Project Syndicate - Why MAGA Fears Europe Feb 20, 2026

 Project Syndicate 

Why MAGA Fears Europe

Feb 20, 2026

US President Donald Trump and his acolytes have long promoted the narrative that the European Union is weak and misguided, and there was no let-up at the World Economic Forum’s annual gathering Davos in January or at this month’s Munich Security Conference. But the truth is that Europe’s social-market model and commitment to openness continue to pay dividends. Far from doubting itself, the EU should double down on its strengths and, as the US-China geopolitical rivalry heats up, tout them as an example for the rest of the world.

Featured in this Big Picture

PS editors

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Stephen Holmes

Nadia Calviño

Dani Rodrik

Sandeep Vaheesan

Alberto Alemanno

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MAGA’s Approach to Europe Hasn’t Changed

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Rubio’s Silk-Stocking Diplomacy

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Europe Should Reject US-Style Competitiveness

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Europe Is Stronger Than Its Leaders Think

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Feb 20, 2026

PS editors

At last year’s Munich Security Conference, US Vice President JD Vance delivered a hostile address to America’s European allies, accusing them – without a hint of irony – of retreating from their “most fundamental values” and suppressing free speech, not least to sustain “out-of-control migration.” So, one might have breathed a sigh of relief this year, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio took a more polished approach, inviting America’s “cherished allies” and “oldest friends” to help it realize its vision of a “new century of prosperity.”

But while Rubio’s tone was sweeter than Vance’s, his message was no less “menacing,” observes Mark Leonard, the director of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “The Europe he celebrated is not today’s European Union,” but rather the “ethno-nationalist Europe” championed by the continent’s “far-right parties,” which, as the new US National Security Strategy makes clear, “can count on America’s backing.”

Carl Bildt, a former prime minister and foreign minister of Sweden, agrees, noting that whereas “one would think the horror show playing out on NATO’s eastern flank would merit some mention,” Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine was mentioned only in passing, and with nary a hint of criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Instead, Rubio reiterated “the MAGA, funhouse-mirror version of events leading up to the present moment.” The message was clear: the transatlantic divide “has become massive” – and it is “still widening.”

In this sense, writes Stephen Holmes, Professor of Law at New York University School of Law, Rubio is just “Vance in a silk stocking.” The future he describes – “as proud, as sovereign, and as vital as our civilization’s past” – is not a “vision of something to be built,” but racism-imbued “nostalgia packaged as a goal.” Rubio’s reassurances that the US wants a “strong Europe” must not be allowed to distract from the reality that the Trump administration is “publicly backing” European leaders who have spent their careers undermining European stability and unity.

According to European Investment Bank President Nadia Calviño, the real message of this year’s Munich Security Conference was one of “trust and confidence” in the “technology, trade and industry powerhouse” that is the European Union. Surveys showing “record levels of public support for the EU and the euro,” and indicating that “majorities around the world see the EU as a great power on equal footing with the US and China,” should not be surprising. Europe is a “different kind of superpower,” which remains committed to principles, loyal to its partners and allies, and willing to “build bridges in a world of walls.”

That is why European global leadership is so important, explains Harvard Kennedy School’s Dani Rodrik. “Many yearn for a better future than what the US and Chinese models offer,” and Europe’s “social-market model” has delivered “greater equality,” access to “middle-class jobs, and “reliable safety nets.” But to meet the current moment, Europe must “invert” its “founding logic.” That means building a “common foreign and defense policy,” while “letting countries do their own thing in economics – on their own, or in groupings of their own choosing.”

In a similar vein, Sandeep Vaheesan of the Open Markets Institute urges European policymakers not to heed calls to emulate America’s economic model, which fuels a “pernicious” form of competition that is often “patently injurious to consumers and workers.” Instead, it should use competition law, including robust antitrust enforcement, to “encourage firms to compete and succeed in ways that produce broad-based benefits.”

This is exactly what the Trump administration is afraid of, notes Alberto Alemanno of HEC Paris. The EU proves that a social-market economy – in which “workers have a voice through collective decision-making, universal health care and education are rights, and antitrust law protects competition instead of supporting state-backed or politically connected firms” – can deliver “stability, prosperity, and global clout.” For authoritarians like Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Chinese President Xi Jinping, that is a very inconvenient truth.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio at a bilateral meeting during the Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany, February 13, 2026.

Liesa Johannssen/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

MAGA’s Approach to Europe Hasn’t Changed

Feb 19, 2026

Mark Leonard

Although the speech that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered to this year’s Munich Security Conference was softer in tone than the one that Vice President JD Vance gave last year, the Europe he celebrated was that of the ethno-nationalist far right. Europe is on its own, and it must start acting like it.

MUNICH – At last year’s Munich Security Conference, JD Vance gave a performance worthy of his boss in both its theatricality and its virality. Not only did he break the norm of transatlantic comity and forego the usual bromides that previous US vice presidents brought to the MSC; he also snubbed his German guests by meeting with Alice Weidel of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) instead of then-Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

By contrast, the American tone was much more conciliatory this year. But though the optics have changed, the core message has not. The US delegation’s two big interventions, by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Under Secretary of “War” (Defense) Elbridge A. Colby, displayed the two sides of the Trumpian coin. And each, in its own way, underscored the long-term challenge facing Europeans.

