World 'concerned about EU'

(ANSA) - Brussels, October 20 - The state of the European Union post-Brexit is a concern worldwide, Premier Matteo Renzi told MEPs from his center-left Democratic Party (PD) ahead of a European summit Thursday.
    Sources present at the meeting told ANSA Renzi said the Brexit could have been a chance to relaunch the Union but that fellow EU leaders appeared backtrack at a failed September informal summit of the EU-27 in Bratislava.
    Renzi relayed to MEPs at the 45-minute meeting that U.S.
    President Barack Obama told him during his official visit to Washington, DC earlier in the week week that he considers the EU - not the civil war in Syria, which he said was a serious emergency but one that could be solved - to be the most critical issue to be inherited by whoever succeeds him at the White House. Obama told Renzi he considers the Italian left a key partner to relaunch the European project, which must happen based on three premises: a break with economic policies of the past and austerity, building the European identity through culture, and welfare measures.