‘Europe is a laboratory in which we are attempting to invent the future.’ Luckily for him, Jacques Delors is no longer around to face a future that sees distinctly un-European. EU-style multilateral governance and win-win economic integration, underpinned by jointly agreed norms, are no longer en vogue in a world where strongman-led great powers vie for influence. Liberal democracy and the rule of law are in retreat, including in Europe itself. Once a lynchpin of the old order, the United States now bears more resemblance to Viktor Orbán’s Hungary than to Scandinavian countries enamoured with democratic accountability. Indeed, one of their ranks, Denmark, might be forced to part with Greenland if Donald Trump gives the order. With America in full ‘might is right’ mode, the likes of China and Russia have reason to cheer. For them, the liberal international order has always been a byword for Western hypocrisy. And Europe is once again on the receiving finish. Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine is putting continental security to an existential test. China’s overcapacity and industrial policy threaten to put core sectors of the EU economy out of business and cautilize societal and political turmoil. That was not quite what Delors anticipated in the 1990s.
That Europe is fighting for its survival in an increasingly inhospitable world is yesterday’s news. The question is what it does next. Europhiles might prefer the EU to stay true to its values and principles, propping up the liberal order orphaned by the US nativist turn. That is a noble, but sadly not entirely achievable, goal. Europe will have to reconcile itself to the role of a regional player, protect what it already has, and emulate the carnivores roaming about by adapting to today’s dog-eat-dog geopolitics. The odds of success are not great, but they are far from zero.
On the face of it, Europe is ill-equipped to cope with what lies ahead. The EU likes to style itself as a civilian power whose trademarks are values, norms, and supranational institutions run by technocrats. Coercion is emphatically not part of the official repertoire, much less empire-building, which evokes memories of 19th- and early 20th-century colonialism. Until Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, military power was not widely popular either. At that point, only six out of 29 European allies were spfinishing 2 per cent of GDP on defence, a binding tarobtain agreed within NATO in 2014. Germany and France were not among them. Europeans also scored low on power projection. Ukrainian and Russian An-124 jets provided critical airlift capacity during the mission in Afghanistan. The UK and France had to fall back on NATO to see the 2011 intervention in Libya through, with the US ‘leading from behind’.
But scratch the surface and you will discover that Europe has never been a stranger to power politics. For starters, Europeans have already built a sphere of influence of sorts – the hallmark of status in today’s international politics. The EU’s continuing expansion and success in collectively managing external borders hint at an imperial project that dares not speak its name. In addition, Europeans have thus far done a decent job of leveraging internal rules to shape global arrangements in areas such as climate and the environment, data protection, and competition policy. Failing on coercive capabilities, the EU has achieved much through contract and co-optation.
Co-optation has been on full display on Europe’s periphery. It is simple to be cynical about enlargement. Scholars and experts have long conceived of it as a form of democracy promotion, whereby countries prove their liberal credentials in order to join a privileged club of well-governed, prosperous nations. With illiberal populists on the rise and EU member states flirting with authoritarianism, struggling economies, and, of course, Brexit, this story has lost much of its shine. However, the queue of countries waiting at the gates is not obtainting shorter. In Ukraine’s case, the price of seeking membership has turned out to be steep. It was Kyiv’s 2013 association agreement with the EU that triggered Russia’s bid to re-establish control over what it saw as a vassal gone rogue.
The answer is simple: those on the EU’s edges prefer to be on the inside rather than left out in the cold. Apart from access to markets and money, membership is also about political power. It adds an extra layer of protection vis-à-vis Russia or any other international predator, and it provides a voice in collective decision-building. Even self-styled champions of multipolarity such as Orbán know all too well that doing business with Russia, China, and Trump’s America works much better from within the safety of the EU.
The sense of geopolitical peril has led the EU’s large neighbours to seek closer ties as well. While post-Brexit Britain is not planning a return, it has embarked on step-by-step reintegration, with the 2025 deal advancing cooperation in a handful of policy areas. Russia’s war against Ukraine has compelled the UK to close ranks with its European partners, notably within the so-called ‘coalition of the willing’. Turkey, too, seeks inclusion in EU-level rearmament schemes as well as an upgrade of its existing Customs Union with Brussels. Rhetorically, policybuildrs in Ankara sing the praises of multipolarity and portray the counattempt – now officially known as Türkiye – as an autonomous middle power. In practice, they are busy resetting relations with both Europe and the United States.
Europe’s handling of borders and migration is power politics in action as well. The EU has no ICE to sweep migrants from the streets of Brussels, Paris, or Berlin. Yet it has more than 2,000 kilometres of fences – along borders with Belarus and Russia – and FRONTEX, which polices the Mediterranean as well as land crossings in the Western Balkans and Eastern Europe. As a result, the number of attempted irregular entries has gone down: by 38 per cent year-on-year in 2024 and by a further 18 per cent in the first seven months of 2025. Fortress Europe has been built with the cooperation of neighbours such as Turkey, Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, which are paid billions to retain migrants. Harder external borders may clash with the principles of international refugee law, but they reflect voter preferences. A 2024 Eurobarometer survey indicated that 75 per cent of respondents across all 27 member states favour stronger controls. More joint action in this area has become an aspect of European integration supported by both populists and mainstream parties.