On the surface, Colby’s remarks seemed to pose the more direct challenge. A hard-nosed realist, he is America’s third-highest-ranking defense official, with responsibilities that include deciding where and how US troops are deployed. In a question-and-answer session that I mediated, he argued that Europeans and Americans no longer have any shared values to stand on. For him, the highlight of the conference was that he had heard the term “rules-based order” mentioned only twice.

Colby made clear that although the US remains committed to its extended nuclear deterrent, the Trump administration’s goal is for Europeans to assume responsibility for the conventional defense of the continent. He then praised the German and Polish governments for massively scaling up their military spending, and addressed Trump’s handling of the Ukraine negotiations, threats against Greenland, and other sources of transatlantic tension. “A certain degree of anxiety is salutary,” he argued. “If you had a near-death experience … you change your diet, you don't want to be too reassured ... you want to make sure you take your medicine, exercise.”

Whereas Colby spoke with conviction about the need to make Europeans feel uncomfortable, Rubio wooed his audience with paeans to the unbreakable civilizational links between Europe and the US. In a strange inversion of NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte’s reference to Trump as “daddy,” Rubio acknowledged that America “will always be a child of Europe.”

He then expanded at length on Europe’s contributions to a shared Western heritage, with references to Christopher Columbus’s discovery of the New World, the frontier spirit exhibited by Scots-Irish settlers in America, the Christian faith, and even German beer. (Not surprisingly for a member of the Trump administration, his account pointedly failed to mention the atrocities committed against Native Americans or any other unsavory elements of European imperialism.)

After this brief historical tour, Rubio promised the audience that America would never give up on Europe. The transatlantic relationship, he explained, reflects “the deepest bonds that nations [can] share.” That takeaway met with a standing ovation. Speaking immediately after Rubio, the chairman of the conference, Wolfgang Ischinger, thanked America’s top diplomat for his “reassuring” message. And soon thereafter, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also alluded positively to his speech in her own remarks.

In fact, Rubio’s message was more menacing to European governments than Colby’s. The Europe he celebrated is not today’s European Union – the post-Enlightenment Europe that UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and von der Leyen all invoked. Rather, he had in mind the ethno-nationalist Europe that one hears about from ascendant far-right populist parties. According to the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy, those are the forces that can count on America’s backing.

While Colby urged Europeans to accept the end of the post-Cold War order and come to terms with the fact that 340 million Americans will not underwrite the security of 500 million Europeans in perpetuity, he also made it clear that a grown-up, self-sufficient Europe could remain a close US ally. The subtext of Rubio’s message was far more sinister. He seems to envision a new civilizational Atlanticism in which US respect for Europe’s sovereignty is contingent on European governments’ ideological proximity to MAGA and the far right. Like Vance, he is implicitly advocating regime change.

Although the choice of messengers may have surprised long-time MAGA watchers, both Colby and Rubio are faithful servants of Trump. Their contribution is to add a veneer of intellectual heft and coherence to the president’s more instinctive approach. That said, both will continue to influence Republican foreign policy long after Trump has left the stage – especially Rubio, who obviously has presidential ambitions. Europeans should listen carefully to both. Rather than being fooled by Rubio’s siren song, they should let Colby’s shock therapy have its effect.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivering a keynote speech at the 62nd Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany, on February 14, 2026, amid concerns about the transatlantic alliance under U.S. President Donald Trump.

Johannes Simon/Getty Images

Marco Rubio’s Sugar-Coated MAGA

Feb 17, 2026

Carl Bildt

While US Vice President JD Vance used his remarks to the Munich Security Conference last year to hector and insult European leaders, Secretary of State Marco Rubio seemed more eager to flatter. And yet, America’s top diplomat merely confirmed that the transatlantic divide has become massive – and is still widening.

MUNICH – As soon as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio rose to address this year’s Munich Security Conference, it was evident that the Trump administration intended to change its rhetoric toward America’s longstanding European allies. While Vice President JD Vance used his remarks last year to hector and insult European leaders, Rubio seemed eager to flatter. After paying homage to European history and culture – highlighting various achievements, from the Sistine Chapel to the Beatles – he acknowledged that the United States is itself a child of Europe.

It all sounded very nice to European ears after a year that had horrified everyone committed to the transatlantic relationship. Not only has the administration Rubio represents accused Europe of inviting “civilizational erasure.” It has even threatened to seize Greenland, the sovereign territory of a fellow NATO member (Denmark). Was Rubio signaling a change?

On the contrary, after the applause died down, it soon became obvious that the Trump administration’s basic message remains the same. Both in its substance and its perspective on the world, Rubio’s speech revealed a deep gulf between the Trump administration and the Europeans in the room. Notably, Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine was mentioned only in passing, and with nary a hint of criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Yet with casualties around 1.2 million, a front line stretching 1,200 kilometers (746 miles), and more than 400 Russian attack drones targeting Ukrainian infrastructure and civilian centers the previous week, one would think the horror show playing out on NATO’s eastern flank would merit some mention.

