Since the failure of the draft constitutional treaty (2005), the EU has suffered a concatenation of crises: recession, euro, Crimea, refugees, Brexit, Trump, coronavirus, war in Ukraine. The management of the pandemic - the purchase of vaccines and the adoption of the 750 billion euro Next Generation EU plan financed through joint debt - has been a major step forward in joint action.
The European reaction to the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been even more forceful. Vladimir Putin is acting, to his displeasure, as a great EU federator. It has relaunched defense policy - increased investment, joint purchase of equipment, co-financed shipments to Ukraine, the creation of a rapid intervention force in 2025 - and settled foreign policy. It has revolutionized energy policy with the diversification of supplies, the acceleration of renewables and the strengthening of strategic autonomy. He has removed asylum and immigration policy and quartered the illiterate Visegrad subgroup, distancing Polish populism from Hungarian autocracy.
The war in Ukraine has been a great shock to the EU, as its project is based precisely on peace, and at the same time has awakened it to geopolitics. Today he assumes that confrontation determines the relations between the great powers and that it must go from being only a normative or commercial power to being erected as a strategic power.
The European response to the war in Ukraine has followed the path of progress already seen in the post-pandemic recovery plan. Brussels is sending weapons to Ukraine with the EU budget and is considering buying gas jointly in the face of threats to cut off supply.
NATO, meanwhile, has awakened from the "brain death" attributed to it by President Macron and is gathering the defense capabilities needed to ensure security in Europe, while expanding to Finland and Sweden. NATO and the United States need the EU as an additional component of their political and military capabilities. After the war, the EU will have to deal with reconstruction and peacekeeping.
The EU is preparing to reform itself to adapt to the new geopolitics and become a functional, flexible and more federal union. It has on the table a set of proposals, such as those of Mario Draghi (pragmatic federalism), Enrico Letta (confederation), Emmanuel Macron (political community, variable geometry) and those from the conference on the future of Europe (elimination of the unanimity rule, treaty reform).
All these proposals are being examined at the European summit held yesterday and today, during the last month of the French six-month presidency of the EU. There it is decided on the possible convening of a convention in charge of implementing the reforms. The NATO summit, in charge of approving its strategy for the next ten years, will also take place in Madrid this June.
These are moments of change in which the countries of southern Europe must become a constructive, proactive and reliable bloc. Spain is a key country that will hold the European presidency during the second half of next year. It has a great opportunity to contribute effectively to the definition of post-war European institutional architecture, which in any case will be more federal. Nothing will be the same after Ukraine.
