The European Union has 27 member states. It’s understandable, then, that the EU finds it difficult to come to quick or decisive decisions on important matters. But in order to advance its raison d’être of expanding European federalism, prosperity and influence, the EU must accomplish two tasks.
First, it must retain and increase the support of its member state populations. Second, it must advance the EU’s interests around the world.
Today, the EU is manifestly failing on both these counts.
The EU’s failure of popular support is underlined by the growing success of Eurosceptic parties across the political union. European parliamentary elections in June saw successes for National Rally (France), AfD (Germany), Brothers of Italy (Italy), National Rally (France), Vox (Spain), and Fidesz (Hungary). These parties oppose major EU policies on immigration, federalism and other key concerns.
The EU’s foreign policy failure is underlined by its inability to address challenges abroad in a collective and effective fashion.
To be sure, the EU is good at taking on those who accept its confrontations. The U.S. offers a good example here.
It’s understandable that the EU opposes the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act. That legislation increased subsidies for U.S. clean energy/related sectors. But rather than increase its own subsidies in kind, the EU is doubling down on its war against the crown jewel of the U.S. economy, the tech sector. Washington has done very little to confront what is now a quite overt EU extortion scheme against major American technology companies.
But contrast this EU strategy with its response to determined adversaries.
As Russia continues its war on Ukraine, the EU is increasingly divided over how to respond to Moscow. While Ukraine might not be an EU member, other states, such as Poland and the Baltics, most certainly are EU states. And while Vladimir Putin likes to tell Western audiences he has no ambitions toward EU states, his statements to Russians and policies tell a very different tale. Eastern flank EU members understand this threat and are allocating vast defense investments to prepare against it. Alongside others, such as the U.K., these nations are also maintaining their support for Ukraine in the belief that Putin must be stopped at Europe’s front door. Others, such as France, are also belatedly realizing that European strategic autonomy requires firepower alongside fine rhetoric. But many other EU states continue to skimp on both defense spending and support for Ukraine.
Take the EU’s most powerful nation, Germany.
Barely two years after pledging a revolutionary increase in German defense spending and security strategy, Chancellor Olaf Scholz is now cutting military aid to Ukraine and scaling back defense spending. How this is supposed to consolidate the trans-Atlantic alliance with America or the EU’s periphery states against Russia is left unexplained. Instead, influential security strategists such as the Munich Security Conference’s Wolfgang Ischinger claim, absurdly, that Europe is now doing its fair share for Western security and it is Washington that must do more.
Still, nowhere is the EU’s foreign policy crisis more evident than towards that greatest threat to Western security and prosperity. Namely, the Communist Party of China.
Having made its economy dependent on cheap exports to China and unwilling to undertake bold reforms, Germany opposes much-needed EU tariffs on Chinese car exports. That matters because China is dumping cheap electric vehicles into the European market in the belief that the EU is too weak and disorganized to resist this attack on its economy.
Xi Jinping is likely correct in his assumption. Scholz opposes the tariffs in fear that Xi will restrict German car exports to China. And on Thursday, Scholz found a new ally via the EU’s fourth largest economy (and, relevant to the Ukraine-Russia concern, notorious NATO freeloader), Spain. Visiting China, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced an abrupt U-Turn away from his prior support for tariffs. Sanchez then echoed vacuous Chinese talking points on the need for more “dialogue” on the issue. Why Sanchez’s shift?
As the South China Morning Post notes, “Sanchez’s comments came a day after Chinese company Envision agreed to build a US$1 billion [renewable energy] plant in Spain.” Bingo. Amusingly, Chinese state media observed that Sanchez’s “realistic and rational perspective deserves to be heard more widely around the world.” Put simply, Xi bought off Sanchez just as he bought off Scholz and the fake Hungarian nationalist Viktor Orban. Xi has half the EU in his pocket and Putin has the EU divided.
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This leaves the EU unable to coordinate any serious response to China’s dumping campaign or to maintain significant support for Ukraine.
Indeed, with its economic growth rates stagnant, its political leadership and popular opinion divided, and its adversaries plainly holding the initiative, the EU may well be in systemic decline.