DAVOS-Europe should be more ambitious on climate change - EU's Malmstrom

European Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said on Thursday that Europe should be more ambitious on issues such as climate change as a way to unite the bloc around a single vision. "We need a great debate on the future of Europe," she said in a wide-ranging debate at the World Economic Forum in Davos on the state of the continent and the rise of populism.

Europeans vote for a new European parliament in May, at a time when citizens in many countries are backing populist parties. Italy's Foreign Minister Enzo Moavero Milanesi said the European Union had become like an archipelago of separate islands. "There is no real European vision at the moment, such as the vision which moved the founders. We need to find things that mobilise people, that make the heart beat faster, not just the wallet."

(Reporting by Simon Robinson, editing by Mark Trevelyan)