How the EU must act to survive mounting global threats.
At the beginning of December, as the new European Commission began its tenure, a meeting was held in Valle d’Aosta, Italy, organised by the publication Le Grand Continent, which focuses on Europe and its future. This gathering offered an opportunity to evaluate the main challenges facing the continent as 2025 approaches. The mood, however, was decidedly grim.
Between the escalating war of aggression against Ukraine, the worsening crisis in the Middle East—where Europe is increasingly discredited for its inaction by the so-called ‘global South’—and the return of Donald Trump to power with its potentially dire implications for Europe, the outlook appears bleak. Yet, the unexpected collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s criminal regime might offer the European Union a chance to reverse the trend, provided it acts decisively.
Nearly three years after Vladimir Putin launched his war of aggression against Ukraine, Russia continues its advance, wreaking devastation on the country with assistance from Iran, China, and North Korea. The situation could worsen if Donald Trump, upon returning to office after 20 January, chooses to sever American aid to Ukraine.
While the European Union demonstrated resilience in 2022 by cutting its energy dependence on Russia and providing military aid to a nation at war for the first time, it has since struggled to sustain the necessary momentum to ensure Ukraine’s victory over Putin. For example, it took over eighteen months for EU nations to deliver the million artillery shells promised to Ukraine in March 2023—while Russia expended a similar quantity in just three months. Meanwhile, Viktor Orban’s obstructionism increasingly hampers EU efforts, bolstered by the support of other heads of state and government.
A Putin victory in Ukraine, even in the form of a Korean-style frozen conflict that allows him to maintain his regime, consolidate territorial conquests, and prepare for new imperial adventures in Ukraine or elsewhere, would pose an existential threat to the Union.
At the same time, due to its internal divisions, the European Union has been unable to influence events in the Middle East following the Hamas terrorist attack on 7 October 2023, despite the fact that this crisis could have far-reaching consequences for the Union. Whether through its increased dependence on fossil fuel supplies from the Middle East, a potential wave of refugees arriving in Europe, or the destabilising impact of the conflict on European societies, the stakes are high.
The contrast between Europe’s commitment to Ukraine—despite its shortcomings—and its inaction in response to the tens of thousands of Palestinian civilian casualties, as well as the numerous war crimes and breaches of international law committed by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government over the past year, has fuelled perceptions of a European ‘double standard’. This narrative, widely exploited by Putin’s propaganda, resonates strongly across the ‘global South’, far beyond just Muslim-majority countries because European policy lends itself to such criticism.
This mistrust of the European Union is further exacerbated by its ‘Fortress Europe’ approach to migration, its hesitance to reform international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to grant the ‘global South’ greater representation, and its reluctance to fund the green transition in developing nations, despite Europe’s historical responsibility for climate change.
Recent developments in the Sahel underscore the potentially devastating consequences of this growing hostility towards the EU. There is now a serious risk of a consolidated alliance of ‘the rest against the West’, as exemplified by the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia, last October.
In a world shaped by Trump and Putin, the European Union has no future unless it rebuilds its relationships with the ‘global South’. Unlike the United States, which can afford an inward-looking approach due to its vast resources and relatively few neighbouring countries, the EU cannot isolate itself. If the threat from Putin’s Russia in the East combines with growing hostility in the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and sub-Saharan Africa—while the United States opts to abandon Europe—the very survival of the Union would be at stake.
So far, however, this critical issue of relations with the ‘global South’ appears to have escaped the attention of most European leaders, including Ursula von der Leyen and the coalition of right- and far-right parties that now support her. On the contrary, their policies, particularly regarding migration, risk deepening Europe’s isolation.
Against this backdrop, the unexpected collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime presents the European Union with a chance to recover lost ground. It significantly weakens Russia and its allies, not only in Ukraine and the Middle East but also in sub-Saharan Africa.
How the EU approaches the post-Assad era will be crucial. If it views this moment merely as an opportunity to expedite the return of Syrian refugees from Europe, the chance will have been squandered. However, if the EU is willing to commit fully—financially and otherwise—to aiding Syrians and Lebanese in rebuilding their states, it could mitigate the damage to its reputation caused by the Gaza conflict.
This approach would not absolve the Union from the need to reassess its relationship with Israel, where a far-right, supremacist majority intend to continue flouting international law. Nor does it exempt the EU from finally using its available levers to impose the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
It will be decisive for the future of the Union and its ability to stand firm against Vladimir Putin’s ambitions, with or without the support of the United States.
Originally published in French in Le Nouvel Obs
Guillaume Duval is the former editor-in-chief of Alternatives Economiques and former speechwriter of HRVP Josep Borell.