Until the seventies, when two brothers quarreled for a car, the parents resolved the question by making it swallow to the strongest child. This synthesis came to my mind after reading a disturbing news on the Financial Times.

The European Union has 157 million hectares of agricultural land; Ukraine (borders pre-2022) 41 million hectares. If Kiev entered the EU today, it would absorb most of the EU agricultural funds, with an estimated cut of 20% to the subsidies of the current member countries. What governments would they be willing to give up a substantial slice of their benefits?

On the FT of 21 May 2025 I read that in Brussels it is discussed to bring together agricultural grants in the great cauldron of defense and rearmament. I will be paranoid, but it immediately came to me that with an adequate tam tam of war, the cannons would have the priority on butter, and the subsidies would stop being the pommel of discord.

Until the seventies, the loose parents made the object of the dispute disappear. From the nineties onwards, more democratic parents ended up buying a toy to the weakest son. If agricultural subsidies are a Balocco, throwing them into the great defense cauldron, the EU is perhaps returning to a type of pedagogy seventies?