Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-04-01-Speech-3-045"
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"en.20090401.12.3-045"2
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"Madam President, my congratulations to the rapporteur. I think this is an extremely important report.
Russia’s strategic thinking, it seems to me, is one of the most significant problems facing the European Union at this time. If we do not understand how Russia thinks about itself in the world, we shall not actually make sense of what the Kremlin says and does. There is in fact a logic to Russia’s actions, but this is not the same as ours. While the EU has made the peaceful resolution of conflict the centre of its thinking, Russia has no compunction about using force, as we saw in Georgia last year.
So the real key is how Russia sees power. In the European tradition, power should be supervised by democratic institutions. To Russia, power is to be concentrated in the belief that, through such concentration, power will be more effective.
This is very dangerous for states that Russia sees as weak. They automatically become targets for the expansion of Russian power. The recent secretive purchase of a large shareholding in the Hungarian energy company MOL by a Russian enterprise is thus more than a mere commercial transaction; it illustrates how Russia moves into an unoccupied space.
From the perspective of power, the European Union and European integration are inexplicable, meaningless processes for Russia. In Russian eyes, the transfer of sovereignty is an abomination, not a way of securing peace. So – and it is vital that we recognise this – for Russia, the European Union is the problem. Its success is a puzzle and, above all, it is an obstacle to the maximisation of Russia’s power. The European Union’s future success therefore depends on recognising how Russia thinks about power. Very differently from Europe. And let there be no illusions about this."@en1
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