Honorable members,

Last year, I told you that “Europe is in a fight. A fight for a continent that is whole and at peace. For a free and independent Europe. A fight for our values and our democracies. A fight for our liberty and our ability to determine our destiny for ourselves. Make no mistake—this is a fight for our future.”

That still holds true this year. In fact, it would be more exact for me to say that Europe is in a war, if not quite at war, yet. Because what else should we call the various kinds of attacks Russia has been waging against us at an increasing rate and intensity? I recently described a Russian armed attack against a massive Romanian gas field as “hybrid warfare,” not because I like euphemisms, but because I’m told that saying Russia is waging war against us is more than our populations are able to handle. Perhaps it’s time we get real.

As I said in my speech last year, “we cannot varnish over the difficulties” and Europeans “can feel the ground shift beneath them.”

So, this must be Europe’s power moment. 

The ambition I expressed for the EU, to “take care of our own defence and security” and “take control over the technologies and energies that will fuel our economies,” was perhaps a bit too grand. But I think we can acquire more power to do these things. We’ve started doing it in many aspects: We have forged forward in protecting our digital space through the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act. In July, we fined Google €890 million ($1,019 million) for breaking the latter, despite threats and bullying from our friend, U.S. President Donald Trump. We’re also forging new partnerships with allies: Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney is in town this week to discuss just that, and I wouldn’t dream of skipping out on him. He may have infringed a bit on our trademarks with his speeches about middle powers, but we’re letting that slide because for someone like him to desire the EU so much is validation that our project is worth all the incrementalism and breakthroughs built through painstaking compromises. 

Last year, I asked if we “have the stomach for this fight? Do we have the unity and the sense of urgency? The political will and the political skill to compromise? Or do we want to just fight between ourselves? To be paralysed by our divisions.”

There’s good and bad news on that front. Some of our divisions have held us back. We’re still pulling our punches when it comes to Russian frozen assets, the EU-Israel association agreement, and sanctioning Israeli ministers who openly advocate for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the annihilation of the two state solution—this turns the bedrock of our policy into a laughing stock. And that is indeed weakening our geopolitical hand with direct consequences on the cost of living, on security, and on our economies.

But the good news is these divisions haven’t paralyzed us completely. Since I last stood before you, we’ve agreed three sanctions packages against Russian interests. And we came up with a creative workaround to agree on a €90 billion ($102 million) support loan package for Ukraine and a €150 million ($171 million) grant fund for its postwar reconstruction. Would it have been better—both financially and as a strategic signal—to have used the frozen Russian assets to back these up? Undoubtedly, but some member states wouldn’t budge despite my attempt at a creative compromise.

We also held together in managing our great American friend’s roller-coaster positions on Ukraine and Russia. It’s perhaps no coincidence that roller coasters are called montagnes russes, literally Russian mountains, in French. Some weeks, we Europeans feel like we turned a corner with Washington, only to discover that they spent sixty Patriot missile interceptors in one night in Jordan when we’ve been begging—sorry, asking—for 100-120 for every month of the coming winter in Ukraine. Or even better, we hear President Trump put blame for the war once again on Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky. Or, we hear Trump’s envoy Jared Kushner talk about finding a win-win and needing to take into account what Russia wants to achieve, even though it is literally occupying and erasing another people. So, we’re on moving sands. But we’ll keep at it, because that’s what we do. We don’t get to quit.

And while we keep pushing forward, we should also learn from our closest friends across the Atlantic, who are so much better than us at marketing their exploits. Just compare how the U.S. First Lady Melania Trump’s accomplishments on returning Ukrainian children abducted by Russia are so clearly celebrated, while barely anyone has heard of the Summit of the International Coalition for the Return of Ukrainian Children held in May, which is strengthening tracing, verification, and monitoring, as well as expanding support for reintegration through long-term childcare and education programs, and stepping up support for investigations and legal proceedings. Perhaps giving it such a mouthful of a name was setting it up to fail, in our social media age.

Last year, I had a great, punchy line about building a drone wall. But then something more potent prevailed: the inevitably plodding pace of Brussels decisionmaking. It took ten months, but the EU-Ukraine Drone Alliance was launched in July. The Ukrainians moved quicker than us while at war, armed with their ingenuity and superior know-how, to build partnerships with some Gulf countries who have now discovered that their hedging might have helped those who are now raining drones down on them.

So, in concluding this part about geopolitics in my speech, I believe it is time to break free from the shackles of our constant dillydallying. Brussels time still lags behind actual time. If we don’t set out clocks right, the immense promise we have, and that we have started to deliver on, will be squandered. But now we must strike the iron while it’s hot. We have much to offer partners like Canada, the Gulf Cooperation Council, and others.