Turning 27 small to middle-sized powers into a geopolitical heavyweight has been French President Emmanuel Macron’s largely unheeded call ever since US President Donald Trump’s first term. Photo / Fabrice Coffrini, AFP
At an emergency summit of European Union leaders in Brussels, the building blocks of a putative empire were beginning to take shape.
United States President Donald Trump’s threats over Greenland have just exposed Europe’s weakness. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin wages war on its eastern flank. China’s President Xi Jinping is a relentless competitor.
In a brutal new age of world powers, the EU wants to build a bigger, richer, stronger “super Europe” able to resist the dangerous whims of the globe’s autocrats.
Turning 27 quarrelsome small to middle-sized powers into a geopolitical heavyweight has been French President Emmanuel Macron’s largely unheeded call ever since the US President’s first term.
This time though, it is different, multiple Brussels insiders have told the Telegraph.
“Let’s take a step back and realise we live in a world where the leader of the free world is willing to upend the Western alliance over something he sees on Fox News,” one EU diplomat said.
“It is not a cosy place,” Friedrich Merz, the German Chancellor, said at Davos of a global order changing at “an unprecedented pace”.
The EU’s answer to every major crisis has always been “more Europe”. To assert “European sovereignty”, it needs more members, more money and more military.
“Europe has got the message,” Merz said. “My Government will do its homework and pursue an ambitious reform agenda revolving around security, competitiveness and European unity.”
A day after the summit, he signed an accord pledging close co-ordination on European reforms with Giorgia Meloni of fellow founding member, Italy.
Macron and Merz, the EU’s two most influential leaders, are in agreement, which has not always been the case in recent times.
The French President vowed Europe would not give in to “bullies” after Trump insisted Denmark had to sell the US Greenland or face tariffs.
Mette Frederiksen, the Danish Prime Minister, arrived in Brussels from visiting a supportive British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in London after Trump’s climbdown.
She said: “When Europe is not divided, when we stand together, and when we are clear and strong, also in our willingness to stand up for ourselves, then results will show. I think we have learned something in the last days and weeks.”
“We know we have to work for a more independent Europe,” Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission President, said. “This is not something which happens overnight. This is hard work.”
It also means the EU is poised to get much, much bigger.
“People want to join the EU. Nobody wants to join China. No neighbour of the US wants to join the US,” Bart De Wever, the Belgian Prime Minister, said in Davos.
“Because we have respect, we have the rule of law. We do speak softly.”
Enlargement, adding new member states, was a dirty word in Brussels for years. Now no fewer than nine nations are knocking at the door of the club.
It is not quite 2004’s “big bang”, when 10 mostly former eastern-bloc nations joined the EU at once. But the war in Ukraine has changed everything.
Kyiv’s EU membership is a vital component of the peace deal Trump is attempting to reach with Putin.
Joining the EU is a lengthy, difficult and technical process every bit as complicated as leaving it. It can take more than a decade.
The draft peace plan foresees Ukraine joining the EU as early as 2027, which means the process needs to be sped up.
“We want to make sure we can deliver on our promises to Ukraine. The EU cannot be seen to be blocking a peace deal,” an EU official told the Telegraph.
Step-by-step membership is now being considered by the commission. Ukraine could join the bloc but with restricted rights in areas such as voting, until it makes the reforms necessary to qualify for classic membership.
These include alignment with EU laws, rule of law safeguards and anti-corruption measures. But the plan will need the blessing of the bloc’s capitals.
“Adapting enlargement rules takes the EU and member states out of their comfort zone. But given the geopolitical context, there is now a debate to come up with innovative solutions,” the EU official said.
Bending once inviolable rules has a knock-on effect. The six Western Balkans countries have long coveted membership and will demand similar treatment.
Montenegro and Albania are the closest to being given the keys to the club after first applying in 2008 and 2009. North Macedonia, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia are also on the waiting list.
Moldova and Georgia applied to join in 2022 after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Iceland
Iceland could hold a referendum as early as the northern spring on whether to become a member, in part as protection from the acquisitive US President. Greenland, while part of Denmark, is not an EU member.
Perhaps because of Trump’s habit of calling Greenland “Iceland”, a poll in April found 43% in favour of EU membership with 39% opposed.
Iceland is already a Brussels rule-taker as a member of the European Economic Area (EEA) but has its own independent fisheries policy.
The EU’s common fisheries policy, which demands access to waters, could be an issue, but if the referendum is won, Iceland’s accession should be straightforward.
Bundling Iceland together with less welcome members would help sugar the pill, making it harder for capitals to veto the other countries.
Norway
Norway too is an EEA rule-taker and has grown rich on exporting gas to Europe, particularly since Russian energy was cut off after the invasion of Ukraine.
Oslo seems happy with the current, very close relationship with the EU, but the world is changing fast.
Balkans
Bringing in the Balkans will bolster the EU’s eastern flank against Russian influence and bring more stability to the region.
