What happened to those who clamored for the common army of the European Union? Where are those who aspired to a de facto fiscal union of the EU without the claims of the so-called “frugal”? What do those who a few months ago aspired to create a United States of Europe think and believe in today?
These are hard times for pro-Europeans, caught between an Atlanticist grip and a Community claim.
Since NATO has returned to the center of the international scene, the federal aspirations of those who would have liked to make the Old Continent a global force on a par with the USA and China have vanished almost into thin air.
The failure of this political and institutional design has been hiding in recent months – like a child’s finger – just behind the recent militarist redemption of the Atlantic Alliance; just as NATO feeds the ideal excuse to prevent the member countries from continuing in the convoluted and difficult but necessary process of European unification.
From healthcare (MES) to military defence, passing through the community army to migratory flows, the rule of law, LGBTQ+ rights, rules on tax breaks, the stability pact and the Pnrr: in the emergency of the conflict, better if prolonged, no one decides which side to take. Nobody decides anything for the truth.
Everyone agrees on being an Atlanticist (see under Vilnius), but no one knows what it means to be a Europeanist anymore.
Those who have worn the helmet in recent months have not only done so to fight in favor of the Ukrainian cause, for the freedom of their people, for the defense of national sovereignty, but also because they have seen in the Russian invasion a political opportunity to escape from ambiguity, vagueness, confusion on certain central issues which, if Brussels had a heart and a soul, it would undoubtedly impose on the governments’ agenda, whatever the cost.
But the Commission, the Parliament, the Council have no soul.
Bent over by the Qatargate scandal, the latest Euro-shame, Brussels is the capital of all political displaced persons, certainly not of the most admired and feared leaders (if any still exist).
And so Macron stays in Paris, he doesn’t lead Europe. Merkel served the interests of Germany, not of Europe. You dragon those of global capital, not those of the most populous continent in the West.
Ultra-militarism, business, Western sovereignty, international security and war have welded misunderstandings, impasse, inability to make decisions, to understand who and what this invertebrate Europe wants to be when it grows up.
Behind a blind Atlanticism for its own sake we buried, in the space of one morning, all the values and principles on which the Union is founded; the same ones we are fighting for for Kiev to be free; and always in the name of NATO are hidden even the most cruel hypocrisies and indecisions.
In the last issue we wrote: Europe finds itself at a crossroads: to resurrect independently and pursue its own interests or die in the shadow of the stars and stripes giant, or Chinese.
The conflict in Ukraine, although now chronic, cannot last forever. And the time will soon come when these issues – crucial and essential for defining the perception of a new West – will knock again on the doors of the EU.
It will certainly not be enough to delegate our security, that of our children, our grandchildren to NATO. In whose name? Of the choices of which leader?
Why should we, as Europeans, give up our (and only our) foreign policy? It won’t be a stupid percentage of GDP, the economic translation of our military investments in weapons and defense equipment, that will establish who we are.
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