The malaise of European unification lies in its incompleteness. Its level of organization is high, its regulatory density even higher in the eyes of many, and its legal framework fills many thousands of pages—and yet the European Union has remained a torso that lacks essential instruments for preserving the welfare and security of the peoples of European. The single market, for example, is unfinished; it lacks a common capital market or full trade competence for the EU. There is no single market for defense equipment and barely any common procurement, no effective common border protection and no common immigration policy, no common defense policy, not to mention integrated armed forces.
After the end of the continent’s division, the magnetism of the EU gave the idea of integration an unimagined boost. There was grand talk of the new Europe, even when the reform treaties that followed the Maastricht Treaty failed either in substance or form. But there was less and less big thinking and big action. The festive rhetoric of European gatherings still exists, but it hardly inspires anyone these days. For a long time now, the everyday business of European unity has followed the rules of managing political situations, even when major crises threaten to undermine the structure. The financial and sovereign debt crisis in 2008, the migration crisis in 2015, the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020—each of these challenges triggered intensive political processes and numerous crisis decisions, but no lasting strengthening of Europe’s effectiveness, closer union or deeper integration were achieved or even seriously attempted. Preventing failure was success enough for the players. So, Europe is foreseeably unprepared for the double upheaval of its surroundings.
Cohesion or Fragmentation
On the one hand, Russia’s geopolitical swing against Europe and the West exposes and exacerbates the problem of Europe’s incompleteness. It’s not an isolated process, but part of a global upheaval: The primacy of power over law and the pursuit of self-interest at the expense of a balance of interests are overlaying the values- and rules-based idea of order that had governed international relations until recently. Rival major states with superior military power, economic strength or resources are transforming the international community and its cooperation and alliance structures.
Power players prefer bilateral relationships, which they can dominate more easily, rather than multilateral processes. Rivalry with other powers leads them to zero-sum calculations. The often revisionist agenda of these powers, the escalation of the confrontation between the largest of them, and the entry of the United States into this circle may break Europe’s unification. For the first time since the 1950s, the failure and disintegration of the European Union appears to be a realistic scenario.
On the other hand, the balance between integration and fragmentation, which John Lewis Gaddis recognized as early as 1991 as the new dichotomy after the end of the bloc confrontation, has shifted dramatically over the past decade. Gaddis expected fragmentation primarily as a result of three driving forces: First and foremost, from an old-new nationalism, in economic terms from new protectionism and culturally from the intensification of religious differences—today one would probably speak more broadly of identitarian movements. Gaddis describes these forces as much older than those of integration, so that even at the moment of Western triumph, he does not consider the latter to be permanently secured.
Today, the concept, momentum, and acceptance of integration have lost broad swathes of ground across society, the business world, and politics. Against this backdrop, the institutionalized Europe can also disintegrate from within, in the face of a political class that no longer knows where Europe's union should lead, and in the face of European societies that do not want to accept or do not understand the impact of crude power politics and populist nationalism on their cohesion.
Today, a united Europe faces the double risk of this fragmentation. At no time since the 1950s has the centrifugal dynamic been stronger and more visible than now. While institutions and processes are functioning as usual, the foundations of integration are eroding beneath the surface. Five changes mark the creeping decay.
1. The Lack of an Integration Idea
Throughout the various stages of its development, European integration was never a self-sustaining process but always an outcome of negotiation in which different interests and objectives came together. In this respect, the vision of a gradually progressing formation of a community served as a guide. The fact that the treaties defined the “finality” quite loosely was no problem so long as the options for completion remained present in the European political debate.
Since the turn of the century, however, this presence has increasingly evaporated. Then-German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer’s keynote speech on European integration at Berlin’s Humboldt University in May 2000 marked the end of the debate in Germany. By 2004, with the failure of the Constitutional Treaty, the vision of an “ever closer union of the peoples of Europe” as set out in Article 1 of the existing treaties had disappeared from the European political debate. Now, it only features in ceremonies, award speeches, and coalition agreements.
Instead, pragmatic political management rules, without any longer-term objectives. The exceptions are occasional keynote speeches by French presidents, but their impact remains limited because they fail to find resonance. European policymakers appear to have shelved the idea of a big step forward. As a result, integration has lost its strategic dimension; moreover, given the absence of more far-reaching objectives, even the small steps can no longer be understood and communicated in their full significance as part of a larger path.
