Europe should overcome US pressure, resume cooperation with Russia - Duma chief
State Duma Speaker Sergey Naryshkin has urged European politicians to stop listening to US propaganda and start working on common Eurasian economic interests with Russia.
Naryshkin expressed his views on the best possible course for European politics in an article entitled “Natural Allies”, published on Monday in the Russian government daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta.
He wrote that the foundations of the European Union or “Big Europe” had been laid by people who remembered the lessons of the First and Second World Wars and these people still assert NATO’s eastward expansion was a mistake. Europe is taking great risks if it remains in the political wake of a nation located thousands of miles from the European continent. The Ukrainian crisis is yet another confirmation of the fact that EU member countries must decide on their foreign policies without any foreign interference, he noted.
If this doesn’t happen, Washington will eventually destroy the EU’s economic sovereignty by skillful manipulation of WTO mechanisms, Naryshkin wrote.Large-scale, rigid deals the United States is pushing through, under the guise of liberalization of trade, are in reality bringing the European economy under US control, he noted.
The Duma speaker expressed hope that more people in Europe are beginning to understand that cooperation with the US is leading the EU into a dead end. “As American propaganda’s scary tales vanish like smoke more people in Europe will understand that they had been deceived again,” he wrote.
He emphasized that the latest crisis in European security was caused largely by US actions and their disregard for international law. To overcome this crisis, Europe must return to the classical model of statehood based on morals, politics and law, he added.
Naryshkin also pointed out that Russia was much closer to Europe both geographically and mentally, and suggested that European partners return to a discourse on common interests, stressing the question of the southern and southeastern borders of the future major bloc is still open.
“Russia is a natural ally for all European countries. It was Russia that brought peace to the whole continent in 1945 and it deserves much more trust than those who thoroughly and for a long time rewrote history in order to start the fires of confrontation in our peaceful home,” the Duma chief wrote.
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In April, Naryshkin backed the idea of a future merger between the Russian Federation and the European Union, and suggested immediately starting consultations. The idea of the possibility of such a merger originally came from Czech President Milos Zeman, who confessed to having a dream that one day Russia would join the EU.
“Zeman didn’t exclude the possibility of EU nations joining the Russian Federation. Our country has repeatedly admitted the possibility of a merger between two regional unions – the Eurasian Economic Union and European Union,” Naryshkin wrote. He added that in his view the plan wasn’t a fantasy because Russia “has always been and will always remain in the common family of European people.”
