Europe should be standing up to Trump and Putin – instead it is mirroring them

The Guardian

7 hours ago

Donald Trump's 'America First' policies are undermining decades of transatlantic cooperation just as Putin's Russia destabilises Europe with direct military aggression. But these twin shocks have unintentionally accomplished something the EU institutions never could. They have made European integration feel not just important, but existential – a matter of democratic survival – for ordinary citizens.
From Helsinki to Lisbon, people are suddenly experiencing the same existential unease. Trade wars, defence threats and military aggression don't respect borders. More and more Europeans now recognise that their small, individual nations cannot withstand simultaneous pressure from both Washington and Moscow. They find themselves caught between economic coercion and military intimidation.
Recent Eurobarometer data confirm the shift: 74% of Europeans now view EU membership as a positive thing – the highest level of support ever recorded.
This is a historic opportunity. And yet, EU and national leaders remain paralysed – unable, or unwilling, to convert this public support and shared urgency into political momentum for reducing Europe's dependence on US military guarantees and economic shelter.
This is the real tragedy: Europe's governments no longer practise the very ideals they preach. Though the EU still speaks the language of multilateralism and climate leadership, its policy direction and that of most of its member states increasingly mirror Trump's.
On migration, the EU's new pact on migration and asylum reframes asylum as a security risk, echoing Trump's immigration crackdown. On climate, Ursula von der Leyen's European Commission has quietly dismantled key green deal initiatives and delayed critical legislation, in a deregulatory shift reminiscent of Trump's EPA rollbacks. Civil society is also under mounting pressure. Just as Trump has targeted non-profits and dissenters, the conservative European People's party (EPP) – von der Leyen's political 'family' – has launched an unprecedented assault on NGOs, threatening their funding and legitimacy. Even fundamental rights are at risk. The EU's response to Hungary's ban on Pride marches and expansion of surveillance powers has been tepid at best – tacitly tolerating democratic backsliding within its own ranks.
But perhaps the most dangerous convergence lies in how power is exercised. Trump governs by executive fiat, sidelining Congress with executive orders. Today's commission is drifting in a similar direction at the demand of a majority of its member states. It centralises power, pushing through complex 'omnibus' packages and bypassing the European parliament most recently in its proposal to rearm the EU.
What we are witnessing is not just a rupture in the transatlantic alliance but something more insidious.
There are signs of an ideological convergence between Trump's America and today's European political centre, where parties are increasingly stealing ideas from the far-right – as in Germany – or governing with those parties, directly or indirectly. That is not only the reality in many EU countries but in the EU system itself under von der Leyen.
Despite pledges in her first term to stick to the centre of politics, the commission increasingly relies on the votes of a rightwing majority in the European parliament, formed by conservative and far-right groupings of all stripes. These include the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), which used to be considered mainstream conservative but which now brings together Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy party with more extreme far-right parties such as France's Reconquête and the Sweden Democrats. There is also the Patriots for Europe (PfE) group, co-led by Marine Le Pen and Viktor Orbán, and the even more extreme Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN), dominated by Germany's Alternative für Deutschland.
The EPP has traditionally allied with socialist and liberal MEPs who as a bloc helped elect von der Leyen last year. But the EPP has recently voted with parties to the right of it, notably to delay a new deforestation law. The same happened on budgetary matters, the recognition of Edmundo González as Venezuela's president, and more recently in blocking an EU ethics body.
There is also a growing presidentialisation of the commission. During the Covid pandemic, von der Leyen personally negotiated vaccine deals by text message – shielding those discussions from public and parliamentary scrutiny.
The risk is that tolerance of such a shift towards personalised, opaque governance makes it easier to pass to the 'Trumpification' stage – where politicians increasingly borrow from the authoritarian playbook, preferring executive fiat over parliamentary democracy.
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This creeping phenomenon weakens Europe's ability to respond to the very threats that should be pushing it closer together. Just when European citizens are most willing to support joint action – on Ukraine, Gaza, big tech, or defence – their leaders are failing to respond. What's missing is the political courage to articulate a compelling alternative to far-right messaging – one that makes an affirmative case for EU-wide action on the issues that matter most to Europeans: common security, managed migration and shared prosperity. This means presenting European integration not as a threat to national identity, but as the means to protect and strengthen it.
When European nations pool their defence capabilities, they don't surrender sovereignty – they multiply their capacity to defend their communities. When they coordinate migration policies, they don't open floodgates – they create orderly, humane systems that serve both newcomers and existing communities. When they harmonise economic policies, they don't level down – they lift up regions and workers who have been left behind. This vision appeals to the same desire for security and belonging that populists exploit, but offers real solutions instead of scapegoats.
This failure to articulate such a vision has real costs. Every month of delay in building European defence capabilities is another month of dependence on an unreliable US. Every compromise with authoritarians – whether in Budapest or Jerusalem – erodes the democratic credibility that makes European leadership possible.
Trump and Putin have inadvertently given Europe a shared sense of purpose and a need for urgent action. The question is not whether Europeans are ready to respond – the polls show they are. The question is whether Europe's leaders will sleepwalk into irrelevance, or worse.
Alberto Alemanno is the Jean Monnet professor of EU law at HEC Paris and the founder of The Good Lobby