In his recent book Project Europe, Kiran Klaus Patel describes the architecture of European integration as an edifice that reflects the continent’s history, “with round and pointed arches, with some windows bricked up and new ones broken through elsewhere, with extensions and conversions, ruins and follies.” Europeans built this edifice over the decades in fits and starts, often reluctantly, to meet different needs and challenges. It may look strange and fragile. But it is much stronger than it looks.
As we wonder how the war in Ukraine will change Europe, it is important to keep this picture in mind. Most probably, the war will not change Europe that much. Of course, as we have seen during previous crises, European policy priorities evolve over time. Right now, the EU is moving quickly to protect itself and its open structures—as well as making them more resilient to geopolitical threats. National defence budgets are rising, and the commitment to a common European defence policy is in fashion. A common energy policy is seriously taking off, industrial and agricultural policies are being adjusted and Ukrainian refugees are getting legal status in record time. But the way politics is done in Europe will not change. The EU’s edifice, patched up many times and in many styles since its inception in the 1950s, will probably just end up with a newly fortified garden wall and another turret or two.
For sure, Vladimir Putin’s brutal war is shaking Europeans to the core. European postwar integration, a reaction to two devastating world wars, was set in motion to make such conflict impossible on the continent. This was such a success that younger generations became convinced they had reached a level of civilisation “beyond” war. War was for “less civilised peoples” who had not learned to settle their differences amicably. If fighting broke out somewhere, Europe sent peace envoys and humanitarian aid.
During past decades, most European countries steadily reduced their defence budgets. Many applauded the transfer of American troops, stationed in Europe throughout the Cold War, to bases in Asia. Good riddance, they thought.
Some Europeans thought they could do without the EU altogether. That’s another illusion shattered by Putin. Suddenly, war is back. Because, yes, most Europeans feel that Ukrainians are fighting their battle: Ukraine moved away from Russia, towards the west, and Putin’s invasion was meant to put a stop to that. Suddenly, the essence of the EU—“no more war”—has moved centre stage again. In a way, Putin reminds us that European integration is still about war and peace: it is a deeply political, indeed civilisational project, and economic integration is just a means to that end.
For years, far-right populists have had a soft spot for Putin. Now, we see them scrambling to hide the fact that they had been helping him to undermine the EU. After Russia’s invasion, the far-right National Rally (formally the National Front) in France hastily destroyed campaign brochures featuring a picture of its leader Marine Le Pen smiling with Putin in the Kremlin. Italian far-right leader of the League party, Matteo Salvini, who once proudly posed outside the Kremlin in a Putin t-shirt, travelled to the Ukrainian border to show how much he cared about refugees—until one Polish town mayor reminded him, on camera, of his recent sympathies for the Russian president.
European leaders are again ready to do “whatever it takes”
Putin’s invasion heralds a change in Europe’s geopolitical priorities. During the Cold War, western Europe was protected from Soviet communism by the US. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, an enlarged EU thrived in a highly interconnected world—its openness regulated by multilateral arrangements. This world order is now changing: leaders in Brussels and national capitals, unprepared for war, have been jolted into action.
With unusual speed and resolve—words rarely mentioned in the same sentence as “Europe”—those leaders are acting. They aim to punish Russia with the severest sanctions; to help Ukraine as much as possible without risking a (nuclear) clash between Russia and Nato; to adjust existing agricultural and energy policies to shield citizens from shortages and price hikes; to outlaw Russian propaganda channels Sputnik and RT (a surprisingly uncontroversial move given Europe’s pride in its press freedom); to invoke a temporary protection mechanism for Ukrainian refugees that had never been used in the previous 20 years; and to increase work on European defence and security structures, mainly within the framework of Nato. That organisation, after having been declared “brain dead” by France’s Emmanuel Macron in 2019, is once again seen as relevant and the protection it offers valuable. The UK is involved in European security decisions as a Nato member, mostly following US policies—not much more than that.
We have also seen a remarkable show of solidarity by ordinary Europeans with Ukrainians. Many are welcoming refugees into their homes, giving them language classes and organising food supply convoys to besieged areas. Before the war, populist parties in Europe were preparing to capitalise on resentment over energy price hikes. Now, citizens are voluntarily turning down the temperature at home, signalling both to Russia and their own governments that they are willing to pay the price to be on the right side of this ugly war. These contributions fit into the larger narrative of the fight by democratic states against a totalitarian system.
In the past two decades, the world has had to stomach several crises in a row—Islamist terrorism, the credit crunch and then the worst pandemic since Spanish flu. For Europe, it is hard to respond fast to challenges of such magnitude: instead of one government, Europe has 27. Those 27, with different political cultures, geographies, histories, taboos and interests, often disagree. That is why the EU was invented in the first place: to get countries to settle their differences at the negotiating table instead of on the battlefield.
