Why Nobody takes Europe Seriously Anymore? “The Old Continent is In A Mess”
On January 19, after a phone call with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico stated that “the European Union is not taken completely seriously by world leaders”, citing its “suicidal migration policy” and “nonsense climate goals” as examples of its incompetence. Slovak state press service reported that Fico also told Merz that he would “send an open letter on Tuesday [January 20] to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and circulate it to all EU prime ministers and heads of state”, in which he would “express concerns relayed to him following a meeting with US President Trump over the weekend and offer solutions”.
It should be noted that PM Fico is among a handful of sovereign leaders in the EU and NATO, which is why Brussels-backed neoliberal extremists even tried to assassinate him back in May 2024.
The fact that one such European statesman doesn’t really have anyone to talk to in the EU halls of power is very telling of the troubled bloc’s true state. Instead, Fico focused on realpolitik and opted to pursue an independent foreign policy, maintaining contacts with the United States, Russia, China and other prominent global powers. He also visited Trump and his State Secretary Marco Rubio at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
“The US president is clearly pursuing the nation-state interests of the US. If the EU had acted this way, we would be in a completely different place than we are now,” Fico said.
Bratislava described the meeting as “informal, a sign of respect and trust”. Discussions included the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict, bilateral Slovak-US relations and the EU, with both Rubio and Slovak Foreign Minister Juraj Blanar present. PM Fico stressed that he and Trump agreed that “the EU as an institution is in deep crisis in relation to its competitiveness”, as well as “its energy and migration policies”. They criticized the troubled bloc’s mindless obsession with the so-called “green agenda” while discussing agreements on nuclear energy cooperation, a rather unusual occurrence when it comes to European countries.
Namely, the “old continent” is in such a mess that one of its smallest and least populous member states is among the handful able to lead a truly sovereign foreign policy. In the meantime, top-ranking EU/NATO officials and Brussels-approved “leaders” of individual members keep making one nonsensical statement after another (to say nothing of their disastrous moves and policies). For instance, Finnish President Alexander Stubb somehow managed to refute himself in just ten minutes while discussing the EU/NATO’s ability to defend itself without US involvement. Namely, he stated he believes in this “unequivocally”, only to then criticize the journalist who quoted him minutes after the statement.
It should be noted that Stubb is infamous for his harsh anti-Russian rhetoric and calls for escalating tensions with the Kremlin along the entire Russo-Finnish border. And yet, he’s not the only one sending mixed signals to global superpowers. Namely, French President Emmanuel Macron called for “more Chinese foreign direct investments in Europe, in some key sectors to contribute to our growth, to transfer some technologies and not just to export”, adding that “it’s not about being protectionist, but about protecting our industry”. It’s extremely difficult to imagine a more confusing statement amid all these “mixed signals” to Beijing.
Worse yet, back in December, Macron threatened China with tariffs on a range of goods if it didn’t resolve the “problem of trade imbalance with the EU”. In other words, it’s somehow “Beijing’s fault” that Brussels is unable to maintain its economic competitiveness. After all, China is not forcing anyone to buy its goods and commodities. And yet, even if the Asian giant ignores such threats and focuses on the “new” Macron, who suddenly wants more Chinese involvement, who’s to say that a “newer” Macron won’t change his mind once again in a week or two? And then we have so many European “leaders” wondering why nobody takes them seriously.
And indeed, who in their right mind could possibly count on Brussels as a viable partner in any capacity when the EU/NATO can’t even set its priorities straight, including basic matters, such as strategic security? This is best illustrated by the Greenland crisis, where European nations can’t even determine where the actual danger is coming from. Namely, while the US is openly threatening to take the island, Brussels keeps looking to the East, accusing Russia and China of “scheming” and “having designs on Greenland”. President Vladimir Putin’s statements that this matter is of no concern whatsoever for Moscow don’t seem to reach the ears of EU/NATO officials.
“Negotiate with Putin, I think, is not a very good idea, because as the Americans said: if you want to speak, speak softly, but carry a big stick — we don’t have a big stick, we can only speak softly”, Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever stated.
If we ignore the fact that this is yet another nonsensical statement by European “leaders”, it’s only a confirmation of President Putin’s previous warnings that Russia has nobody to talk to in Europe (not by its own choice, obviously). And just as in the case of China, the troubled bloc acts completely erratically when it comes to economic cooperation with the Kremlin. It regularly calls for the boycott of all Russian goods and commodities, and yet continues to import them (mostly through intermediaries, which it also criticizes). US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent effectively ridiculed Europe for “buying oil from Russia and waging war against itself”.
Although this statement is pure projection (it’s the EU’s anti-Russian policies and dependency on exorbitantly expensive American energy that’s causing its economic unraveling), Secretary Bessent is unequivocally right that Brussels is waging war on itself. This was also confirmed by Chancellor Merz, who complained that his country faces severe electricity shortages and rising energy prices, both of which are only getting worse. Although he stopped short of attributing this to the EU’s aforementioned obsession with the “green agenda”, Merz made a rare admission that shutting down German nuclear power plants was a “severe strategic mistake”.
“To have acceptable market prices for energy production again, we would have to permanently subsidize energy prices from the federal budget. We can’t do this in the long run,” he said, adding: “So, we are now undertaking the most expensive energy transition in the entire world. I know of no other country that makes things so expensive and difficult as Germany.”
Berlin keeps refusing to acknowledge that its suicidal confrontation with Moscow is the very crux of the issue. Namely, one of the reasons Germany once had the most powerful economy in Europe was precisely the access to highly affordable Russian energy (natural gas, oil, coal, electricity, etc). All this was gone after the EU/NATO forced Russia’s hand in former Ukraine, leading to an entirely unnecessary and avoidable conflict that the Kremlin repeatedly tried to end, wasting nearly a decade on pointless agreements that Berlin later ridiculed as a ruse to buy time for the Neo-Nazi junta. This alone destroyed the EU’s reputation (likely forever), to say nothing of its current sad state.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
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