‘We are changing the European DNA’ – A conversation with Margrethe Vestager, Marija Burić and Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya

By Euronews Brussels bureau

Europe has a reputation for being a crisis manager of sorts.

The continent’s greatest feats have always come in response to cataclysms of unexpected magnitude. Think of the economic integration after two bloody world wars, the common currency after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the recovery fund after the coronavirus pandemic. 

Today, Europe is living through a new chapter of its history – one of profound darkness and barbarity whose resolution is yet to be defined. But in spite of the confusion and distress, one thing has become abundantly clear: Europe has once again transformed itself.

“From the (first) day of the invasion, I think Europe more or less changed by the hour,” says European Commission Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager.

“We get to solutions so much faster, and everyone has the willingness of coming on board for a common solution. It is as if we are changing the European DNA.”

Vestager was speaking with our reporter Isabel da Silva on the sidelines of an event in Brussels celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS). There, Isabel also had a chance to catch up with Marija Burić, the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, and Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the leader of the Belarusian opposition movement. 

The three leaders reflected on the extraordinary changes that swept over the continent in the past twelve months and the prospects, albeit still remote, for a better and peaceful future.

“Europe can show its teeth. So now I see a consistency in European politics. I see bravery and I see decisiveness,” said Tsikhanouskaya, a fierce critic of Vladimir Putin. 

“I really hope that Europe will still stay like this because I think that we will have together a lot of challenges ahead of us. And the principled position of Europe is very important.”

Secretary Burić noted that, although the conflict has injected a fresh impetus of political unity and determination against Russia’s unprovoked aggression, it has also exposed and exacerbated underlying problems across the continent, such as democratic backsliding. 

“Europe is a champion of multilateralism around the globe. It has been one of the first (regions) after the two horrible wars to start thinking about new multilateral organisations that would help sustain the peace and assure prosperity and economic advance for all of our member states,” Burić said.

“We are certainly needing to rethink what we do well and what needs to be changed. But probably the way we work, the priorities, need to be rethought.”

For Vestager, the war has been something of a geopolitical eye-opener that has made Europe “more precise as to what poses a risk to us.”

In her position as the EU’s top enforcer of competition policy, the Vice-President knows all too well the plethora of risks that loom over the bloc’s interlinked economy. Chinese subsidies, Big Tech and overly generous tax deals are some of the prime targets for the Danish commissioner.

“We will be much more succinct, much more precise in saying ‘this is a no-go’ or if all of this trade is actually enabling both us and our trading partners,” Vestager told Isabel.

“We need to take that step because, otherwise, all trade becomes tainted and we become scared and afraid that this will be another future choke-point. So we need a completely different degree of precision in where our economic security lies, so that we can act on it.”

Tsikhanouskaya, who has been living in exile since she ran against Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in the fraudulent 2020 elections, drew a comparison between her country’s ordeal and Ukraine’s suffering, two crises that, in her view, have awoken Europe’s realpolitik.

“You know, grief usually unites, pain usually unites. And I see that people in democratic countries who take democracy for granted felt the Belorussian pain, they felt Ukrainian pain, and they for sure united in solidarity with our countries,” Tsikhanouskaya said.

“Who could have ever imagined that European people would fundraise for buying war cars and for military equipment? They are doing so now because they understand that they are defended by our nations,” she added.

 “There is a moral obligation for every person, now, to contribute to our common victory.”

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