In September 2024, Mario Draghi handed the European Commission a damning report. Europe’s problem, he argued in essence, is not so much knowing what to do as managing to do it in time.[1] That remark sums up thirty years of European construction.
For three decades, the Union’s major policy shifts have followed the same sequence. A proposal is put forward, often by France, sometimes by a small state no one listens to. It runs aground on national interests, on the unanimity rule, on the rhetoric of subsidiarity. Then a crisis comes. And what was impossible becomes urgent, what was divisive becomes consensual, sometimes in a matter of weeks. Six examples to illustrate the point.
The idea of a common European borrowing goes back to the work of the Delors Committee in 1989. Repeatedly defended, notably by Paris, as a condition for genuine economic solidarity, it ran up against the same front: the so-called “frugal” states — the Netherlands, Austria, Denmark, Sweden — which feared that mutualising debt would encourage a slackening of budgetary discipline.
In March 2020, nine European leaders, including Emmanuel Macron and Giuseppe Conte, called for the creation of common debt instruments to face the pandemic.[2] On 18 May 2020, Berlin and Paris jointly proposed a 500-billion recovery plan financed by common borrowing.[2] In July, the Twenty-Seven adopted NextGenerationEU: 750 billion euros, issued for the first time as common debt at Union level.[3]
Three months of Covid did what thirty years of discussion had failed to achieve.
As early as 2007, the report A Power Audit of EU-Russia Relations by the European Council on Foreign Relations documented how Moscow used Gazprom as a differentiated foreign-policy lever — preferential rates for allies, commercial pressure on the rest. Germany, meanwhile, was funding Nord Stream 2.
In February 2022, Russia covered 45% of the Union’s gas consumption.[4] The invasion of Ukraine changed everything in a matter of weeks. On 18 May 2022, the Commission presented REPowerEU, with the aim of ending Russian gas imports by 2027.[5] In three and a half years, the share of Russian gas fell from 45% to 13%.[6] What the 2007 warning had not been enough to trigger, a war accomplished in record time.
Since de Gaulle, France has held to a constant thesis: Europe cannot outsource its security to Washington indefinitely. Strategic autonomy presupposed its own military capabilities, a common defence industry, an independent doctrine. This position was a minority one. A study by the European Council on Foreign Relations showed that member states agreed neither on what the concept covered nor on the level of ambition to give it — with Estonia and Lithuania going so far as to argue that it could weaken NATO.[7]
The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, then the return of Donald Trump and his repeated questioning of the American commitment, turned what was seen as a Parisian idiosyncrasy into an obvious truth. Defence budgets are rising in almost every member state. In February 2025, the Twenty-Seven held an unprecedented meeting of their leaders devoted exclusively to defence, an agenda unthinkable ten years earlier.
The health crisis revealed how far European value chains could be paralysed by our unconscious dependence on foreign powers. The vulnerability was known: as early as 2018, the Important Projects of Common European Interest mechanism had been activated for the first time in microelectronics.[8] China had long been investing massively in its production capacity. The analyses existed and had not been enough.
It was in direct response to the Covid-19 supply-chain disruptions that the European Chips Act was introduced in February 2022.[9] During the pandemic, 45% of European supply chains had been exposed to semiconductor shortages.[10] The regulation entered into force in September 2023. The shock did what the reports had failed to accomplish.
The European directive on the protection of personal data dates back to October 1995.[11] It took twenty years to be revised. The GDPR, adopted in April 2016, entered into force in May 2018.[12] But the Cambridge Analytica affair, which broke a few weeks before its application, showed that these tools were not enough to protect Europeans’ data in electoral contexts.[12] Each scandal produced a response: the GDPR, then the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act in 2022, then the AI Act in 2024.[13] Despite these chain reactions, the AI Act is still criticised and still seems poorly suited to the challenges of the future.
The Paris Agreement was signed in 2015.[14] For years, France and the Nordic countries have carried climate ambitions that go beyond the European consensus. The Green Deal was not presented by the Commission until December 2019.[15] Europe adopted a climate law making the 2050 carbon-neutrality target binding.[16] It tightened it as climate and energy crises forced its hand. The text is today contested by those — SMEs, farmers, local elected officials — who believe solutions should emerge from the ground rather than be imposed by regulation, a sign that this transition remains unfinished.
These six cases show that the sequence is identical every time: the diagnosis is available, proposals are made, an institutional deadlock prevents their implementation, a crisis triggers belated decisions.
The Union has numerous bodies to think about the future and does not seem to suffer from a lack of foresight and anticipation tools. It is simply that its institutional architecture prevents national leaders from being mobilised on essential questions. The unanimity required in many areas keeps the threat of a veto hanging over decisions. Short electoral cycles narrow governments’ horizons. And Europe becomes the convenient scapegoat of national leaders who are nonetheless its chief architects.
Tools exist but remain under-used. The Lisbon Treaty provides for “passerelle” clauses allowing a move from unanimity to qualified majority in certain strategic areas — without revising the treaties.[17] It also provides for enhanced cooperation, allowing nine or more member states to move forward together without waiting for the Twenty-Seven.[18] In November 2023, the European Parliament adopted a resolution calling for a considerable expansion of the use of qualified majority voting.[19][20] These mechanisms nonetheless remain little used. Their limited use owes less to legal obstacles than to a lack of political will.
And yet time is short. Eighteen months after the publication of the Draghi report, the Institut Montaigne assessed the state of implementation of its 567 recommendations: fewer than a third are fully or partially applied.[21] Creating common debt to finance the additional 750 billion euros a year identified in that report remains an unresolved emergency. History repeats itself and risks proving right those who denounce “too much Europe.”