“The EU is a peace project, and this is important with the Balkans,” the official said.
Ukraine
The addition of almost 40 million Ukrainians and the second-largest land mass on the continent is an even more important bulwark against Putin.
Ukraine has a battle-hardened Army of around 900,000 people.
It has weapons factories that can help Europe rearm. It has plans to build up to 20 million drones in 2026, should it receive financial backing from its allies.
It will be the “steel porcupine”, supplied with more arms from the EU, that can deter any further Russian aggression into Europe.
Land mass and population
With the Balkans, Moldova, Georgia, Ukraine and Iceland, the EU would grow by almost 400,000 square miles (1,035,995sq km), depending on Kyiv’s borders after the war. The population could swell by 57 million.
“The EU will benefit because in this new world size matters. It will make our single market larger, it will bring stability and security,” the EU official said.
For this to work, a new multi-speed Europe must be born. The old rulebook of integration must be torn up and the rules of access to the single market could be bent.
As the EU works to build its own sphere of influence, countries, including Britain, could be granted closer relations to the core group that fall short of full membership.
It is no secret that the United Kingdom, as a nuclear and military power, influential member of Nato and the UN Security Council, would be welcome back into the EU fold, if it wished to rejoin.
The same cannot be said for Turkey, which formally applied to join in 1987 but blows hot and cold on membership. Ankara is an important strategic partner, the relationship can be improved but sources said full membership was a non-starter.
The existing member states must unanimously approve any new entrants and will have to be convinced.
Tough decisions will have to be made on agricultural subsidies and regional funding and the new members cannot be allowed to destabilise the bloc as whole.
Each final accession treaty is tailored to each candidate country. There will be a strong focus on corruption. Hungary’s Viktor Orban, the EU’s longest-serving leader, is accused of backsliding on democratic standards, but bringing him to heel has been difficult.
“Orban clauses” tying EU funding to respect for the rule of law are being mulled for new members.
Hungary has already said it will veto Ukraine’s membership. Not every member state recognises Kosovo’s sovereignty.
France, the Netherlands, Austria and Germany have historically been sceptical about enlargement.
Moods may be shifting in Paris and Berlin, but nationalist eurosceptic parties are enjoying success across Europe, including in France and Germany, where they are the main opposition.
The EU is often compared to the Holy Roman Empire, which Voltaire said was “neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire”. To avoid the same accusation, it needs to streamline its decision-making, but that means giving up powers to Brussels.
An already slow EU has been delayed or blocked from foreign policy decisions by a single veto-wielding member state.
Budapest, Putin’s best ally in the EU, is the worst offender in recent times, notably when it comes to the war in Ukraine.
A long-standing taboo has been broken. Until recently, decisions would only be adopted by consensus of the entire European Council of 27 prime ministers and presidents.
Now no one raises an eyebrow when decisions on Ukraine are made by 26, without Hungary, where elections will be held this year.
There’s a new appetite to move forward on important matters in smaller groups of member states if necessary.
Unanimous decisions are out of fashion, with more and more being taken by a vote, with a majority vote, weighted by population.
The EU’s new anti-coercion instrument, the “trade bazooka” Macron waved at Trump, does not need unanimity.
The EU’s greatest asset is its single market of 460 million consumers, the pull behind its “tractor beam” of influence over global regulation.
Enlargement alone won’t convince prime ministers juggling tight budgets to get on board with the difficult work of empire-building.
However, money might when EU GDP growth rates are at 0.4% in the third quarter of 2025 and Europe must rearm.
European leaders want cuts in red tape to boost the region’s competitiveness and to turn Europe’s high savings into private investment.
Work is under way on integrating capital markets to find investment from other sources than banks. Corporate insolvency rules are being harmonised.
The EU was addicted to Russian gas. It still depends on US military might. It is dependent on China for rare-earth minerals used for electric vehicles, smartphones, solar panels and wind turbines.
Europe is hunting for new partners to strengthen its vital supply chains. Ukraine has them and so does Greenland. Inside the bloc, a new EU-funded rare-earth factory opened in Narva, Estonia last year.
France wants the EU to favour European companies, with uncertain consequences for British firms.
“Protection doesn’t mean protectionism. Today’s Europeans are too naive,” Macron said in Davos.
The US is the EU’s largest trading partner, followed by China. Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs imposed a blanket 15% rise on European goods.
Commission negotiators have struck trade deals with more reliable countries, including Trump’s neighbours Mexico and Canada. It’s seen as vital to making Europe more resilient to economic blackmail and to shore up World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules.
On the day Trump threatened his Greenland tariffs, von der Leyen signed a trade deal with the seven South American nations of the Mercosur trading bloc.
It capped 25 years of negotiations in the face of European farmers who fear being undercut. Last week, to fury in Berlin, the European Parliament subjected the deal to last-minute legal scrutiny by EU judges.
