'It is clear that sooner or later we will have European casualties', Romanian MEP

There's a definite feeling here at the summit of spillover from the war in Ukraine on neighboring countries, particularly on Romania and Bulgaria. And as you said, several members of a crew are still missing after their chemical tanker was attacked just off the Romanian coast. And I'm here joined with a Romanian MEP, Nicolae Stefanuta, who's actually the co-chair of the Greens in the European Parliament. and he's one of the vice presidents of the European Parliament, and he's from Romania himself. Nikolai, thank you so much for being on the program. What do you think should be the response of the EU and NATO to this situation in the Black Sea? I mean, there have already been calls for a joint NATO commandment in the area. You have to know that there's been so many drones in the Danube Delta off the coast of Romania, Bulgaria, more than there have been in the Baltic area everybody thinks something bad might happen in the Baltics in Poland and Finland whereas what we see is repeated and and purposeful drone activity from the Russian side attacking vessels they have been dead i don't want to speculate why the press isn't talking about that more because these are international ships and maybe because they're not European citizens yet, but it is clear that sooner or later we'll have European casualties, we'll have European damage, not to say that the international vessels and lives are not as important, but the public needs to see this as our own losses and as attacks by Russia. And Europe and NATO are not prepared for that moment when European casualties are actually going to come home to them? I don't think we are. I don't think we speak enough and loudly that we need to have a common defense system, that we need to have common defense purchasing, so that not each member state spends so much money, taking away a lot of the time from social, from climate, but everything would be together, everything would be better if the union as such were to be more united. And I can give an example. The so-called eastern flank should be all of us, really, because really what difference does it make? And we should be more present, French troops, Western troops, German troops, should be more present on the Europe... On the eastern borders. On what is called the flank, the borders. I wanted to ask you about President Zelensky. Obviously, he's here in Brussels at this very sort of low point in relations between Ukraine and the Trump administration. What do you think he'll be looking for here in Brussels, particularly from EU leaders? And do you think there's anything in particular that they can offer him at this point? Yeah, well, there's already calls in there for speeding up accession. I think European leaders realize finally that we need to play like the big boys. We either, or girls, we either get Ukraine in the Union, Moldova in, or somebody else gets Ukraine. It's as simple as that. And what we saw with the diesel contract from President Trump, which is a total blunder, and it's already being criticized by its own party, by his own party. We see that Mr. Putin is using Mr. Trump's money to bomb Kiev and to bomb many other cities, to starve Oleschki, to bomb vessels in the Black Sea. So what exactly are we doing here? And not to mention the possibility that air attacks are no longer communicated that amounts to to treason in my eyes we'll have to leave it there but thank you so much uh Nikolai Stefanuta thank you for being on the program my pleasure back to you Mark, by the way the summit is going to be quite a long one tonight because they've got big negotiations on the EU budget that's a separate story we'll be covering for you later on this evening Mark but meanwhile back to you in the studio Armin thank you very much indeed and And I'll just echo back to the viewers the words of Nikolai Stefanuta, who said, we either get Ukraine in or somebody else gets Ukraine. A call there for the EU to act on the integration of Ukraine into the 27, would be 28 state bloc. More from Armin later.