Dubai, UAE–The EU has given US$92 billion to Ukraine in economic and military support in two years.
The 27-member bloc at its leadership summit on February 1 approved another four-year, $53.90 billion profligacy package to support Ukraine in its war effort against Russia.
“This locks in steadfast, long-term, predictable funding for Ukraine,” European Council President Charles Michel said.
When the EU leaders met in December, they could not finalize the same proposal because Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban opposed it for using the EU budget and not having built-in review of the arrangements.
Orban has other problems with the EU as well, so much so that the bloc’s vicious system is not reluctant to insult him and is willing to financially destroy his country.
Hungary has also raised some hackles for not approving Swedish membership of NATO and having serious reservations about EU sanctions on Russia. Both NATO and the EU have their headquarters in Brussels and 22 members in common.
Most of their members are heavily involved in supporting the Ukrainian war effort against Russia, undeterred by the stalemate and no prospect of a Ukrainian military victory.
Their public pronouncements continue to be about supporting Ukraine for as long as it takes.
Afflicted with war insanity, EU members and European Commission (the EU’s executive branch) President Ursula von der Leyen are not prepared to give the veto to Orban on Ukraine war support measures.
EU leaders got their knickers in a twist when Hungary blocked the deal in December, but for their emergency summit on February 1, they came prepared to bludgeon Orban into submission.
Going by a Financial Times report, Brussels had made a “confidential plan” to ruin Hungary’s economy, shatter investor confidence, destroy its currency, and cause high unemployment and inflation. These are the kind of goals the EU has unsuccessfully tried to achieve against Russia in the ongoing economic warfare.
“This is Europe telling Viktor Orbán ‘enough is enough; it’s time to get in line. You may have a pistol, but we have the bazooka’,” Mujtaba Rahman, Europe director at consultancy Eurasia Group, was quoted as saying in the British newspaper’s report.
Rather than carrying pistols or bazooka, it seems EU leaders are acting like monkeys with grenades.
Nevertheless, the threat worked. The aid package comprising loans and grants was approved unanimously after Hungary dropped its opposition.
The Hungarian PM’s reaction shows it was a compromise.
“Mission accomplished. Hungary’s funds will not end up in Ukraine and we have a control mechanism at the end of the first and the second year. Our position on the war in Ukraine remains unchanged: we need a ceasefire and peace talks,” he said.
Since the EU states were prepared to use the weapons of economic destruction against one of their members, non-EU countries must know how much they can trust the EU’s arrogant tyrants.
When non-Western countries accuse the EU or the West about their unfair trade sanctions, economic warfare and financial mafia methods, Western regime pundits dismiss the accusations as conspiracy theories.
The secret EU plan against Hungary further gives currency to the perceptions that the West manipulates the markets, currencies and economic systems to gain unfair advantage.
The Russia-Ukraine war has exposed a lot about the EU’s hypocrisy on international law and rules.
Garden or a jungle?
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell in 2022 described Europe as a “garden” of “freedom, prosperity and social cohesion” and most of the rest of the world as a jungle.
“And the jungle could invade the garden,” he said.
His tactlessness, if not outright mindlessness, was on full display.
The remarks were obviously seen as blatantly racist and Borrell later did apologize for them.
If the EU’s political troglodytes are not shy about being war-mongers and racists, then surely they have a starkly different understanding of what the rest of the world considers wicked and criminal.
Von der Leyen, a 65-year-old German politician, and those of her ilk have shown during the ongoing Israeli onslaught on Gaza that the EU is an agent of chaos and lawlessness.
Its officials are trained not in a pleasant “garden” but in a dog-eat-dog “jungle.”
Unscrupulously pro-Israel, she strutted around on foreign tours, made pompous statements and desperately sought attention.
There is no audience for her theatrical performances in most of the world. She ended up making the EU look uglier.
Zionism has not conquered all of the 27 states and their 450 million inhabitants yet. Von der Leyen and those of her ilk will learn that it is not profitable to support Israel’s genocidal destruction of Palestinians and still remain respectable.
That the EU’s dominant actors are America’s vassals is clear. Germany, Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, France, Finland and Romania are among the EU states cutting off funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). Their diabolical move came after the International Court of Justice recently ruled that Israel must prevent acts of genocide in Gaza. Since the EU is a partner in Israel’s crimes, it will also face the material consequences and opprobrium that is usually reserved for Israel in much of the world.
It was only after the opposition to Israeli brutalities against Palestinians grew louder that many in the EU began rethinking their blind support for Israel. They have no principles but are amenable to pressure sometimes.
Von der Leyen’s attention-seeking ways only accentuate the EU failures on multiple fronts whether it is managing conflicts, tackling racism and Islamophobia within the bloc, or sorting out the refugee crisis that results in unnecessary migrant deaths at sea.
The search for finding solutions starts with honest intentions. The EU is not only dishonest but roguish as well.
After the Gaza catastrophe, if the EU tyrants ever talk about human rights or democracy, they will be laughed at.
In the case of Hungary, the EU exposes a lot more than its internal mafia control mechanisms. It would appear that there are absolutely no depths of lawlessness it would not plumb if push comes to shove, even going full Nazi to suppress dissent.
Diverting resources to fuel wars and conflicts in other parts of the world is not going to resolve’s the EU’s socio-economic troubles, population discontent, racism, far-right extremism, messy migration policies, and the basic lack of delivery on the core objective creating a “garden” within which goods, finance and people move freely.
As EU leaders held their summit, farmers from a number of member countries threw eggs and stones at the European Parliament in Brussels. If the EU becomes more problematic globally, other countries may respond with harsher means than eggs and slogans.