The Diplomat
“Europe must be a cathedral of good and a university of truth,” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Monday during a speech at the University of Heidelberg (Germany) on the future of Europe a year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Morawiecki stressed, according to a Polish Embassy’s statement sent to The Diplomat, that the biggest challenge facing the EU is security. “The war in Ukraine threatens the whole of Europe and its values,” he said, “such as the nation state, freedom and solidarity. “Therefore, he assured that Ukraine’s struggle for those values will determine the future of the entire continent. “Today, Ukrainians are fighting not only for their own freedom, but for the freedom of the whole of Europe.” And he added: “Ukraine’s defeat would be the defeat of the West“.
The head of the Polish government insisted that “Russian neo-imperialism threatens the values of Western civilization and the rich diversity of our nations“. And he accused Vladimir Putin of wanting to “eliminate all differences, destroy all national identities and dilute them in the ‘great’ Russian empire”. In the face of this, he concluded that “Europe must not surrender to an identity crisis” and must protect its spiritual heritage, composed of dozens of diverse cultural and linguistic traditions”.
In this sense, and in the face of those who call for reforms in the European Union in order to continue enlarging it, he criticized that “this is a proposal camouflaged as federalization”, which he opposed as a “top-down imposed concentration of decision-making”.
In contrast, Morawiecki proposed solutions to strengthen Europe’s position, according to the Embassy’s communiqué. Among them, he recalled that Europe’s strength comes fundamentally from “its robust middle class” and that “prosperity and growth must be shared by the whole of society, not just by a group of rich people.” He also criticized the existence of tax havens, “which we can call tax hells, as they rob the middle class and national budgets”.
For this reason, he defended changes that give more internal cohesion to the EU and allow it to have more external impact, he demanded more balance of power among the community partners and to complete the integration of the Western Balkans, Ukraine and Moldavia.
In addition to recalling “how important energy independence is” for Europe, he called for “cooperation, combined with competition, which is the best way for Europe to succeed in the global world, while at the same time we must build our own defense capabilities”.
Morawiecki ended his speech by pointing out that “Europe is not yet lost, although it has not yet won” but “if we work hard, Europe will win. Europe will be victorious”.
