With war in Ukraine and the Middle East, race riots in the UK, the threat of terrorism hanging over France and Belgium, unrest in Germany, and the specter of Jihad and Putin hovering over Europe, any talk of “national security” is either made in jest or hopelessly naive.

Not simply because security is the second most precious public good after freedom. After all, there can be no freedom without security, nor security without freedom.

But because a dogmatic and complacent society is prepared to combat the fears of yesterday, but not the perils of today.

Paranoia! We read recently that the EU wants the use of “intrusive surveillance software” to be “strictly controlled”. That it is even drawing up a “plan” to do so (Politico, 23/7).

The reasoning is even worse. It says “The scope of the requirements relating to the maintenance of national security cannot be determined unilaterally by each member state, without any control by the institutions of the EU.”

Which is a really strange idea. If it’s accurate. I will remind readers at this point that the same publication doubted Ursula would be re-elected.

But let’s get to the point.

The point is that national security is too serious a matter to be left to the Member States without some measure of Union control.

No objections there. Just a few practical problems.

For a start, since the failure of the European Defence Community (1954) and the Treaty of Rome (1958), no substantive national security competence has been transferred to the EU.

And since there is no competence, there is no EU body, institution or service which is responsible for security. Just a bunch of idle MEPs.

So I don’t know what sort of a “plan” they’re hatching, if they really are, whoever they might be, but before they request “control” they need to find the “controller”.

And then convince 27 countries to place their security under the control of someone nobody knows.

Luxembourg may agree. And perhaps those (few) who believe that national security “is not the end goal” (Christos Rammos, Syntagmawatch, 5/8)

You will tell me that the time has finally come to formulate a common European security policy. I hope so. But there is no such policy for now, nor is one on the horizon.

And until such a policy exists, I don’t think it’s particularly smart to assign some activists to put on a show for their benefit, not ours.