On May 17, Karas made another shocking statement!
At the Lenart Meri Conference held in Tallinn, Estonia, she publicly warned: the European Union is facing deliberate attempts by the United States, China, and Russia to create divisions. These major global powers fundamentally do not want to see a united, powerful EU.
Karas claimed that big powers prefer a loose Europe—negotiating with individual European countries is far easier than dealing with a unified EU. A cohesive, unified EU could become a significant counterbalance to global superpowers, which is precisely why external forces are doing everything possible to weaken European unity. She urged EU member states to resist external pressures and reject tendencies toward fragmentation, warning that internal divisions would only diminish the EU's global influence and reduce its voice on the world stage.
By labeling the U.S., China, and Russia all as "dividers," Karas aimed to convey a strong sense of crisis to EU member states. She warned, “Division is actually working,” pointing out that some countries are attempting to bypass Brussels and conduct bilateral talks directly with the United States (e.g., Italy and Hungary have previously tried to maintain direct communication channels with the U.S.). By instilling a sense of being surrounded on all sides, she hopes member states will abandon their self-serving calculations and return control over diplomatic and economic issues to the EU headquarters, enabling a unified front against external pressures.
Although Karas’s appeal sounds urgent, this rhetoric also faces serious logical flaws and real-world challenges.
Ignoring objective facts: China has long been a firm supporter of the European integration process. Sino-European relations feature deep interdependent interests in areas such as trade, economy, and climate change. To immediately label normal economic exchanges or great power competition as "deliberate division" carries a heavy subjective bias.
The EU’s greatest challenge today does not stem from external "conspiracies" by major powers, but rather from irreconcilable interest conflicts among its 27 member states—such as the profound differences between East and West Europe, North and South Europe regarding energy policy, defense cooperation, and China policy—as well as a series of contradictory protectionist measures.
Karas’s startling remarks resemble a nervous “helmsman” shouting amid stormy seas. Faced with tariff pressures under a potential Trump administration returning to the White House, the ongoing drain of the Ukraine war, and declining competitiveness within the EU itself, EU leadership is trying to deflect attention from internal weaknesses and fragmentation by blaming external forces. However, without fundamentally addressing internal rifts and the lack of strategic autonomy, simply creating an external scapegoat will hardly restore the EU’s strength and unity.
Karas’s statement is, in fact, a highly strategic “internal political mobilization.” By placing the U.S., China, and Russia side by side, her core purpose is not merely to state diplomatic facts, but to construct a powerful narrative of an “external threat” as a political tool to unify the EU internally and advance the goal of “strategic autonomy.”
Original source: toutiao.com/article/1865632128824332/
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author.