The threat that Russia poses is a dominant concern for Europeans, because they recognize that the defense of Ukraine today is vital to European security tomorrow. For the Trump administration, however, the issue does not even bear mentioning. In terms of basic threat perceptions, the gulf between the US and Europe could hardly be wider.

Before praising European culture and history, Rubio outlined the MAGA, funhouse-mirror version of events leading up to the present moment. The decades since the end of the Cold War were based on a “dangerous delusion” and a “dogmatic vision of free and unfettered trade,” he argued. The “rules-based global order” is “an overused term” that ignores the lessons from 5,000 years of human history and has driven too many societies to “appease a climate cult.”

It is no secret that the “rules-based order” is a MAGA bogeyman. Another member of the Trump administration in attendance, Elbridge Colby, the grandson of Richard Nixon’s CIA director, William Colby, noted with satisfaction that he had heard the term mentioned only once at a recent NATO ministerial meeting.

Obviously, no European outside of the continent’s most extreme political fringes shares this attitude. We understand that the rules-based global order was never perfect, and that anyone who is inclined to list its failures and shortcomings can do so easily. But we also know that its achievements following the last bloody conflict between great powers have been close to miraculous.

During the decades-long period of relative peace and stability following World War II, the global population tripled, life expectancy doubled, and the world economy grew 15-fold. It was the longest period without a war between great powers since the end of the Roman Empire. There simply is no denying that networks of global rules, norms, and agreements were a key factor in making this possible.

Nor is there any doubt that the rules-based order is under severe threat. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a blatant violation of one of its most fundamental rules: respect for territorial integrity. Similarly, China has ignored international judgments concerning its territorial claims in the South China Sea, and the Trump administration has violated rules and norms with gleeful abandon. In addition to disparaging the United Nations and launching a trade war against the entire world, it has broken numerous international agreements and withdrawn the US from international bodies that oversee everything from global health to climate change.

By contrast, Europeans believe that what remains of the rules-based order is worth preserving. In fact, they are taking pains to strengthen many of its core pillars. That is what the European Union’s new free-trade agreements with South America’s Mercosur bloc (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay) and India are about. Moreover, Europeans are joining with others to maintain global progress on combating climate change and mitigating health threats.

Europe has no interest in a world subject to the capricious whims of the mighty, where rights have no meaning because the vulnerable can always be thrown to the wolves. Rubio’s remarks didn’t go quite that far, but statements from others in the Trump administration have. America’s top diplomat may have offered a kinder, gentler presentation than his master would have given, but the message was the same. The transatlantic divide has become massive, and it is still widening.

Image for Rubio’s Silk-Stocking Diplomacy

Johannes Simon/Stringer/Getty Images

Rubio’s Silk-Stocking Diplomacy

Feb 15, 2026

Stephen Holmes

The future that the US Secretary of State touted at this year’s Munich Security Conference is not a vision of something to be built. It is the past projected forward, sugar-coating its racism with appeals to the shared “Christian faith” and “ancestry” that supposedly define the transatlantic bond.

BERLIN – Napoleon famously derided his foreign minister, Prince Talleyrand, as “de la merde dans un bas de soie” (shit in a silk stocking). That quip came to mind watching Donald Trump’s foreign minister, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, address this year’s Munich Security Conference.

Last year, US Vice President JD Vance flew to Munich to berate Europe’s leaders to their faces, attacking the European Union’s immigration policies, hate-speech regulations, and efforts to keep the far right out of power. Rubio is Vance in a silk stocking. He delivered much the same message, this time swaddled in diplomatic gauze.

In 2016, Rubio called Trump “a con artist” who could not be trusted with the nuclear codes. Now Rubio serves as Trump’s chief diplomat – and he just presided, without protest, over the lapse of the last remaining agreement limiting Russian and American nuclear arms.

Rubio’s self-betrayal has been so thorough that it amounts to a job qualification. In Trump’s Washington, having once possessed principles and publicly discarded them is a more reliable proof of servility than never having had principles at all.

In Munich, Rubio saturated his speech with performative reassurance. The United States and Europe “belong together.” Their destinies are “intertwined.” America wants a “reinvigorated alliance” and a “strong Europe.” But what holds the West together, in his telling, is not shared institutions, not a common commitment to the rule of law, not the postwar architecture of treaties and multilateral cooperation. It is “shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together.”

The key words here are “Christian faith” and “ancestry.” Rubio defined the transatlantic bond not as a political alliance but as a civilizational bloodline – a kinship rooted in religion and consanguinity. “We will always be a child of Europe,” he said, a formulation that casts the relationship not as a contract among sovereign equals but as a family tie – inherited, not chosen, with loyalty following from biology, not from shared principles and goals.

