In Ursula von der Leyen’s first press conference as head of the European Commission in 2019, she promised to lead a “geopolitical commission”. The EU’s obsessive preoccupation with internal political and economic challenges, not least Brexit, had seen its ambition to play a role on the world stage commensurate with its economic clout wither. As global multilateralism took a battering, the union was seen by many as little more than a bystander.
Times are changing. In her forceful State of the European Union speech in Strasbourg on Wednesday, Von der Leyen put geopolitics, the EU’s place and active engagement on the world stage centre-stage. She spoke of its evolving relationships with Ukraine and Russia, with China, with the neighbouring Balkans, and how those priorities interact with challenges such as the energy crisis and climate change. “This is not only a war unleashed by Russia against Ukraine,” she argued. “This is a war on our energy, a war on our economy, a war on our values and a war on our future.”
And to those who might prefer an emphasis on negotiation in Ukraine, von der Leyen made a welcome insistence that “This is the time for us to show resolve, not appeasement… we are in it for the long haul…. Slava Ukraini!”
In backing US President Joe Biden’s call for an alliance of democracies to confront the global threat of autocracy, the commission president also sent a strong message to wayward EU member states, Hungary and Poland, that they must respect democratic norms and that the commission will not backtrack on holding them to account. “If we want to be credible when we ask candidate countries to strengthen their democracies, we must also eradicate corruption at home.”
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One got the sense that von der Leyen’s insistence on the imperative of enlargement to embrace Ukraine – with immediate access to the single market – Moldova and the Western Balkans was not the usual mandatory afterthought in such speeches, but heartfelt. As was the call for the union to convene a convention to agree reform of its institutions and procedures to make it capable of taking in new members. That will not go down well with the member states and will, no doubt, take time.
Von der Leyen spoke candidly of major errors in the union’s past strategic calculations – its over-generous assessment of Vladimir Putin, its belated understanding that fossil fuels are replaceable, and its unwillingness to reform over-strict national debt rules. She spoke of the need for changes of paradigm in its thinking.
“Globalisation” is still key to Europe’s wealth as a world trader, but von der Leyen’s emphasis on building the union’s sustainable autonomy and self-reliance marks an important and subtle shift in how the union will project its power.