The European Union is experiencing a moment of resistance and self-assertion. It is also a moment of fear, of vertigo. A feeling of accelerated change that is leading the community institutions to a cyclothymic reality that made a diplomat from the European Union External Action Service, for example, confess to me on Thursday morning that she was worried that "the moment of unity has already vanished" when talking about the response of the 27 to Russia. However, just a few hours later, the EU came out to announce its general support for the eight hundred billion euro defence spending plan presented by Ursula von der Leyen. As the President of the Council, the Portuguese António Costa, explained, if out of the 27 there is only one country, Hungary, that does not join the plan, this is not the portrait of a division within the Union, but of the self-exclusion of one of its member states. The heads of state and government closed ranks around a still hypothetical Europe of defence. What is emanating from Brussels these days, above all, is a desire to respond. Diffuse and not very concrete when it comes to seeing where the money will actually come from, but the desire to respond is more important at the moment. be. The urgent need to respond jointly – and with a certain firmness, even if it is rhetorical and vague – to the imperial aspirations that grip the Union. The Europe of defence is above all an idea, which is being deployed meeting by meeting. But the Europe of urgency is a reality.
At a time of hyperactivity of international actors and a deep crisis of global institutions, the EU is immersed in an internal transformation with economic, geopolitical and security implications. The founding taboos of the European Union and of some of its member states have not stopped falling since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The EU has tied its fate to the viability and sovereignty of a Ukraine that will in all likelihood remain divided and with part of its territory occupied for a long time. An invaded Ukraine that, paradoxically, has also experienced its own political and institutional reaffirmation. As Ukrainian researcher Anna Osiptxuk explained to me a few months ago in Barcelona, the Russian invasion increased support for the country's institutions. There has been a "reconstitution process", a revaluation of political representation, although, at the same time, in opinion polls, the majority of Ukrainians continue to answer that "politicians are not reliable". And the European Union knows that it will have to give credible answers for the immediate future of this Ukraine that has become the playing field for new geopolitical balances that are dismantling the continental security architecture built after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
"The certainties of decades are collapsing" said Ursula von der Leyen at the advanced press conference to celebrate the first hundred days of the new commission she presides. A hundred days marked by the discourse of rearmament and external threats.
In a world of variable geometries "there is nothing more transactional than the Council of the European Union", says a European diplomat. In Brussels everything is negotiated. Everything has a price. And all this European strategic ambition cannot become a reality without a reinforced community budget. The real deepening of European integration is at stake in the negotiations for the future multiannual financial framework that must begin next year.
Emmanuel Macron has come out in a televised speech to warn the French that the time has come for a painful budgetary awakening. "Reforms, choice, courage will be necessary: the moment requires unprecedented decisions". Europe is beginning to talk of sacrifices for a frightened and aggravated population. France, for example, is already one of the most indebted countries in the Eurozone, with a population mobilized against the plans of a government that is hostage to the power of Marine Le Pen's National Rally in the Assembly.
Difficult times are coming. Where this will to be imperative for the European Union forces us to explain very well what this moment of transformation implies and what real consequences it will have for Europeans. The existential risk is not only security or defensive. The geopolitical threats that are transforming Europe have a direct impact on its economy, competitiveness, future uncertainties and the welfare state.