This is not the language of NATO. It is the language of the late Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” – the idea that the West is defined not by what it believes but by who it is; not by its principles but by its bloodlines and its faith. It is a formula that builds an imaginary wall around Christian Europe and its diaspora and leaves outside Europe’s Muslim citizens, the secular traditions of the French Republic, and the multi-confessional realities of modern European life.

Rubio’s promise of a future “as proud, as sovereign, and as vital as our civilization’s past” gives the game away. The future he describes is not a vision of something to be built. It is the past projected forward – nostalgia packaged as a goal.

So, what lay beneath the silk was the same litany Vance delivered last year, now stated with somewhat better manners: Europe has outsourced its sovereignty to multilateral institutions. Europe is captive to a “climate cult” that impoverishes its citizens. Mass immigration threatens “civilizational erasure.”

Of course, “civilizational erasure” is not a neutral description of demographic change. It is the vocabulary of the European far right, obsessed with the “great replacement” of white people. In Munich, Rubio conferred the legitimacy of the world’s most powerful government on a narrative that frames immigration not as a policy challenge to be managed but as an existential threat to Western civilization’s survival – a framing that places it beyond the reach of compromise or democratic restraint.

Rubio’s polish made the phrase more dangerous, not less: couched in the language of shared concern for Europe’s future, it sounded almost solicitous, as if the Trump administration were merely trying to save its friends from a peril that they were too polite to name. But the effect is to narrow the space for pragmatic cooperation on asylum, labor mobility, and integration – the actual work European governments need to do – while handing Europe’s nationalist parties an endorsement that they could scarcely have imagined before Trump.

Rubio’s casual use of the derogatory phrase “climate cult” also deserves attention – not for what it says about climate policy, but for what it reveals about the hollowness of Rubio’s references to the glorious future his boss claims to be building. Climate policy is, by definition, an investment in the future – perhaps the most consequential one any generation can make. Calling it a cult, dismissing climate mitigation efforts as religious delusion, is a spectacular way of saying that the future habitability of the planet is not worth investing in.

Moreover, Rubio’s schedule told a different story than his rhetoric. On Friday, the day before his speech, he skipped the Berlin Format meeting on Ukraine – a gathering that included Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and the heads of the European Commission, the European Council, and NATO. After his speech, he flew to Bratislava and Budapest to visit Slovakia’s Robert Fico and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán – the EU’s two most Russia-friendly leaders, both of whom Trump has courted as ideological allies and recently hosted at Mar-a-Lago.

So, while Rubio told his Munich audience that America wants a “strong Europe,” he is publicly backing leaders who have made careers of attacking European institutions from within, vetoing collective action, and cultivating ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin. When pressed on Ukraine in the post-speech interview, Rubio let slip a revealing formulation: the US wants a deal that Ukraine can “live with” and that Russia can “accept.” The asymmetry is the point. Ukraine is expected to endure; Russia is expected to be satisfied.

Rubio did not fly from Munich to Bratislava and Budapest to strengthen the transatlantic alliance. He went to show which Europe the US prefers: not a Europe of collective defense and shared sovereignty, but a Europe of governments that defy the EU, court the Kremlin, and call it sovereignty.

Russia and China were absent from Rubio’s speech. The enemies he identified were not authoritarian great powers but immigration, climate policy, and the multilateralism that has governed the Western alliance since 1945.

Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, happily exploited this opening, arguing that “certain countries” undermining multilateral cooperation and reviving a Cold War mentality bear primary responsibility for today’s global dysfunction – a rebuke that would have been harder to deliver had Rubio not just dismissed the postwar institutional order from the same stage.

Rubio is no Talleyrand. Whereas Talleyrand served France’s interests while reshaping Europe’s balance of power, Rubio serves a president who mistakes demolition for strength and nostalgia for renewal. The silk stocking softened the tone and flattered the audience. But beneath it lay the same message Vance delivered bare-knuckled last year – that Europe is useful only if it submits, Western civilization is defined by exclusion, and a common future is available only on conditions that guarantee there will never be one.

Offshore wind turbines in the Baltic Sea near Mukran, Germany — symbols of Europe’s clean energy expansion and industrial cooperation.

Jens Büttner/Picture Alliance via Getty Images

Superpower Europe

Feb 19, 2026

Nadia Calviño

Europe may be a different kind of superpower, given the extent to which it prioritizes values, rules, and multilateralism over sheer might. But it is a superpower nonetheless, and it is increasingly pursuing investments and reforms that will make it not only unassailable but also widely attractive in a dangerous world.

LUXEMBOURG – If there is one key takeaway from the just-concluded Munich Security Conference, it is a message of trust and confidence in Europe. The European Union is a technology, trade, and industry powerhouse.

Around Europe, the signs of this strength abound: off the northern coast of Poland, just beyond the horizon, 233 giant turbines – each almost as tall as the Eiffel Tower – are about to rise from the sea floor. With German rotors, foundations designed in Denmark, and cables from Poland and Greece, they will be towering symbols of European manufacturing excellence and industrial might. As the latest additions to an already vast Baltic fleet, they are creating thousands of jobs across the supply chain; and when they are operational, they will supply an additional 5.5 million households with clean energy.

