For the first time in a millennium, Europe no longer plays a critical role in promoting Western civilization nor in world history at large.
Ostensibly it should. Some 750 million people live on the European subcontinent.
Europe still remains the most popular tourist spot on earth. Its hallowed architecture, art, infrastructure, and natural beauty still remind millions of visitors of the world’s once most dynamic and grandiose civilization.
Europe’s middle classes are increasingly dissatisfied with governing institutions and establishment political parties, while skepticism of the war effort in Ukraine is more widespread than many thought, a new study has found.
The report by the Martens Centre, the think tank of the centrist, pro-EU European People’s Party, acknowledged that mainstream parties and governments are losing support, but claimed the solution was more European integration.
“There is no denying that representative institutions and traditional political parties are in crisis. Our results only confirm that,” the study stated.
Europe is in “complete denial” as China proceeds to spread its influence on the continent. At least that is the urgent, unequivocal view of Ivana Karásková, a Czech foreign influence specialist and a special adviser to European Commission Vice President Věra Jourová.
“In some countries, awareness of [Chinese influence operations] is high because they have a history of Russian-backed action. Elsewhere, it’s complete denial,” she told Politico. “It’s very uneven in terms of awareness. There are some countries where the discussion isn’t happening at all.”
The continent is changing faster than America
The temperature, at last, is starting to drop — and for Europeans that only means one thing: peak season is over.
The crowds in the piazzas and on the beaches are starting to thin. And in the tavernas that were TikTokked you can finally think about getting a table. It’s time. Like the clockwork of migrating swallows — the Americans are going home.
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The killing of a teen criminal vs. the passing of judicial reform.The lawless violence of 2023 is similarly close to the surface.
During last year, many large European cities, from France to England, from Sweden to Belgium, have caught fire. And in those flames we could see the end of multiculturalism crackling, a giant powder keg waiting for the spark.
“How can we avoid secession? Because that is what is happening: secession,” said former socialist president François Hollande. And if Gérard Collomb, Emmanuel Macron’s former interior minister, long-time mayor of Lyon and historic exponent of the Socialist Party, said before leaving that the communities, from “side by side”, have moved on to live “face to face, face to face” and that there is a risk of a “civil war”, in the Journal du dimanche an appeal by French generals and officers warned: “We have seen declared a hybrid and multifaceted war, which will end either with a civil war or with a defeat” .
President Emmanuel Macron’s recent Politico interview from his return flight from China (where he spoke at length with Chinese president Xi Jinping) has triggered a wave of controversy. Macron asserted that “Europe must reduce its dependency on the United States and avoid getting dragged into a confrontation between China and the U.S. over Taiwan.” He warned that if Europe too quickly takes sides with the U.S. in such a conflict, then “we won’t have the time, nor the resources, to finance our strategic autonomy, and we will become vassals.” Cultivating a position of “strategic autonomy” for Europe requires reducing its dependence on the U.S. dollar as the primary currency of trade, as well as its dependence on U.S. energy and weapons. Instead, Europe must seek to develop its own industrial, military, and political independence.
EUROPE appears to be falling apart. Germany is now officially in recession as de-industrialisation follows its green energy policies and the catastrophic damage to the Nord Stream pipelines. As Bloomberg put it last week: ‘Europe’s economic engine is breaking down’. France remains in uproar as protests continue nationwide. And any idea that that it is trying to free itself from the shackles of carbon neutrality is wishful thinking at best, naïve at worst. Dutch farmers are still under attack from their own government after the EU approved a farm buy-out plan to meet their climate goals.
Perhaps it is not surprising that the European Parliament hosted an event a couple of weeks ago titled ‘Beyond Growth‘, as that is the clear direction of travel for much of Europe.
Cancelling due to Ben Gvir’s presence is just the newest hypocrisy. Europe celebrates with dictators, but boycotts democratic Israel.
