EU/USA: alignment, complicity and submission, between the lines or written all over them

Tuesday, 17 March 2026RSS
EU/USA: alignment, complicity and submission, between the lines or written all over them

The idea has taken hold that the EU is experiencing a political fracture embodied in the supposedly divergent positions of António Costa and Ursula von der Leyen regarding the aggression by the USA and Israel against Iran. Some even suggest that this divergence goes further, encompassing different conceptions regarding the nature of the relationship between the European Union (EU) and the USA and the role to be played by the EU on the international stage. The fracture is not proven, and the divergence remains only on the surface of the words used. Looking deeper, we find a position that is, after all, shared by both in its most significant aspects. The EU's alignment with the USA, complicity in its actions on a global scale, and submission to its impositions is the common substrate that unites them. Even if one says between the lines what the other writes all over them. Reviewing the various statements made in recent weeks, nowhere can one find a simple and direct condemnation of the aggression by the USA and Israel against Iran by either of these EU officials. At best, there are general and indirect references to the reprehensibility of bombings carried out in the name of democracy and in defiance of the 'rules-based international order'. In some cases, the references are so diffuse and confusing that some might doubt whether the words were even intended to target the USA. While there are differences to be noted in the way each chooses to refer to International Law, the truth is that neither identified that aggression against Iran as the gross violation of International Law and the United Nations Charter that it constitutes. With the world facing an unjustified and unprovoked aggression, it is even less understandable that the discourse is not as clear and vehement as it was in other circumstances. Ultimately, this reveals the bias and double standards that undermine credibility and mark the partiality of the position assumed by the EU whenever the abuses of those considered allies or masters are involved. In cross-references to International Law, freedom, democracy, peace, Human Rights, and the sovereignty of peoples, one might eventually find greater differences between the speeches of Costa and Von der Leyen. But it is only in discourse that these differences remain. In action, the unity of EU officials in alignment, complicity, and submission to the USA is maintained. This is the only way to explain why the EU does not 'lift a finger' to counter the aggressive action of the USA, despite the emphasis placed on its negative impacts regarding Latin America, Greenland, and the Middle East or the Palestinian people in Gaza, there by proxy of the government of Israel. From neither one nor the other do we even hear talk, for example, of acting to put an end to the genocide in Gaza by suspending the EU/Israel association agreement. Let us agree that, for a political fracture and divergence, there needs to be more substance.

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