Ambassador of France: The EU must make up for lost time in the field of defense

The crisis in Ukraine should serve as a “wake-up call” for the EU, said the Ambassador of the French Republic in Athens, Patrick Mezonav, addressing the members of the parliamentary Committee on European Affairs. Invited to brief on the results of the French Presidency of the Council of the European Union to date, Mr. Mezonav spoke about the need for strategic autonomy of the EU but also “to make up for lost time in the field of defense”.

Referring to the Ukrainian crisis, the French diplomat said that “it should act as an alarm, a wake-up call, an awakening, as the Anglo-Saxons say for some Member States and for the European Union as a whole.” It is time for Europeans to “let go of innocence,” said the French ambassador, adding: “The European Union is an institution of peace. It was the result of wars on our continent so that they would not be repeated. Our values, however, the protection of borders, respect for human rights, we may have believed that these were self-evident issues enough to separate the ghost of war on European soil. “Perhaps it was a historic mistake, especially in certain Member States, for which the war in Ukraine is a shock of reality,” he said, adding that “this happened” at a time when Europeans were ready to agree on the adopted unanimously. […] Based on the analysis of these threats, which are included in the Strategic Compass, we will be able to determine the means we need, and not only in the field of defense, because there is an economic aspect that is very important, to deal with these threats. . “And of course, this Ukrainian crisis makes us aware of the need to make up for lost time in the field of defense.”

“NATO is the framework for our collective security,” he said. And I think we should not play competitively, between the European Union and NATO, but we should look at our complementarity, and there will be situations where NATO, for reasons you know very well well, it will not work because of an issue between some allies, you see, very well, what I’re talking about – and the European Union next to NATO, but in addition, NATO will have to take on its own responsibilities. “where your sovereignty is threatened, where our European sovereignty is threatened,” said the ambassador of the French Republic, addressing the members of the European Commission. European Affairs of the Greek Parliament.

On the Ukrainian crisis, in light of the “discovery of crimes in Bhutan”, he also said that apart from a humanitarian catastrophe, “it may be a diplomatic failure. “He calls on us to reconsider as Europeans, perhaps because we were not fully aware of the consequences of the fall of the wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union.” He emphasized that the decision was not a signal of a formal antitrust inquiry into Russia. ” , although [..] its intervention in Georgia in 2008, should have awakened consciences even then, but also in Syria, Libya, in many African countries, either directly or indirectly, operations that should probably have led to a faster awareness on the part of of Europeans.

In the end, however, Mr. Mesonav stressed that the European reaction was “unanimous condemnation, and not self-evident.” On the issue of our dependence on the energy sector, the food industry, he expressed the belief that “many Member States are a vulnerability for the EU as a whole. […] At the Versailles meeting (10 and 11 March) urgent proposals were made to the European Commission, initially to reduce the European Union’s energy dependence by 2/3 by the end of the year, which would allow us to increase the pressure to the Russian authorities, “said Patrick Mezonav.

Source: AMPE