A nice hostel
(B2) It should be a high level hike through the mountain, reserved for the most enduring, to climb the toughest peaks and train others.
The permanent structured cooperation (PESCO) could turn, if we are not careful, into a cycle tour that ends in the evening around a good campfire, with mulled wine, guitars and tambourines... and a game of tarot. The main thing is not so much the sporting aspect as sharing good times, having the certainty that in the evening, a bowl of soup awaits you, warm beds... even if they are bunk, in this hostel of youth called "PESCO".
All the States are now discovering the will to work together around Defense projects. Some have a real desire to achieve high-level integration. And they are voluntary. But they are rare. Some dragged their feet. They came for fear of being isolated, of not being part of the club. Others thought it was a good way to obtain European funding for projects to be carried out. Because, after all, isn't the main thing to be part of the group?
As in a youth hostel, the activities are very diverse: from the deck chair to hiking in the high mountains, from pétanque to paragliding... And it is not enough to register, you must then get up at six o'clock. morning, the bag is done, to participate, and above all not to give up on the way, to prefer to come back to sip a drink, on the deck chair, facing the television, looking exhausted when the rope companions return, who will have really sweated.
There is no point in denying this reality of what PESCO has become today compared to what it was in the spirit of its initiators and in the letter of the treaty. It would be a denial. Now we must not fall into the opposite excess, take advantage of the betrayal of the founding principles to throw the baby out with the bathwater. After all, in hostels, you can see great friendship groups forming that last beyond a hike and achieve great things. All hope is not lost...
(Nicolas Gros-Verheyde)
