Paper has always been mightier than the sword, even more so than a smooth-bore 140mm Leopard A2 tank. In the turbulent scenario of Eastern Europe and Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine, the recourse to a community regulation is beginning to remove the foundations of post-Soviet geopolitics from that portion of the map. I am referring to article 49.6 of the Community regulation referring to the trans-European transport network.
Let's back up a bit. May 5, 2022, the day begins in Brussels with the crisp Belgian morning. Seven degrees which, due to the light north-east wind, conveys a colder feeling. Coat lapels up and cup of coffee in hand. The sky will allow the sun to begin to caress the crystals of the Commission building. Inside, the soft orange carpets prevent the footsteps of the entourage heading towards one of the meeting rooms from being heard. The translation booths around him are empty.
Of the people heading that cold morning to meet, the Ukrainian delegation stands out. He carries under his arm the revision of the formal request that the Government of Volodymyr Zelenski presented to the European Commission a year ago: the activation of article 49.6 of EU regulation 1315/2013. That May 5, Russian armored divisions had already entered dozens of kilometers into Ukrainian territory, but that request had arrived months earlier. The country's diplomacy knew what was coming.
Regulation 1315 of the EU, approved in 2013, is a fundamental part of the European project: it designs its transport network, that mesh, that network of material realities that must sustain every political project and without which it would be smoke. On this infrastructure exoskeleton, composed of railways, roads, ports, airports and connected urban nodes, the Union is developing an ambitious project: to articulate a mobility of people and goods suitable for civil and military use, fully interoperable, above borders and legal provisions that, since the 16th century, have been forging the national identity of their states.
Officials determined to carry out this Herculean project work without political statements and media interviews. This European project of "imperial" scale, in the style of the roads that built, maintained and gave splendor to the Roman Empire two thousand years ago, began to be drawn up only ten years ago. And although the Roman antecedent is perhaps the most appropriate for our history and geography, it is by no means the only one.
Possibly on some wall of an office of the General Directorate of Mobility and Transport in Brussels (better known as DG-MOVE) hangs a plan of the American National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, the ambitious plan that the President Dwight D. Eisenhower set in motion to build a complete system of interstate highways that today exceeds 75,000 kilometers.
Curiously, it is often insisted that this initiative arose as a result of the request and pressure of the country's main car manufacturers. It is not true. In the official title of the plan, the strategic concept of the initiative is clear: when Eisenhower was supreme commander of the Allied forces in Europe during the Second World War, he was amazed by the German autobahn network.
The American plan to build a network of highways that would allow the structuring of the North American territory and effective mobility in case of need was born with the arrival of Eisenhower in power in 1953 and was developed thanks to a federal law of 1956. But we must not forget that already in 1919, the American army had sent a convoy of vehicles from one part of the country to the other to check not only the time required to do so, but the material conditions , logistics and roads of a movement of this style.
On board one of the 81 trucks that left Washington and 62 days later arrived at their destination, the Golden Gate in San Francisco, was traveling a young 28-year-old officer: his name was Dwight D. Eisenhower. I wonder what the outcome of this trip would be if a unit of the Eurocos, the embryo of the army that is being developed by the European Union based on the Franco-German brigade that Kohl and Mitterrand launched in 1989, decided to go with their trucks and armored the route between Algeciras and Tallinn.
In 2021, with an intuition of what was about to happen, the Government of Ukraine requested the European Union to activate Article 49.6 of Regulation 1315/2013, which specifies that powers were granted to the Commission to adopt delegated acts with the purpose of adjusting the Trans-European Transport Network to include or adapt indicative maps of neighboring countries based on high-level agreements on their transport infrastructures.
Beyond the administrative jargon, what this article means is that the Commission has the capacity to include among its plans referring to the material armor on which the transit and mobility of the continent will be based the coordination and extension in neighboring countries. Ukraine knew this and in 2021 requested its application, vehemently supported by Poland. It must be said that this same article is serving for Brussels to start analyzing the adaptation of the road and railway map in the countries of the Western Balkans, i.e. in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia .
Contrary to popular belief, geopolitics is not done with tanks, but with maps and projections. The mysterious Caucasus, the throbbing Balkans and the Ukrainian plains are bubbling like a pan in an oven, as our Ausiàs March would say. The distance and barrier of the Pyrenees can make us lose perspective, but matters are being decided that can substantially alter the map of Europe in the future and we should be very attentive to their consequences for this part of the Mediterranean.
