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The High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs said that his words “were taken out of context” and apologized to those who felt offended.
Borrell apologizes after comparing Europe to “a garden” and the rest of the world to “the jungle”
Josep Borrell, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, explained his recent and controversial statements in which he compared Europe to a “garden” and described the rest of the world as the “jungle” .
In a ‘post’ published this Tuesday on his blog, the politician wrote that part of his words “were taken out of context” and suffered “a twist”.
“Some have misunderstood the metaphor as ‘colonial Eurocentrism’. I’m sorry if some have felt offended,” he said. garden” and the “jungle” is not an “invention” of his. “Sadly, the world we live in today looks more and more like a ‘jungle’ and less and less like a ‘garden’, because the law of the fittest is eroding agreed international norms in many parts of the world,” he argued.
In this context, he stressed that the European integration project was based on “the rejection of power politics”. “This is why I spoke of the ‘European garden’: our record, thanks to our Union, of cementing peace and cooperation between previously warring parties, with a shared commitment to respect rules and laws,” he continued.
“The growth of this world without law and disorder is what I meant when I was talking about the ‘jungle’. My reference to the ‘jungle’ did not have a racist, cultural or geographical connotation. In fact, and unfortunately, the ‘jungle’ is everywhere. parts, even today in the Ukraine”, he reiterated.
At the same time, Borrell admitted that “neither Europe nor the ‘West’ are perfect and that some ‘Western’ countries have violated sometimes international legality”.
The high representative of the EU emphasized that he has always opposed “any form of contempt or racism towards any person”. “In my current position, I have tried to tell the Europeans, the students in Bruges and the EU ambassadors not to entrench ourselves in our world of relative comfort, trying to protect it by building walls, but engage more with the rest of the world with an open spirit, looking at it the way it is and not according to our Eurocentric point of view”, he concluded.
- “Europe is a garden. We have built a garden. Everything works,” said Borrell last week at the inauguration of the European Diplomatic Academy in Bruges (Belgium). According to the senior diplomat, the EU is “the best combination of political freedom, economic prosperity and social cohesion that humanity has been able to build: all three things together”.
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The head of European diplomacy declared that “most of the rest of the world is a jungle, and the jungle could invade the garden”. “The gardeners should take care of it, but they are not going to protect the garden by building walls. A nice little garden surrounded by high walls to prevent the jungle from getting in is not going to be a solution,” he said, arguing that “the jungle has a strong capacity of growth and the wall will never be high enough to protect the garden“.
