EUROPE IS GETTING ARMOURED
MIROSŁAW PIOTROWSKI
If expenditures for the army are increased within NATO, there may be shortage of money to build a separate EU army
It is getting more and more dangerous in the world. During a Conference on Safety held in Munich, the chancellor Angela Merkel made a declaration of increasing budget of Germany on the army. By no means is it all about some extra-ordinary means but about meeting NATO commitments. They were defined on the level of 2 per cent of each country’s Gross Domestic Product. However, so far, this level has not been achieved by many countries. In this small group, besides the USA, Great Britain and Estonia, there is also our country. Germany has assigned 1.22 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product for the army so far, and in order to meet the EU commitment, they will have to assign about 25 milliard euro annually. A trifle! It will, certainly, be spread over the time, but….In the opinion of one of Swiss observers – ‘Merkel responds to justified postulates of the USA president Donald Trump’. Indeed, this is shocking – as Kazimierz Pawlak used to say in a film ‘Love or break up’. Similar mixed feelings appeared in the EU headquarters. The chairperson of the European Commission criticized this trend at once. In his opinion ‘Europe should not agree to the demand of the Americans’, and he went on speaking something about damages for humanitarian help, etc. Jean-Claude Juncker took up an opposite attitude. What did happen? Well, the truth may turn out to be very prosaic. If expenditures are increased on the army within NATO, there may be shortage of money to build a separate EU army.
It is a long time since I have always considered this mythical project as utopia, but – as we can see – some, ‘especially sincere Europeans’ such as Juncker, find it very difficult to resign from it. Is he aware that Europe – including the EU countries – without the United States, is not able to defend? So, when the main Atlantic ally refers to the principle ‘pacta sunt servanda’, Europe must get re-armored.
AA
„Niedziela” 10/2017