ROME, MAR 25, (DNA) -Sixty years ago, Britain shunned a meeting in Rome where six war-scarred neighbors founded what became the EU; on Saturday, it is again absent, this time from a somber birthday party as it quits a bloc which now embraces most of Europe.

It might have been a modestly hopeful summit to mark the 28-nation European Union’s 60th anniversary in the palazzo where old foes France and Germany, with Italy and the Benelux countries, signed the Treaty of Rome on March 25, 1957.

Instead, it will be overshadowed by the unprecedented departure of a member state, which Prime Minister Theresa May will initiate next Wednesday.

All the bloc’s economies are growing after a slump that has blighted the past decade and recent border chaos has largely abated as refugees are, for now, being held in check.

But Brexit, which should take effect in March 2019 if a two-year timetable holds, has undermined the self-confidence of a Union that might see its 60 years of strengthening peace and growing prosperity as a success, and has encouraged eurosceptic nationalists challenging governments from Stockholm to Sicily.

It has also amplified the petty frictions among the more than two dozen national governments and obliged leaders’ aides to water down a grand birthday declaration of unity.

Britain originally snubbed the Treaty of Rome, but changed its mind about the Common Market three years later. It was made to wait however by the suspicious French until 1973 before joining and it voted to leave the Union last June in a divisive referendum whose consequences remain unclear.

After days of carping from Poland and Greece, seeking to show home voters they were getting Brussels to give assurances about equal treatment and social welfare, the Rome Declaration the 27 will sign in the late morning offers ringing phrases about peace and unity.

But it may disappoint those who think more ambition and coordination is the answer to malaise.=DNA

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