Producing energy made in Europe, by Europe, for Europe, Poland’s offshore wind farms are as important strategically as they are economically. They add to a buildout of clean power that is happening across the continent from Italy in the South to Ireland and Lithuania in the North. Cables and interconnectors – enough to wrap the Earth many times over – are being laid to link the windy northern seas with the sunlit Mediterranean coastline, creating a superhighway for the age of electrons.

Meanwhile, cutting-edge fiber-optic sensors pioneered by Dutch innovators will be watching over the seabed to protect Europe’s critical infrastructure. New constellations of satellites developed in Belgium will offer enhanced surveillance capabilities from space, alongside cutting-edge radar systems from France and Spain. And all these systems will be connected by AI-powered 6G networks developed in Finland.

These are just a few of the nearly 900 investment projects financed by the European Investment Bank Group last year alone. By leveraging EU budget guarantees to mobilize private investment, the EIB Group is powering the unfolding energy and technological revolutions. The transition into tomorrow’s world is already in full swing in Europe – a major development that remains overlooked amid rapid geopolitical change.

In fact, the overall investment in the EU’s energy transition reached a new record in 2025, approaching €400 billion ($455 billion) – from hydropower in Austria to new railways in Czechia, and from energy efficiency upgrades by small businesses in Croatia to clean technologies deployed by heavy industries in Portugal. Just in the past year, the combined market capitalization of European renewables companies has risen by over 50%. Something that many thought impossible in the near term is already happening – Europe is irreversibly weaning itself off Russian gas.

European investments in defense are increasing even more rapidly. European defense stocks have tripled in value in the past three years. Europe’s industrial production capacity now exceeds even that of the United States in critical areas, including artillery shells. Europe is moving by leaps and bounds into strategic sectors and technologies such as drones. A new venture-capital ecosystem geared toward pioneering security and defense enterprises has emerged almost overnight and essentially from scratch.

We have seen a similar mobilization before. In 2020, no one expected that a European biotech company would pioneer a vaccine against an unknown virus in a matter of months, helping the world put down a once-in-a-century pandemic. Nor did anyone think that European leaders would launch a massive recovery and resilience program financed by joint debt – an unprecedented show of solidarity and unity. When Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine caused a massive spike in energy prices, everyone assumed that the European economy would buckle. Instead, the eurozone’s GDP grew faster than China and the US that year.

In the face of trade warfare, intense market volatility, and shifting traditional partnerships and alliances, European companies have proven resilient, not only diversifying their trade flows but also maintaining strong growth and investment. European stock markets ended up outperforming US exchanges in 2025, rewarding investors who put their trust in our economy. Unemployment is hovering near record lows, and growth is picking up – thanks to high-performing countries such as Spain and Poland. Europe has emerged as a beacon of stability in an uncertain world.

Time and again, the EU has adapted and reinvented itself in the face of crises, leaving it well prepared to navigate a tempestuous geopolitical environment. An export powerhouse, the EU is home to world-class universities and research centers, as well as a vibrant start-up ecosystem. Opinion polls show record levels of public support for the EU and the euro, and global surveys indicate that majorities around the world see the EU as a great power on an equal footing with the US and China.

They are right to do so. With a $22 trillion economy, a vast single market of nearly a half-billion people, and plans for another wave of enlargement, Europe’s weight in the world is undeniable. It may be a different kind of superpower, one that prizes values, rules, and multilateralism over sheer might. But its power lies in its commitment to principles and willingness to back its partners and allies, as demonstrated by its status as the biggest source of financial and military assistance to Ukraine.

Europe continues to build bridges in a world of walls. It is the world’s leading trade power, residing at the center of a vast, ever-expanding network of free-trade agreements. It is also an investment superpower that promotes shared prosperity around the world. As the biggest source of humanitarian aid and development finance, Europe funds everything from global vaccination campaigns to projects to improve water supplies in Amman and Karachi.

We do so because we remain committed to the same values that brought us this far. European unification started nearly eight decades ago from the ashes of two world wars. Our parents and grandparents learned from the tragedies and mistakes of that dark era, and we can draw inspiration from their example to shape a better future for ourselves and others around the world. Ours is a society based on inclusion, equality of opportunity, intellectual freedom, peace, and the rule of law.

We know what needs to be done to preserve this way of life. We need even deeper integration, including our capital markets. We need even more large-scale investment in critical infrastructure and strategic capabilities. We need simplification to make the EU more agile and efficient. And we need more win-win partnerships and alliances to diversify our supply chains and open new markets for our goods.

Momentum is building in all these areas. European leaders’ minds are focused, and we are determined to capitalize on Europe’s strengths as the world’s underappreciated superpower.

European flags waving outside the European Parliament in Brussels near a mural reading “The Future is Europe,” two days before Brexit ratification.

