The European Union likes to describe itself as a geopolitical actor. This year, that claim is being stress-tested by events it cannot control: Russia’s war in Ukraine, a more transactional White House, and a global economy splitting into rival blocs. The question in Brussels is no longer whether Europe faces a harsher world. It is whether the bloc’s institutions can respond before division becomes paralysis.
Ukraine remains the most immediate measure of Europe’s seriousness. Military aid, sanctions enforcement and the long process of accession have all become tests of political will inside the EU. Some governments want faster integration and deeper security commitments; others still hedge, worried about cost, escalation and voter fatigue. That tension is now shaping nearly every major EU debate, from defense financing to budget priorities.
At the same time, Washington’s shifting posture has made the transatlantic relationship less predictable. European leaders still talk about partnership, but they are also hedging against uncertainty on trade, technology rules and NATO burden-sharing. The result is a familiar European contradiction: strategic autonomy is fashionable in speeches, but much harder in practice, especially when it requires money, industrial policy and collective discipline.
The institutional challenge is equally severe. The European Commission wants to push ahead on competitiveness, defense-linked investment and regulatory simplification. The European Parliament, meanwhile, is under pressure from both pro-European centrists and a more assertive nationalist right. The Council remains the place where ambition goes to be diluted. Every major file now runs into the same barrier: unanimity, or something close to it.
That is why 2026 feels like a make-or-break year not because the EU is collapsing, but because its old habits are becoming unaffordable. Europe can still cope with crises one by one. What it has yet to prove is that it can build a durable political response that matches the scale of the threats. If it cannot, the bloc risks becoming a manager of decline rather than a shaper of events.
