Ursula von der Leyen's State of the European Union address in Strasbourg yesterday, was full of issues but short on solutions. Especially in areas (such as migration) where Europe is not only under-performing, but where the continuation of current policies is jeopardizing what many of us consider to be the heritage of our civilization.
If the EU commits once and for all to this immigration policy, as the current German government program has, then the EU's population will be substantially transformed over the next decades; this is what's called the great population exchange.
While the European Commission president knows the exact number of carbon-neutral steel mills, she does not quantify that today, more than a million people are living illegally within the EU's twenty-seven states. Von der Leyen happily talks about the nearly full employment in Europe, while in Germany, the EU's largest economy, more than 1.1 million people of immigrant background and foreigners are out of work. It has been eight years since the masses of migrants traipsed halfway across Europe under our noses. They went mainly to Germany, and in those eight years, just over half of them have been integrated into the labor market. This "fantastic" result was, for some reason, missing from the figures just presented by the German Christian Democrat politician.
However, Von der Leyen, the first lady of the EU mainstream, says she still believes in educated immigrants, perhaps envisioning Afghan brain surgeons in her mind's eye.
But as the Hungarian example shows, demographic indicators can be improved by increasing the birth rate. It is a good solution, but the European mainstream believes that it is politically incorrect and could be branded as ethno-nationalism.
Migration, the labor market and demography are only some select examples. Many elements of this year's speech are like a botched house covered up with a layer of plaster, but the material crumbles as soon as you scratch it a bit. Of course, one can mention the influx of Chinese cars (although that is not enough for the Greens), but Chinese factories are also providing jobs for Europeans, contributing to the economic performance that President von der Leyen so proudly talks about.
One can build on invoking emotions with a mother's sad sorry and lament Ukraine all one wants, but victimhood alone does not magically turn Ukraine into a country ripe for EU membership. It's more than a sin of omission, it's an outright mistake to keep silent about the fact that our neighbor to the north-east should ensure, rather than disregard the rights of national minorities.
In this way, Kiyv will only continue to delude itself, while the Western Balkan countries like Serbia have been waiting for EU membership for many, long years and still only get vague mentions. It may be that Moscow is wielding the gas tap as a weapon, but then it is merely doing exactly what Brussels is doing with the money tap at the expense of Hungary.
