The Small European Reset
Essay by Krzysztof Mroczkowski
12 July 2022
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krzysztof.mroczkowski@europeapatient.com
Twitter: @K_Mroczkowski
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Europe needs to stick to its values.
But to stay on course it also needs protect those who are threatened by energy poverty.
“There is a larger lesson we can draw from the last decade of EU politics. Whenever the strong states and interests dominated the weak ones in Europe, it bred resentment, economic imbalances, undermined social cohesion and created climate change externalities.”
Before the war in Ukraine, the European Union was on course towards political decoupling from the common liberal democratic project. That decoupling was driven by increasing energy dependence on Russia and trade dependence on China. The war has put those energy and trade ties into question, along with the political and economic leadership of the EU. Germany, and to a lesser extent France, have been seen to have mismanaged relations with Russia.
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