Sauli Niinistö, the former Finnish President, has been commissioned by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to write a report on “EU Crisis Preparedness”.
He will prepare this report together with Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy representative by September this year.
Niinistö has been an active supporter of joint western defence organisations, as was seen in his strong support for Finland to become a member of NATO last year.
He explained that “Finland’s defence policy has been born over a long period of time as a neighbour of Russia. People’s state of mind is the most important thing for a nation’s will to defend peace.”
President Ursula von der Leyen stated that there are “… very real European security risks. So, to put it as bluntly as outgoing President Niinistö of Finland did last month: ‘Europe has to wake up.’ And I would add: urgently. We all know there is so much at stake here – our freedom and our prosperity. And we have to start acting like it.”
There can be little doubt that Europe is facing a rather frightening situation as stated in a recent article by FT’s Martin Wolf’s about the dangers we are facing if Trump is re-elected in November. Trump’s transactional approach that mixes his business interests with the US interests can cause great harm to our democracies…
… and there are also the risks from people like Marine Le Pen, who openly demand that we stop providing aid to Ukraine. She shares Trump’s distorted opinions whose wealthy backers would be delighted in supporting Putin to fund her party.
We all know the consequences of “divide and rule” strategies – “divide et impera” used by Julius Caesar, Machiavelli, and Hitler!
Remember that none were too kind to the French over the course of history. In the same breath it is also worth recalling that Orban’s support for Putin is in stark contrast to Russia’s bloody suppression of Hungary in 1956 and thereafter.
In was only in December 1991 that Mikhail Gorbachev and Russia, represented by Boris Yeltsin, officially apologised for the Soviet actions of 1956 in Hungary. Yeltsin made the apology in person during a 1992 speech to the Hungarian Parliament.
Even if Orban seems to have a failing memory of 35 years of hell, we cannot forget Hungary’s suffering!
