A major challenge for Europe is how to establish a unique voice to express its interests and aims. The problem is not just about how to reach agreement regarding what needs to be done among the different governments but also how to do it within each country. Political fragmentation around the continent has kept growing, as what is happening in the UK appears to show.
Even Germany is providing a demonstration of a persisting lack of agreement within the black-red coalition which is now running the country, as well as within the main parties. This is resulting in a situation where every draft strategic decision in Europe - in all areas, from the economy to the environament to security and defence - ends up as a mix of compromises that really satisfy no one. As of when they get launched, policies seem to have been packaged in doubts about how effective they would turn out to be.
A friend of mine said: It's true the Europeans are fragmented. We know about this because disagreements between them are played out in the open. But there are indications that other areas of the world are facing similar problems. For as long as this stays hidden, it's as if they have none. But then when their disagreements boil over, everything explodes. Meanwhile, European dissension still proceeds but is experienced as a low fever.
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HANTA
The story of the cruise liner Hondius where passengers died after being infected with the hanta virus has unsurprisingly, generated widespread alarm. Memories of the Covid pandemic are too fresh.
Apart from wars, the biggest threat to peoples' security still remains that of contagious diseases which spread from person to person, destroying whole families and communities. Often, the threat of pandemics has arisen in the wake of a war, as happened with the influenza outbreak post-World War One and polio following the Second World War. Other pandemics were brought over by travellers and merchandise arriving from far away, as happened with the Black Death which killed off half the European population of the fourteenth century, or cholera which over the centuries made multiple returns.
That was (still is) the fear aroused by the Hondius affair. Did travelling on that cruise liner contribute to the spread of another disease for which humanity still has found no cure?
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BARONS
I don't know whether I'm reading correctly the signs of the times... but is the PN trying to see how to revive its ties to the business barons? In recent years, it seemed to have lost their sympathy and its contacts with them. The indiscriminate attacks which some of their representatives carried out on those business people who were working closely with the Labour administration seemed premised on the idea they wanted to cut all the linkages of the past. On their basis, PN governments had acted hand in hand with the barons.
Today during its election campaigning, the PN is being very cautious in what it says about this sector. However when dealing with barons, matters progress on the basis of agreed arrangements not via vaguely articulated gestures and good wishes. If gestures and good wishes are expressed, it would be because deals have been concluded. Could there have been such agreements underlying the announcement by the PN of new major projects, that are reminiscent of Smart City?