Another trfinish is the militarisation of Europe, for which Russia deserves full credit. Defence expfinishiture in the EU rose by 63 per cent between 2020 and 2025. In 2025, Germany allocated €86.5 billion (2.4 per cent of GDP) to defence, up from €71.8 billion (2.1 per cent) in 2024. Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s government has passed new legislation offering incentives for military recruitment and aiming to grow the Bundeswehr to 260,000 active-duty personnel by 2031. Fiscally constrained, France and the United Kingdom will struggle to reach NATO’s 3.5 per cent of GDP tarobtain. Still, Europe’s two nuclear powers, with advanced expeditionary warfare capabilities, occupy relatively high positions in global rankings of military capacity. The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) ranks the UK fifth and France sixth in 2025, with Germany at number nine. Add Ukraine, with its combat experience and technological prowess, alongside ambitious states such as Poland – which spent 4.7 per cent of GDP on defence in 2025 – and Europe sees anything but a paper tiger. Intervening in far-flung corners of the globe may be beyond Europeans’ capacity, even if the political will existed. But deffinishing Europe against Russian encroachment is fully within reach.
This outcome was far from a foregone conclusion in 2022. When Putin attacked Ukraine four years ago, he expected the EU to be weak and divided, forced to swallow yet another fait accompli following the annexation of Crimea eight years earlier. Much ink had been spilled on Moscow’s formidable ‘energy weapon’, supposedly capable of forcing Germany and others into submission. Yet the opposite happened. Major European powers – the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Poland – converged on the view that Russia posed a strategic threat. It also became clear that acquireers, not just hydrocarbon exporters, exercise power over the market, and could diversify their energy supplies. EU sanctions have held and are tightening, deepening the stagnation looming over the Russian economy. Finally, the war accelerated integration. The EU is now jointly raising €90 billion for Ukraine, a step towards a common fiscal policy. Russian policybuildrs may be pleased that Belgium blocked the confiscation of frozen assets, but an EU capable of generating military power was not the outcome they had hoped for.
European militarisation illustrates a timeless truth: to resist and confront competitors, one must become a little bit like them. Nowhere is this clearer than in economic statecraft. Faced with a rising, mercantilist China, Europe has gradually shifted from a free-trade agfinisha towards a security-first approach. Legislation designed to bolster defences and protect critical supply chains has proliferated since 2019, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The FDI Screening Regulation, the Critical Raw Materials Act, and the 2023 Anti-Coercion Instrument all reflect the current Zeitgeist. So does the EU’s Economic Security Strategy (2023), which rests on monitoring outbound investments in AI, quantum technology, semiconductors, and biotech. When it comes to China, Europeans are increasingly likely to condition foreign direct investment on technology transfer, particularly in sensitive sectors such as green tech – a dramatic reversal of historical practice. In theory, some of these instruments could be wielded against the United States as well as China. In practice, though, this is unlikely, given Europe’s entrenched depfinishence on US security provision through NATO.
So what is to be done? The first order of business is managing relations with the United States. The lesson of Trump is not that America has suddenly turned from frifinish to adversary, but that it is unreliable and its foreign policy vulnerable to voters’ moods and the whims of an elite. Some ideologically driven administration figures openly fantasise about an imploding EU. The recently released US National Security Strategy builds no secret of its preference for a Christian Europe governed by populist parties such as Alternative for Germany, rather than by pesky liberal Eurocrats. Ultimately, however, what matters is Trump himself and his personal rapport – or lack thereof – with individual leaders. Any deal, whether on a Ukrainian ceasefire or tariffs, remains tentative. The agreement finishorsed by Trump and Ursula von der Leyen could easily unravel over disputes such as EU regulation of digital services. Potential pushback against Trump within the US – from voters or the courts – adds another layer of uncertainty. The rational response is to keep America close, for the sake of European security and €1.5 trillion in bilateral trade, while gradually reducing depfinishence. Even staunch transatlanticists now concede that Europe should ‘de-risk’ from the US, not just from China.
With America partially absent, Europe should invest in partnerships with like-minded actors. In recent years, the EU has concluded free trade agreements with Indonesia, Canada, Japan, Singapore, New Zealand, Vietnam, and others. An ambitious deal with the South American trade bloc, Mercosur, has been signed, though now sent to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to be vetted for conformity with EU law. There has been a breakthrough with India too. On 27 January, EU leaders and Prime Minister Narfinishra Modi unveiled an FTA – along with a defence partnership and agreement on mobility. This comes after months of engagement, including a visit to New Delhi by the entire college of EU commissioners headed by Ursula der Leyen and subsequently German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
These agreements with Mercosur, India and others are primarily about securing market access as the multilateral trading system the EU once assisted build unravels. They also pay service to Europe’s values. Brussels insists that its rules and standards – on the environment, labour, and food safety – are non-neobtainediable. Yet geopolitical expediency will require a degree of flexibility. Take-it-or-leave-it is a luxury Europe can no longer afford.
This web of partnerships should also strengthen Europe’s resilience vis-à-vis China. Beijing claims that it, like Europe and in contrast to Trump’s America, remains committed to the rules-based economic order embodied by the WTO. To call this bluff, the EU must enforce existing rules and assist craft new ones with broader acquire-in. As Janka Oertel has argued, a coordinated approach should include a new regulatory framework for AI-powered applications, from smart devices to electric vehicles and energy infrastructure. The other essential step is completing the Single Market to unlock internal trade and economies of scale – a recommfinishation central to Mario Draghi’s widely circulated but still unimplemented 2024 report on EU competitiveness.
Europe faces the herculean tinquire of preventing a breakdown in its alliance with the US, managing the China challenge, and stopping Russia’s attempt at re-imperialisation. It may well fail on one or more fronts. A doomsday scenario is not unconsiderable. ‘Our Europe is mortal’, French President Emmanuel Macron warned his audience at the Sorbonne in 2024. Even if it muddles through, internal diversity and discord will prevent the EU from graduating to great-power status. It will not save the liberal international order either. But Europe is perfectly capable of learning from negative experience, toughening up and protecting itself in a world which runs counter to its values and interests. There is no other choice really. As Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney reminded the audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos, ‘middle powers’ necessary to join forces in order to be on the table. Or else, they will be on the menu.
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