Every crisis is a mirror and, in 2026, the European Union is finally forced to see itself. During the springtime of this already quite eventful year, the EU is neither in open crisis nor in calm, but in state of suspension. We are in a historical pause in which familiar certainties have dissolved, while new forms of orientation remain incomplete. The assumptions that once anchored the European project, such as an irreversible liberal order, permanent American stewardship, prosperity detached from power, have largely evaporated. What remains is not collapse but ambiguity: a continent acutely aware that the world it was shaped for no longer exists, yet still hesitant to inhabit the one that is emerging.
This hesitation is not accidental. It reflects a deeper tension between memory and necessity. Europe carries the weight of a past that taught it to distrust power play, to moralize restraint and to embed its ambitions in law rather than force. But the present insists on different questions that can no longer be deferred. How does Europe guarantee security in a world increasingly organized by power rather than rules? How does democracy endure in societies strained by inequality, cultural anxiety and political fragmentation? And can European integration evolve from a protective framework designed to prevent regression into a genuine political project capable of commanding loyalty, responsibility and collective agency?
The next few months will concentrate these unresolved questions with unusual pressure and clarity: not because of a single election, a summit, or battlefield development, but because it will reveal whether Europe is capable of crossing a historical threshold, from reactive adaptation to conscious modern agency.
The EU is torn between the habits of a past that no longer offers shelter and the demands of a future that has already begun to press upon it. The question is whether it can learn to act as a historical subject once again, or whether it will remain a well-intentioned space, articulate in principle yet shaped by forces decided elsewhere.
A long road to presence
The EU in its current state-in-between did did not arrive to today’s reality bruptly, but through a long process of erosion and awakening that unfolded over the course of decades. The financial crisis of the late 2000s cracked the promise of ever-increasing prosperity. The migration surge of the mid-2010s exposed the limits of solidarity without shared governance. The pandemic shattered assumptions about efficiency, resilience and the benign nature of interdependence. And the war in Ukraine ended, definitively, the post-Cold War illusion that peace on the European continent could be taken for granted.
Each of these moments was initially treated as an exception, a temporary deviation from a stable trajectory. In retrospect, they form a coherent sequence: the slow dissolution of a world in which Europe could afford to be economically integrated but politically fragmented, and strategically dependent on Russia for its gas and on the US for its military security.
By the mid-2020s, the realization that this reality has passed has become widespread. Europe today is more sober, more alert and less self-congratulatory than it was a decade ago. Yet it remains uncertain about what this new awareness should lead to. The continent has shed its naivety, but not yet acquired its new posture – at least not as one united block.
A world that has moved on
The international environment confronting the EU is no longer transitional; it has been structurally transformed, and this transformation is more profound than most observers acknowledge. The war in Ukraine, which has entered its fifth year, has ceased to be a mere crisis or an episodic conflict. It has settled into a prolonged contest of endurance, in military, industrial, political and psychological terms, whose reverberations reach far beyond the Donbas or Kyiv. Its significance for Europe is no longer measured only in military aid, economic sanctions, or refugee flows. The war has exposed enduring vulnerabilities at the very heart of European strategy: the limitations of defense capacities, the fragility of industrial and technological supply chains, and the consequences of decades spent outsourcing hard power while simultaneously claiming moral superiority. In short, Europe has discovered that moral authority, unaccompanied by the power and instruments to back it up, is a fragile commodity in a world of hard realities.
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But the lesson extends beyond Europe’s borders. In stark contrast to the last 80 years, or so, the United States are no longer indispensable to European security, as it has shown itself not tremendously unreliable – and even openly hostile – to the European project of peace and cooperation. Washington’s priorities oscillate between domestic preoccupations and strategic recalibrations, leaving Europe in the uneasy position of having to plan for security contingencies without a guaranteed anchor. China, for its part, is neither a partner nor an adversary in European terms. Its rise is systemic, deliberate and long-term; it operates according to a logic indifferent to European law, norms, or persuasion. Russia, finally, has chosen a civilizational antagonism: not merely a tactical adversary but a state articulating a historical narrative at odds with European liberalism. And this challenge will probably endure for a generation or more.
