L’ex primo ministro finlandese Sanna Marin: le nazioni devono ‘svegliarsi’ al cambiamento globale e ai conflitti

Europe must integrate and become a geniune superpower, argues Sanna Marin at the Pendulum Summit. “We’ve gone to a new ideological world. Power matters”

”There’s still a “learned smallness” about European leaders. It’s time to shed the post-Yalta era. Don’t look to Washington and Moscow, but shape your destiny. Become who you are”.

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She is right. Federal Europe now, it’s already late

Is it possible to read the article without paying?

I think the problem is the solidarity gap in Europe. Countries seem to still default to pulling up the drawbridges when a crisis happens. If you look at what went on during the very early stages of the COVID crisis, the way some countries (including big ones like France) behaved was appalling.

If you look at the financial crisis, rather than just solving the problems, we all went around moralising and punishing and have left a situation where various countries are now highly eurosceptic and were left in quite weak positions.

Look at the current mess with Schengen. You’ve countries reimposing internal border checks because nobody’s really willing to resource the agencies necessary or pool sovereignty to do it right.

I don’t think the EU has had long enough to develop as an entity to really do some of these things. It’s still very much in the ‘good times friends club’ mode. When bad times hit, the shutters still come down very fast and I still don’t think we have the political infrastructure to manage something like an EU military.

There was also a policy of reliance on the US and NATO, which was not accidental and was fully intended to keep Europe in the fold during the post WWII and Cold War era. I think it’s more than a bit disingenuous of the US political figures to now start ranting and raving about how Europe (and particularly the likes of Germany) have NATO-dependent militaries and hadn’t been building up huge military industrial complexes.

If the US pulls the plug on NATO, I think what remains will end up as an Euro-NATO basically and that might become the start of an EU common defence, but how effective something like that would be is anyone’s guess.

I think you can call for a lot of things, but there needs to be a LOT more work done on building the political infrastructure and capital to actually do any of them.

Y-yes, my lady!

I think it’s gonna take a while before Europe realizes this fully. There’s still a lot of folks living in the past who think their little countries are going to be economic powerhouses again in the future. Fact is Europe is losing relevance year on year because it’s too fragmented and doesn’t have enough weight to throw around.

There needs to be more investment in the future. The EU has to invest more in Tech, especially AI and chip technology. Europe isn’t competitive enough when it comes to entrepreneurial endeavours either. It’s much easier to have a startup in the US, the amount of tax breaks they give and subsidies for tech is propelling them far above the EU.