Opinion
By Michalis Sophocleous
The tariff crisis a year ago, and the trade agreement with the United States that followed, skewed against the EU, was the wake-up bell that made Europe realize the world had changed. But the Greenland crisis, and what unfolded at the World Economic Forum in Davos, proved something more: that Europe’s time to reinvent itself has now become dramatically, suffocatingly short.
On Greenland, President Trump crossed the Rubicon by questioning the territorial sovereignty of a NATO and European country. Troops, however limited Denmark’s may be, were deployed amid fears of an American invasion. A number of NATO allies spoke of activating Article 5 in support of Denmark. European public opinion watched, stunned, as the beloved “uncle from America” refused to rule out war. And it has struggled to keep its composure so as not to rupture its transatlantic bonds with the American people, despite unprecedented insults that went so far as a U.S. president attempting to erase the role of allies, whether in World War II or in Afghanistan and Iraq, when they readily rallied alongside the United States at great human cost.
It is true that Europe emerged strengthened from the Greenland crisis. Its leaders acted with unity, each assuming different roles, averting disaster. The enemies of the European idea within the EU are today in a weaker position, as it became clear how feeble each of our countries would be on its own. In the United States itself, there was evidently a far more forceful backlash against the turn on allies than what we saw, particularly within Republican ranks. And so the crisis, for now, was defused. But the causes that triggered it remain firmly in place.
We must see the world as it truly is, not as we would like it to be, said Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in a speech that will be taught for decades. From within Davos, the “temple” of globalization, he announced the end of the global order that followed the Cold War. We cannot live inside a lie, he continued; nostalgia is not a strategy; the fixation on returning to what we once had today produces only submission.
That applies first and foremost to Europe, and especially to the European Union. Its very real strengths, as well as its critical weaknesses, are now acknowledged by everyone. But we have moved beyond diagnosis. The question is what we will do about it and, above all, when.
The lack of strategic autonomy has today become an existential issue for the Union. Dependence on the United States for defense, low competitiveness and anemic economic growth, falling far behind the United States and China technologically, especially in software, artificial intelligence, and the fostering of startups. To these are added over-regulation, which now stifles entrepreneurship to an almost inconceivable degree, the “Green Deal,” which, painful as it is to say, has become an initiative out of place and out of time, Ukraine, which Europe could not support on its own, and migration, which has caused massive upheaval in European societies and allowed extreme forces to rise to prominence.
All of these problems have become inextricably linked to the presidency of Ms. Ursula von der Leyen, rightly or wrongly it matters little, whose tenure was further marked by the fact that in 2019, when she became President of the Commission, she was not a candidate but the product of a compromise.
To date, Ms. von der Leyen has not managed to inspire Europe’s societies or leaders to rally behind her for a bold, transformative reform. She does maintain very good relations with heads of state, but that is not enough. There is no open intergovernmental conference today for a new European Treaty. There is no new vision that includes the United Kingdom and Canada. And the reports by Mario Draghi, above all, Enrico Letta, and Sauli Niinistö on competitiveness, the single market, and security and preparedness are advancing at a snail’s pace.
Yet Ursula von der Leyen herself now has, at a moment that is better for Europe, a unique opportunity to trigger the profound leadership change we need, without leaving defeated. In a way that can be embraced both by leaders and by citizens. And thus to remain in history as the European politician who saved Europe.
