Politics & Economics

Polish EU Council presidency calls on arming Europe to let it survive

24
January 2025
By Editorial Staff

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has appealed to the European Parliament’s members to support the call to devote 5% of GDP to defense expenditures. “Some people think it’s extravagant, or it is a brutal or malicious warning when we say that we should spend up to 5% of GDP on our security; if Europe is to survive, it needs to be armed,” Tusk told the entire hemicycle in Strasbourg.

Tusk further said that Donald Trump’s victory in the latest US federal elections and the decision he made on his very first day at the White House to suspend US participation in many international cooperation settlements “is not a threat to Europe, but it’s a great opportunity.”  

According to the Polish head of government, the “new president of the US is saying that Europe needs to share our own, take on our shoulders our own share of the responsibility for our security.” A normal wish from an ally, urging the Chamber to be “flexible in the ways we think” and to be creative on the means the EU should adopt to invest in external security. “Don’t ask America what it can do for our security; ask yourselves what we can do for our own security,” he further stressed.

As for internal security, “European money, European efforts should be translated into safe external borders in the EU,” he warned. The Polish rotating presidency of the EU Council is prioritizing border protection due to the pressure Russia and Belarus exert at the borders to destabilize some of the EU democratic countries.

“We want to protect our infrastructure; we want to use the tried and tested methods that have also been used in the context of the war triggered by Russia against Ukraine,” Tusk said.

He further insisted that if “political lunatics are the ones who speak out so loud” and say “that European democracy is something that is of no use,” it is because “we are not capable of defending our European border and European territory.”

As far as the defense of democracy is concerned, Tusk said that the EU should stay away from falling into the trap of censorship, “but we cannot be helpless against aggressors who use information as a weapon, just as they use immigrants on the Polish border as a weapon against European democracy.”
The Polish Prime Minister was not fearful in their 45-minute speech to propose a review of all the legal acts, including those under the Green Deal.

“We all want to compete against the US or China, but our energy prices are three times as high,” he said while asking to identify the problems and demanding “the courage to change those rules that might result in excessively high, prohibitively high energy prices.”

He explicitly ruled out the possibility of putting into question the need to protect the environment and the climate. “We are well aware of the potentially disastrous consequences that would follow in the case of no action, but there is a but,” he remarked. “We should identify the problems, but we should also have the courage to change those rules that might result in excessively high, prohibitively high energy prices,” he highlighted while also including the emission trading schemes.”

More precisely, he asked for a deep reflection on the potential quick introduction of ETS2: “I would really like to warn you against this move.”