Michael Kappeler/Picture Alliance via Getty Image

The World Needs Europe to Get Its Act Together – Fast

Feb 10, 2026

Dani Rodrik

If Europe is to assert itself on the global stage, as it should, it needs to restore its self-confidence. Many yearn for an alternative to the US and Chinese models, and for that, Europe’s leaders must have the courage to chart their own course.

CAMBRIDGE – The world’s two superpowers are hardly inspiring models for those who care about democracy, human rights, and social justice. For all its economic success, China is an authoritarian regime that does not tolerate dissent. Under President Donald Trump, the United States has not only abandoned any semblance of addressing its vast inequalities of income and wealth but has also departed sharply from the rule of law at home and has become an erratic, unreliable partner abroad.

Many yearn for a better future than what the US and Chinese models offer. If we are to achieve a stable, multipolar world in which democratic aspirations remain alive, Europe will have to take the lead.

But Europe has its own weaknesses. Its economic machine is faltering, and its democracy is under attack from far-right groups. But its politics has not deteriorated as much as in the US under Trump, and the continent still has many sources of strength, including a social-market model that produces greater equality and a stronger middle class than the US, as well as a large economic base – comparable to that of the US when adjusted for purchasing power – that boasts many innovative industries.

The trouble is not only that Europe lacks a vision of what it wants to be, but that it often looks at the wrong models for inspiration. For many of the continent’s leaders, the holy grail is the American Silicon Valley model of innovation. They point to the “innovation gap” between the US and the European Union that the influential Draghi report documented and advocate reforms – such as financial market integration and digital deregulation – that would, in effect, make Europe more like the US.

This US envy is misplaced. It disregards Europe’s own traditions of inclusion and regulation that have produced more equitable societies with broader access to good middle-class jobs and more reliable safety nets. It also overlooks the disconnect in America between innovation, on one hand, and productivity and general living standards, on the other.

It is true that by almost any metric the US spends more on research and development and produces more innovation. But this yields greater economy-wide productivity and rising living standards for ordinary people only if the benefits diffuse widely. Indeed, US productivity growth since 2000 has been lackluster, except for the very recent uptick. The tech sector is an island in an economy where many workers need a second job to keep their heads above water.

As Ufuk Akcigit of the University of Chicago and Sina Ates of the Federal Reserve Board have shown, the diffusion of innovation has slowed in the US. A small number of large firms have monopolized knowledge production, while entry barriers and restrictive patents create a mass of smaller, laggard firms. The resulting concentration of innovative activity means that the US economic system produces a highly skewed income and wealth distribution that no country should want to emulate. Trump himself came to power riding the wave of discontent that this has caused.

In manufacturing, it is China that is the target of European envy. China’s manufacturing prowess has squeezed traditional areas of European dominance, such as autos and capital goods. For many European industrial leaders, restoring competitiveness requires putting up protectionist barriers against Chinese imports.

But there is no way that Europe can return to its manufacturing glory days. Jobs will not return to factories: even China has lost millions of manufacturing jobs over the past decade. Ensuring good jobs in Europe will require a focus on services, enhancing both productivity and working standards in areas ranging from care to hospitality.

The competitive challenge from China requires a more strategic response than protectionism. The appropriate remedy consists of narrowly targeted industrial policies that, unlike import tariffs, directly encourage innovation and focus on segments of advanced manufacturing where Europe is most likely to become a technology leader. In autos, for example, Germany should focus on the next generation of electric vehicles, rather than on the mass-market EVs that China has become so good at producing.

Another problem is that the EU as an institution is not well equipped to develop the bold, new vision that current circumstances require. Its founders thought economic union would ultimately produce political union. But their vision has not been realized. The EU acts more like a restraint on economic policy than an enabler: insufficiently integrated for its central institutions to act boldly, but integrated enough for national leaders to feel they cannot (or should not) experiment.

Today, the EU’s founding logic needs to be inverted. Geopolitical challenges demand that Europe act in unison in matters of defense and national security, while economic conditions require the relaxation of the Union’s shackles to permit experimentation. Europe should focus on a common foreign and defense policy. But there is no harm, and potentially significant benefit, in letting countries do their own thing in economics – on their own, or in groupings of their own choosing.

Consider the trade agreements that the EU has negotiated with India and South America’s Mercosur bloc – seeming successes that nonetheless underscore the EU’s inability to move beyond its past preoccupations and arrangements. Deepening the EU’s cooperation with other parts of the world is an absolute necessity and a requirement of multipolarity. But it is better pursued through political agreements. Trade agreements consume political capital at home and divert attention from more important economic-policy priorities: strengthening the middle class through good jobs, enhancing productivity in mostly non-tradable services, and fostering an innovation ecosystem that is consistent with Europe’s social model.

If Europe is to assert itself on the global stage, as it should, it needs to restore its self-confidence. The world needs an alternative to the US and Chinese models, and for that, Europe’s leaders must have the courage to chart their own course.

Mario Draghi at a press conference.

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Europe Should Reject US-Style Competitiveness

Feb 6, 2026

Sandeep Vaheesan

European leaders seem increasingly convinced that, to succeed in the 21st century, they must reshape Europe's economy in America’s image. But the American brand of "competitiveness" contributes to major imbalances and far-reaching harm, which the European Union can avoid by embracing effective competition policy.

