The leader of the European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, presents, Monday, to the foreign ministers of the twenty-seven gathered in Brussels his projects for the EU on security and defense.
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What is a compass for? To find the right direction when you are lost, then keep the course. The term “strategic compass”, adapted from English Compass, is therefore not necessarily the happiest for expressing new security and European defense.
However, it is the tone that the leader of the diplomacy of the European Union (EU), Josep Borrell, intends to give the project that he presents, Monday, November 15, to the Foreign Ministers of the Twenty-Seven, In Brussels, on the foundation of Belarusian crisis: the time has come to pass to Hard Power because, he writes in the preface of this “strategic compass”, “Europe is in danger”.
The last document of the European Commission laying down the strategic directions of the common security and defense policy, conceived by the predecessor of Mr. Borrell as high EU representative for Foreign Affairs, Federica Mogherini, goes back at 2016.
The world has changed since – and not for the best: the general direction of this new project clearly reflects the degradation of the international environment as well as the imperative for the EU to be able to respond itself the resulting direct threats. It proposes the creation of a European autonomous rapidly deployment capacity, which can respond to a diversity of missions, avoiding the passage of past devices. EU citizens, explains Josep Borrell in the world, expect it to “ensure their safety”. In other words, summarizes the former Spanish minister: “to project outside, unite inside, protect Europeans”.
Crisis on the Eastern border of the EU
There is urgency. At the moment when the foreign ministers of the twenty-seven, then those of the Defense, meet in Brussels at the beginning of the week, the crisis born of a “hybrid attack” of the Belarusian regime against Poland, Lithuania and the Latvia on the Eastern border of the EU focuses all attentions.
Here, the weapon used by the dictator of Minsk, Alexandre Loukachenko, that Brussels is considering to destabilize the EU, is that of the instrumentalisation of thousands of asylum seekers, blocked in a disastrous humanitarian situation between Belarusian and Polish soldiers. The tension rises each day.
At the beginning of the winter, Europeans face another tension, on their gas supply, 30% dependent on Russia. President Vladimir Putin has long understood the geopolitical value of energy and he knows how to use it, whether it’s the powerful Germany or small Moldova.
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