Rising Europe: How Washington Should Respond to an Empowered EU

In December 2022, the European Union (EU) approved an 18 billion euro aid package to Ukraine to bolster its economy amidst Russia’s invasion. This follows approximately 2.5 billion euros in EU military aid to Ukraine between February and July 2022. The EU has enacted sweeping sanctions against Russia, banned exports of advanced technologies to Russia, and cut Russian banks out of the international financial system. The EU also agreed to a gas price cap to starve Russia energy profits and implemented a 140 billion euro plan to lower energy prices across Europe amidst war shortages.

Since Russia’s invasion, the EU has displayed a remarkable degree of unity and action, coordinating across 27 member states to carry out a robust military, economic, and political response to Russia’s transgressions – a response that would have been unfathomable just a few years ago. In a sign of the EU’s potency, Ukraine formally applied for EU membership just days after Russia’s invasion, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tweeted that “Ukraine’s future is with the EU.”

The EU’s robust response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the most visible sign of a persistent trend: the growing power and integration of the EU. For decades, the EU has quietly accumulated new members and authorities, making it one of the most important geopolitical forces on the world stage. The EU’s newfound power poses a foreign policy dilemma for the United States: whether to embrace the EU or circumvent it in favor of member-state level engagements.

Ultimately, the minor challenges that an empowered EU poses to the U.S. are far outweighed by the vital strategic benefits it offers. Washington should therefore welcome and encourage the EU’s growth.

Following World War II, six Western European countries (Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg) established the European Coal and Steel Community to unify war-making industries and ensure that no member could attack another. Over the next seven decades, this group expanded in membership and scope. By the 1990s, the Maastricht Treaty formally established the European Union and launched the EU’s single market, ensuring the free movement of people, goods, services, and money. The Schengen Treaty then largely eliminated internal EU borders. In 1999, the euro was introduced as a singular shared currency. As of 2022, the EU has 27 members states, an extensive regulatory structure, powerful executive, legislative, and judicial apparatuses, and significant influence over policy domains from foreign affairs to human rights, energy, economics, agriculture, financial matters, and more.

Despite the EU’s apparent success, numerous recent crises across Europe have thrown the Union’s future into doubt. The 2009 debt crisis in EU-member Greece rocked the EU’s economy and threatened the future of the euro and the single market. An EU bailout stemmed the crisis but tough austerity measures prompted anti-EU backlash. In 2015, at the peak of the EU migrant crisis, sharp divisions emerged among EU member states, leading to inaction and the rise of anti-immigrant populist movements. The United Kingdom’s Brexit vote to leave the EU in 2016 gave rise to fears that the EU was on the verge of disintegration. Add to these challenges the emergence of anti-EU French Presidential candidate Marine Le Pen and Eurosceptic political parties in Italy and Germany, the anti-EU policies and rhetoric of the Trump Administration, and democratic backsliding in EU members Poland and Hungary, and the EU’s future appeared grim.

Yet the EU has not only weathered these successive crises but has emerged stronger from them. The EU’s 2009 ‘European Economic Recovery Plan’ coordinated fiscal stimulus and investments following the great recession. This program, while imperfect and oft-criticized, did mitigate the crisis and represented an important symbolic step forward: the EU acting in concert to address a continent-wide crisis. Despite controversy, EU-led diplomatic deals eased the refugee crisis, and some experts argue that the EU is better off without the U.K., which had historically impeded EU integration. The U.K.’s present political instability, economic woes, and painful ‘hard’ Brexit agreement serve as a warning against any further EU ‘exits.’ Le Pen and Trump’s electoral defeats temporarily quieted some of the EU’s most prominent critics. Thus, the numerous crises that threatened to destroy the EU have nearly all been ameliorated.

The EU’s recent successes have allowed it to move beyond managing crises to laying the groundwork for further integration and expansion. The EU’s ambitious 800 billion euro COVID-19 recovery fund marked the first time the European Commission issued EU-specific debt to borrow money on international financial markets, rather than relying on member states’ national budgets. Moldova and Georgia have followed Ukraine’s formal application for EU membership and the EU launched a monumental European Green Deal to combat climate change. French President Emmanuel Macron’s calls for a stronger EU defense apparatus – rather than relying solely on NATO’s infrastructure – have recently gained ground, and proposals for an EU fiscal union persist. The momentum of the EU is clear. What was once just a customs union is not only expanding membership, but also improving policy integration and increasing global influence.

U.S. policymakers must decide how to react to this new geopolitical force. President Trump undermined the EU by instituting tariffs and praising Brexit. While President Biden has promised to restore the transatlantic alliance, he has fallen short of a whole-hearted embrace of the EU and has taken numerous actions – from the Afghanistan withdrawal to submarine deals and the Inflation Reduction Act – that have angered EU leaders.

Granted, a more powerful EU does pose challenges to the U.S. With a comparable population and economy, the EU would be a ‘peer competitor’. The EU and the U.S. disagree on some human rights issues and on foreign policy issues such as the Iran Nuclear Deal. The two have also clashed on business and technology concerns, including the EU’s Digital Service Act and carbon border tax, which harm U.S. businesses. Fresh tensions over U.S. green energy subsidies within the Inflation Reduction Act even threaten to ignite a new trade war. A Europe united under common regulations and authorities poses a much more challenging business competitor and negotiating adversary than a Europe divided into 27-member states vulnerable to a ‘divide and conquer’ strategy by U.S. diplomats and businesses. However, these concerns are outweighed by the significant benefits of a strengthened EU. Amidst rising authoritarian threats from China, Russia, and Iran, the U.S. should welcome a strong, democratic European bloc as a geopolitical ally. A bolstered EU is more capable of countering China and Russia via trade, technology, and diplomacy. The EU accession process provides a mechanism to transform and stabilize countries in Europe’s periphery, thereby alleviating the U.S. global leadership burden. An empowered Brussels can also moderate democratic backsliding and support U.S. priorities from climate change to space cooperation. And with more than $1 trillion in total trade flows between the U.S. and the EU, a stable and prosperous EU economically benefits the U.S. as well.

The rise of the EU should therefore be welcomed by U.S. policymakers. Washington should elevate EU-U.S. level engagements, bolster its diplomatic presence in Brussels, and pursue dialogues to expand the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council. The U.S. should also utilize development assistance programs to support EU enlargement in the Balkans and Eastern Europe and deploy its diplomats across EU capitals to encourage member states to pursue EU reforms and improvements. And adopting joint U.S.-EU strategies on China, Russia, climate change, and development would send a strong international signal that the liberal, democratic order remains resolute.

Rather than fearing the EU as an economic competitor, labeling the EU as a ‘foe,’ or seemingly ignoring EU concerns, the U.S. should embrace its newly-enhanced EU ally. With growing global threats, Washington needs all the friends it can get.