NewsRescue
Mateusz Morawiecki, the prime minister of Poland, has criticized the notion of strategic autonomy for the EU, saying that those who support it want to see the economic community become more reliant on China. Additionally, he warned “democracies” against “trading with tyrants”.
According to the Polish official, “European autonomy sounds fancy, doesn’t it, but it means shifting the center of European gravity towards China and severing ties with the US,” he said on Thursday in remarks to NATO’s Atlantic Council auxiliary, which is supported by the arms industry.
Morawiecki’s remarks follow a request for a more independent EU foreign policy by French President Emmanuel Macron following a trip to China. The EU shouldn’t be a “vassal” of the United States, he added, and it shouldn’t get “caught up in crises that are not ours.”
Morawiecki, a fervent supporter of the EU’s adherence to US policy, criticized Western European lawmakers who sided with Macron.
In his words, “shortsightedly they look to China to be able to sell more European products there at enormous geopolitical cost, making us more dependent on China, not less.” As a result, “strategic autonomy” doesn’t entirely make sense to me if it entails shooting ourselves in the knee.
The Western European economy, according to the Polish prime minister, has long been supported on five pillars: cheap Russian energy, accessible capital, cheap labor, “free” defense through NATO, and access to the Chinese market.
All of those pillars are now either under danger or have completely disappeared. Their current strategy has failed, he observed.
For geostrategic and ideological reasons, Morawiecki advocated for limiting international commerce. He asserted that handing over critical industries to certain countries “means giving more kinds of weapons to those who may use them against the free world.”
