2026, the time for European choices

Well, here we go! The year 2026 had not even begun for more than three days when Donald Trump was already imposing his disruptive agenda on the entire planet. The next step could be Greenland in about twenty days, apparently. What will we do then? Certainly not go to war with the United States. But how can we deter the American president from acting if that were indeed his intention?

In the early 1990s, one of my first international economics courses mentioned the “triad”: the structuring of the global economy around three dominant poles — the United States, Japan, and the European Union. The end of the Cold War opened a new sequence, that of globalization, full of promises, emergence, and economic development. Today, another triad seems to be taking shape. It is no longer based on economic interdependence, trade, and openness, but on the law of the strongest and empires. The United States, China, and Russia all share a strategy centered on power, intimidation, and spheres of influence. They redraw their reach according to their economic and strategic interests, without concern for the rules or principles that have long structured the international order.

Because Europe could well be the next victim of these authoritarian powers, united in their dislike of what the European Union represents today — a project based on law, cooperation, and the voluntary limitation of raw power — it must react quickly. European citizens are not mistaken. Eurobarometer after Eurobarometer, they strongly support the Union but struggle to understand European hesitations and weaknesses.

Thirty-seven years ago, to the day, Jacques Delors issued a famous warning before the European Parliament: “Europe demands more cohesion, more sense of responsibility, more initiative. History is knocking at our door. Will we pretend to be deaf?” He continued by asking: “How will we build Europe if those who work, produce, innovate, and create are not its primary actors? How will we build Europe if research remains fragmented, if young people cannot project themselves into it, if collective ambition yields to the sum of national interests?”

Moreover, apart from the United States, China, and Russia, the rest of the world represents three-quarters of the global population and more than half of the wealth produced. There is therefore no inevitability in allowing this new triad to dominate, and the European Union, by what it is and what it represents, has all the legitimacy and credibility needed to rally around another path — provided it believes in itself and is ready to assert it loudly and clearly.

2026 opens without illusions, but not without responsibility. After a 2025 marked by successive shocks and accelerating geopolitical rivalries, the European Union enters a decisive phase. The diagnosis is now widely shared. The only question that remains more than ever is that of choice: that of assertion or of renunciation.

The tools exist. Doctrines are emerging. Priorities are known — defense, industry, transition, competitiveness — but also other priorities directly linked to citizens’ expectations, such as fighting social inequalities, inclusion, or access to housing. These, combined with our commitment to carbon neutrality, are also key assets of European soft power, more necessary than ever in the essential international balance of power.

It is in this context that our work and analyses are framed, and will continue to be, to better understand the forces at play, illuminate the choices that must be made, and nurture a European debate that can no longer settle for half measures. More than ever, we will need you and your support. We have just launched a new fundraising campaign, and we are counting on you.

The entire team at the Institute joins me in wishing you a lucid and demanding 2026 — a year in which choices finally prevail over renunciations.