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Ursula von der Leyen’s humiliation in Scotland on Sunday may have been the moment when the EU struck an iceberg, to use the SS “Titanic” analogy. This is so patently obvious and undeniable, no amount of PR can conceal the fiasco. Nor was it the bloc’s only humiliation this summer.
A hat trick of own goals
The EU already scored a spectacular own-goal in their relations with China. First, our High Commissioner for Foreign Relations, Kaja Kallas thought it appropriate to take advantage of her meeting with China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi earlier this month to lecture him about EU values and democracy. She opened by demanding of China to submit to the rules based order and arrogantly insisted that China condemn Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, cease providing support and use its influence to stop Russia’s advance westward.
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Wang Yi replied that China was not helping Russia in the conflict with Ukraine and that it had no intention whatsoever of interfering in that conflict. Had China done so, said Yi, the conflict would already have been over. However, Mr. Yi also informed Kallas that China had no intention of seeing Russia lose, because China’s leadership believes that if Russia was defeated, the “rules based order” would turn on China next. Allegedly, the members of China’s delegation at that meeting said they had never seen Wang Yi as angry as he was then.
EU-China Summit fiasco
The Euretards (a new term for EU leaders that’s recently emerged on social media) weren’t done scoring own goals. On Thursday, 24 July they came to Beijing for the 25th EU-China Summit with the same arrogance and sense of superiority. The Summit, which was supposed to celebrate 50 years of the two sides’ diplomatic relations, did not go well and was abruptly cut short at China’s request. It was yet another high-profile humiliation for Ursula von der Leyen and her delegation.
For starters, she highlighted China’s relationship with Russia as an obstacle to future ties with Europe and warned that Beijing’s stance on the Ukraine war had become “the determining factor” in EU-China relations. Von der Leyen also said that bilateral relations “have reached an inflection point,” urging China to “come forward with real solutions,” referring in particular to the swelling trade deficit that hit €305.8 billion ($360 billion) last year. “ She claimed that Europe’s openness “isn’t matched” by China and that Beijing benefits disproportionately from the current system.
Xi Jinping wasn’t having it and called on the EU to “properly manage differences,” insisting that “the current challenges facing Europe do not come from China.” Indeed, they come from the EU’s own, self-inflicted loss of competitiveness due, among other things, to its burgeoning bureaucratic red tape and the bloc’s insane energy policies.
EU-Qatar fiasco
This last element very nearly derailed the EU’s relation with Qatar, one of its most important suppliers of non-Russian Natural Gas. Namely, the Qataris, who supply close to 14% of the EU’s Natural Gas grew exasperated with the EU’s corporate sustainability due diligence directive (CSDDD), which requires companies operating in the EU to find and fix human rights and environmental issues in their supply chains.
In a 21 May letter, Qatari Energy Minister Saad al-Kaabi wrote that, "Put simply, if further changes are not made to CSDDD, the State of Qatar and QatarEnergy will have no choice but to seriously consider alternative markets outside of the EU for our LNG and other products, which offer a more stable and welcoming business environment."
Thick and furious
Indeed, the EU’s problems have ultimately been created by the bloc’s arrogant, intellectually challenged and short-sighted leadership, which has proven as incompetent as it is rigidly attached to ideological objectives. Slowly but surely, they managed to render the EU dysfunctional, not only in terms of its diplomacy but practically along every metric including competitiveness, military power and its economic growth.
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The problem has been discernible for a very long time. Here’s how the Greek author, Dimitrios Konstantakopoulos characterized Europe’s leadership, almost exactly ten years ago (3 July 2015):
“Today’s European politicians . . . are ‘test-tube politicians,’ who haven’t emerged from a process of significant political battles with worthy political opponents, but have instead risen to power through the manipulations conjured by the strong players of the financial capital system, with the objective to control the political elite of the European continent. They are more employees than they are politicians. Moreover, their programme is not for public disclosure. Should they discuss in public what they really want to achieve, or rather what the bankers who appointed them want to achieve, even the stones will cry out in Europe in protest against them!
Today’s European politicians are the product of a very particular historical period which started with the collapse of the European left and its integration into the established status quo and especially with the collapse of the USSR. They are also the product of decades of successful ‘filtering’ of European politics and of a very successful strategy of ‘entryism’ into the political elites … organised around a ‘neoliberal’ and ‘neoconservative’ core respectively.”
Athens, 3 July 2015
Konstantakopoulos.blogspot.com
Certain of their righteousness, such characters led the EU for well over a decade. Errors, misdirection, blunders and missed opportunities compounded, leading to the moment when the whole ship of fools finally struck an iceberg (or three).
Ursula von der Leyen and the rest of the EU’s many governing structures will carry on with business as usual as the edifice begins to collapse. They’ll blame the Russians and their unworthy hydrocarbons, they’ll blame the Chinese and they’ll blame Donald Trump, but they won’t alter course. They might pretend to be busy rearranging the deck-chairs, but in the end, there can be little doubt that soon, the ship will sink.
The markets can now smell blood and the euro, which traded at $1.1750 yesterday morning, has already fallen to $1.1530, suggesting that this year’s rally may have peaked and the exchange rate could be headed back to parity (or less).
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