The European Union's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission, Josep Borrell, stated this Tuesday at the Forum Europa in Brussels that "the possibility of a high-intensity conventional war in Europe is no longer a fantasy".
This was stated by Josep Borrell during a meeting organised by the New Economy Forum in the EU capital, in which Borrell said that in order to be able to dissuade the threat of a conflict affecting the old continent "we need to have the means" to do so.
Borrell stressed that, looking to the future, "the possibility of a high-intensity conventional war in Europe is no longer a fantasy" and recalled that when he took up his post as High Representative, he had already stated that Europe needed to learn to use the language of power.
In the same vein, the Vice-President of the Commission confessed that when he presented the 'Strategic Compass', the document for the defence strategy of the 27 and took the opportunity to say that Europe was in danger, people smiled and questioned whether he was "selling his business".
In Borrell's view, what is currently happening in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip "is the old conflict over land", and he lamented that with globalisation came the belief that borders were disappearing as a reason for disputes.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, he said, Europeans believed they were in a world surrounded by friends, and now they realise that Europe is in fact surrounded "by a circle of fires", from the Sahel to the Middle East, to the Caucasus and the Baltic countries.
