Bruno Alomar, former senior official at the European Commission, auditor at the 68th Defense Policy session of the IHEDN, author of
Reform or insignificance: 10 years to save the European Union
(Ed.Ecole de Guerre, 2018 ).
After the
“Last Chance Commission”
(Jean-Claude Junker), the President of the European Commission Ursula Von Der Leyen said she wanted a “Geopolitical Commission”.
The European Union, more broadly, has in recent years claimed to shed its DNA, entirely structured around the market, to make room for non-economic considerations.
The toll is cruel.
Is there any area in which the European Union has gone so far astray, has failed so pitifully, as geopolitics?
Let us judge.
On a diplomatic level, Europeans, whether through the EU or national diplomacies, have never been so weak.
This situation sanctions the total incongruity of claiming, with the European External Action Service (EEAS), created a little over ten years ago, to set up European diplomacy.
Because the talent and good will of many of those who work there can do nothing about it: European countries were, are and will remain divided.
In terms of European diplomacy, the EU's action is tragically superfluous, muddled, expensive, focused on "values" whose ambiguities October 7 showed, forgetting that international society is driven by interests.
Hubert Védrine recently noted, sadly, how the EU was now incapable of imposing these values on the world.
On the military front, the EU's record is even worse.
The war in Ukraine is for the EU, already stunned by a Brexit that it was incapable of foreseeing, a new unpleasant strategic surprise.
It not only underlines the consubstantial incapacity of the EU to understand the dangerousness of the world, that the creation in the Commission of a general directorate for defense, again despite the good will of many, is not capable of to change.
It had a consequence that we persist in not understanding in Paris, but which is fully accepted in the 26 other European capitals: NATO, which is definitely not "brain dead", is indeed the guarantee security that Europeans – it is their right – want.
In short: in the minds of Europeans, with the exception of France which has its own nuclear umbrella, there is no alternative to American protection, whatever the price, particularly industrial. .
In Sweden, the authorities are preparing their population for war!
We could continue.
Among the recent proposals are the creation of an “EU foreign affairs minister”, that is to say nothing less than the end of national diplomacies, including French diplomacy.
Bruno Alomar
However, faced with such an assessment, what do we see?
The European People's Party (EPP), whose backbone is the German CSU-CDU, proposes to persevere with the error.
Nothing new, one would say: the “Green Deal”, whose hubris and damage to our economic activity we are finally seeing, which was in no way part of its program, at least in the proportions it has. taken, was an assumed betrayal on the part of the EPP.
Among the recent proposals are the creation of an “EU Minister of Foreign Affairs”, that is to say nothing less than the end of national diplomacies, including French diplomacy.
Also included is the generalization of qualified majority voting in matters of foreign policy, that is to say, here again, the end of all national independence.
All of this might not be taken really seriously.
This would be a mistake, for several reasons.
First, let us note the deafening silence of French political forces, in France and even more so in Brussels, in the face of such proposals.
While the European parliamentary elections are looming, will we still see, particularly with regard to the center right, that we have "high Gaullism" only within the Paris ring road and at the time of solicit the votes of voters, but that as soon as we find ourselves in the Brussels “bubble” the national interest – and, in reality, the interest of Europeans – is quickly forgotten?
Then, because while a new Commission and a new European Parliament are taking shape, it is during these months that the program for the next five years is being built.
Even more, the Commission is not waiting and is moving forward with resolute steps, seeking to increase its power by getting its hands on defense issues, the last piece of sovereignty remaining to the Member States.
It practices this
hold-up
with no other legitimacy than the voluntary abandonment of States which are preparing to partially renounce, without ever having been mandated by their population, their military and diplomatic sovereignty.
A few days ago, it published a package of five new initiatives relating to different aspects of economic security, including a white paper on export controls in the field of dual technologies, the philosophy of which is simple: get the questions across military and industrial industries under the caudal forks of the rules of the European internal market, itself entirely controlled by the Commission.
Let us understand clearly: the incapacity of each country taken separately, outside of any consideration linked to the EU, to take stock of the risks for their people and draw the consequences in terms of intellectual, industrial and military rearmament must be condemned.
No reasonable person would think of closing the door to cooperation between Europeans in principle, nor of remaining blind to the evolution of our American allies focused on China.
But the fact is that the EU, by nature, understands economics;
she is incapable of understanding geopolitics.
Whether it concerns diplomatic or military questions, it can and must help States if and to the extent that the latter consider it useful.
But in no case pretend to replace it.