Yesterday it was criticised for going too far. Today, it is denounced as incapable of rising to the challenge. “Where is this Union? What is it doing? Bravo for disunity!” we now hear, as Europeans are threatened by Putin, horrified by the bloodshed in Iran, appalled by the decline of international law and constantly challenged, above all by Donald Trump, whose latest whim is to use customs duties to make us accept the annexation of Greenland.

Even though it was they, the majority of them, who had so stubbornly refused to make the Union a political and military power, Europeans suddenly want it to be as strong as a federal state, that United States of Europe which they had for so long seen as an abomination to be fought against.

After all, we could remind yesterday’s Atlanticists that it was they who blocked the path to common defence; the Eurosceptics that it is because of them that political union remains to be built; to the British that they only joined the Union to prevent its consolidation before leaving it, and to the French that they alone rejected the European Defence Community in 1954, thanks to which we could have formed a political union from the outset.

There are twenty lessons to be learned from these past mistakes, but the urgency lies elsewhere.

The urgency is to stop underestimating ourselves.

We have responded to Donald Trump’s weakening of the Atlantic Alliance and Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine by laying the foundations for a common defence. We are still far from having invested enough money and determination, but we have done it and, although insufficiently, we have been able to arm Ukraine, finance it, borrow to lend it €90 billion and stand with it when the White House wanted to impose on it, last summer, the surrender that the Kremlin is dreaming of.

It is thanks to the immediate mobilisation of 25 of the 27 EU countries, supported by the United Kingdom, Canada, Norway and Australia, that the Ukrainians were able to resist Russian and American pressure. It is this success that we must focus on, rather than the secondary fact that the Czech Republic has now joined Hungary and Slovakia in submitting to the Kremlin.

Despite the immense delay caused by the blindness of nationalists, Atlanticists and Eurosceptics, we were able to impose a power balance on Donald Trump. We were able to do so because the American economy, led by high technology, cannot do without the 450 million consumers in our common market, and because the United States would have just as much, if not more, to lose than we would in a trade war.

Even Donald Trump must know how far he can go without overstepping the mark, especially since breaking the Atlantic Alliance or depriving Ukraine of American intelligence would further discredit the United States by losing the trust of all its allies, particularly in Asia.

Even without a common defence, even without institutions capable of meeting today’s challenges, we remain indispensable to the United States, which has never been so divided since the Civil War, while we have never been so united, not even under Rome.

The White House cannot ignore this, which is why sending European troops to Greenland, even if only symbolic, carries much more weight than is being said. It means that we would be prepared to defend, with arms in hand, the sovereignty of this European country against any attempt at annexation by force.

The message is so clear that Donald Trump has preferred to return to his customs scare tactics. He is not prepared to take the political risk of an armed confrontation with the United States’ European allies with the mid-term elections looming, his poll ratings falling and 83% of Americans refusing to even buy Greenland.

The European Union must do more, much more.

What the Union must do is not to reform, but to reinvent itself.

There is much to be done but let us stop seeing only our weaknesses and none of our strengths. Let us stop announcing the inevitable victory of the RN in France and the AfD in Germany. Let us stop declaring ourselves dead and buried when, far from bowing to so many challenges, we are growing stronger. Not enough – yes, that is unfortunately true – but much more than we think.

Photo by Polina Tankilevitch