“In Europe, you need the firefighter but also the architect,” as Jacques Delors once famously put it. During his term as president of the European Commission between 1985 and 1995, Europe must have looked like a blank canvas, following the end of the Cold War in 1989. Delors became the architect of the European Single Market and a key figure in forging the Economic and Monetary Union, which saw the European Economic Community transform into the European Union with the Treaty of Maastricht of 1992.
Since those founding days of the modern EU, there have been numerous examples of the bloc in firefighting mode—from the “euro crisis” to the “migration crisis,” and the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, Europeans have lost their appetite for architecture. As 2026 begins, the new year urgently calls for another European architectural moment—even though it’s currently unclear who will assume the role of the architect or if there will be anyone at all.
At this juncture, Europe looks weak and vulnerable. At the time of writing, Europeans are trying hard to get a seat at the table while the United States and Russia negotiate an end to Russia’s war of aggression with Ukraine—a settlement that will have a profound impact on the future of European security. At the same time, Europe’s benign partnership with the US has fundamentally changed. The new US National Security Strategy, published in early December 2025, is an unveiled attack on the European Union itself, and liberal democracy in Europe. At a time when the Europeans depend deeply on the US, above all on defense, but also on trade, the new US doctrine is likely to increase domestic pressures on Europe’s leaders: Why should they continue to expose their countries and the EU to the attacks of a US president and a political movement that embraces a “might makes right” logic in its relations with the world, ridicules European leaders, and undermines liberal democracy at home and abroad?
Seizing the Moment
European leaders have, albeit moderately, pushed back against the latest US criticism. And yet, they have not seized this moment for Europe’s emancipation. Why is that? Arguably, European leaders are cautious, given their acute vulnerabilities in light of Russia’s ongoing aggressions and an erratic US president in the White House who changes his mind and modes rather impulsively, potentially even on NATO’s Article 5.
European reluctance goes deeper, however: In the decades since the founding of the modern-day EU, Europeans have lost confidence in discussions on a grand design to re-strengthen their union. After the big integration steps, including the launch of the euro in 2002, the EU and its members have chosen incremental fixes to the more recent series of crises between 2009 and 2025.
Europe knows how to “think big.” The last “architectural period” of European integration is not a distant memory, but was facilitated by the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989. Political momentum continued throughout the 1990s with successive steps to prepare the EU of then 12 members for enlargement to 28 members within little more than a decade. By 2007, the EU and its member states had adopted fundamental institutional and governance reforms in successive rounds of negotiations to prepare for their union to perform at more than double the number of previous members, and on policies well beyond economic cooperation.
The European Convention (2002-03) even drafted a constitution. The stop signs for the EU’s ambitions were the failed referenda in France and the Netherlands that put the constitutional draft on hold in 2005, and then later to bed, as its provisions were transformed into the less prosaic framework of a treaty. This Treaty of Lisbon has been the basis of the European Union since 2009.
Leading Nowhere?
For two decades, Europe had been an architectural building site. But by 2009, the political tailwind for fundamental reforms was exhausted. “Treaty reform” has since become a synonym for endless negotiations with uncertain outcomes given the need for unanimity among all the member states; in sum, a time-consuming act leading nowhere and unpopular with voters.
And yet, the EU was far from prepared for what has happened since. By 2009, the global banking crisis had led to a sovereign debt crisis in EU member states, threatening a breakup of the eurozone. This was clearly a moment for European firefighters and architects alike: With its incomplete integration of economic and fiscal policies, the EU struggled to fence off the threat. But instead of completing the Economic and Monetary Union, member states chose a set of patches outside of the treaties that turned out to be effective enough to weather the storm.
The next test to the EU’s cohesion was to come in 2015, with unprecedented numbers of refugees and migrants arriving in Europe. Yet again, the Europeans’ response was uncoordinated, patchy, at times undignified, and failed to meet the requirements of an EU without internal borders. It took 10 years to agree on a reform of the EU’s asylum system to better manage migration and limit illegal migration—and by 2025, migration has become a major political battleground, more recently fueled by noise from the other side of the Atlantic. Decisive action at the time could have avoided this trajectory.
While recent crises have exposed the EU’s structural and political vulnerabilities, it has, over time, also become better at crisis management. Brexit is a good example of a decision that shook the EU’s foundations, and could potentially have created a domino effect for other countries to leave. Instead, the EU remained focused and united; it successfully managed the terms of the United Kingdom’s departure and future relations with one of its until then largest and most powerful members. Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic meant entering yet more unchartered territory—successfully. Acquiring vaccines at EU level and the €750 billion NextGenerationEU stimulus package financed by common debt helped member states weathering the impact of the pandemic.
Russia’s full-scale war of aggression against Ukraine created a different type of threat to the EU—an existential one. And it met a European security architecture relying on NATO, with a hitherto strong US commitment. The EU’s role in defense until now has been a very limited one, despite a commitment in the EU treaties since the 1990s to collectively work on a European security and defense policy.
In this demanding and dangerous environment, European leaders have so far focused on ad hoc solutions and measures. The “Coalition of the Willing” in support of Ukraine is a prime example. This has helped bring the UK, Norway, and global partners such as Canada and Australia closer, while also offering a way to work around actors seeking to weaken the EU from within.
Europeans have also become better at pooling their resources. Throughout 2025, the European Commission showed that the EU can help strengthen European security by placing its resources at the service of those member states that are also NATO members, supporting them to deliver on their targets, granting fiscal breathing space for eurozone members, and unleashing the Single Market for defense procurement. It also demonstrated that bringing Ukraine in through the EU’s various instruments, including the enlargement framework, can strengthen European security and cohesion.
Yet, the architectural challenge ahead is far greater than strengthening the European pillar of NATO. With the tailwind of 1989, Europeans, supported by the US, transformed their economic community into a political union. But what is the political answer to 2025? Europeans will need to boldly re-engage in shaping not only the security order but the broader political umbrella for the continent as an act of emancipation—not against NATO or the US, but as a clear choice for Europe.
This does not necessarily mean tearing down the institutions that have served European interests for many decades. But Europeans should not shy away from asking yet again more fundamental questions about their architecture of collaboration. This will have to involve difficult questions regarding the future of NATO and the EU, none of which will be easy. But Europeans need to start this process now.
Political Determination
As a point of departure, European leaders—EU and non-EU alike—need to articulate political determination and re-affirm a renewed choice for Europe. This can be expressed in a lean political declaration, which should entail the following elements as a minimum: a commitment to democracy, human rights, and multilateralism; to European collaboration, including via joint institutions, to serve Europe’s citizens; a path toward a European security and defense framework, including by integrating the elements of the EU that can help bring about a new security architecture in Europe in the medium to long term; a significant collective investment in technology; and an overall forward-looking attitude to embrace opportunity in a fast-changing world.
Europe has tremendous collective agency. Now is the time to unleash it.
Almut Möller is Director for European and Global Affairs at the European Policy Centre (EPC) in Brussels.