2. No Coalitions to Shape Integration
The development of the European Union is inconceivable without long-term, stable coalitions between member states. The Franco-German tandem was indispensable, as was the integration alliance of the Benelux countries as well as the contribution made by Italy. The consensus of the founding states has accompanied the Union through the stages of its enlargement, even if not all of them were always involved in all stages. Other states such as Spain and Poland joined over time, while the UK and Northern European member states actively participated in the coalition that shaped the single market.
In today’s XXL-EU, such coalitions are lacking given the greatly increased heterogeneity of interests. Political management is much more about forming majority constellations that can bring together different states depending on the situation and dossier. The focus is on benefit analysis. Groups no longer come together to shape a common strategy but to form vetoing coalitions that seek to prevent certain decisions or changes of course.
3. The Concept of Sovereigntism
Gaddis was right; nationalism has returned to Europe—initially in a variant that appears constructive as an emphasis on national identity. It was able to create acceptance and cohesion in the societies of Central and Eastern Europe in the face of the shock of change toward democracy and the market economy that brought social upheaval to the former Eastern Bloc. However, fractures and conflicts quickly emerged: on the question of protecting minorities in a number of states and, on a massive scale, in the disintegration conflicts and wars in the former Yugoslavia.
However, the resulting tendency toward fragmentation remained limited, as accession to the European Union and NATO topped the foreign policy agenda of all the states that had achieved national self-determination. The consequences of supranational political integration became more noticeable in the everyday life of membership, but above all in the distribution conflicts and crises. Right-wing nationalist movements and parties gained weight in many of the recently joined new members in Eastern and Northern Europe, but also in “old” member states such as France with the Rassemblement National (RN), Germany with the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), as well as in the Netherlands and Italy.
What these parties have in common is the emphasis on national sovereignty, the desire to preserve or return to unanimous decision-making, and the principle that national law should take precedence over European law. The manifesto of sovereigntism is the deconstruction of the European Union into a voluntary cooperation of independent states with their own borders, their own institutions and their own currency.
4. Malaise Amplified by Populism
The resonance of nationalist parties in Europe can hardly be explained by the coherence of their arguments or the attractiveness of the alternatives they offer. Many people in Europe continue to articulate positive attitudes toward the EU in the Eurobarometer surveys, and since a period of weakness around 2011/12, these attitudes have even risen significantly—which is surprising given the considerable increase in Euroskeptic voices in the public debate. This may be an indication of increasing polarization within European societies, but it may also point to the contingency experiences of many people in response to the enormous increase in economic, political, and social integration on a global scale.
The breakdown of economic boundaries in the globalization of supply chains and production locations, the breakdown of social boundaries through the global culture industry, mobility, and digitality as well as the breakdown of state boundaries through supranational integration and global policymaking have not only created new prosperity and new opportunities, but have also triggered a loss of familiarity, fears, and crises of identity. Integration is triggering the reverse, it seems, boosting concepts such as homeland, nation, or religion as the non-material categories of self-definition that promise stability, belonging, and distinction. The slogan from the Brexit campaign—“Take Back Control”—sums up the malaise about this breakdown of boundaries.
It is an irony of the history of integration that in the eyes of many people today, the EU has become part of the problem where it should be the solution, conceived as a protective space that should allow a fragmented, often dysfunctional world of European states to survive in prosperity and security.
5. The US without a European Role
The US played a decisive role in the construction of Europe. It made the provision of funds from the Marshall Plan conditional on cooperation among the recipient states, and since the founding of NATO it has been the undisputed leading power and guarantor of security for the Europeans. The intergovernmental structure of the alliance was more in line with the preferences of American foreign policy than the developing supranational elements of today’s European Union.
Washington’s relationship with the “other place” in Brussels remained ambivalent. The transfer of sovereignty to joint institutions and the resulting negotiating power of the Europeans led to the first trade conflicts as early as the 1960s. The issue of burden-sharing within NATO in the sense of reducing the burden on the US has also been a feature of transatlantic relations for decades. However, the strategic interest of the United States in a stable, prosperous, and cooperative Europe clearly prevailed.
