In the absence of a profound and coherent revision of the geo-economic approach adopted by the Commission, the deterioration of European security appears to be difficult to reverse. Not due to a lack of values or institutional tools, but due to insufficient strategic rationality in the actions of its main decision-maker, write Pasquale Preziosa and Dario Velo.
The geostrategic crisis currently affecting the European Union cannot be understood by resorting to generic categories that attribute to “Europe” an indistinct political subjectivity. Such an approach, however rhetorically reassuring, ultimately obscures the central issue of decision-making responsibility. The strategic weaknesses that are now emerging with increasing clarity can be traced primarily to the actions of the European Commission, the body responsible for legislative, economic, and commercial initiative and, in practice, the main architect of the Union’s geo-economic choices.
Over the past decade, these choices have progressively eroded the material foundations of European security, undermining its original function of promoting economic growth and structural convergence among Member States, from which the very legitimacy of the integration project derives. The Commission’s management of the green transition, its inability to negotiate economic relations with the United States effectively and symmetrically, and its adoption of strategic postures poorly calibrated to global power dynamics have produced an accumulation of systemic vulnerabilities that now manifest themselves on political, industrial, and strategic levels.
Any rigorous analysis of European geo-strategy must therefore begin with a clear methodological premise: the European Union, as such, does not act as a unified political actor endowed with autonomous decision-making capacity. The function of initiating, directing, and implementing the Union’s main economic, industrial, and commercial policies is exercised primarily by the European Commission. It is the Commission that shapes industrial policy, defines the common commercial strategy, sets the framework for the energy and climate transition, and conducts negotiations with external actors within the limits of the mandates it receives.
Indiscriminately attributing the consequences of these decisions to “Europe” amounts to dissolving political responsibility into an abstract entity. This produces a narrative that tends to absolve institutional decision-makers, obscuring the causal link between specific geo-economic choices and the Union’s progressive strategic weakening. In reality, the quality of European geo-strategy depends directly and inescapably on the quality of the geo-economic framework designed by the Commission.
Within this context lies the proposal—advanced by the Commission and ultimately rejected—to allocate frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine. Beyond the contingent political motivations, such an initiative would have entailed significant systemic consequences, undermining the Union’s reliability as a legal and financial space and further weakening its strategic credibility in an international system marked by competition among major powers. The failure to adopt this measure represents, in effect, a political defeat for the line promoted by the President of the Commission and by those governments that supported a maximalist approach insufficiently anchored in legal constraints and global power balances.
More broadly, a problem of decision-making legitimacy emerges. The European Commission, and particularly its leadership, has progressively assumed a strategic steering role that exceeds the scope of the political mandate originally conferred upon it. In a Union founded on institutional balance and the centrality of Member States, such a shift raises questions that cannot be ignored. It is the responsibility of the European Parliament to fully exercise its democratic oversight function, reaffirming the principle that strategic and potentially conflictual decisions cannot be taken without a solid foundation of political legitimacy.
The foundational value of the European Union is not the projection of military power, but peace, stability, and shared prosperity. Any strategy that, implicitly or explicitly, exposes Europe to asymmetric confrontation with actors possessing superior military, economic, and strategic capabilities risks becoming a dangerous illusion of strength, with disproportionate costs for European societies.
To this must be added another often underestimated factor: the deficit in strategic communication. The use of technical, self-referential language that is scarcely intelligible to the general public has widened the gap between Europe’s institutions and its citizens. In complex democratic systems, communication is not an accessory element but an integral part of the legitimacy of power. When strategic decisions are not explained clearly and transparently, the risk is to fuel misunderstanding, disengagement, and ultimately delegitimisation.
The final issue, therefore, does not concern the abstract validity of the European integration project, but the strategic legitimacy of the European Commission’s action as the effective centre of the Union’s decision-making process. In an international system characterised by the return of power politics as an ordering principle, the legitimacy of institutions cannot be assessed solely in procedural or value-based terms; it must also be measured by their ability to produce security, autonomy, and development.
In the absence of a profound and coherent revision of the geo-economic approach adopted by the Commission, the deterioration of European security appears to be difficult to reverse. Not due to a lack of values or institutional tools, but due to insufficient strategic rationality in the actions of its main decision-maker.
