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Another week, another set of dilemmas for Europe’s beleaguered political class to deal with. On Wednesday Brussels is due to outline the terms of the €90bn loan it has promised to Ukraine, amid internal tensions over whether Kyiv can use the money to buy US as well as EU weapons. On the same day, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, is due to meet ministers from Denmark and Greenland, as Donald Trump continues to insist that the US will take ownership of the latter “one way or another”. And as the body count of protesters rises in Iran, the EU is under mounting pressure to do more than merely “monitor” the situation, as the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, somewhat feebly put it over the weekend.
Beyond the crisis management, a deeper reckoning is overdue after a tumultuous beginning to 2026. It has long been a truism that there is a profound mismatch between the EU’s economic heft and its geopolitical clout. But only a year into Mr Trump’s second term, the disjunction looks unsustainable in the “America first” era.
As the US president has thrown his weight around across the globe, EU leaders have trailed in the slipstream of events, seeking to mollify and appease Mr Trump in order to preserve what is left of the transatlantic alliance. Given the pivotal importance of the US in guaranteeing Ukraine’s future security, this has perhaps been an understandable strategy of mitigation. But if the EU is to properly assert and protect itself, and project its values in a menacing multipolar world, it needs to start acting with the self-confidence and clarity that should come naturally to an economic superpower whose GDP dwarfs that of Russia.
Some of the problems are structural. The time has surely come, for example, to address the decision-making processes of a union comprising 27 member states, in which the veto mechanism frequently allows small minorities to block decisive action. But the challenge is also one of changing a political mindset that has been both too timid and too complacent regarding internal and external threats.
There is already general agreement over the need to accelerate investment in the kind of hard power that the EU previously relied on the US to provide. Europe is playing a belated game of military catch-up that leaves it vulnerable to bullying in the meantime. But instead of raising the money by cutting public spending in other areas, the bolstering of a distinctive social model should become a twin priority. The rise of national populism across the continent – which Mr Trump and his Maga acolytes hope will eventually tear the EU apart – is intimately linked to disillusionment associated with rising inequality and post-crash austerity. Strengthening social solidarity, as well as armies, is key to Europe’s future.
The Covid pandemic demonstrated that, when confronted with a health emergency, the EU could mobilise its vast collective resources creatively, ambitiously and successfully. Its leaders should show the same flexibility and determination now, leveraging the power of a union comprising 450 million people to stand up for liberal democratic principles that the White House and Vladimir Putin hold in contempt. That may ultimately mean “more Europe”, in the sense of greater integration in relation to security and the economy. The unpalatable alternative is a dangerously weak one in predatory times.
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