Donald Trump’s return to the White House has changed everything. With him, the change in the constellation of transatlantic relations is accelerating rapidly. For Trump, the EU is an instrument with which the Europeans take economic advantage of the US, and the EU single market with its size and organization is a weapon, especially in the hands of those EU members that are major exporters such as Germany. The EU institutions make the transactional nature of his policy more difficult. The Trump camp already celebrated Brexit and supports parties and governments in Europe that are critical of the EU. The fact that Europe's nationalists in many cases harbor strong anti-American resentments seems to be secondary to the Trumpists compared to the opportunity of splitting the EU.
In order to break up this community, the Trump administration is likely to reward compliant states with exceptions in the trade war while seeking to exacerbate the Europeans’ security dilemma. In view of the significant increase in defense spending, Trump has already raised the target to 5 percent of GDP and sees this spending as a debt owed by Europeans to the United States. In his view, this should be paid off primarily through large scale weapons purchases in the US. Trump’s bilateral talks with Putin, followed by initial negotiations between the foreign ministers in Saudi Arabia, have fueled the concerns in both Ukraine and European capitals about a deal without proper involvement of Kyiv and Europe. Major concessions have been made by the Trump administration even before the opening of formal peace negotiations. In addition, the way the US government presented itself at the Munich Security Conference seemed to confirm a US departure from transatlantic solidarity. Evidently, the US president wants to step away quickly from supporting Ukraine and is seeking to force the country into a ceasefire deal—obvious to the world since the clash with Zelensky in the Oval Office. If thus the Russian war against Ukraine will be ended quickly on the basis of the current status quo, as Trump has announced, threat perceptions in Central and Eastern Europe are likely to rise sharply.
Protection for money, discount for political allegiance—this would not only bring new conflicts into the EU's debates but would also change the character of the military alliance. In his outlook for the coming years, Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff recently characterized these states as a camp of “adaptors” and counted Germany among them in addition to the eastern flank. If they accept this role, their weakness will become the EU's Achilles' heel.
Can the EU Survive to See the Year 2040?
So, the future of the European Union is not looking good, and not just because of the renaissance of great power politics, de-globalization, and social polarization. Brussels is the new Moscow, according to one of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's mottos, which is shared by many of his sovereigntist friends. Orbán is alluding to what he sees as the suppression of national capitals by the EU institutions as well as to the fate of the Soviet Union. The reference to the new Moscow is reminiscent of the famous 1970 essay by Andrei Amalrik and his thesis that the USSR would perish due to its internal torpor in the war against an external opponent (in this case China).
Can a Europe survive being so misunderstood and denigrated by key players? Evidently, European integration is more fragile than many expected; even a structure so consolidated and constitutionally organized can fall apart if it no longer meets the needs, interests, and ambitions of its members. However, political entities rarely collapse as spectacularly as the Soviet Union did, especially not when they are based on freely concluded treaties, boundaries, and numerous forms of participation and democratic control. They can continue to exist institutionally, but they can lose their significance and binding force; they can neither evolve nor retain their effectiveness—until one day they have become completely obsolete and only the eternal nature of their legal basis prevents them from disappearing.
Viktor Orbán alone cannot break up the EU, but the participation of right-wing nationalist parties in more and more governments in the EU could trigger this if—as Poland and Hungary have shown—they curtail the separation of powers and fundamental freedoms in their countries, if, like some EU member states, they no longer implement European law and majority decisions in the Council or undermine them by acting unilaterally at the national level. The immigration and asylum policy of the past few years has served as an illustration of this. The struggle for unity in foreign policy provides further examples of fragility. If these tendencies reach the first pillar of the EU—the single market and the common currency—then the Union will be torn apart by a plethora of multi-level conflicts between EU institutions and member states, as well as among the member states themselves. Common prosperity and common security will be lost.
If the structured reconciliation of interests fails, the enforcement of national interests will destroy trust and cooperation, and the power imbalance between the European states will create new rifts. If solidarity within the EU breaks down, solidarity within NATO won’t last either. In terms of the major and medium-sized powers in world politics, Europe is being dwarfed in the entanglements of its attempts at ingratiation. A continent of “first principalities” definitely can’t be the answer to Trump's “America First.”
