[ad_1]
Yesterday, Foreign Minister Paul Rangel argued that the challenges facing the new EU institutions include peace and enlargement and defended the need to “reinvigorate the Atlantic”.
After speaking at an EU conference for young people of different nationalities, the minister detailed one of the “huge challenges” facing the 27-nation bloc, namely “guaranteeing peace in Europe” and “modernizing the defense industry throughout Europe” by maintaining “decisive support” for Ukraine.
One of the challenges also includes “preparing for eastward expansion, which obviously also depends on a peaceful resolution of the Ukrainian problem”. “And then we have the Balkans, which are no longer affected by this war problem. So we have to take that into account as well”, he told reporters.
For Rangel, “given the emergence, strengthening and centrality of the Indo-Pacific today, it is necessary to reinvigorate the Atlantic”, which is why Europe must “build substantial and substantive partnerships with Africa and South America”. “Relations with North America, in good times and bad, are always very good, we are the ones who feel all the fluctuations, we can do more, but there is already great cohesion”, he declares.
Other Centers
The new Atlantic centrality is not necessarily a “prime centrality,” the Portuguese foreign affairs chief explained. “We do not want a unipolar world that is centered only on the Indo-Pacific,” the official explained, noting that he was speaking abstractly about the North American presidential election in November and that “it should not be a unipolar world.” Catastrophists” may be cyclical changes.
“What happens periodically is that there are more isolationist governments and presidents, which is obviously not good for us”, which translates into phases where transatlantic cooperation is “at a lower level”, but this does not mean that they are no longer at a “high level, compared to the global level relations between the different blocks”.
He believes that “when they are more open to the outside world, it will obviously bring tremendous strength to the transatlantic partnership.”
Therefore, “I am not a catastrophist, so to speak, but obviously for us it is not indifferent that the United States of America would be more open to global cooperation or more attentive to its internal dynamics. It is not indifferent, “said the minister, who rejected “catastrophist visions” because relations between the two countries have always remained at “a very, very satisfactory level.”
Answering a question from young people about relations with China, Paul Rangel said that Portugal has “very good relations” with the Asian country and that in a “global perspective” it is necessary to “de-risk” (reduce risks), but not “decouple”, remembering how the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the risks of broken value chains and dependence on countries.
“China is everywhere and Europe is everywhere? This is something we have to think about,” the government official challenged, taking the opportunity to defend the strengthening of relations between the Atlantic countries.
[ad_2]
Source link
