For ten years I have been a Brussels-based correspondent and, too often, chronicles, analyses and interviews have been dominated by a sense of fatalism. The sequence of failures grew more bitter because success was always within sight. The European Union is unique in many aspects. It is also unique in having a detailed recipe for how to regain the course and regain control in different spheres and to repeatedly renounce executing a plan known to absolutely everyone. It seems as if the EU suffers a severe political anemia.
George Steiner spoke of the “eschatological self-consciousness” that defines Europe: the obsession with its own death. “It is as if Europe, unlike other civilizations, had sensed that one day it would sink under the paradoxical weight of its conquests and the wealth and unparalleled complexity of its history,” Steiner noted in The Idea of Europe. The very Steiner, in the speech that became that small work, gives hints of optimism that he himself suppresses, admitting that “perhaps it is too late” to save Europe.
That same sense grips the entire European Union. In their recent reports on European competitiveness, former Italian prime ministers Enrico Letta and Mario Draghi have offered a detailed analysis of what is needed to reactivate the Union’s economy. Draghi, who knows well Europe’s tendency toward inaction, has been the one who most insisted on “doing something”. Anything, but something. And he has been the most fatalistic, because he knows that it is one of the few ways to capture Europeans’ attention: either progress is made on key reforms, or Europe faces a “slow agony”.
“Draghi, who knows well Europe’s tendency toward inaction, has been the one who most insisted on «doing something». Whatever it is, but something”
Has he said slow? That sounds better than fast. That is what European leaders must have thought, because they are choosing to agonize. It is natural, part of European DNA. It is Steiner’s self-fulfilling prophecy. In the debate over the next multiannual financial framework (MFF), which will cover the period 2028-2034, the Twenty-Seven are laying bare for all to see the absence of a sense of survival. The “frugals” are completely entrenched in the need to make further cuts on the next MFF, while the group of the “friends of cohesion” refuses to let traditional allocations be touched in order to redirect spending toward new objectives.
Despite the broad economic consensus that exists around the so-called “European public goods” and the suitability of boosting the euro’s international role, the Twenty-Seven are not able to connect the dots and move toward a sustained issuance of joint debt. Although economists and analysts consider it common sense, many capitals keep dragging their feet. Without urgency there is no need. The same happens in almost all domains, such as, for example, deepening the internal market or protecting European industry. It also happens in foreign policy. The EU systematically renounces influencing in many cases, and in others it systematically misplays its cards. When you are convinced that you are going to lose always, unforced errors are fairly easy. And so a fatalism slowly takes root that is hard to eradicate.
There are some hopeful signals in certain areas. For example, everything points to the fact that the majority of the EU has finally opened its eyes to the existential threat that China and its trade practices pose to its key industries, as well as the risks it presents from an economic-security perspective. For the first time since 2023 began to harden its position, the European Commission is pursuing a much more assertive trade strategy toward Beijing with the backing of the member states, especially France and Germany.
“The Twenty-Seven are not able to connect the dots and move toward a sustained issuance of joint debt, even though economists and analysts consider it common sense”
If the attitude toward China has changed, it is solely because the leaders, and especially the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, have understood that the risk is not only existential, but also immediate. The Twenty-Seven need to find themselves faced with a grave and sometimes unprecedented crisis to feel compelled to move decisively into areas they knew were the right ones. They have demonstrated this in the China trade case, but they have done so also in the case of the United States and the threat to Greenland.
The survival instinct only electrifies leaders who face the abyss. Only then does the inspiration of the ‘Machiavellian moment’ of J. G. A. Pocock reach them and they manage to react. The serious thing is that, by acting and achieving results, European leaders show that Europe is not doomed. That there are remedies, that there are solutions. And they simply refuse to believe in it. Europe must abandon self-pity as the default stance, waiting for crises to be so severe that there is no option but to react. It must replace self-pity with conscious self-esteem, knowing its weaknesses, but knowing and using its strengths without hesitation.