In reality, the question is not whether to choose between more or less Europe. It is to decide where power should be exercised — and to give oneself the means to do so. The challenges ahead — defence, artificial intelligence, climate, industrial competitiveness — can no longer be handled at the level of states alone. They demand a faster European decision-making capacity. Conversely, everything that touches citizens’ daily lives would gain from being more firmly rooted in the regions.
A more effective Europe probably requires an executive capable of acting when strategic interests are at stake. But this integration will only be durably accepted if it is accompanied by a democracy anchored in the regions — regions that are more than mere administrative relays, able to carry the realities of the ground all the way up to Brussels. Some intellectuals are indeed calling for the advent of a Europe of the regions, an idea more than half a century old.
In truth, whatever form it takes, European power will not stop suffering crises until it has given itself the institutions capable of avoiding them. Let us hope that this political undertaking — widely anticipated, widely documented — will not wait, in turn, for its own crisis.
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Notes
[1] Draghi, M., The Future of European Competitiveness, September 2024. https://commission.europa.eu/topics/strengthening-european-competitiveness/eu-competitiveness-looking-ahead_fr
[2] Touteleurope.eu, Plan de relance européen : où en est-on ?, July 2025. https://www.touteleurope.eu/fonctionnement-de-l-ue/plan-de-relance-europeen-quelles-sont-les-prochaines-etapes/
[3] European Commission / Representation in France, Plan de relance européen : les clés pour comprendre, July 2020. https://france.representation.ec.europa.eu/informations/plan-de-relance-europeen-les-cles-pour-comprendre-2020-07-30_fr
[4] European Commission, REPowerEU Roadmap — the share of Russian gas in EU imports fell from 45% to 19%, May 2025. https://commission.europa.eu/news-and-media/news/roadmap-fully-end-eu-dependency-russian-energy-2025-05-06_fr
[5] Touteleurope.eu, REPowerEU : comment l’Union européenne veut sortir de sa dépendance aux énergies fossiles russes, January 2026. https://www.touteleurope.eu/environnement/repowereu-comment-l-union-europeenne-veut-sortir-de-sa-dependance-aux-energies-fossiles-russes/
[6] Resurgam Hub, How is the European Union getting rid of its energy dependence on Russia?, 2025. https://resurgamhub.org/fr/analytics/europe/eu/how-is-the-european-union-getting-rid-of-its-energy-dependence-on-russia-
[7] Dennison, S. et al., European Council on Foreign Relations, Independence Play: Europe’s Pursuit of Strategic Autonomy, 2018. https://ecfr.eu/special/independence_play_europes_pursuit_of_strategic_autonomy/
[8] European Commission, press release, State aid: Commission approves public support for an Important Project of Common European Interest in microelectronics, 18 December 2018. https://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-18-6862_fr.htm
[9] European Court of Auditors, Special Report 12/2025 — The EU’s microchip strategy, 2025. https://www.eca.europa.eu/ECAPublications/SR-2025-12/SR-2025-12_FR.pdf
[10] Dan Nica, rapporteur to the European Parliament, quoted in Touteleurope.eu, Semi-conducteurs : le Parlement européen adopte le Chips Act, July 2023. https://www.touteleurope.eu/economie-et-social/semi-conducteurs-le-parlement-europeen-adopte-sa-position-sur-le-chips-act/
[11] European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), The History of the General Data Protection Regulation, 2018. https://www.edps.europa.eu/data-protection/data-protection/legislation/history-general-data-protection-regulation_fr
[12] Wikipedia, Règlement général sur la protection des données, accessed June 2026. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A8glement_g%C3%A9n%C3%A9ral_sur_la_protection_des_donn%C3%A9es
[13] SGAE / Vie-publique.fr, DSA, DMA, Data Act, AI Act : tour d’horizon des textes clefs de la législation européenne numérique, 2023–2024. https://sgae.gouv.fr/files/live/sites/SGAE/files/Contributed/SGAE/04_Citoyens_Entreprises/documents/20230602_R%C3%A9gulation%20des%20plateformes.pdf
[14] UNFCCC, Paris Agreement, December 2015. https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement
[15] European Commission, The European Green Deal, 2019. https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/european-green-deal_fr
[16] Terra Nova, Le Pacte vert européen — un bilan, 2024. https://tnova.fr/democratie/politique-institutions/le-pacte-vert-europeen-un-bilan/
[17] EUR-Lex, Unanimity — EU law glossary (passerelle clauses), accessed June 2026. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/FR/legal-content/glossary/unanimity.html
[18] EUR-Lex, Enhanced cooperation — EU law glossary, accessed June 2026. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/summary/glossary/enhanced_cooperation.html
[19] European Parliament, Treaty reform: proposals to strengthen the EU’s capacity to act, November 2023. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/fr/press-room/20231023IPR08163/reforme-des-traites-propositions-pour-renforcer-la-capacite-d-action-de-l-ue
[20] Euronews, Unanimité ou majorité qualifiée, le vieux débat européen refait surface, June 2023. https://fr.euronews.com/my-europe/2023/06/13/unanimite-ou-majorite-qualifiee-le-vieux-debat-europeen-refait-surface
[21] Institut Montaigne, Rapport Draghi : l’Europe au rendez-vous ?, June 2026. https://www.institutmontaigne.org/publications/rapport-draghi-leurope-au-rendez-vous
