<h6><strong>Eduardo González</strong></h6> <h4><strong>The President of the European Council, António Costa, emphasized this Monday in Madrid, after receiving the Forum Europa Prize from King Felipe VI, the need to increase European investment in defense because, at a time when “our allies inspire less confidence and our adversaries increase their threats (…), if we want to be free and autonomous, we cannot depend militarily on other powers.”</strong></h4> “Five decades ago, in Portugal and Spain, we built a solid democratic project and had a clear destiny, which was to return to the center of Europe,” Costa said after receiving the award at an event held at the Teatro Real in Madrid to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the New Economy Forum. “The European Union is now our common project, that of Spain and Portugal, but also that of 25 other countries and the well-deserved aspiration of many others who wish to join it. We saw this yesterday with the overwhelming pro-European victory in Moldova. And, despite all the problems and disappointments we sometimes face, we must not lose sight of the fact that our common goal must be to continue strengthening our Union,” warned the former Portuguese prime minister. “We are neither Americans, nor Russians, nor Chinese. We are Europeans, and we are proud of it. But that often presents us with very special challenges, because being European means being diverse,” Costa continued. “It is clear that our greatest ally to date, the United States, is changing, and a lot. It is changing, and is trying to change the order that emerged from the ruins of World War II,” he warned. “The European Union is a child of that time. It has cooperation, dialogue, and multilateralism in its DNA. Its principles include democracy, equality, and human rights,” he added. “And we are not going to give up on all of that. We aspire for the United States to remain a great ally, while we continue to defend our model, our commitment to multilateralism and a rules-based world order, and a fair and predictable global trading system. From the European Union, we will continue to diversify our trade relations with Mercosur, Mexico, India, and countless other partners,” Costa stated. “When our allies inspire less confidence and our adversaries increase their threats, we must be able to stand on our own two feet,” the European president continued. “If we want to be free and autonomous, we cannot depend militarily on other powers. If we want to be influential and be heard, for example, in the Middle East, it will not be enough to uphold lofty principles, issue communiqués, or wield our economic power,” he warned. “That is why we are increasing our investments in defense, because peace without defense is an illusion, because soft power alone is not enough in a world where hard power increasingly prevails,” he added. According to Costa, “Europe must advance, transform, dare to look beyond, mobilize to regain the competitiveness of the European economy, strengthen our security, and assert itself in the multipolar world,” and, to achieve all this, “Europe needs Spain, because Spain is not only part of Europe. Spain builds Europe, day by day.” “Spain has been a vanguard. A benchmark in rights. An example in freedoms. A pioneer in the fight for equality,” he added. <h5><strong>The King</strong></h5> For his part, the King emphasized that “Spain and Portugal are two countries profoundly transformed by their accession to the EU, which took place on the same June 12, 1985.” “If, 40 years after that day, we are stronger, more dynamic, more cohesive countries, it is largely because we have believed in and grown in Europe. I am not referring only to economic and social aspects, but also to cultural aspects: we are stronger because our identity, and that of our regions, has learned to recognize itself in the European identity,” he continued. “Our defense of Europe is not the defense of a heritage, but of a way of being and existing in the world: freedom, equality, law, democracy, solidarity. Almost seven decades of shared history and prosperity, and the ever-present memory of the suffering of two world wars. We cannot go backwards, lose that heritage, surrender to the evidence of a historic watershed that undoes all that has been achieved. We must continue to build Europe, because the European construction defines us, drives us, strengthens us,” he stated.