The fact that this scenario, although possible, doesn’t appear highly probable is solely due to the inherent balance of a multiple constellation of actors, which can buffer sudden swings and allow momentum to ebb in the length of the processes. However, this should not mislead anyone about the risks to integrity and cohesion that Europeans are facing. Europe's demise will be a creeping process.
Ways out of the Erosion
European policy must stop its tactical wrangling. Today, the EU is caught in a “policy disentanglement trap” (the term modifies the analysis coined by Fritz W. Scharpf, who describes the malaise about EU policy with the term “joint-decisiontrap”), because the member states go it alone nationally in crisis situations—such as the asylum issue—to force through European solutions, and these solutions are blocked by others or not implemented at the national level, which in turn provokes other pro-integration members to go it alone nationally. Avoiding further steps toward integration and toward a deepening of the EU for fear of creating a rift has led to more fragmentation through the rise of sovereigntism.
Instead, Europe needs new impetus for integration, because the Europeans' ability to take action is increasingly lagging behind the need to take action. The EU needs a fresh drive toward political union, it needs strategic thinking. Further development must include the clarification and delineation of competences as well as making procedures more effective through majority decision-making. “More Europe” is needed, particularly in the completion of economic and monetary union, in internal security, and the overall area of immigration, as well as in foreign, security, and defense policy.
This includes the question of a common defense. Ruling it out with the argument that this could call into question the US role as guarantor is no longer convincing, because it’s clear now that the Europeans' non-action is jeopardizing the United States’ solidarity as an ally. The European governments that are prepared to move toward joint defense should lead the way with a joint strategic concept, joint procurement in a common market, and joint armed forces on the eastern flank, where the risk of a violation of territorial, political, and economic integrity is greatest. It is obvious that they must also act in concert with NATO.
Having a group of states push ahead should also be considered for the internal security of the area without internal borders. Just as the Schengen Agreement was initially an agreement between five states that found a solution outside the treaties, blockades, and deadlocks can also be overcome in other areas.
A New Europe Policy
Strengthening Europe along such lines can only be brought about by sufficiently stable coalitions of European states that are willing to act. They must find a new language for the challenges facing Europe, its goals and strategies, because the old ciphers are failing to gain attention or approval. Political communication must stop “over-selling” and “under-performing” in European policy.
Much, if not everything, depends on Germany. How German politicians read the situation in Europe and what conclusions they draw will determine the prospects of any coalition that comes together to shape policy in the aforementioned areas. Everyone sees this, except the German policymakers walled in behind their red lines. Other states such as France or Poland are also essential for a strategic Europe, but without Germany, there’s virtually no chance of gaining the critical mass needed for progress. If Germany remains as passive on integration as it has been up to now, if the German government continues to reject variable progress, then other players will also remain on hold. An indecisive Germany paralyzes Europe. If the unification of Europe falls apart, then Germany will be both the main victim and the culprit.
An effective Europe is in Germany’s vital interest. Whoever forms the next German government must not confine themselves to platitudes and vague declarations of intent in the coalition agreement. Just as Europe needs a strategic concept for its further development, Germany needs a foreign, security, and European policy strategy. It can take inspiration from French President Macron when formulating its objectives, but it must define the operational steps and its own contributions itself. A national European strategy must make offers to form partnerships and coalitions. Germany must take the risk that its own ideas may get rejected, and it must plan alternatives. A “directorate” of a few large states will not carry enough weight; other member states from different areas of the EU must be won over to participate.
The abstinence of the Germain Foreign Office on fundamental questions of European policy must be overcome. Where else could more consistent and competent work be done on strategic building blocks and partnerships? Germany needs a National Council for European Strategy much more than it needs a National Security Council under the chancellor. A new European policy requires strategic cooperation between the key departments of the chancellery and the foreign, defense, interior, finance, and economy ministries.
It is not enough to want a new European policy; it must be implemented. All too often, government action has been determined by the hope that things won’t turn out so bad. Those days are over. They’re turning out worse.
Josef Janning is senior associate fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP).
