Bono: Make EU More Romantic Through Music, Praises ‘Incredible’ Africa-Europe Partnership

The anti-Brexit frontman of Irish band U2, Bono, has said it is an artist’s duty to romanticise the European Union and that deepening ties between Africa and Europe would be “an incredible opportunity”.

The musician made the comments during a visit to the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium, on Wednesday to promote the idea of a partnership between Europe and Africa.

“While America is on its holidays from big ideas, we should sit across the table with our African partners as equals and take over the world,” Bono said during a visit with the Parliament’s president Antonio Tajani and EU Council President Donald Tusk, according to the Irish Times.

Irish band U2 frontman Bono (L), co-founder of ONE, a global campaign and advocacy organisation committed to ending extreme poverty, meets European Parliament President Antonio Tajani to discuss African development issues at the European Parliament in Brussels on October 10, 2018. (Photo credit EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images)

Not mentioning Brexit specifically, the musician said that pro-EU artists were needed at the present time when “people are questioning Europe” and claimed the globalist Brussels-based institutions “improved the lives of Europeans”.

Bono, 58, is a vocal opponent of Brexit but recently lost his voice at the beginning of a tour in September in Germany at which he planned to wave EU flags, which he described as a “radical act”, while attacking “nationalists and extremists”.

“As an artist, I think I probably have a role to play in romancing the idea of Europe and seeing it as something warm-blooded,” he said, standing alongside Tajani.

Irish rock band U2 singer Bono (L) looks on past European Council President Donald Tusk gesturing upon his arrival at the European Council in Brussels on October 10, 2018. – Bono, the co-founder of ONE, a global campaign and advocacy organisation committed to ending extreme poverty, is in Brussels to discuss African development issues. (Photo credit EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images)

“Europe is a thought that needs to become a feeling and I am, as an artist, in service of that.”

“I’m not sure it is heard by enough people and I want to be a part of that romantic idea that is Europe,” he added.

Tajani, who predicted that 30 million more migrants will come to Europe in the coming years, said that it was “impossible to compete during globalisation as Italy, as France, as Ireland, as Germany, with China, Russia, India or the USA”, and that European countries needed to exist under an EU “umbrella” with “a common identity and common values – first of all, freedom”.