Luuk van Middelaar: The best Europe can do is make the bad Ukraine deal less bad'

"Brussels aroused in Baudelaire the most irresistible disgust. During the years when the poet, already very ill, wandered through the European capital in his bitterness, the Hotel van Eetvelde, a jewel of Art Nouveau, was about to be built an incredible structure of wood, steel, and glass embedded in the European Quarter (and financed with the atrocities committed by Belgium in the Congo, incidentally). Luuk van Middelaar (Eindhoven, 52 years"

"old), director of the Brussels Institute for Geopolitics, meets with EL PAIS in that handsome building, the institution's headquarters. A historian, philosopher, and expert on EU institutions, Van Middelaar is one of the most interesting thinkers in Europe, a place of adventure, according to the apt definition of sociologist Zygmunt Bauman."

"Question. After a disastrous summer, Donald Trump reached an agreement on Gaza in which Europe did not participate, but for which it will foot the bill. Something similar is happening with Ukraine. Can we be optimistic about this EU? Answer. In the summer, the leaders of the European Union were supposed to be negotiating a trade agreement with the U.S., but in reality, those negotiations revolved around security, Washington's commitment to NATO, and its support for Ukraine. It was a humiliating episode because of"

Brussels evoked intense disgust in Baudelaire even as the Hotel van Eetvelde, an Art Nouveau marvel built with funds linked to atrocities in the Congo, arose in the European Quarter. Luuk van Middelaar, director of the Brussels Institute for Geopolitics, is a historian, philosopher, and EU institutions expert who views Europe between Bauman's adventurous place and Baudelaire's pessimism, leaning toward Bauman with lingering pessimism. Recent diplomacy saw Donald Trump secure agreements on Gaza and press Europe aside while imposing asymmetric trade outcomes that oblige Europe to buy U.S. energy and weapons. Trump follows a pattern of leveraging gains to push looser tech regulation and a weaker Green Deal, forcing Europe to consider red lines even as readiness to defend them appears lacking.

Read at english.elpais.com