The moment of truth

Without doubt, the advantages of belonging to this great economic club are obvious. The phrase that defines the EU as an economic giant, but a political dwarf, is famous. Each one, according to the countries, their circumstances and the ambitions and category of their leaders. Ideological approaches can influence, but in reality, the majority show that they prioritise their personal, partisan and electioneering issues.  

The Union has been suffering for some time from the alliance of the Hungarian leader Viktor Orban and the Slovakian Robert Fico, populists who seek to maintain the support of citizens who, for the most part, are quite disappointed by the failure to fulfil the over-inflated expectations that had been created about the benefits of belonging to the European club.  

It is worth remembering that in their day their biggest concern after the tragic experience under the Soviet Union was belonging to NATO in the face of the Russian threat. 

Curiously, Putin has managed to change the opinions of a large part of the Hungarian and Slovakian people and he continues to interfere in the rest of the European countries in order to destabilise them as much as possible. He has been waging a cyber and propaganda war against them since 2014. He is not trying to improve the few remaining communists, his strategy is focused on the growth of far-right parties which, moreover, have ridden the wave of Donald Trump and his supposed idyll with Putin.  

A complicated puzzle that threatens to break up European unity if its leaders and citizens do not wake up and realise the gravity of the situation and the great change involved in having to assimilate the commitments of their own defence that until now were largely the responsibility of the United States.  

These commitments are not just about billions of euros in armaments, they are about lives, awareness and a security and defence culture based on principles and values. Putin is threatening his neighbours in northern Europe and in the south he is trying to destabilise North Africa in order to gain access to the Atlantic. 

It is absurd that Pedro Sánchez and Giorgia Meloni want to change the words to justify political decisions on security and defence that are not popular but are necessary. Citizens have every right to expect their leaders to speak clearly to them and not to consider them as a simple vote that must be maintained in order to remain in power. Without forgetting the hindrance posed by their far-left and pro-independence partners.