The European Union’s peace project has collapsed, EP’s von der Schulenburg says

Editor’s note: Speaking at the East-West Forum held in Istanbul on September 26, Michael von der Schulenburg, Member of the European Parliament and former Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations, offered striking assessments of the European Union’s current trajectory. Schulenburg stated that the Union, established after World War II to build peace, has now abandoned this mission and surrendered entirely to a war-driven rhetoric. He pointed out that Europe, while grappling with structural challenges such as scarce resources, high energy costs, deindustrialization, and a demographic crisis, has been left confronting a ring of active conflicts along its borders. Emphasizing that Brussels has lost its capacity for diplomacy and mediation, the senior diplomat stated that the 27 member states lack the flexibility and collective will to sit at the negotiating table with Russia.

I’m not an academic, as you said. I’m coming from the real world of wars and peace, and I spent all my life outside Europe, actually, but the last two years I spent in the European Union, and I’m quite shocked what I see there. The European Union, as you know, was founded after the Second World War as a peace project.

A peace project, not to repeat the Second World War, bring countries together in Europe, but also reflect to the outside world that there is a sort of peaceful integration where you don’t have to have war. That has completely changed. When I listen today in the Parliament or on the line, actually, war is the main theme of the debate now in the European Union.

I would now characterize the European Union as an organization that is in complete denial of reality, of complete denial of reality, and therefore is completely unable to do any policy. And when the question here in the seminar is whether there is a contribution to the new world order, it will surely not come from the European Union.

Let me just make some comparison, which is closer to my job. When you compare the European Union to the United States, China and Russia, then the European Union is surrounded by most of the wars in the world, active wars. No other of these countries have so many wars around them. And even we have the problem that the United States starts wars like the Iran war and others, and they withdraw over the Atlantic.

But the consequences of the wars will stay next to the European Union. I think about Iran, I think about the many wars Israel does, from Syria to Lebanon to West Bank, Gaza. But I think also about the war between Yemen and Saudi Arabia. And then behind them, there’s all these conflicts in Africa, Mali and so on, and of course, Sudan. And the worst, of course, for us is the Ukraine war, because it’s on our own continent.

When you compare the European Union to the other three powers, you also realize that we are probably the place which have the least natural resources. We have a huge demographic problem. We have a demographic transition in our country, which we like not to speak about, but it will have an enormous influence. We have the most expensive energy. We have lost our comparative advantage. We have deindustrialization. And of course, we now lose what actually made Europe so special in the world, our social system.

You would assume that the European Union, and with this one, I don’t mean only the institution, but also the member states who have created what they call a common foreign and security policy would have be very strong because they would have to react to what happens around them.

Oh, forgot the United States, of course gripping now Greenland because I think that the agreement they just signed is the first step of taking over full control of Greenland. I mean we should not have any. And that’s a European territory. I mean what does the European Union does they have no foreign policy, they have no security policy, at least not that I can detect. They have a lot of political statements. They’re usually full of rearm Europe that we have to finally to become a military power. And they are full of moral.

And you know, in the UN we say always who speaks about war, moral wants war and those who speak about interest look for a solution. There’s nothing speaking about interest in the I can detect in the European Union. So it’s very, very worried. You know, this whole moral. Of course somebody who always thinks that I’m the moral superior is always very close to hypocrisy. And it’s actually sometimes really painful to listen to all these arguments.

But in a sense we have no policy to something which is actually for the European Union, for its future life threatening all these conflicts around them. You cannot speak to anybody. We don’t see anywhere we sit on the table of negotiations. Nowhere we have a proposal, nowhere we try to interfere on saying maybe we can mediate or anything.

There’s nothing of the sort anymore. And despite the fact that the foreign service alone of the European Union not to speak about the member states cost $1 billion a year, $1 billion. I don’t know what they do. I’ve met them in the field. I have no clue what European diplomats do. Anyway,

the most important thing is of course Ukraine. I mean it’s in our continent. If you are in such an insecure situation as we are, I mean the first thing one should come to mind that we need peace on the European continent. Then maybe we can also deal with the others.

Having peace in the European continent means that we have to talk to Russia, we have to negotiate, we have somehow to find a solution to the conflict. But we can’t. We are so blocked in ourselves that we were unable, we would be unable to have a negotiating position with Russia because the 27 countries cannot agree on a changed policy.

They cannot agree on what person should do in negotiations and they would never agree to give this person a certain flexibility people need when they do peace negotiations. And even if you think the E3 take the lead, the interest of the E3 is so completely different that it will not that is even more dangerous because the British would hate anything which is peace with the east because they look to the Atlantic and they see this since 1850, I think, as a great danger.

Germany would be the greatest profiteer from these things, but behaves, of course, irrational, most irrational. And the British would. The French would probably also not like it because the link to Russia and things like this would be of enormous economic and political benefit for you. So we don’t have anything.

What I want to say conclude with this whole thing is that the European Union will be a factor of instability in the world for a long time to come. I think as we go along, it will have also instability within its own borders. It is very sad to say. So the peace project of the European Union has been lost. And this loss of peace, we will all have problems that will make future generations suffer. Thank you very much.