European Parliament
A7-0010/2012
Ioan Mircea Paşcu  (S&D ). -
Mr President, the report we are now debating is strategic, comprehensive and sophisticated, addressing Europe’s challenge generated by the changing distribution of power within the international system: a process accelerated by the current world crisis.
Europe, which has created a modern international system, is now facing a double challenge. She has to keep her central place within it while having to fight a nasty internal crisis. In the past century, given Europe’s centrality within the international system, war in Europe has twice become world war. Today, even if war in Europe is unthinkable, our continent could still rock the world boat hard, both financially and economically.
The West – the US and Europe – now has to make room for the newcomers, either in existing bodies such as the UN Security Council or by creating new ones for them such as the G20. BRICS is a nascent grouping which is relatively heterogeneous, while Russia and China are well-established powers. There is a big question mark over the ambitions of Brazil and South Africa, with India apparently preoccupied primarily with China, which embodies this challenge. How can Europe best engage these emerging power centres without destroying the current world international institutional architecture? To engage this power successfully, Europe, which will have first to ensure coherence between the national and EU approaches towards them, will need to strike the right balance between change, namely permitting these emerging power centres to achieve their aims, and continuity, namely safeguarding her interests.