WASHINGTON, DC – Even before President Donald Trump ratcheted up his demand for US control of Greenland, European leaders were feverishly reassessing every aspect of the transatlantic relationship, from security to trade. One area of particular concern has been the European Union’s supposed “competitiveness” deficit with the United States. 

The conventional wisdom nowadays, on both sides of the Atlantic, is that Europe can no longer keep up. The US, for example, boasts most of the world’s tech behemoths. It is also home to nine of the world’s ten most valuable companies (with the Taiwan-based chip producer TSMC the only exception).

But there is more to economic success than market capitalization. One problem with the prevailing narrative on “competitiveness” is that it treats competition as a one-dimensional quantity that can be dialed up or down. In reality, competition has a qualitative component, and can take many forms, only some of which are socially advantageous.

When we think of competition, we typically think of a constructive version of it, in which firms make sales and capture market share by offering attractive prices or delivering new and improved products. After Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007, other firms worked to develop smartphones with similar features, but at a lower price point. This sort of competition has clear benefits for consumers.

But competition can also take more pernicious forms. For example, firms may deceive the public with false claims about their products or those of their rivals. Soon after Apple launched the iPhone, propelling a revolution in wireless communications, Volkswagen built up a large market for diesel passenger cars in the US. It marketed these vehicles as “clean,” even though they did not meet US environmental standards and worsened air quality in many places. For years, Volkswagen profited from this deception.

Some of the US tech giants’ competitive practices are patently injurious to consumers and workers. Facebook and Google became digital advertising giants by systematically surveilling users to develop detailed profiles of them, while minimizing transparency and user control. This enabled them to direct advertising and other content with greater precision than traditional media could.

As pioneers of the “gig economy,” Uber and DoorDash grew rapidly not just by making it more convenient to hail rides and order food, but also by misclassifying their workers as independent contractors, thereby avoiding their legal responsibility to pay drivers minimum wage and to provide overtime pay and benefits. Both firms also came under fire for altering their app designs to discourage tipping – an action that proved very costly for delivery partners.

World-leading AI firms like OpenAI train their large language models using the work of artists, writers, musicians, news media, and other copyright-holders, without obtaining consent or offering compensation. The models can reproduce these copyrighted materials as their own output. As one tech lawyer admitted, such behavior is fundamental to the LLM business model, meaning that firms attempting to compete in this sector continue to replicate these violations.

To be sure, AI firms cannot be certain of legal impunity. Several copyright lawsuits have been brought against OpenAI and other top firms, and the US Copyright Office tentatively concluded last May that some appropriations of copyrighted materials by LLMs are not protected by the fair use doctrine. But these firms have so far faced limited consequences for these violations, beyond settlement payments. And they remain a pillar of US “competitiveness.”

Then there is the widespread pursuit of mergers and acquisitions, which have enabled a handful of US firms to gain control over a huge swath of the global economy. Major US tech companies have acquired hundreds of firms over the past quarter-century, in order to shore up or extend their market dominance. Mergers and acquisitions are easy (not to mention lucrative) for executives, especially compared to what legal scholar Carl T. Bogus describes as “the hard, sustained, and often prosaic work of improving one’s business.”

Scofflaw behavior and mergers and acquisitions by already-large corporations hardly amount to a model of competitiveness worth emulating. But European leaders continue to accept the premise that, to succeed in the 21st century, the EU must reshape its economy in America’s image. This belief is apparent in former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi’s much-discussed 2024 report offering recommendations for improving Europe’s competitiveness, many of which EU leaders are seeking to implement.

A better approach would not promote any version of competition, but rather encourage firms to compete and succeed in ways that produce broad-based benefits, such as by providing more useful or affordable goods and services to consumers or by advancing the green transition. In China, as the Financial Times reported last year, vigorous competition between electric-vehicle-battery-makers BYD and CATL drives progress in developing EVs with longer driving ranges and shorter charging times.

Antitrust enforcers have a critical role to play in this process. When US authorities blocked AT&T from acquiring T-Mobile in 2011, the smaller wireless carrier did not fail, as some predicted. Instead, T-Mobile invested in its own network and offered more attractive terms to customers, unleashing a healthy competitive dynamic in the US market.

The European Commission should treat competition law as a critical tool for reviving economic dynamism and fostering the growth of European firms, thereby reducing dependence on an increasingly hostile US. Through more expansive interpretations of existing legal authorities, policymakers should impel businesses to redirect their strategies from illegal and damaging tactics toward the expansion of productive capacity and investment in research and development.

It is a lesson the US would also benefit from learning. Although the Trump administration is treating antitrust enforcement as just another vehicle for corruption, many state attorneys general still want to enforce the law aggressively. They should recognize that effective competition policy can deliver abundance for everyone, instead of scarcity for the many and mindboggling riches for the few.

