Year LXVII, 2025, Single Issue, Page 3
Is Today’s Divided Europe Still Credible?
In the face of events that are revolutionising the framework of international relations and the balances of power between various world regions, Europe finds itself both ill-prepared and paralysed.
Ill-prepared on account of the member states’ failure over the past seven decades to establish a federal supranational political power capable of guaranteeing the Union’s ability to act. And paralysed by the fear—shared by many governments—of the possible electoral consequences of boldly pursuing the creation of a political Europe, by the inability to see beyond a now superseded vision of international relations, and by an apparent obliviousness both to the urgent need for change and to the risk of losing the values that originated and flourished in Europe.
In a world of shifting balances, in which the powers external to Europe are engaged in a struggle to seize resources and secure spheres of political influence, the European Union’s inability to embark on a path of radical political transformation—combined with the cautious and hesitant attitude of its member states and institutions—is seriously undermining the credibility of the European integration process itself. This could potentially lead to a complete collapse of public confidence and spell the end of the entire project.
In recent months, there have been multiple signs of Europe’s weakness, inability to assert its positions, and loss of credibility on the international stage.
We may cite, for example, the Europeans’ exclusion from the Alaska summit between Trump and Putin—an event that amounted to a legitimisation of Putin as an interlocutor and a complete delegitimisation of the European Union and its member states.
Or, similarly, the recent tariffs agreement between the United States and the European Union. In this case, the Europeans’ initially cautious response to the Trump administration’s threats of staggering tariffs on European goods—unlike Canada, for example, the Europeans were careful not to react with counter-threats such as deploying the EU’s anti-coercion mechanism (or ‘bazooka’)—ultimately led to an undertaking not to raise tariffs on US products, a promise to purchase US energy (worth $750 billion over three years) and military equipment, and a commitment to increase direct investment in the United States by $600 billion—all in exchange for a 15 per cent tariff on European goods rather than the threatened 30 per cent.
This agreement is a compromise that runs completely counter to the direction outlined in Draghi’s report on competitiveness, which stressed the urgent need for Europe to gain autonomy from external powers and equip itself with real political planning and decision-making capacity. The report also made it clear that, in a world increasingly dominated by competition between continental-scale powers, the illusion that defence, energy and technological needs can be met through dependence on others is no longer sustainable.
Indeed, the inability of the fragmented and divided European countries to influence international decision-making and protect the interests of their citizens and businesses was already clearly evident in the recent G7 decision on the Global Minimum Tax proposal, which has already been implemented, fully or partially, by 55 (mainly European) countries. At the G7 summit in late June, the United States managed to secure an exemption for US-headquartered multinationals, thereby effectively causing the tax to backfire against businesses based in the European Union.
The European Union’s lack of political influence and its dependence in many areas on external powers—particularly its subordination to the United States—are not the result of chance. Rather, they are direct consequences of the fact that the EU is not a political entity and has no authority independent of its member states. In other words, its dependence on external powers—in particular the United States—is ultimately rooted in its internal dependence on its own member states.
This dependence is most evident in areas traditionally recognised to lie at the heart of state sovereignty—such as foreign and defence policy, and economic and fiscal policy—but, in reality, it also obstructs the implementation of policies that the European Union ought to be able to pursue independently, given that they fall within its exclusive competence. Returning to the tariffs issue, one need only think of the customs union and the common commercial policy. Since these are two of the areas under the EU’s sole jurisdiction, in which decisions are taken by qualified majority in the Council and therefore not subject to any right of veto, the member states cannot intervene in them. Nevertheless, even here, the lack of a European political power capable of acting independently of the member states greatly limits the Union’s ability to act, for two main reasons.
First, because the ability to negotiate tariff and trade agreements with third countries is closely tied to foreign policy choices, and thus to political decisions regarding Europe’s role on the international stage. Indeed, since the CFSP is regulated by intergovernmental mechanisms based on the rule of unanimity, these decisions remain essentially in the hands of the member states, meaning that the Union, far from able to develop a coherent strategy, is constrained by the differing views of its member states and thus prevented from making decisions. This in turn explains why, in the face of Trump’s aggressive stance, the member states found themselves divided on the best way to approach the United States, with Italy prioritising the maintenance of good relations, and other countries, such as France, favouring a firmer position.
Second, because the Europeans’ dependence on third countries in many areas weakens their negotiating power even in those that are exclusive competences of the EU. We might think, for example, of how Europe’s dependence on the United States for defence and military equipment—and the associated fear that the US might lose interest in European defence, leaving Ukraine to fall into Putin’s hands—had the effect of curbing efforts to respond to Trump’s tariff policy with a hard-line approach, and ultimately saw the Europeans settling for an unfavourable compromise.
Therefore, even though the European Union has, in principle, a free hand when it comes to matters of trade policy, its power is hollow in practice.
As already mentioned, it is primarily in the areas lying at the heart of state sovereignty that this condition of dependence strips the Union of its autonomy and prevents it from acting. The key such area—to be addressed as a priority—is that of EU funding, since the creation of own resources, based on EU fiscal competence, is the essential precondition for the exercise of all the Union’s other competences.
And yet, even though numerous observers have repeatedly stressed the crucial nature of this issue and the urgent need for the EU to find a way of funding itself independently of its member states, there appears to be—as shown by the debate surrounding the recent proposal for the Multiannual Financial Framework 2028–2034 presented by the Commission—no real awareness of this need, either within the member states or at the level of the EU institutions. Compared with previous Frameworks, the new proposal contains several new developments—an increase in the budget from 1.1 per cent to 1.6 per cent, new priorities, a €410 billion fund to promote competitiveness and innovation, a €400 billion package to support financially struggling states—to be funded through the issuance of European debt—and new own resources. It is therefore a sign that the Commission recognises the need to secure additional resources in order to address the new challenges now facing Europe.
The risk, however, is that all this will lead to nothing. Not just because the proposed budget increase would not actually be that significant—since the additional amount would also have to cover interest payments on debt issued under NextGenerationEU, it would correspond to a real increase of only 0.04 per cent—but also because the proposal falls within the framework of existing procedures, meaning that its adoption will require unanimity in the Council and approval by the parliaments of the member states. Also, leaving aside the fact that some countries have already expressed their opposition to the proposal, it is quite significant that no EU institution—not even the European Parliament, glaringly excluded from the decision on own resources—has raised the issue of the need to grant the Union genuine budgetary autonomy, which could be achieved through a reform that uncouples decisions on EU financing from the requirement of unanimity among the member states, and instead entrusts them to a true European-level fiscal authority, ensuring full involvement of the European Parliament in the process. Without such a reform, there can be no real increase in the resources at the EU’s disposal, which means that any proposal can only result in a mere reallocation of resources from one area to another.
Once again, then, the courage to really address the critical issues of the process of integration and break away from the existing system seems to be lacking, leaving the European Union caught in a vicious cycle.
The window of opportunity for reversing this trend is limited, making it essential for at least some of Europe’s member states, starting with those belonging to the ‘coalition of the willing’ supporting Kyiv—to take the initiative to form a core political union able to reaffirm the centrality of the values developed in Europe and restore credibility to the project of peace and democracy that lies at the heart of the process of European unification.
As pointed out by Giuliano Noci, writing in Il Sole 24 Ore (‘L’Occidente e le nuove regole per evitare il crollo definitivo’, 24 August 2025), unless action is taken now, the entire structure will collapse—and Europe will not be a bystander: it will be buried in the rubble, wondering how things ever came to this.
The Federalist
