Lisboa, 11 de Junho de 2025
Painel: The Global Role of the EU in the New Geopolitical Landscape – Challenges Ahead and Opportunities in Building New Progressive Partnerships
Thank you very much for your invitation. It is a pleasure for me to contribute to this very timely debate.
I took the title of this panel seriously: “The Global Role of the EU in the New Geopolitical Landscape”. Today, this is a crucial issue, as it relates to the credibility of Europe as a political actor.
I was told I could speak my mind here. Therefore, I will completely set aside the "langue de bois" I often employed during my four decades as a professional diplomat. I imagine that some of what I am going to say may not be to everyone’s liking. That’s life!
I have focused my notes, for these 10 minutes, on the EU’s external image – the principles and values which, in my view, must be upheld if we want to make a difference, particularly as socialists.
Let us begin with America.
The arrogance shown by the Trump administration, although not surprising, has reached a level that surpasses our worst expectations. But let us be honest: the United States has always been arrogant towards Europe – sometimes with smiles, at other times with harsh words. Europe, feeling that its core security depended on Washington if things went wrong, consistently showed a high degree of complacency towards the attitude of "the American frien" — and I am not referring to the Wim Wenders film.
For many decades, Europe has been aware of its inability to play a meaningful role on the international stage, as a collective entity, without the United States at its side. For that reason, Europe accepted Washington’s "à la carte" multilateralism, and the opportunistic use the United States made of the United Nations, according to its own convenience.
I know that not all European countries reacted in the same way to American arrogance, but the outcome of the collective European will invariably ended up favouring the continuation of American exceptionalism.
And let us be clear: for many years, and on many issues, Europe never really minded being subordinate to American will on the global stage. Sometimes this was out of deference, particularly when it came to defence. At other times, it was about efficiency, as American leadership made things easier to get done.
Decades of experience dealing with American diplomats have led me to the conclusion that, for them, it is almost a surprise when we dare to suggest that our interests may not coincide with their own.
There has never been a true balance in the transatlantic relationship. We all know that.
For a long time, Europe remained convinced — and many still are — that it was in America’s own interest to ensure the security of the European continent. That is why, for years, Europe showed little concern for the issue of “burden sharing” in defence. America had long been a European power and behaved as such. And it was no ordinary power. America was NATO, and NATO meant European security. The NATO that Sweden and Finland have wanted to join is different from the NATO that exists today. NATO meant Article Five of the Washington Treaty, its automaticity. That NATO, as things stand today, no longer exists.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine may have been the last moment when Europeans saw the United States caring about a major European strategic interest. Europeans — especially those who remember all too well their traumatic past with Moscow — were reassured to see America on their side, defending the current government in Kiev. But they may have been misled: Biden may have been the last American president to see European security as a core component of the US’s global strategic calculations.
This war seemed more than convenient for the United States: it contained Russia, cut off access to cheap energy, undermining Europe’s competitiveness, sold its own gas, subsidised its arms industry, involved no American “boots on the ground,” and — for once — put America on the “right side” of History, which has not always been the case in the past. And, not least, it helped erase the memory of Afghanistan.
Was this the ideal war for America? Trump and his camp clearly do not think so.
But let us return to the moment of the Russian invasion.
On the Ukrainian issue, Europe and the US initially stood eye to eye. They defended the same interests and, at least on paper, shared the same values. Perhaps for this reason, Ukraine became a unifying factor for the European continent. It allowed Europe, with few dissenting voices, to speak with one voice — beyond just the EU — rallying other like-minded democracies, even from outside Europe. It was, in many ways, a good moment.
For some time, many believed that this alignment on solid values and principles could be the foundation upon which Europe might build a respectable foreign policy — becoming a force for good, untainted by the duplicity of the United States, and worthy of the ethical tradition of European civilisation.
They were profoundly mistaken. The war in Palestine proved them wrong. The shameful spectacle that Europe has displayed over the Palestinian issue has, in a short time, destroyed the moral authority that Europe had been building as a political actor — an authority strengthened by its stance on Ukraine.
Double standards, in the end, seem to be the defining feature of this European Union. A life lost in Ukraine, it seems, is not the same as a life lost in Gaza. Europe clearly applies a hierarchy in the way it views deaths caused by violence.
And there are more double standards. Putin is the subject of an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court, and Europe applauds — rightly so. Netanyahu receives a similar warrant, and we do not see Europe mobilising to support its enforcement. On the contrary: Europe seems embarrassed, almost uncomfortable, looking the other way.
Half of the weapons used by Israel to kill Palestinians come from Europe. Many people are dying in Gaza. But political Europe has also died in Gaza. In fact, political Europe committed suicide there.
What moral authority can Europe claim in the future to lecture third countries on human rights and the protection of minorities, to impose conditions on development aid, when it behaves as it does towards a state like Israel?
Why don’t we see the European Union demanding that Israel comply with UN Security Council resolutions — for example, on settlements in the West Bank? Why doesn’t Europe speak out against the nuclear weapon that Israel keeps hidden? If Europe truly believes that it disagrees with Israeli policies, why does it not use the bilateral tools at its disposal to apply pressure on Tel Aviv? Or is it simply that, no matter what Israel does, Europe will always end up divided and ineffective? That is what we call objective complicity.
Let me now address another delicate point.
It would be more comfortable — or less inconvenient — for me not to do so, but we must put an end to this kind of taboo. You know as well as I do why this eternal complacency towards Israel persists in many parts of the international community. We know that some European countries are bound by the tragic memory of the Holocaust. But the memory of those countries is not the memory of all Europe.
We know that public opinion today is often held hostage by the spectre of antisemitism, as if openly denouncing radical Zionism and criticising the fanatics who promote it in Israel were somehow the same as being antisemitic.
Defending Palestinian rights is not siding with Hamas. It is not ignoring the terrorist nature of some of its actions, such as the criminal abduction and use of civilians as bargaining chips. That is a rhetorical trap we must not fall into. We must be able to resist this dishonest tactic that shows up in political discourse every day.
What is happening in some European countries — namely, the prohibition of public support for the Palestinian cause — is unacceptable, when judged against the values of freedom that we all — especially those of us in this political sphere — are supposed to uphold.
I come from a country where antisemitism is not an issue. I belong to a diplomatic corps that proudly honours one of its historic figures, Aristides de Sousa Mendes, who saved thousands of Jews from nazi persecution. The threat of being labelled antisemitic does not frighten me.
Antisemitism is a vile form of racism, as is Islamophobia or the persecution of other ethnic groups. But antisemitism is not somehow above them all.
That is why I feel completely free to say, without mincing words, that the cowardly behaviour of the diplomacy that claims to speak for the European Union, in the face of Israel’s criminal actions in Gaza — call these mass killings “genocide” or use another term — does not represent me. Not as a European, not as a Portuguese citizen, not as a democrat, and certainly not as a socialist.
My Europe deserves a better diplomatic face. It deserves a decent one. Not this one.
Thank you very much for your attention.
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