Within this transformed environment, The EU’s traditional posture is increasingly insufficient. For decades, European states have relied on the notion that influence could be exercised with soft power: through law, standards, trade and diplomacy, rather than through force. Yet influence alone cannot guarantee security, shape strategic outcomes, or deter aggression. Europe now faces the urgent question of whether it can convert its economic scale, normative weight and institutional sophistication into coherent strategic power. The challenge at hand is to embrace its own weight in a responsible way: one that acknowledges the burdens of power without betraying principle, and that acts decisively without sacrificing moral coherence, so that it translates capacity into tangible, protective, and stabilizing action in the world.
This is not simply a matter of larger defense budgets, or more European military coordination. It is a civilizational challenge, a question of identity and self-perception. Can the EU see itself as a unified strategic actor, or will it remain a reactive, morally assertive, yet materially dependent entity? Can it cultivate the discipline, coherence and foresight necessary to manage risk, and preserve the liberal values that are increasingly under siege both at home and abroad?
Current global events may finally force Europe to confront the challenges, that have been building up for years – if not decades, collectively, decisively and consciously. Yet external responsibility cannot be achieved in isolation from internal resilience. Strategic coherence abroad depends upon cohesion at home, which can only be founded on the pillars of political legitimacy, societal trust and effectively functional institutions.
The pressures of polarization, electoral volatility and the persistence of populist movements are structural conditions that will determine whether Europe can act with clarity and purpose in a turbulent world. It is clear that the continent’s internal political and social dynamics are inseparable from its external posture.
Our homework
Much commentary on the EU’s internal division fixates on elections: on the apparent strength of populist parties, the fragmentation of parliaments, or the volatility of coalitions. Yet these phenomena are not the source of instability; they are its diagnostic signal, a visible reflection of deeper structural and societal tensions. Elections reveal a lot about how citizens experience change, and how our political systems struggle to adapt to it.
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Across the continent, voters are responding to a shared reality: Current political structures designed for a slower, more predictable world are now confronted with a world that is faster, more uncertain and more interconnected. Cost-of-living volatility, security anxieties, climate change and energy transitions, and migration and global openness, converge in ways that traditional party systems were never constructed to manage. What appears at the ballot box as populist appeal is, in truth, the manifestation of a society negotiating unprecedented complexity, seeking narratives that are emotionally intelligible, if often simplistically framed.
In this light, the populist–progressive divide is frequently misunderstood. It is not merely a contest between openness and closure, or tolerance and intolerance. It is a deeper struggle between simplification and complexity, between narratives that promise control through exclusion, and those that focus on responsibility, because of our factual interdependence. Populist movements thrive not because their solutions are inherently effective, but because they offer perceived clarity and legibility in a world of uncertainty. Progressive movements face the far more arduous challenge: to render complexity politically and morally comprehensible, to transform foresight, nuance and collective responsibility into narratives that resonate with citizens’ lived realities.
The electoral calendar of 2026 crystallizes this struggle as nowhere else. Hungary’s parliamentary elections will serve as a stark test of whether entrenched populist-nationalist governance can be meaningfully contested, and whether European institutions and norms retain the capacity to influence domestic trajectories. In Cyprus, legislative elections will probe the resilience of a polity balancing historical division, geopolitical pressures and domestic discontent. Even smaller-scale elections, from Spain’s regional contests to Estonia’s indirect presidential vote, function as microcosms of continental dynamics. Collectively, these contests are not merely national events; they are showcases of competing visions for Europe’s political imagination.
In the end, these elections underscore a profound truth: the vitality of the EU depends not on the absence of tension, but on its ability to convert tension into collective agency. European electorates are not simply choosing governments; they are choosing whether its politics can rise above reactive grievance and embrace the mature stewardship of complexity, the true foundation of sustainable power, legitimacy and moral authority in today’s world.
The integration project beyond its innocence
The interplay between domestic cohesion and international agency is intimate. A Union that cannot consolidate trust, stabilize its democratic institutions, and articulate shared narratives of responsibility and belonging will find itself weakened in global negotiations, unable to project influence, and constrained in defending both its principles and its citizens. Conversely, the successful integration of domestic resilience into continental strategy would allow Europe to convert its normative weight, economic scale and institutional sophistication into coherent geopolitical power, the responsible kind of power the continent has long aspired to exercise.
