BarcelonaIn 2024, the year with the most elections in history and with the most open armed conflicts in the world, the Economic Circle Meeting has focused its first day on international challenges and especially on the two key elections: the European June and those of the United States in November. But, despite the recurring warning about the rise of the extreme right predicted by the European elections, it has become clear immediately that the most decisive for the world – and that they represent an even greater risk – are the Americans.
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“If Trump wins, it will not be a return; he will be a different type of president. I think that a second term of Trump will take us to uncharted territory,” warned the former high representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini, current chancellor of the College of Europe. Mogherini was the head of European diplomacy from 2014 to 2019, so she had to deal with both the Barack Obama administration and the Trump administration. And he explained that, “despite the radically different views on many issues, it was still possible to work with the Trump administration”, but a second mandate started in the middle of this context of polarization in the United States “would be completely different”. “I wouldn’t be surprised if his first call was to Vladimir Putin to announce peace in Ukraine – in terms favorable to Russia, obviously – or to challenge the existence of NATO or the participation of the United States in NATO and many other things that are still far beyond our imagination.”
“Russia is waiting for the elections in the USA” to move the table in Ukraine
For Mogherini, the resolution of the war in Ukraine will depend on the outcome of the elections in the United States, because Putin is “waiting” to see what happens in those elections “with a very clear interest” in Trump’s victory. The former head of European diplomacy is convinced that only after those elections can a scenario of possible negotiation be opened to resolve the conflict, but this negotiation “will be very different” depending on who is in the White House from January 2025.
“The Invasion of Russia [a Ucraïna] it was also an attack on the United Nations system,” said Mogherini, who pointed out precisely that the main current geopolitical problem is that “the global multilateral system is not working”, a fact that has become clear with the war in Ukraine. For this reason, the Italian has underlined “the enormous responsibility of the European Union” in the task of “rebuilding the global governance system”, a job that must be done, she said, counting on the United States and China. “I don’t think we can do it without China. I think we can do it without Russia, but not without China,” said Mogherini. “In geopolitics ten or twenty years from now, I see Russia shrinking, but China growing,” she said.
In geopolitics ten or twenty years from now, I see Russia shrinking, but China growing”
Federica Mogherini Former head of European diplomacy
Regarding the specific challenges of the European Union, Italian politics has advocated for an enlargement as soon as possible, even if it means incorporating “a single new state without waiting for a new wave of incorporations”. For Mogherini, the community club needs “the injection of self-confidence” that would mean incorporating a new member state such as, she said, Albania, “where the level of enthusiasm” to be part of the EU is enormous. “We have lost a little sense of why we are together in the EU”, and that is why this new knowledge “would be very beneficial” for the European political project, he said. According to Mogherini, the arguments against European enlargement are “only a lack of will”, and about the difficulty of reaching decisions he replied: “If it was possible to reach unanimity with Boris Johnson’s United Kingdom at the table, it will be possible to do it with new countries.” He has also challenged the argument of “European values in danger” claiming that this risk does not come from the new incorporations but is very present in the heart of the founding states of the EU.
In fact, the growth of the extreme right, which is not exclusive to the newest states of the EU, has been the most repeated danger during the first day of the Economic Circle. It has been mentioned both by the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, and by the mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, and by the analysts of the European Policy Center and the Europa d’Eurasia Group who have taken to the stage. Mogherini has also done so: “Human rights, the rule of law and democracy are in the European DNA and we must be very careful not to lower the bar of these standards.”
2024-05-22 19:15:09
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