EU Ambassadors Annual Conference 2022: Opening speech by High Representative Josep Borrell | EEAS - 10.10.2022 |

At this pace, the black swan will be the majority. It will not be white swans - all of them will be black - because one after the other, things have happened that had a very low probability of happening, nevertheless they happened, and they had a strong impact and certainly they happened. 

Let me try to summarise what is happening to us. Maybe I am wrong, but I want to discuss with you about it. I think that we Europeans are facing a situation in which we suffer the consequences of a process that has been lasting for years in which we have decoupled the sources of our prosperity from the sources of our security. This is a sentence to provide the headline, and I am taking that from Olivier Schmitt, who has been developing this thesis - I think - quite well.

Our prosperity has been based on cheap energy coming from Russia. Russian gas - cheap and supposedly affordable, secure, and stable. It has been proved not [to be] the case. And the access to the big China market, for exports and imports, for technological transfers, for investments, for having cheap goods. I think that the Chinese workers with their low salaries have done much better and much more to contain inflation than all the Central Banks together.

So, our prosperity was based on China and Russia - energy and market. Clearly, today, we have to find new ways for energy from inside the European Union, as much as we can, because we should not change one dependency for another. The best energy is the one that you produce at home. That will produce a strong restructuring of our economy - that is for sure. People are not aware of that but the fact that Russia and China are no longer the ones that [they] were for our economic development will require a strong restructuring of our economy.

The access to China is becoming more and more difficult. The adjustment will be tough, and this will create political problems.

On the other hand, we delegated our security to the United States. While the cooperation with the Biden Administration is excellent, and the transatlantic relationship has never been as good as it is today - [including] our cooperation with the United States and my friend Tony [Antony] Blinken [US Secretary of State]: we are in a fantastic relationship and cooperating a lot; who knows what will happen two years from now, or even in November?

What would have happened if, instead of [Joe] Biden, it would have been [Donald] Trump or someone like him in the White House? What would have been the answer of the United States to the war in Ukraine? [Most likely there would not have been an outbreak of war because Joe and Tony never used diplomacy, and still no communication between two enemies, not either with China]

What would have been our answer in a different situation? 

These are some questions that we have to ask ourselves. And the answer for me is clear: we need to shoulder more responsibilities ourselves. We have to take a bigger part of our responsibility in securing security. [NATO already shares responsibility across the globe from Afghanistan to Libya, Syria and Palestine]

You - the United States - take care of our security. You - China and Russia - provided the basis of our prosperity. This is a world that is no longer there. [Thanking Pax Americana after 9/11 -- Washington believes it can remake the world in its image, the fools - chaos and destruction]

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Post November Joe Biden will be a lame-duck president with an antagonistic Republican run U.S. Congress who are anti-Russia and leading in AmericaFirst! ... Trump's MAGA. The European Union will never recover from this artificially created energy crisis by the world's biggest fossil fuel producer. Security my a$$ 😡

'Sapere aude'