From American tariffs to the loss of the illusion of being able to exert geopolitical influence based solely on its economic strength. For years, the European Union believed that its size—a market of 450 million consumers—was sufficient to ensure influence in international relations and trade. "2025 will instead be remembered as the year in which this belief definitively evaporated," former Prime Minister Mario Draghi was convinced of this in his speech at the Rimini Meeting. "We had to resign ourselves ," he explained, "to the tariffs imposed by our largest trading partner and long-standing ally, the United States. We were pressured by that same ally to increase military spending , a decision we perhaps should have made anyway—but in ways and forms that likely did not reflect Europe's interests."
" The European Union," Draghi explained, "despite having made the largest financial contribution to the war in Ukraine, and having the greatest interest in a just peace, has so far played a fairly marginal role in the peace negotiations ." All this while China has openly supported Russia's war effort, not considering Europe an equal partner and "using its control of rare earths to make our dependence increasingly binding." The Union has also been a spectator when "Iranian nuclear sites were being bombed" and during the escalation of the "massacre in Gaza."
For Draghi, this long list of events has "done away with any illusion that the economic dimension alone could ensure any form of geopolitical power." This situation, therefore, should not be surprising given the increased skepticism toward the EU. But what is the real purpose of this skepticism? "In my view, it is not skepticism about the values on which the European Union was founded: democracy, peace, freedom, independence, sovereignty, prosperity, equity" and "social protection. We have a social welfare system that is probably the most developed in the world." The doubts, rather, concern "the European Union's ability to defend these values."
(Unioneonline/vf)
