European defence: let's stop declaiming, let's detail!

(B2) Hardly a month now goes by without a leader with responsibility at European level presenting a 'new' idea to move European defense forward. In itself, it is interesting, it animates the debate. But it would be necessary to know more.

A wealth of businesses

We have set up a permanent structured cooperation. Then came a European intervention initiative, derived from an idea presented by Emmanuel Macron 18 months ago, in September 2017. Then came several Franco-German declarations (in Meseberg in June 2018 and Aix-La-Chapelle in January 2019) who spoke of a new military solidarity between the two countries and an EU Security Council. Then came declarations from several European leaders – such as the Frenchman Emmanuel Macron, the German Angela Merkel, the Spaniard Pedro Sanchez – announcing an “eventual” project for a European army (1). Top leaders. Finally, Emmanuel Macron wanted to set up a new defense treaty with not only Germany but also the United Kingdom defining a new mutual defense clause and this famous European Security Council. Without forgetting the famous aircraft carrier common, which the CDU of Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer.

Stop mouthing and explain

It might now be time for ideas to stop being put in the mouth, but for us to grasp what exactly they cover. Paris and Berlin do not perhaps have quite the same idea of ​​the European Security Council or of European defence, it would be interesting for these nuances to be clarified so that the debate can engage concretely. It would also be interesting to have a little coherence in all this fireworks of wonderful ideas.

Explain: a democratic necessity

Politicians should get into the habit, in their great speeches, of accompanying them with a small explanatory note, detailing in a few sentences, how their fine ideas should be understood. This would have an interest: to avoid misunderstandings, to allow the debate to engage, to advance the projects. This would have an advantage: to clarify if we are in the sleeve effect, the agitation or the project, the action. It would simply respond to a democratic necessity.

(Nicolas Gros-Verheyde)

(1) Even if those around them strive to indicate that it is just a way of seeing, of doing, to cover up what is being done today, the words have been pronounced in a decided manner.

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