Supporters of the 'Pulse of Europe' movement participate in a pro-Europe flashmob in Berlin ahead of French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to the chancellery, May 15, 2017.

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Europe Is Stronger Than Its Leaders Think

Jan 13, 2026

Alberto Alemanno

Over the past three decades, the European Union has built a political and regulatory system strong enough to shape global competition and bind much of the continent together. Yet instead of doubling down, its leaders are weakening the social and economic model that made that achievement possible.

PARIS – Make no mistake: despite the claims of US President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and their MAGA acolytes, the European Union is not in decline. In many ways, the EU project has succeeded beyond its founders’ most optimistic expectations.

For the first time in modern history, Europe is recognized by other powers as a political actor in its own right rather than merely a market or a loose collection of sovereign states. That was not the case after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 or even following the EU’s eastward enlargement in the early 2000s. Over the past three decades, Europe has built a political and regulatory order that external powers can no longer bypass by dealing with 27 national governments individually. Instead, they must deal with Europe as one.

This is increasingly evident in how foreign powers frame their policies and actions. Even Trump’s new National Security Strategy (NSS), for example, speaks of a declining “Europe” rather than focusing on individual EU member states. Russian President Vladimir Putin, for his part, has justified his war against Ukraine by invoking EU (and especially NATO) expansion, while China views Europe as a unified regulatory counterweight.

At the heart of this shift lies a deeper transformation. Europe is no longer seen only as a geopolitical actor, but as a competing model for organizing economic and political life. Consequently, European policymakers are forced to confront a fundamental question they have largely avoided for decades: Is the EU merely a coordination mechanism, or is it a political community with a shared destiny?

In reality, the world has already answered this question. Whether Europeans acknowledge it or not, Europe is a political community. That recognition, however, is neither automatic nor guaranteed. It depends on the EU maintaining its distinct economic model. Unlike American capitalism, with its emphasis on speed, scale, and accumulation, and Chinese authoritarianism, which subjects markets and political authority to centralized state control, Europe’s social-market economy places democratic choice, social protection, and the rule of law at the center of economic life.

When viewed through this lens, it is clear that the Trump administration’s hostility toward the EU is not about individual regulations. It is about opposition to a system in which workers have a voice through collective decision-making, universal health care and education are rights, and antitrust law protects competition instead of supporting state-backed or politically connected firms.

That model is made possible by scale. With 450 million consumers governed by a unified regulatory framework, the EU is the world’s largest single market. Multinational firms seeking access to it have no choice but to adapt to European rules, enabling the EU to set the terms of global competition.

Today’s external pressures to abandon that model are nothing new. For decades, critics have claimed that Europe’s social model was unsustainable, its regulatory regime economically suicidal, and its democratic constraints on markets naive. Yet that model has delivered stability, prosperity, and global clout. The intense opposition it receives is evidence of its success: it has become a force others must confront rather than dismiss.

The numbers speak for themselves. The EU’s major economies match or exceed US productivity per hour worked, enjoy higher life expectancy, and have far lower income inequality. Quality-of-life rankings consistently place European cities such as Vienna and Copenhagen ahead of their American counterparts.

Moreover, despite the NSS’s warning of “civilizational erasure,” Europe has absorbed millions of migrants without undermining social cohesion. Germany alone has naturalized more than a half-million citizens over the past five years, while Italy’s far-right government approved record numbers of migrant entries in 2025, showing that the EU’s immigration model can function even under leaders ideologically opposed to it.

Taken together, these features help explain why authoritarian regimes view the EU as a threat and why profit-maximizing companies regard it as constraining. What the bloc lacks is not institutional capacity, but the political will to defend its model and complete the process of European integration.

To be sure, Europe faces serious challenges. Economic growth is uneven, capital markets remain fragmented, and defense capacity has not kept pace with security threats. But these weaknesses are not the product of the EU’s social and regulatory model, and dismantling it would only make them worse.

Regrettably, European leaders are treating international resistance to the EU’s economic and regulatory model as proof of its failure. In response to fears of deindustrialization and relative decline, EU policymakers have converged on a single diagnosis: over-regulation. The prescribed cure, inevitably, is deregulation. Both former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s report on EU competitiveness and the European Commission’s “Omnibus” package, for example, treat Europe’s regulatory approach as a liability rather than an asset.

The logic behind this regulatory rollback is straightforward: in a world dominated by the United States and China, Europe must abandon its social-market model to stay competitive. But that reasoning mistakes success for failure. Europe cannot simply imitate America or China, given that it lacks the former’s financial and military dominance and the latter’s centralized control over labor and capital. And why would the world need a smaller, slower version of US capitalism or Chinese state control? Ultimately, when Washington pressures Europe to dilute its environmental or industrial rules in order to shield American interests, it is intervening directly in European self-government.

By pushing back against the EU’s economic and political model, Putin, Trump, and Chinese President Xi Jinping have done what 70 years of gradual integration could not: they have made Europeans see themselves as Europeans. In a world of rival empires and raw power politics, Europe’s greatest strength remains precisely the model that makes it inconvenient to others.

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