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Europe is not as weak as it acts

2026-02-09 20:16:07Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA MARTIN SANDBU

Many were captivated by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's speech in Davos three weeks ago.

He told “middle powers” ??to abandon the pretense that the rules-based order established by the US had delivered what it promised and to cooperate with like-minded countries when and where they could.

But in a speech in Leuven last week, Europe’s supreme statesman, Mario Draghi, saw Carney’s hand and raised it. The old order is indeed “dead,” he said – but not “because it was built on illusion. It delivered real and widely shared benefits.”

What could not survive was the willful weaponization of economic interdependence. The EU’s response – strengthening domestic capabilities while seeking deeper relationships where possible – is very Carney-esque. But, Draghi warned, this can only be a “holding strategy.”

The reason? “Individually, most EU countries are not even middle powers capable of navigating this new order by forming coalitions,” Draghi said. “[But] of all those now stuck between the US and China, only the Europeans have the chance to become a real power themselves.”

In short, Europe is not Canada: it must either accept the greatness imposed on it, or divide and rule.

But how? Draghi’s answer is a “pragmatic federalism” – where EU members willing to share more sovereignty choose to unite in as many areas as they can to find ways to make progress. On the ground, this approach is already being tested.

Take the Spanish-led “competitiveness lab” initiative, open to EU members eager to speed up common rules for financial markets. Perhaps in response, the finance ministers of the EU’s six largest economies recently pledged to forge agreements among themselves. However, to dispel the inevitable accusation that this is a disruptive initiative, the group needs to produce serious progress quickly.

In security and defense, the new secure joint borrowing structure covers only about half of the EU countries (and includes some non-EU countries). There are now strong proposals for coalitions of European capitals willing to jointly finance and build strategic military capabilities previously provided by the US. In macro policy, leaders have agreed to issue new EU bonds (for Ukraine), but with side payments to allow reluctant countries to effectively opt out.

The increasingly geopolitical approach to EU enlargement underpins a similar “pragmatically federal” logic. As the FT reports, the high stakes surrounding Ukraine’s future have provoked discussions about reversing the current accession process. Rather than crowning a long process of approximation with the EU, membership would come first, but with only core rights and obligations. More would be added gradually as the new member undergoes the required reforms in the country.

Such a model could spur talks with other EU candidates, including Turkey, whose long-frozen relationship with the bloc has shown faint signs of thawing. A less binary path to membership could also be attractive to Iceland, which is due to hold a referendum soon, Norway and even the United Kingdom.

If the end result is a larger EU, but one of many speeds, this would not be intentional, but through the organic growth together of those who want to do more in common.

However, many will think that Draghi’s pragmatic federalism has been doomed by Europe’s internal divisions. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent touched a nerve with his deadly quip about the EU creating its “fearsome task force”.

Draghi offers two insights in response.

First, the lack of unity is not an argument for waiting to act: “Unity does not precede action; it is created by taking important decisions together, by the shared experience and solidarity they create, and by discovering that we can cope with the outcome.” When Europeans dared to oppose Donald Trump’s claim to Greenland together, they were forced to “carry out a real strategic assessment,” and “willingness to act” clarified “capacity to act.”

Second, Europe’s need to involve people – the demands of a union of national democracies – is itself a valuable asset. Where the American system allows the executive to exercise its will and China happily pushes the cost of its economic progress onto other economies, Draghi argues that “European integration is built differently: not on force, but on shared will; not on subjugation, but on shared benefit.”

Europeans are, slowly but surely, waking up to what they are capable of. Something a senior EU minister recently told me is typical of this shift: “Europe is not as weak as it acts.”


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