SECURITY AND DEFENSE ARE TRULY A PRIORITY FOR THE MEMBER STATES OF THE EUROPEAN UNION: FACT OR HOAX?

All the often-contradictory hoaxes concerning the European Union (EU) are so-called Euro-myths. They mostly have a negative tone and try to denigrate this institution. Their emergence is caused by the fact that individual states often need more information about what is happening in the EU, and the complex mechanism of the Union's functioning is difficult to understand. Therefore, when the next "EU wants to ban something" comes out, ordinary people tend to take it as a given without verifying the information, ensuring the defence of freedom, independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity, and population belongs to the main objective of each state. Thus, in response to the current political, security and economic situation, countries must earmark, within the framework of their national budgets, a proportion of the available resources to ensure their defence. The aim of this paper, based on current trends in the defence budgets of the EU member states, is to point out, that not only the global economic and financial crisis and the credit and debt crisis in the Euro-area have a significant negative impact on the amount of resources, which individual EU member states earmark to ensure their defence, but, in addition, all these aspects should be precisely understood, bearing in mind, the growing influence of disinformation spread, leveraged by the hoax rising influence.