Whatever happens, Paulo Portas has a warning: “If Putin prevails in Ukraine, you can be sure that one day he will knock on the doors of the Baltics”
Paulo Portas considers that the European Council took a crucial decision on Ukraine, although far from ideal, but failed completely on another strategic front: the agreement with Mercosur. In TVI’s Jornal Nacional Global, from the same group as CNN Portugal, the commentator explained that Europe was facing two central decisions and that the results were profoundly different.
Regarding Ukraine, Paulo Portas began by highlighting that the context was one of “enormous pressure”, with “an indirect alignment between Russia, on a military level, and the United States, from the point of view of restricting support to Ukraine”.
With the prospect of a cut in North American support, especially from March onwards, Kiev’s financial survival began to depend on the European Union. Paulo Portas listed the four options on the table in Brussels. The first, “do nothing”, would mean “giving political victory to Putin and, probably, handing over Russian financial assets to Donald Trump”. The second involved resorting directly to national budgets, which would transform Europe “into a permanent salsify of electoral campaigns”.
The solution that ended up prevailing was, according to Portas, “a part of mutual debt within the European Union’s budgetary margin, with the Commission’s triple A, faster and delivered in tranches”.
Another possible solution, which did not advance, was the immediate use of frozen Russian assets, around 210 billion euros, of which 180 billion were in Belgium. Portas explains why: “The relevant risk was that those who have money placed in Europe would consider that Europe no longer protected the legal security of deposits”.
The balance of results, however, is positive. “From this point of view, Europe did what it should with Ukraine and itself,” he said, leaving a strategic warning. “If Putin prevails in Ukraine, you can be sure that one day he will knock on the doors of the Baltics.”
Macron and Meloni “joined together to do nonsense”
The assessment of Mercosur is quite different. Here, Paulo Portas spoke about a serious and personalized error that brought together two unlikely leaders: Emmanuel Macron and Georgia Meloni. “Absolutely unlikely because they cordially detest each other”, he recalls. Even so, “curiously they came together to do something nonsense”.
For Portas, the opposition between Emmanuel Macron and Giorgia Meloni reveals a “lack of vision”. “It seems that everyone can only look at their garden and cannot understand the world”, he criticized, remembering that, in a context in which “the United States is closed in terms of trade”, Europe should “take advantage of the opportunities left vacant”.
The agreement with Mercosur involves Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, around 260 million inhabitants, and is, in the commentator’s words, a wasted historic opportunity. “It is a miracle to get Argentina, with Milei, and Brazil, with Lula, to agree”, he highlighted.
For Portugal, the benefits are, according to Portas, evident. “In agriculture alone, we have something to gain in the olive oil sector (…), we have something to gain in the wine sector and also in the fruit sector”, he argues, adding that “we have nothing to lose in milk or butter, where we are self-sufficient”.
Regarding the Italian opposition, the commentator presents Meloni’s possible vision. “Ms. Meloni has no objection to Mercosur (…) she wants to gain something else in the European Union’s multi-annual budget.” A gesture he classified as tactical, but at a high cost: “Seen from Latin America, it seems that the European Union’s decision-making system is stupid”.
