European Union member states can spend years arguing from entrenched positions without anyone budging much. Then in the space of weeks everything shifts during a crisis. Enter Donald Trump.
Their initial plan after his re-election last November had been to avoid saying anything to provoke the US president.
European leaders repeated that they wanted to maintain a strong relationship with the United States. This period of trying to carefully tiptoe around Trump seems to be over.
Peace within the EU “can no longer be taken for granted”, Ursula von der Leyen said this week. The head of the European Commission said many long-standing assumptions were being shattered.
Europe had believed it could rely on the protection of the US indefinitely and so it lowered its guard, spending less on its own defence.
“The time of illusions is now over,” Ms von der Leyen told the European Parliament, after earlier telling MEPs: “We are facing a crisis of European security, but we know that it is in crisis that Europe has always been built.”
Trump seems determined to push Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy to agree a deal – to end the full-scale war that Russia started when it invaded Ukraine three years ago – on terms that suit Moscow more than Kyiv.
[ ‘Watershed moment’: Europe faces decisions about future security, Ursula von der Leyen says ]
The US administration has shown it is willing to cut off the crucial flow of military aid and battlefield intelligence it had been supplying to Ukraine – even if these have now been restored following the US-Ukraine talks in Saudi Arabia.
If Ukraine refuses to sign up to a bad peace deal, Zelenskiy would look to Europe to make up some of the huge shortfall left by Trump possibly pulling US support.
If a deal is agreed that undermines Ukraine’s future security, EU states near to Russia fear they might be next, given the US can no longer be relied upon to deter a possible Russian attack.
This focused minds when the EU’s 27 national leaders met for an emergency summit in Brussels last week. The heads of state and government agreed to back a major defence plan to “re-arm” Europe.
Spending rules to keep national budget deficits within limits will be relaxed to let EU states invest more in their militaries.
Von der Leyen’s commission will borrow €150 billion to fund cheap loans the EU executive will extend to national capitals. Unspent EU funding that had been earmarked to develop poorer regions of the bloc can be redirected by governments to defence.
You might expect more fiscally prudent states, such as Germany, to baulk at the parking of budget rules.
Instead the man expected to become Germany’s next chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has been at the front of the push to significantly ramp up European spending on defence. Denmark, traditionally another one of the more “frugal” capitals, has also crossed over to the side of the spenders on this issue.
“There are a lot fewer frugals now,” one EU official remarked to a group of journalists on the sidelines of last week’s summit.
The conversation has already started to shift to what else the EU can agree to do. One previously divisive idea is for the 27 states to take on common debt. This would be a significant departure. Common borrowing was used only once in recent years, to finance an €800 billion Covid-19 recovery fund of grants and loans.
Jörg Kukies, Germany’s caretaker finance minister, said he remained sceptical about raising debt together, if it was to just hand money to “countries to do their own thing nationally”.
But spending on defence could be an exception, he indicated. “What Germany is very open to, and what we have supported explicitly, is whenever there are true European projects in the defence area to also think about common financing,” he said.
If there’s an argument to do things collectively, it is now
— Thijs Reuten, Dutch MEP
The Dutch government remains set against common borrowing. It believes taking on a lot of debt would weaken European economies. “The Netherlands is not in favour of Eurobonds, of more common debt ... because it’s not a solution in the long term,” finance minister Eelco Heinen said.
But Thijs Reuten, an MEP from the Dutch Labour Party, said he was disappointed the right-wing government was digging its heels in.
Making sure Europe was able to defend itself was much more existential than buffering states from the economic fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic, he said. “If there’s an argument to do things collectively, it is now.” Opponents of common borrowing needed to get over their concerns, given the urgency of the moment, Mr Reuten said.
Ireland has been uneasy about joint EU borrowing in the past. However, the Government has suggested it would not stand in the way of everyone else finding ways to boost defence spending.
As the number of capitals opposed to the idea gets smaller, the Dutch and any other remaining holdouts will face a lot of pressure to come around.