It is precisely for this reason that the return of Donald Trump to power, together with the policy architecture outlined in Project 2025, represents more than a change in diplomatic style. It signals a strategic orientation that views a cohesive European Union not as a pillar of shared Western strength, but as a regulatory rival and economic competitor. Within this worldview, European unity limits American unilateral leverage; European regulatory sovereignty constrains American corporate and strategic freedom of action; and European strategic autonomy would dilute Washington’s primacy within NATO. A fragmented Europe, by contrast, is more susceptible to bilateral pressure, more dependent on US security guarantees, and less capable of acting as a coherent geopolitical actor. Encouraging nationalist reflexes, questioning multilateral commitments, and favoring transactional relationships over institutional solidarity are therefore not accidental gestures; they align with a broader interest in preventing the consolidation of European power. In this sense, the weakening of European cooperation is not a side effect but a structural objective: Europe divided is Europe diminished, and a diminished Europe is easier to manage within an increasingly competitive global order.
Considering all this, the European Union is now unmistakably in a post-innocence phase. The optimism of the early decades, the belief that integration would unfold steadily, predictably and universally welcomed, has given way to a sober awareness: Progress is neither linear nor guaranteed, and the consensus that once underpinned the project has frayed. Enlargement, fiscal coordination, defense cooperation and institutional reform now advance not through the momentum of conviction, but under the vigilant gaze of skepticism. Every new initiative is measured against the yardstick of political feasibility, national interest and social legitimacy, rather than the ideal of a united Europe as an end in itself.
And yet, paradoxically, the case for European integration has never been more urgent. Europe confronts challenges that are by nature transnational problems that no single state can solve alone. Climate change, energy security, technological sovereignty, migration pressures, supply chain vulnerabilities and digital infrastructure resilience are all issues that operate across borders and demand coordination at a continental scale. But political legitimacy, the lifeblood of democratic governance, remains overwhelmingly national. Citizens evaluate policies primarily through the lens of local experience and immediate impact, not through the distant abstraction of European unity. This creates a fundamental asymmetry: The scale of the problems increasingly exceeds the scale at which democratic consent is organized.
It is no longer sufficient to rely on treaties, institutions, or technocratic compromise; the Union must learn to politicize itself at the continental level. Not as a bureaucratic exercise, but as a genuine democratic project. Citizens must learn to see themselves as participants in European deliberation, capable of shaping collective outcomes and holding institutions accountable.
The deeper question is not whether the EU needs more integration – the necessity is evident -, but whether it can create a shared political space in which disagreement does not automatically become disintegration. Integration must be understood not merely as the harmonization of rules or the pooling of sovereignty, but as the cultivation of a political culture capable of absorbing conflict, negotiating difference and producing coherent collective decisions. In other words, Europe must become a space where pluralism is not only tolerated, but operationalized; where disputes are channeled into institutions that reinforce, rather than erode, the Union.
The paradox of power
Beneath the surface of geopolitics, electoral competition and institutional mechanics lies a far deeper and more consequential contest: Europe’s relationship to power itself. For decades, the continent defined its identity in opposition to the raw exercise of force. It sought to transcend traditional power politics, embedding its influence instead in law, norms and economic interdependence. This approach was neither naïve nor accidental; it was an evolution of our collective spiritual and emotional intelligence, born from the trauma of two world wars and the Holocaust, a conscious attempt to anchor civilization in principles rather than arms. Moral authority became Europe’s principal instrument of influence and, for a time, it was enough.
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Yet moral authority alone cannot guarantee security, prosperity, or strategic relevance. Power did not vanish; it migrated. It concentrated in actors willing to combine force with purpose. The EU’s retreat from traditional forms of power, however justified morally, has left it exposed. Not because it has weakened intrinsically, but because it has ceded space to others who operate without the same ethical constraints.
Today, we must learn the art of reconciling principle with strength. This is no mere tactical challenge; it is existential.
The exercise of power cannot, however, be confined to the external arena. It must extend inward, to the structure, culture and narrative of European democracy itself. Democracies do not endure solely through procedures, treaties, or institutional checks; they survive and flourish only when they cultivate confidence, purpose and a shared sense of direction. Europe’s challenge, therefore, is both practical and philosophical. It must articulate why it exists beyond trade agreements, regulatory frameworks and crisis management. Its political, economic and normative power, must be rooted in a conscious understanding of its own history, values and responsibilities. This is the paradox of Europe’s moment: To survive and flourish, it must embrace power, but power of a kind that preserves the lessons of centuries of human suffering. It is a call not merely to act, but to act with wisdom and clarity of purpose.
In learning this art, The EU does not merely safeguard itself. It reclaims its role as a guardian of a distinctive vision of civilization, capable of marrying strength with conscience, and ambition with restraint.