Bled Strategic Forum
Speech by
Jean-Dominique GIULIANI
Chairman of the Board
Robert Schuman Foundation
Bled – Slovenia
August 29th 2010
Robert Schuman told us, from the beginning of the EU: « There is no sustainable economical integration without a true political integration ».
We just have experienced this with the sovereign debts crisis which is mainly due to the lack of political integration, the absence of common budgetary and economic policies, which are the only guarantee of the strength and the sustainability of the Euro.
The multipolar world, contrary what we usually think in Europe, is not a multilateral world. It is a competitive world, with many unilateralism behaviours of the actors, a world of Continent-States who continue to act as Nation-States, using the same tools: Force and influence.
The European Union, the first GDP in the world, must accept to better define its own interests, to defend them without hesitation, to promote them and to use the traditional tools of the international relations.
It so has to revise its exclusive belief in its Soft-Power. It cannot be sufficient in the new world. For example: The enlargement Policy cannot be the sole Foreign Policy at our borders. We need a true Neighbourhood Policy, with new concepts of Partnership, agreements, treaties and more funds. We cannot be a global payer, we must become a global player.
We do not need a common foreign Policy. We need a strong common foreign Policy.
The EU is a peace-loving Union. It should not be a non-military Power. We do not have the choice if we want to count on the international scene.
So, the new European External Service is a good step toward a better promotion of our common interests. But are we sure we share all the constraint that it means? Are we sure we are ready to make all the necessary effort to fight terrorism, to ensure European security toward all the new threats (cyber security, human and drug trafficking)? Europe must think itself as a building Superpower, a pacific one, but a Power under construction. Europe needs a true mobilization in the global security matters. And sometimes we seem not to be ready and not to be united toward these new requirements. You can be sure this kind of divisions, as well as those regarding – for example- the independence of the Kosovo, is a true stab in the back of the Common Foreign Policy. We have no interest to put at rise the price of every European people for the terrorists. We have to face together the challenges they throw down to us.
The new EU delegation in the third countries should not be only representation offices. They have to be proactive, imaginative and dynamic to promote a stronger Europe and to defend at last our long term interests.
At this point I just want to mention that – for example – we need to complete the Copenhaguen criteria with the obligation to every candidate country to be in line with the Common Defence and Foreign Policy. That is not right now the case.
Indeed. Since the launching of the European Union, we have drifted the course of the European integration. Comfortable with the umbrella of our military alliances, the member States have too long estimated they could have the benefice of the economic integration without a true political union, without a true European Defence and the necessary funding that it means to the military, to protect and promote their model and their standard of living. The time has come it can not be continue.
Either we decide to launch new common initiatives, internal as external, for example to get a new common Defence Policy, either some of the Member State will decide by their own, to take alone this responsibility. It is urgent to make some new progress in the military field. Not to use it as a common tool of our Foreign Policy, but to show our will to prevent any offense against our interests and to demonstrate our capacity to be united, that means to share our political sovereignties.
Be sure our prosperity, our security and our independence depends on that.
