Emmanuel Macron put it simply – and starkly. Confronted with “a world in disarray” and a double, potentially existential challenge from the US and China, he said: “Europe must become a power.”
The bloc is facing “a Chinese tsunami” on trade, Macron told several European newspapers, as the country most Europeans had for decades seen principally as an infinite export market transforms itself instead into a ferocious, low-price, hi-tech competitor.
And on defence, the US – which Europeans had thought “would guarantee our security forever” – was now “openly anti-European”, showed “contempt” for the EU, sought its “dismemberment” (and was “microsecond-level unstable” on trade, too).
“We are not moving at the right pace, and we are not operating on the right scale,” Macron said. “This must be the moment of awakening. It is time for Europe to wake up … If we do not decide for ourselves, we will be swept away.”
Stirring words, for sure. But this week there is a real sense that what Macron referred to as Europe’s “Greenland moment” – Trump’s attempted grab for the Arctic island, a semi-autonomous part of Denmark – may finally be focusing continental minds.
Two key events may give a hint of whether, and how, that focus translates into action. At a 16th-century chateau in rural Belgium on Thursday, Europe’s leaders will discuss urgent measures to reboot the EU’s sluggish economy and make it more competitive. And at the Munich Security Conference (MSC) on Friday and over the weekend, they will join other world leaders, military officials and experts to discuss European security and defence – and the future of the transatlantic relationship.
“We have the second largest economy in the world, but we are driving it with the handbrake on,” the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said before the gathering at Belgium’s Alden Biesen castle.
Leaders will discuss simplifying, loosening and scrapping regulations to cut red tape, remove barriers and deepen the single market; facilitating the flow of savings and investments; and keeping public money in the EU through a “buy European” rule.
The leaders will be addressed by two former Italian prime ministers, Enrico Letta and Mario Draghi – whose recommendations in 2024 reports on, respectively, the EU’s single market and EU competitiveness the bloc has so far struggled to implement.
IMF research shows EU internal regulatory barriers equate to a 44% tariff on goods, and 110% on services, and one thinktank found only 15% of Draghi’s 383 proposals – without which he said the bloc risked a “slow and agonising decline” – had been actioned.
Thursday’s talks centre on how the EU can hold its own economically in a world that von der Leyen last month described as having “changed permanently”. Friday’s will turn to the bloc’s other critical challenge: defence and security.
The MSC’s organisers were blunt in their pre-conference report: Europe had reached the “painful realisation” that it needs to be more assertive and militarily independent of a US administration it said was sliding into “competitive authoritarianism”.
Europeans have understood they simply cannot resist unfair trade deals or violations of other countries’ sovereignty, it said, if they are “heavily dependent on the military assistance of the country that is using coercive tactics and slashing existing norms”.
Speeches from von der Leyen, Germany’s chancellor Friedrich Merz and Nato chief Mark Rutte – who recently said Europe could “keep on dreaming” if it thought it could cope without US support – should provide at least an outline of the bloc’s response.
Europe’s citizens appear to have grasped the threat. A six-country poll by YouGov published this week found that opinion had turned radically against the US since the “Greenland moment”: between 62% and 84% of respondents expressed disapproval.
A political challenge
The most common view was that Europe’s autonomy must now be prioritised over preserving the transatlantic alliance. But how? A report today by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) reveals the political challenge facing leaders.
Most European voters now realise the US is no longer a reliable ally, it said. Most also accept the need to increase defence spending. The problem, however, is that the Europeans who think those things are not always in the same camps or countries.
The report, based on polling in 13 countries, identifies several distinct groups. The largest (28%) are the Euro-hawks, who no longer see the US as an ally, back increased national defence spending, and take a broadly positive stance towards today’s EU.
Euro-doves (21% overall) are equally sober about the US and attached to the EU, but do not support more defence spending. Atlanticists (12%) tend to still consider the US an ally, while Renegades (15%) reject everything: US, EU and more defence spending.
Nationalists (12%), meanwhile, do not believe much in the EU or see the US as an ally, but support more military spending, while the smallest group, the Trumpists (5% overall), still see the US as their ally, and are generally not much in favour of the EU.
These groups, the authors write, are present in different proportions in different countries and among different political camps: Euro-doves, for example, are most plentiful in Spain and Italy; Renegades among supporters of the populist left; nationalists among the populist far right.
The authors suggest Europe’s way forward is a “values coalition” of compromises across the board: more defence spending for the Euro-doves; greater realism on the US for Atlanticists such as Poland; concessions for Euro-hawks such as France and Germany.
“Our polling delivers a clear message: a mobilised European majority can be composed out of the continent’s scattered public,” said co-author Paweł Zerka. “But this requires leaders to step up and build bridges across the citizens’ archipelago.”
Sound optimistic? National interests, of course, mean Europe’s leaders can rarely agree on everything anyway, and old habits die hard. Macron’s “Greenland moment” will show whether Europe can shed them.
Until next week.
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Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: theguardian.com
