The EU is having a full-blown existential crisis. Someone has really screwed up its economy, and the culprit is conspicuously absent from a new report outlining the carnage. Are there no mirrors in Brussels?
Former European Central Bank president and Italian prime minister, Mario Draghi, has published a new “economic competitiveness” report after a year of work at the request of unelected ‘Queen’ Ursula von der Leyen’s ‘Royal’ European Commission. And it’s a real page-turner, one of the great mysteries of our times.
One is left to breathlessly leaf through the 400-page document looking for a culprit responsible for the massive amount of economic carnage detailed by Draghi. “For the first time since the Cold War we must genuinely fear for our self-preservation,” he told reporters in Brussels. How about starting off by not actively self-sabotaging?
Draghi said that the bloc desperately needs to keep up with China and the US, but has been failing. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the EU readily jumped in to ride shotgun alongside Uncle Sam along regime change highway, but now finds itself kicking dirt on the roadside and wanting to make its own way.
“Now conditions have changed,” Draghi said. “World trade is slowing. China is actually slowing very much, but it’s become much less open to us, and actually it’s competing with us in global markets on all accounts. We’ve lost our main supplier of cheap energy, Russia. And now we have to start for our defense again for the first time since the Second World War.” Apparently, the jokers ruling Europe from the big top tent in Brussels are shocked to discover that they’ve been victimized. Who could possibly have done such a thing?
Gotta love the use of the passive there. “Lost” their cheap energy from Russia. Like it just fell out of their pocket like a set of house keys on the way back from the store.
Listening to Draghi, you’d also think that the EU hasn’t actually adopted “de-coupling” from China as a strategy, egged on by Washington, which wanted Europe all to itself, before EU officials rebranded it a “de-risking” when they realized how stupid a move it would be to fully alienate China as the bloc’s top trading partner and customer.
And now, oh gee, the EU has to start thinking about its own defense again, Draghi said, rather than just using it to shake free some natural resources from all the places with fortuitously-located terrorist problems.
The Ukraine conflict has been an equally convenient excuse to make more weapons at taxpayer expense for the EU’s own defense after emptying out the old junk from its closets. Good thing, too, because making more weapons is about the only real easy answer for improving the economy right now, judging by the dire state of things outlined in this new report. Still, the EU can’t even do the military-industrial racket right.
Draghi has pointed out that EU members are basically idiots for buying most of their weapons abroad, with nearly two-thirds coming from the US. Big mystery as to why Washington wants to keep the party going in Ukraine when it’s making bank by drumming up the need to ramp up weapons purchases for EU members under the guise that their former top economic lifeline and energy supplier (Russia) was suddenly a big threat to them. The bonus: making Europe more dependent on the US for pricier gas, too.
The whole report is just loaded with gems, like this one: “If Europe cannot become more productive, we will be forced to choose. We will not be able to become, at once, a leader in new technologies, a beacon of climate responsibility and an independent player on the world stage. We will not be able to finance our social model. We will have to scale back some, if not all, of our ambitions. This is an existential challenge...”
Draghi’s going on about all these grand ambitions like leading new tech and being a climate and social icon, while European elites have been yelling at the plebs to turn down the heating and air conditioning to stick it to Putin and cheering mild winters like we’re living in the dark ages. Draghi also said that the EU needs another €800 billion ($890 billion), which is about 4.5% of the entire bloc’s GDP, just to be able to stay globally competitive. And that competitiveness can only be achieved by thoroughly unscrewing everything they screwed up over the past two and a half years through self-inflicted idiocy in the interests of impressing their girlfriend Vladimir Zelensky (aka president of Ukraine).
Draghi also said that the amount of cash needed to make the EU competitive now is so massive that private investment just won’t cut it. And well, you know what that means. In related news, EU taxpayers, there’s a sale right now on Amazon France for €4 tubes of lube.
But what if EU taxpayers don’t want to comply, because they’ve had enough of paying for all these screwups, as recent elections across the EU suggest, with anti-establishment parties surging. Well, here’s Draghi with a plea. Cue the violins: “Why do we care so much about growing. Yes, we have to finance these needs, and these needs are important, but why are they so important? Well, they are important because they have to do with our founding values, prosperity, equity, peace and democracy in a sustainable world. And the EU exists to ensure Europeans that they actually will benefit from these fundamental rights. And if Europe can no longer provide them to its people, it will have lost its reason for being.”
Okay, put the lube on ice, folks – he’s giving seduction a try. Queen Ursula will no doubt be along shortly to play the “bad cop.”
So basically, the EU’s ‘braintrust’ blew a bunch of cash and deregulated the economy “for Ukraine”, but now they need Europeans to be okay with handing over even more cash, because it’s totally for their own good. This time it’ll work out. Promise. Just like it did with that ex who you let crawl back into your life one too many times.
Meanwhile, von der Leyen is talking about the need for economic supply security and Draghi is saying that the EU needs more friends. Ones that happen to have a ton of resources that they can cozy up to, preferably. And he’s also saying that some countries are already trying to do that on their own, but it would be better if the EU took charge of it. Draghi added that the bloc was “punching under our power.”
More like it’s been punching itself right in the face, over and over again, if the EU’s recent policies and performance are any indication.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.