Year LXVI, 2024, Single Issue, Page 8
Europe at the Turning Point
Never, in the course of the process of integration, have the Europeans been as close to the edge of the abyss as they are now. In a global context characterized by instability and wars, and continental-sized powers competing fiercely for resources, markets and spheres of influence, the European Union, disunited and weak, risks becoming a puppet in the hands of giants, and, unable to determine its own destiny, having to choose which master to obey.
After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shattered the illusion that war could never return to Europe, the election of Donald Trump as President of the USA has dealt the final blow to the vision of a world based on peaceful cooperation between states, in which the European Union could allow itself to delegate its security to others, limit itself to developing its internal market, and not consider the question of exercising political power. While the United States supported and encouraged European integration in the aftermath of World War II, and has ensured the defence of our continent to this day, the Trump administration is clearly set on dividing and weakening the Europeans, causing them to become fragmented and embroiled in internal conflicts, and ultimately making them subordinate to American power politics.
The vast economic power of Elon Musk combined with his efforts to influence elections in European countries by encouraging support for far-right movements and even the creation of a united front under the slogan ‘Make Europe Great Again’, the temptation of some states, especially Italy, to set themselves up as America’s best allies in the illusion of being able to benefit from this position, and the panic created by an erratic US administration are together creating the perfect storm. A storm that will overwhelm the Europeans unless they can, decisively, demonstrate their willingness to unite politically and take concrete steps to achieve this.
The Letta, Draghi and Niinistö reports had already set alarm bells ringing over the risks inherent in the state of paralysis into which the European states have thus far allowed themselves to be lulled, drawing attention to enormously significant aspects and forcefully underlining the urgent need for a change of pace from Europe. On the one hand, in fact, they clearly underlined the lack of competitiveness and incisiveness of European states when they act separately and in disarray, and the unsustainability of Europe’s dependence on external powers for energy, defence, raw materials and technology. On the other hand, they highlighted the enormous potential that Europe would have were it to act as one and with a single voice; potential that, if exploited, would not only allow Europeans to defend their values of democracy, freedom and equality, but would also contribute to the creation of a world order based on multilateralism and cooperation, to the development of forms of international democracy, and to the implementation of effective tools to address the climate and environment emergencies.
The element that clearly emerges from these reports is the deep interconnection between the various sectors and the need therefore to address the problems that the European Union is facing with a global approach. The Draghi report pointed out that ‘Industrial policies today — as seen in the US and China — comprise multi-policy strategies, combining fiscal policies to incentivise domestic production, trade policies to penalise anti-competitive behaviour abroad and foreign economic policies to secure supply chains.’ Thus, it underlined that a real autonomous European defence is not possible without a European industrial policy and a budget capable of supporting the costs of such a transformation, and that the European Union must therefore develop ‘a genuine EU “foreign economic policy”’. Similarly, the Niinistö report emphasised that security goes beyond military concerns; it also involves providing the tools necessary to prevent and combat disinformation, ensuring cybersecurity, securing raw material supplies, and safeguarding adequate food supplies. Niinistö highlighted that the failure to address these challenges poses a direct threat to democracy and to Europe’s founding values.
Europe is therefore facing an existential challenge, which it will manage to overcome only if its member states and institutions can develop a true awareness of what is at stake and prove able to make the leap towards the creation of a political union.
While this awareness seems at least in part to be emerging, the same cannot be said of a willingness to structurally reshape the EU, laying the foundations for a federal transformation.
While it is certainly true that in the presence of crises affecting all the member states, the integration process has allowed their interests to converge, enabling the Union to respond through decisions taken unanimously within the European Council or the Council (as in the case of the crisis triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic, when it was decided to finance an aid programme, NextGenerationEU, through debt issuance, or when the EU acted together, albeit with difficulties due to Hungary’s position, in defence of Ukraine following its invasion by Russia), it should not be forgotten that these were intergovernmental decisions based on temporary alignments of national interests, and therefore on fragile foundations. In other words, although these were choices capable of guaranteeing the Union a certain capacity to resist external threats, they were also manifestations of the EU’s inability to adopt long-term political decisions that are not merely the fruit of temporary convergence of twenty-seven separate national interests.
The member states’ reactions to Trump’s recent tariff threats illustrate this difficulty. Although it is in the interests of all the member states to defend the European economy and therefore react in a cohesive manner to these threats, it was not long before different attitudes started to emerge. For example, during the informal summit on February 3, convened by Antonio Costa to discuss European defence, some countries, such as France and Germany, supported adopting a tough stance against the United States, while others preferred a more conciliatory approach, suggesting that Europe could offer to purchase more weapons and liquefied gas from the US in the hope of persuading Trump to reconsider the tariffs issue.
This is the division that the great powers outside Europe are counting on — a structural division linked to the EU’s institutional mechanisms which, still profoundly dependent on agreements between governments democratically legitimised at national level, inherently encourage fragmentation and divergence of national interests rather common solutions. Until it equips itself with a political head, a budget worthy of the name funded through a European fiscal system, and democratic decision-making mechanisms no longer based on unanimity between governments, the EU will not be able to emerge from the spiral of impotence and mutual distrust in which it is currently caught.
And these objectives will become achievable only if a discussion is started on a profound revision of the EU’s mechanisms and institutional structure, and therefore on comprehensive reform of the existing Treaties. This difficult undertaking is not incompatible with steps forward in individual sectors to address emergencies and prepare the ground for a political leap (such as providing the Union with defence instruments or additional funds or a core industrial policy, or completing the capital market and the banking union). But in order for these steps to strengthen the prospect of a political Europe, rather than serving merely as stopgap solutions destined to prolong the situation of impotence in which the Europeans find themselves, the member states and the institutions need to forcefully demonstrate their will to move forward together to create a Europe capable of protecting the interests of its citizens and playing a balancing role on the world stage, and thus a European power capable of engaging on an equal footing with other powers of continental dimensions.
The solutions adopted will prove effective in deterring military threats to EU territory, and also efforts to divide member states or undermine the democratic principles, values and rights that define the European model, only if they are viewed as steps in a coherent and comprehensive process towards creating a federal institutional structure. This structure must inevitably be born of the initiative of a group of willing member states, which would likely have to envisage two distinct circles of integration.
As pointed out by Lorenzo Marsili writing in The Guardian today, ‘Such aspirations are not a matter of left or right, liberalism or populism. Nor are they a question of relinquishing national identity to a centralised Brussels bureaucracy. They are, rather, a matter of wanting to be a subject, not merely an object, of history.’
4 February 2025
The Federalist
