The rest of the world will not wait for Europe while it bickers over institutional reform and external policy issues, says Joschka Fischer, ex-German foreign minister, warning that the risk of it becoming a “playground” for upcoming super powers grows by the day.
Tempered by his time in the US where politicians are already looking to China and India as the next powers to be, the former politician-turned-Princeton-professor has a very sober view of the European Union’s position in the world as it dusts itself off from recent 50th birthday celebrations.
“Here in the United States, I hear ‘who is Europe, where is Europe?’ They are looking for China and for India. Europe is increasingly fading away beyond the horizon in the Atlantic,” Mr Fischer tells EUobserver in an interview.
“This is a development which is definitely accelerating, so when you talk with the [US] political elite, the weaker Europe is, the less interest you will find.”
Relating a recent incident where a former Indian foreign minister came to lecture at Princeton and said that the 21st century will see three superpowers – India, China and the US – Mr Fischer said “I was sitting there and I thought, ‘why the hell is nobody in Europe realising what is going on!’”
