The Image of Europe’s Inviolability Has Collapsed, according to Minister Navracsics

Minister of Regional Development Tibor Navracsics, speaking at the General Assembly of the Hungarian Atlantic Council, set out his vision for the future of Europe.

According to Mandiner‘s summary, he said that “today in Europe, and perhaps also in world politics, we have reached a frontier and it will only become clear in retrospect whether it was really a frontier of an era,” and that “we must expect that the lines of force and the factors that have defined and made our world comfortable in the past will change.”

According to him, Europe’s future will be determined by three fundamental changes:

• On the one hand, “a generation has just passed since the democratic transitions in Central Europe,” “we are witnessing a generational change that is bringing a qualitatively different generation to Europe,” since “it is now a young father and mother who was born when democratic transitions were taking place in Central Europe, who grew into a united Europe.”
• On the other hand, “all the signs in European domestic politics are that the post-World War II consensus, based on Christian Democrat-Social Democrat rivalry and sometimes cooperation, is over.”
• Thirdly, for the first time since 1945, there is in Europe “a war fought by one of the participants in the world war of 1945 within Europe,” so the image of Europe’s inviolability, which had already been badly shattered by the Yugoslav wars, has finally collapsed.

Following his presentation, the minister also answered questions from members of the Hungarian Atlantic Council. Asked how the future of Europe is affected by the US-China confrontation, Navracsics replied that “the United States has put China in the box called Russia” because “it attributes to China the same intentions that it attributed to the Soviet Union.”

However, he is not at all sure that “China’s intentions are the same, that China is the Soviet Union of today.” He said that compared to the Soviet Union, “I do not see China as having such strong military ambitions,” and that “the biggest mistake the United States can make is to misread the Chinese signals and prepare for the Soviet Union when China is coming.”

Featured photo via Facebook/Navracsics Tibor