“War is no longer a concept from the past. It is real, and it started over two years ago. The most worrying thing at the moment is that literally any scenario is possible. We haven’t seen a situation like this since 1945,” Tusk said in an interview with the European media grouping LENA on Friday.
“I know it sounds devastating, especially for the younger generation, but we have to get used to the fact that a new era has begun: the pre-war era. I’m not exaggerating; it’s becoming clearer every day.”
The former European Council president’s comments came soon after the two-year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The war upended an era of peace in Europe and pushed nations into ramping up weapons production.
Tusk further said that no one in Europe would feel safe if Kyiv lost the war.
Europe has donated around ~$150 billion USD (including from member states). That’s almost an entire year’s EU budget, over 20x the ESA’s annual budget (wtf), and over 20x the EU’s 6-year contribution to ITER (double wtf).
The money comes from somewhere and Europe is broke.
The US needs to stop shirking their duty, and send the military in. They are making an absolute fortune off LNG and weapons exports, they should take the responsibility to help.
EDIT: Also rich for Poland to complain about this when they are the biggest leech of EU funds in the Union. It’s absurd that there are only ~9 net contributors to begin with.
Europe isn’t broke, the rich countries are stingy. 150 billion is not much for an economy of 19 trillion - in fact it’s not even 1%
Money is nice, it enables Ukraine to keep paying its public servants, but what they really need is modern military hardware, and lots of it. Europe alone has enough if they just delivered it. The USA with their absolutely massive military not helping at the moment is a prolem too, obviously, but we Europeans can no longer rely on them, as they’re apparently insane enough to elect someone like Trump, who said many times he doesn’t give a shit.
That 19 trillion isn’t spendable money at all though. Learn the difference between GDP and a budget.
We’re already at high inflation, high interest rates and little to no growth - the situation is extremely precarious in Europe. We could easily end up like Argentina or Turkey.
You learn being a nice person. Your arrogance and condescension is uncalled for.
Comparing state expenditures as a percentage of GDP is widespread: contributions of EU member states to the EU budget is defined as a percentage of their GDP, as is the NATO defence spending target.
Nah, not really.
Awwww not your feelings.
I really like how you took the comment into consideration and added to the conversation instead of just jumping in and trying to start shit.
Oh I considered what his comment was worth in context. Fucking near zero just whining.
Don’t worry, I’ll listen to your feelings about their comment.
Dude, inflation just got back under control, we’re at like 2.6% annual. Growth was never much different than now, the US is back where it was during the 2010s.
The situation might be precarious, but it’s more because of asset inflation and the related housing inflation, rather than an economy being strained to the brink. And of course the political problems.
TBH the bigger question is whether the EU will find the willingness to help, not the money.
All of GDP is spendable if the will is there. It’s not at the moment, but let’s see how this decade turns out.
GDP isn’t state-owned - we aren’t a Communist state (thankfully) - and any attempt to get close to that would destroy the GDP.
All property is potentially subject to government seizure. Just like we’re all military reservists. These things are implicit, and we just hope and pray it won’t come to that. But total war is definitely on the cards this decade, at least for some countries.
Bro just casually suggested WWIII
Last time it took a while for USA to get involved. History has a bad habit of repeating itself.
I wouldn’t say Europe is broke but the rather abrupt switch away from Russian fossils has certainly left the entire block with less financial resources.
Not to detract from the numbers but the EU budget is tiny, all things considered. For comparison: France and Germany have state budgets of ~1.5 trillion each. The EU doesn’t have a military, very limited police forces (mostly just FRONTEX), it doesn’t run welfare and health systems and the only pensions it pays out are to its own civil servants. A good 130 billion are cohesion funds and agricultural/environmental subsidies, the rest has to get by on 20bn. Which is higher than, but in the same ballpark of, Hamburg’s state budget. Probably lower actually if you include all the brick+mortar and shipping stuff Hamburg owns their turnover doesn’t count towards the state budget.
You dont understand money system tbh