the challenges facing Europe, including Brexit, but also strongly insisting that the bloc had the capability to emerged from a dark period stronger.

Moderator Antonio Di Bella, director of the Italian TV network Rai News, then decided to get the crowd involved by asking them what they thought the future of the EU holds.

He said: There is a break the ice question. Could you please raise your hands and tell us whether you feel that your voice in Europe is heard sufficiently? Who feels that your voice is being heard in Europe?

The self-avowed EU supporter could not contain his surprise - apparently at the lack of reaction from the public - as he glanced around the room, pulling a disbelieving face.

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Giving a nervous laugh, he pressed on: Some feel that it is being heard, your voice. Then you also have, do you think that the EU will offer a solution to the major questions that will influence the future of our continent?

At this point the camera panned out onto the crowd indicating, embarrassingly, that more people may have raised their hands to answer no rather than yes.

And only a smattering of people got involved at all, with most sitting in stony silence and refusing to participate in the public litmus test of support for the project.

Mr Di Bella then swiftly moved on, after chuckling: I see that there are more or less abstentions, so we can maybe bring them over to our own side and convince them.

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During the debate the trio discussed how the European Union can progress and win back citizens trust after Brexit despite facing a multitude of crises from migration to the eurozone.

Mr Muscat said that Britain and the EU would still remain incredibly close even after the UK leaves the bloc, saying the reaction to the terror attack in London shows how the continent is intertwined.

He said: I feel that what happened in London and the global reaction especially the European reaction proves that there cant be Brexit in terms of solidarity.

Whatever may happen between countries and institutions in the forthcoming months there is an insoluble bond and unity which links European citizens.

This is a clear proof of the fact that Europe has a dimension which is prouder than the one represented by politicians.

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European Union - moment crowd at EU summit in Rome is asked ... - Express.co.uk