All Romanian representatives in the European Parliament voted to divert funds for education and health to arming and war, according to sovereignist propaganda.
NEWS: Abandon all hope. All our MEPs, high-ranking and (un)worthy, well-paid, stuffed and stupid as hell - including our great opposition facade (AUR), voted disgustingly cheerfully, with all their hands and feet for THE ARMING OF EUROPE. They actually voted knowingly that, from now on, all our money and our children's money, instead of going to education and health, will go into the big foreign capital accounts, and we will continue to suck our little toes. Or they voted cynically, aware that in the event of a real war, it will be our children who die on the front lines, not theirs, and it will be the parents of those who return home crippled or in coffins who will suffer, if they still have a home. It will be a bitter pill to swallow!
NARRATIVE: Romanian MEPs support arming and war, to the detriment of education and healthcare for the people.
PURPOSE: To promote the sovereignist discourse, undermine public confidence in European authorities and institutions, provoke and amplify social tensions, and validate their own conspiracy theories.
Sovereignists accuse sovereignist disinformation
WHY THE NARRATIVE IS FALSE: The vote incriminated in the analyzed post was, in fact, for the financing of EDIP – European Defense Industry Program, a European Union program that aims to strengthen the production capacity, industrial cooperation, supply, development, and transformation of the European defense industry. It seeks in particular to reduce Europe's dependence on external suppliers and to strengthen local industry in the current security context. EDIP is, in fact, a continuation of the European Defence Industrial Development Programme (EDIDP), implemented between 2019 and 2020, the first EU grant programme aimed at developing capabilities and co-financing the joint development of new defence products and technologies and the modernisation of existing ones.
The program is funded from the European Union budget, which means that EDIP is not responsible for the underfunding of education and healthcare in Romania, as sovereignist propaganda tries to suggest. For the period 2025–2027, the EDIP budget is1.5 billion Euro, and it aims to use grants to introduce a security of supply regime at EU level for defense products, so that the EU can react quickly in the event of a crisis. To receive funding, products must include at least 65% components from the EU or associated countries, in order to protect the European industry. It also aims to create mechanisms for industrial cooperation and joint procurement, such as European Defense Projects of Common Interest (EDPCIs), as well as a European military sales mechanism for a better coordination between the member states. It has only a marginal connection with the European Commission's SAFE program to rearm Europe in response to Russia's increasingly frequent threats—in practice, Europe is strengthening its defense and responding to the rapid militarization of an aggressive power already engaged in hybrid operations in European states. In fact, this narrative has been strongly refuted by one of the most prominent exponents of the sovereignist movement, lawyer Gheorghe Piperea, an MEP and member of AUR.
"Yesterday, the European Parliament did not vote on ANYTHING regarding the rearming of the EU [...] Yesterday, a vote was held on EDIP—a European military and space infrastructure that already exists and is set to receive minimal funding (approximately1.5 billion Euro) so that it no longer depends on long supply chains, usually those in China. So, relax: WE DID NOT VOTE for the arming of the EU!" wrote Piperea on Facebook , describing the disinformation as "ugly."
Armed does not always mean ready to attack
CONTEXT: Blaming the European Union as the main culprit for triggering the Russian-Ukrainian war is no longer a novelty, with the European economic cooperation organization replacing NATO and the US in pro-Russian propaganda narratives following Washington's foreign policy changes after Donald Trump's return to the White House. Thus, the Moscow-inspired sovereignist discourse, now masked by an alignment with the new American doctrine, accuses Brussels of bellicose intentions, in collusion with London, in total contradiction with "the desire of Russia and the United States to make peace."
In support of this narrative, proponents of this type of discourse point to the initiation by EU members of a joint defense plan against a potential Russian aggression in the near future, as well as continued support for Ukraine, a state that has been fighting a defensive war against Moscow for nearly four years. This decision could be interpreted as a desire for war only in the twisted logic of Russian propaganda, masked as a "fight for peace" by anti-European sovereignists. According to any military doctrine and basic logic, lasting peace can only be built on a strong foundation of defense capabilities.
The stronger a country or alliance is militarily, the safer it is, because an aggressor must think twice before launching military action against an opponent with a well-trained army. Any aggressor usually attacks poorly prepared opponents in crisis, not powerful entities that are well organized militarily and have stable and efficient institutions. This is also why, although it constantly claims that it is fighting against the collective West in Ukraine, Russia has not attacked a single other European state since 2022.
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