Expectation is building that an EU-India trade deal could be done in the coming weeks.
Negotiations are continuing with Australia, after a deal with New Zealand entered into force last year.
A deal was done with Canada as Trump began his first term, and another struck with Japan during it.
Mark Carney, the Canadian Prime Minister, has moved closer to Europe since Trump suggested Canada should become the 51st state. In Davos, he warned the old world order was not coming back and called on “middle powers” to act together.
The EU has launched a development programme to compete with China’s Belt and Road initiative in Africa in a race for new global alliances.
It also has no intention of turning its back on the US.
Donald Tusk, Poland’s Prime Minister, said: “It’s good that the Union is mobilising and gaining more confidence in its own abilities. But it would be wrong – and I hope no one gets such ideas – to turn this into something anti-American.”
An EU diplomat said: “Those in favour of the ‘trade bazooka’ often ignore the bigger picture that European economies need American trade to pay for any push for strategic autonomy.”
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused European nations of being too busy arguing with each other to become a “truly global power” in Davos. He has a point.
An empire is only as strong as the army which defends it. The US security blanket and peace dividend was used to cut European defence budgets.
Nato’s European allies, including Britain, spend less than half of Washington’s annual defence budget of around US$1 trillion (£731 billion, €842b).
The invasion of Ukraine forced Europeans to demand that arms manufacturers ramp up production to meet Kyiv’s defensive needs and backfill the stockpiles of donated equipment.
Trump forced an increase in defence spending through Nato, to 5% of GDP annually, as the price for commitment to Article 5, the alliance’s mutual defence clause.
European confidence in Article 5, and American support if Russia attacks, have been damaged by the mercurial US President.
The Greenland saga may have proved the straw that broke the camel’s back.
In theory, the continent should come close to equalling American defence spending when the 5% Nato target is expected to be hit in 2035.
But European militaries rely on high-tech equipment produced by the US.
“There is no reality where we can be independent from the US in the foreseeable future – especially on security,” a European diplomat said.
“Yes, we’re ramping up on it very quickly, and massively, but it’ll still take decades.”
The mooted timescale will act as a test of whether Europe is really ready to assert independence.
Can Europe muster the resources to replace the American-made F-35 stealth fighter jet, which at least 13 European nations will operate within the next decade? Or the Patriot air-defence system, which is superior to European versions?
Currently, through Nato, Europe enjoys the umbrella of Britain’s and America’s nuclear arsenal. However, the UK’s submarine-launched Trident deterrent is not independent of the US.
France maintains its own independent nuclear deterrent, but it would take Paris to rip up its doctrine and finally offer it up for service beyond defending its homelands.
The commission has plans to plug the capability gaps. The €150b Safe defence loan scheme is going to be used to fund joint European projects, such as a European-made air defence system or a tank.
Von der Leyen has also moved to ease debt rules within the bloc to finance a further €650b in defence spending, hoping to make its member states ready for war with Russia by 2030.
There are examples of successful European collaboration in defence, such as the Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jet.
But for every triumph there are multiple failures – triggered by different operating requirements and competing national defence industries.
Germany and France in recent years promised to build a fighter jet and tank together, but squabbling killed the projects off.
While member states were arguing over how to handle Trump’s threat to seize Greenland by force, a former EU leader was busy working out a real plan.
Mark Rutte, the former Dutch prime minister now serving as Nato’s Secretary-General, went about proposing a deal that would enable the US military to enhance its presence on the Arctic island.
This is something EU leaders had been suggesting for a long time, but only Rutte was able to secure the deal and Trump’s climbdown.
Trump realised that Nato was simply far more important than the EU, because his armed forces are reliant on the alliance for its operations in the Middle East.
This will ultimately keep the US President, despite his rhetoric, supportive of Article 5, which risks sapping the continent of the political will needed to transform into a superpower.
Brexit Britain also must avoid being squashed by the established superpowers. Will it try and save itself by finding a role in the emerging one on its doorstep?
Starmer insists Labour will not violate its red lines of no return to the single market or freedom of movement in his “reset” negotiations with Brussels.
“Starmer is fiddling at the edges of the [Boris] Johnson package deal. He’s discovering that it is expensive, that it is time-consuming and that it is frustrating,” said Andrew Duff, a former Liberal Democrat MEP and a fellow at the European Policy Centre think-tank in Brussels.
“It will be up to his successor to draw the proper conclusion from all this, which is to scrap all that and apply to join again.”
The Prime Minister insists Britain does not have to choose between the US and EU but nailed his colours to Europe’s mast over Greenland.
Starmer has already agreed to align with EU law on food rules, a defence deal and a foreign policy pact. Backbenchers are talking up a new customs union with Brussels as Labour searches for economic growth.
Should Super Europe begin to take form, it may prove impossible for him or his successors to resist being pulled closer into its orbit.
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