The EU is a rock on the inside but a marshmallow on the outside

Only an assertive EU will win its rights on vaccines, climate policy and data protection
editor: REMIX NEWS
author: Mátyás Kohán
The EU provides its rivals with a competitive advantage at its own expense. Only those who don’t want to ignore us, don’t do so. 
 
I really don’t want to play blood poker, but with all due respect, I would like to point out that Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca are all responsible for the death and suffering of thousands of Europeans every day, the bankruptcies of many European restaurant and hotel owners and billions of euros lost daily due to the massive slump in European economic performance.
 
They are responsible for all this because, by their continuous breaches of contract, they have created a situation where there are only 2.3 doses of vaccine per 100 EU citizens – whereas this rate is 11.4 in the UK and, even amid a civil war, 7.1 in the USA – and since most vaccines require two doses, a little more than just 1 person has been inoculated out of 100 in the EU.
 
Moreover, the abundant vaccine supply of the British and Americans was largely made in factories located in the EU, which then turned to Europe with their apologies, citing technical problems and slowdowns. What brazenness, a perfectly transparent attempt by the U.S. to keep the European economy in hibernation.
 
Europe is thus a mere dust cloth, a doormat, a meaningless bureaucracy.
 
They have wiped the floor with us.
 
I really don’t want to play the grumpy teenager, but with all due respect, I would like to point out that for the second month in a row, Facebook has been issuing two types of digital citizenship: a full-fledged and a European one.
 
Of course, we can easily survive without nicknames, selfie stickers, surveys and the like on Messenger and Instagram; however, the thing is, Facebook has not stopped systematically phishing European users’ data for advertising purposes, referring to EU data security regulations called ePrivacy, and yet has taken away cute little convenience features from Europeans to turn them against existing and future data protection laws, indoctrinating them that data security equals inconvenience.
 
Europe is thus a mere dust cloth, a doormat, a meaningless bureaucracy.
 
They have wiped the floor with us.
 
I really do not want to play Cold War, but with all due respect, I would like to point out that a few days ago, the European Parliament attempted to halt the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which will be completed in a few months’ time, connecting Russia with Germany via the Baltic Sea. And even though energy trade with the Russians can and should be open to debate, it is a fact that with the construction of Nord Stream 2, the European Union is not losing anything at all.
 
The gas pipeline basically bothers two actors.
 
On the one hand, there is Ukraine, which will be circumvented by Russia, freeing itself from the blackmail potential that Ukraine has heartily exploited in all geopolitical conflicts. It is unfortunate that this weakens Ukraine’s geopolitical position, but the interests of a schizophrenic state with a repressive, legally and morally unacceptable pogrom policy against several European nationalities, ignorant of effective law enforcement and legal certainty, are the last things we need to consider in our energy policy decisions. Especially if that state is not an ally in either NATO or the European Union.
 
On the other hand, of course, the pipeline seriously bothers the United States: we will obviously not buy its super expensive shale gas if we have the pipe to the Russians. But this is again about the interests of the U.S., not ours, so we don’t have to revise our energy plans, even if the Americans, never to miss a punch, are demanding the sinking of Nord Stream 2, this time by citing Navalny.
 
If Europe halts the gas pipeline, it will be a dust cloth, a doormat, a meaningless bureaucracy.
 
They will wipe the floor with us.
 
I really do not want to open old wounds, but for the sake of linguistic correctness, I have to say that European foreign policy has become so much like that of Kinga Göncz (a do-nothing Hungarian Socialist foreign minister) that it’s painful to watch.
 
Only those who don’t want to ignore us, don’t do so in global politics.
 
We provide our global representation with the prudence of a pension insurer and the hardness of a marshmallow at the same time; we act as if we care about everyone except ourselves. This is a Christian attitude appropriate for one’s private life, but a mindless gamble in foreign policy.
 
We will never receive the respect (vaccine, trade benefits, data protection…) we deserve from the world based on our economic performance until the European Union cultivates its foreign policy, and there are only two foreign ministers on the continent who actually work: Heiko Maas from Germany and Péter Szijjártó from Hungary. Everyone else has followed the example of Hungarian Socialist foreign policy, becoming much like ex-ministers László Kovács and Kinga Göncz. Even though they are big, they dare only to be small. What a shame.
 
It further aggravates the situation that the European Union, with its marshmallow-like hardness on the outside, is behaving like a rock internally. With death-defying machismo, it sweeps the Minority SafePack, a national minority rights initiative, off the table, which – let us be honest – does not harm European interest and enjoys wide social support; it seeks to cripple Member States with the highest economic growth and the most favorable demographic trends based on rule of law concerns and other blood libels; and it shows a reluctance to accept what is clearly in its geopolitical interest, that is, the EU accession of the Western Balkans as if they wanted to dump radioactive waste on us.
 
Europe is riding the bull backwards.
 
A self-respecting political bloc is hard on its rivals and partners and gives its members as much freedom as possible. Rock on the outside, marshmallow inside.
 
As long as the EU does the opposite, it will provide its competitors with a competitive advantage at its own expense.
 
The vaccine campaign and the new investment battle for the regulation of the digital space give the European Union objective feedback about how it’s doing in the world compared to other major powers. Conclusion: not very well. And this is not because of the Liberals, the New Marxists, the Greens, the French, the Italians, the Poles or Viktor Orbán, not even because of the cultural struggle, which is tearing apart our continent, or the coronavirus epidemic. No, it is due to the few hundred people who are meant to represent Europe in the world and the other few hundred whose job it is to hold the Union together, for they have proven to either be incompetent or do not follow the right guidelines.
 
But until we run out of all our competitive advantages and international relevance, we still have time to fix the situation; so they had better turn around on that bull as soon as possible. 


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