“The ambassadors of the European Union member states present in Qatar are pleased to invite you to a special event to celebrate Europe Day in Qatar”. And again: “Every year, on May 9, we celebrate the Schuman declaration. The EU ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Patrick Simonnet, has organized a lunch to celebrate Europe Day in Riyadh”. Same invitation in Türkiye.
Chinese government appears interested in pulling EU away from US, when Biden administration has sought to shore up allies to counter Beijing
China’s muted response to the historic meeting of Tsai Ing-wen, the Taiwanese president, with Kevin McCarthy, the US House speaker, comes as Beijing prioritises a flurry of diplomatic activity aimed at its wider efforts to lure the European Union and other nations away from the United States.
Ms Tsai’s meeting was the highest-level government reception for a Taiwanese leader on US soil in decades, and one that China protested in advance.
BRUSSELS — European leaders are suddenly falling over each other to get to China.
Amid growing concern that Chinese leader Xi Jinping is hardening his support for Russia’s war in Ukraine, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced on Thursday he will fly to Beijing for talks next week. Emmanuel Macron, the French president, will follow on a longer-planned trip on April 4.
A succession of European Union leaders used a summit in Brussels to raise the alarm about China’s ostentatious backing for Vladimir Putin this week, warning that they could not stand by while Beijing and Moscow cement an alliance that risks tipping the world deeper into crisis.
China is supporting Russia in its war with Ukraine did the EURO’s not get the message?
It’s bad enough the Liberal Party and our Corporate elite has sold Canada out to Communist China but it appears the majority of our NATO allies are also turncoats.
Young people in three European countries are sharply critical of the world’s two most powerful countries, a study has found.
They are concerned about the US’s role as the “world’s policeman” and China’s growing economic might, says US-based Pew Research Center.
The findings are based on focus groups with some 120 adults aged 18-29 in the UK, France and Germany.
Participants were from across the ideological spectrum.
Many voiced concerns about how the US has wielded its power on the global stage and criticised its actions abroad as self-interested.
BRUSSELS — Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the greatest challenge to European security since the end of the Cold War, but the Europeans have missed the opportunity to step up their own defense, diplomats and experts say. Instead, the war has reinforced Europe’s military dependence on the United States.
Washington, they note, has led the response to the war, marshaled allies, organized military aid to Ukraine and contributed by far the largest amount of military equipment and intelligence to Ukraine. It has decided at each step what kind of weapons Kyiv will receive and what it will not.
Europe has been warned that a flood of fentanyl, the synthetic opioid that has killed more than 100,000 people in the United States, is heading this way.
Belgium is on the front line of the new drugs war, as the main entry point for narcotics arriving from Latin America, and its customs chief says fentanyl is a bigger threat than heroin or cocaine.
A string of drug raids that seized small quantities of fentanyl in Europe over recent months has raised fears that the drug, 50 times more powerful than heroin, has arrived in Europe, as
Mexican cartels seek to build a new market on the Continent. The highly addictive opioid has ravaged the US, driving overdose deaths to 110,236 last year.
MONTREAL — If personal affinity shaped the geopolitical world emerging from the pandemic, Canada and the European Union would be bosom buddie.
But it is more likely the two will be rivals in a beggar thy neighbour regional subsidy war that is brewing between North America and Europe.
It is enough to visit a maternity ward, primary school or playground in a large city to see that Europe’s farewell has taken place.
“From a demographic point of view, Europe seems to be on a path that could lead it to leave history”, said Benedict XVI in 2007, while his secretary Georg Gänswein evoked the “danger of the Islamization of Europe”.
Three years earlier, while cardinal, Ratzinger had explained that “Europe seems to have become empty from within, paralyzed by a crisis in its circulatory system which puts its life at risk, entrusted, so to speak, to transplants, which however then cannot but erase his identity”.
In the past few days the news that Mohammed is the second most popular name among newborns in all of Holland (it has been first in the four main cities for years), the first name in England, the first in Berlin, the first in Oslo, the first in Malmö, first in Brussels, third in Vienna… The Welt informs us about Germany: “Even in Dortmund the first is the name of the Prophet, as in Duisburg and Essen…”.
