In the current era of radical disruption, Europe seems at a loss – or still worse – scared and divided. The world at large is becoming ever more perilous, and the fundamental assumptions of old no longer apply. European leaders are looking for ways to protect common interests and values, yet without much success. The threat to Europe – to us all – is fast becoming existential. Both our security and the European model are under threat.
The EU has achieved a lot over its journey so far: more and more members, a large market with open borders, a common currency and, more recently, common – albeit limited – borrowing. The EU also has seven decades behind it of significant investments in values, in policies, in material and institutional infrastructures, in socio-political relations. It has many achievements to its name and – inevitably – its share of failures. Disparate societies and viewpoints have gradually moved closer together and found support in times of need, though successive enlargements have made convergence more difficult to achieve.
But along the way, Europe has lost both its impetus and its bearings. Within the EU, the balance between a more nation-state approach and the vision of a collective Europe has tipped decisively toward the former. Over time, narrow concerns have come to supplant grand visions within a politically vague and strategically directionless routine, leading to bureaucratization and without the ability to inspire any of the big ideas societies need to evolve successfully over time.
Those of us living in Greece remember the grand rhetoric of a “Europe of values and peoples,” of the efficiencies that would wrench the antiquated and corrupt structures of our own society into the present, coupled with the conviction that much would change with Greece in Europe. A great deal has indeed changed, but in changing a lot has remained the same. In the end, change gave up the fight.
The EU has not succeeded in completing itself as a political entity. According to the post-modern narrative, it might not even have needed to. After the end of the Cold War, Europeans could finally reap the benefits of peace, profit from globalization in its liberal version, while continuing to operate as a soft (post-modern) power in a world with strong institutions and rules, all under the benevolent protection of the United States.
That world no longer exists. It may never have existed, but only in our minds. The geopolitical tectonic plates are shifting, the law of the strongest is prevailing, and international economic transactions are increasingly being subordinated to the logic of security and/or political interest. War has returned to Europe’s immediate neighborhood, while Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump treat the EU as a hostile entity, each in his own way and for his own reasons. Communist/capitalist China is seeking to engage with Europe as a potential independent power pole in the emerging new global order, even as Chinese exports penetrate European markets at unprecedented speed. The countries of the Global South do not take Europe seriously as a geopolitical power, and Benjamin Netanyahu defiantly ignores it. Geopolitically weak, Europe is also falling ever further behind in the technological race. This combination of geopolitical weakness and technological lag is having a corrosive impact on a visibly waning Europe.
Nonetheless, Europe still enjoys some important advantages, sources of strength and deep historical foundations. They will not be enough while they remain in the abstract. It is now critically important that we actualize them and put them to work. Moreover, we need a compelling framework of ideas that will resonate with the hearts and minds of Europe’s citizens, while also engendering a broader sense of trust.
What direction – or directions – should we take?
First, we need to make it crystal clear what are the core values Europe actually stands for and why, and what are our major goals. Above all else, Europe is a community of values that differentiate it from other parts of the world. Historically, democracy, individual freedoms and social protection have always been at the forefront of the European value system to which we have added environmental protection and the fight against climate change. Now all this is at risk in a world increasingly defined by authoritarianism, cynicism and the erosion of norms. It isn’t enough to simply declare our values on paper. We need to adapt them to reality and defend them in practice. However, we also need to acknowledge that putting these ideas into practice becomes increasingly difficult as the rise of the far right in Europe provides fertile ground for external pressures.
We need to make it crystal clear what are the core values Europe actually stands for and why, and what are our major goals. Above all else, Europe is a community of values that differentiate it from other parts of the world
Second, we need powerful, decisive and visionary political personalities willing to take risks, do battle for a politically and geostrategically mature EU, and win. Why does Mario Draghi not have a role to play in the European leadership system? Why was Jacques Delors the last major figure to head the Commission? The blame surely lies, at least in part, with the consensus-driven and sluggish nature of EU institutional procedures, which typically result in lowest-common-denominator decisions that fail to meet the challenges of our times. It is also the fault of the debased and at times corrupt practices that have increasingly come to be seen as “normal” in our public life. Still more, the fault lies in the leadership deficit both in Brussels and in most European capitals – itself the product of a more deep-seated crisis in democratic governance.
Third, the levers of power have changed. Technology, perceptions and hierarchies need to be reoriented in order to enhance Europe’s power. Before all else, power now means a robust economy that performs well in the global technological race, one that channels more European savings toward investment within Europe and aligns private interest with the common good.
Supporting an autonomous European defense industry now constitutes an integral part of European policy – an element many also link to the bolstering of European economic power. Good enough. It would be a mistake, however, for Europe to follow the American example by creating in the process an all-powerful military-industrial complex. What we urgently need is a new, unified defense doctrine underpinned by robust democratic foundations. Clearly, we have neither at present.
In the emerging new international scene, the United States is breaking with its past. No matter how much political cynicism and self-interest one factors in, it remains difficult to explain (let alone defend) the logic of the new American strategy. Nevertheless, this shift is creating a new reality. The EU cannot rely on brute force alone. But when brute force displaces institutions, perceptions and long-established norms, indifference is a luxury we cannot afford, nor is moralism on its own a sufficient response. It takes resolve to resist and a willingness to bear the costs of pursuing major ground-breaking objectives. Europe has to strike a new balance within the existing alliance, while also talking directly to friends and adversaries alike. With strategy and a cool head, but above all with realism.
What the European Union can no longer allow is to be externally defined in such an asymmetrical way, lacking a distinct political, economic, and social identity of its own. We need to understand the critical changes and emerging risks and then redefine our points of departure. We need to provide Europe’s citizens with a renewed sense of optimism based on something real rather than relying on communication tricks. Europe has to win the respect of others beyond its borders. And because power remains largely with its member-states, it is the responsibility of national governments to prove that they are not in power to weaken Europe’s collective foundations, but to strengthen them. After all, as we have all learned from bitter experience, the nations of Europe, including the former Great Powers, have no hope whatsoever to successfully defend their national interests and values when acting in isolation in a world of yawning asymmetries.
Is all this feasible? Only if forces emerge within Europe comparable to those mobilized in the 1950s, and again in the 1980s – forces capable of generating a trajectory of “creative destruction” that will set new dynamics in motion. Those who are able and willing should step forward. This is after all how Europe has made progress at critical junctures in its history since World War II.
The authors of this article have long consistently expressed our positive – though not uncritical – attitude toward developments in the EU and the common European project in general. Today, we recognize, together with many others across Europe, that an EU strong in political, military, technological and social terms is a crucial prerequisite for the survival of our individual countries and Europe as a whole. The stakes are high and the undertaking very difficult indeed being undermined from many sides. If we don’t try, we won’t succeed. Otherwise, we will find ourselves complicit in Europe’s marginalization and decline.
Postscript: This text was written before the military intervention in Venezuela combined with public statements that mark a clear departure from the international rule of law. They confirm how truly urgent it is for the EU to transform itself from a passive player into a proactive and substantive pole of the international system.
Tassos Giannitsis is emeritus professor of the University of Athens and former minister for foreign affairs of Greece. Loukas Tsoukalis is professor at the Paris School of International Affairs, Sciences Po, and emeritus professor of the University of Athens.