Despite repeated predictions that a divided EU would collapse—predictions which, since Brexit, have become commonplace in the UK—the EU has overall performed rather well. During the financial crisis, it established European supervision of banks and other financial institutions—something member states had previously been unwilling to consider. It also set up a huge fund for Eurozone countries in need, accepting for the first time the obvious truth that a common currency requires political solidarity too. During the pandemic, the European Commission bought vaccines for the entire continent, meaning that after a bumpy start, all countries could be jabbed efficiently and for the same cost, nipping jealousies and political friction in the bud. Moreover, member states broke a huge taboo by allowing the Commission to issue common debt— “eurobonds”—to support the countries hit hardest by the virus. This move may be repeated soon, to shield member states against asymmetric shocks resulting from the Ukraine war. The euro is finally taking on a geopolitical dimension.
As the Dutch political philosopher Luuk van Middelaar wrote in his 2021 book Pandemonium, such crises, and the pandemic in particular, have raised awareness among its citizens that Europe is not just a market, but also a res publica. It is during such times of stress that “the Union is experiencing itself more than ever as a body politic, and a new public life is taking shape.” The war in Ukraine reinforces that notion. European leaders are once again ready to do “whatever it takes,” as the European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi (and now prime minister of Italy) famously said about the 2011 Eurozone crisis.
This does not mean, however, that the EU itself is going to change. The EU is a state-like structure with an executive (the Commission), a parliament representing citizens, a senate representing states (the Council), an independent court of justice and so on. There is, however, one major difference between this structure and that of the US or Germany. In Brussels, member states take most of the decisions. When European heads of state and government meet, as they have several times since Putin’s invasion on 24th February, they discuss sanctions against Russia and other measures as national leaders, elected to act not in the interest of Europe but their own nations.
Whether it is hundreds of thousands of refugees arriving from Syria, European banks becoming insolvent or Europe’s dependency on Russian oil and gas, the pattern is the same. A monumental problem appears, whereupon member states bring different solutions to the table; then they get stuck, and after several European Council meetings they arrive at the precipice and look down; seeing how deep it is, they return to the negotiating table and hammer out a compromise. What is good about this system is that there are rarely clear winners and losers. Everyone has a degree of input in the result. Every country “owns” the final decision, to some extent. This ownership guarantees that the 27—none of whom is totally satisfied—will support the outcome.
The flip side is that the outcome does not always meet Europe’s real needs. Often, leaders accept half-baked decisions because some countries refuse to go further. Often, the fire flares up again after a while, more fiercely, forcing member states to reconvene to correct their previous decision. Erik Jones, Daniel Kelemen and Sophie Meunier call this mechanism “failing forward.” Looking back on recent crises, they write: “in an initial phase, lowest common denominator intergovernmental bargains led to the creation of incomplete institutions, which in turn sowed the seeds of future crises, which then propelled deeper integration through reformed but still incomplete institutions—thus setting the stage for the process to move integration forward.” Any Brussels insider immediately recognises this description.
As the UK has discovered since Brexit, this kind of decisionmaking makes for surprisingly robust European policy: remembering the protracted, sometimes painful, efforts to reach agreement, governments are generally reluctant to re-open negotiations. The downside is that the intergovernmental character of the process smothers the democratic participation and accountability that Europe desperately needs. In federal systems like the EU, where the centre is far away from citizens, this greatly matters. European decisionmaking, practised behind the closed doors of the Council, is incomprehensible for most Europeans and occasionally for the Brussels in-crowd itself. Even the European Parliament is often sidelined.
In short, national leaders are frustrating European democracy by keeping so many things intergovernmental. Some older European policy areas, like trade and agriculture, are more integrated: the executive branch plays its role and the legislative approves the proposals by a majority vote. In both areas, the EU is able to take strong decisions in the common interest. But when it comes to areas like the European budget, or foreign and security policy—where member states want to keep control—the EU is hamstrung, because national governments resist handing power to Brussels. In such cases the EU has to beg member states for money to implement unforeseen decisions at crisis time—nowadays, almost all the time. What’s more, a country like Hungary can—and currently often does—block any foreign policy statement the other 26 agree on. Europe can be as weak as its weakest link.
This is why the EU is such a strange political creature: partly vibrantly European, partly owned by member states: it is always in the process of being reviewed, tweaked or extended. Compare it to sausage-making, with some member states and interest groups adding their own ingredients to the mix, and others supplying the packaging or selling the end product on the market. The process is slightly different, depending on circumstances. There will always be sausage—but the taste keeps changing.
The war in Ukraine is a moment where the taste of the sausage changes. More than ever, Europe needs to provide security to its citizens. Europe’s leaders, now used to crises, are becoming increasingly flexible and fast. In the early days of European integration, they met four times a year. Now, if need be, they meet four times a week. The other day, an EU official observed that with new sanctions on Russia, “Europe goes faster than the US,” citing the standoff in Congress. He added: “who would have thought I’d ever say this?”
