A common shield against common threats

"Let’s face it: The EU will only be able to defend and uphold the freedom and wellbeing of its citizens against global challenges by building a common shield against common threats. Division and fragmentation will make the strongest among us weaker."

With the COVID-19 pandemic still taking the lives of the most vulnerable among us, we are humbled as we realise how fragile and exposed we are in the face of threats so real and so great, yet so far removed from our everyday routines.

There is little question that we have fallen short of successfully using our Union to its full strength, as an effective means to fight the greatest global threat since its foundation, barring some notable but scarce exceptions. This realisation, as well as the current, arduous debate to deliver an adequate recovery strategy from the ensuing economic crisis, are sending shockwaves deep into the foundations of our common political and economic framework.

The truth, though, is that in an increasingly multipolar and connected world, global threats concerning the whole of our Union will become increasingly unexpected in both timing, propagation speed, and form. We cannot afford to add our unpreparedness to this scenario.

If we aim to draw much needed lessons from this traumatic experience, we must understand that we will only be able to defend and uphold the freedom and wellbeing of our citizens by building a common shield against common threats. Threats that will affect all of us.

Granted, these threats will certainly affect us in different measure, with unequal impact. But this should not blind us, as seems to have too often been the case these tragic months, from the fact that none of our member states has the critical mass to withstand global shocks alone, or to stand up to upcoming global challenges – economy, health or security-related – with any credibility. An advocacy for anything else than to bestow on our Union the common defence mechanisms against these challenges is nothing more than an advocacy for weakness in varying degrees. Division and fragmentation will only make the strongest among us weaker than any of us in our union.

And on this realisation, let us reflect upon what unites us as fellow Europeans – not just centuries of shared heritage with equal measures of culture and violence exchanges, but rather our core, hard-learnt commitment to democracy and social justice as the bases for prosperity. In the anxiety over our internal differences, we might have failed to realise that this trinomial is increasingly put into question beyond our common borders, but also, worryingly, within them. We cannot afford to expect someone else to take the role of a global champion for this cause on our behalf. Equally, we should not comfort ourselves in agreeing on high-level rhetoric alone, for the threats we face, as we are learning the toughest of ways, will require very concrete and direct mechanisms that we cannot leave unresolved until it is too late.

We must recognise we face a choice: standing up for our core humanist principle and empowering ourselves to defend it, or else accepting its inevitable decline and increasing irrelevance. To those among us who see our Union simply as an instrument for trade, let us be clear: without a common shield, we will not be able to protect our common market.  

If it is not the positive ambition that shall compel us to find the will and the way to construct our shared home, let it be the awareness of what the real alternative is. As we commemorate the 70^th anniversary of the Schuman Declaration, let us construct this common shield through our next series of “concrete achievements”. One could argue that we shall deserve nothing more than what we manage to build together. Let us prove to ourselves, now, that we are worthy of a safe, free, fair, and prosperous future.

[This article was published on the 11th May 2020 in "The New Federalist" webzine, the online magazine of the Young European Federalists]