The Spirit of Europe Day

Europe Day comes and goes, but where is the European vision and the political imagination needed for a Europe ready for a new era?

On May 9, 1950, the French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman set out a bold political and economic vision to make war between European nations “not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible.” The Schuman Declaration inspired a generation of leaders to build Europe’s economic integration on a foundation of common security by pooling coal and steel – the industrial tools of war at the time. May 9 now stands as the annual “Europe Day,” marking the historic pivot from rivalry to unity in Europe. Its unfinished business is a European defence and political union, attempted but narrowly failed in the early 1950s.

History has returned, demanding once more that Europe build its common economy on common security – this time in response to external threats. The current generation of European leaders must revisit and remake Europe’s security, defence, and political unification for an age of global geopolitical rivalry. If there was ever a moment to reinvent the spirit of European destiny, it is now. Is Europe seizing or missing its rendezvous with history?

There is certainly no shortage of transformative plans. The free-market zone that used to be the European Union is gradually morphing into a geoeconomic platform, spanning defence industrial development, strategic autonomy for critical industries and technologies, and broad-based resilience coordination, alongside the reinvention and weaponisation of the bloc’s trade policies for an adversarial world. However, decisive progress on such fronts collides with the legacy of the 1950s: the EU was not built for defence and security, nor has it been politically unified to tackle these challenges in unison. Overcoming this double handicap requires pro-European statesmanship in the spirit of Europe Day. Sadly, that spirit seems fleeting.

Take defence. The rearmament of Germany is arguably the most important Western European development in decades, comparable to the German Mark subsuming into the euro. But note the difference. A Helmut Kohl who used the end of the Cold War to place Germany at the centre of Europe’s monetary integration would have used the return of war to position Germany at the heart of Europe’s defence industrial integration. Instead, the Germany of Friedrich Merz aims for national defence industrial leadership within a rearming Europe of nations, while resisting further federalisation of the European Union as a geoeconomic power on the global stage, where China and the United States loom.

By the end of the decade, Germany will be spending more on defence than France and the United Kingdom combined. Either this is turned into a European project, or the age-old “German question” — how to reconcile the power of a large and central Germany with a European order it cannot dominate — may return to haunt a European Union created to resolve it. With NATO on tenterhooks, and with America increasingly focused on Asia and the Middle East, there is a clear opening for a European defence pillar that could also enable a new dawn in the transatlantic relationship. Without it, US volatility and Russian aggression will continue to poison European politics.

A common European defence would also require a common industrial and technological base – think AI, electronics, satellites, drones, robotics, batteries. We live in an age of military-commercial fusion, with dual-use technologies breaking down barriers between the civilian and defence spheres. The money is there. Collectively, European Union countries currently spend close to €400 billion annually on defence. Under NATO commitments, this will increase by roughly €250 billion per year by 2035, with another €270 to 300 billion annually on security and resilience. By contrast, the development of Airbus cost the European taxpayer roughly €20 billion in today’s euros.

The choice should be clear. Embrace the spirit of Europe Day and do what was done successfully with Airbus: pool resources, unite behind shared technologies, build ecosystems, sustain long-term demand, and shield against foreign dominance. The alternative is either continued geoeconomic dependency or intra-European nationalism benefiting a few nations at the expense of others – both recipes for division and weakness.

Then there is geography. The EU was built as an open community of like-minded nations. It was a model of globalisation. It must now forge its path in a world where borders are once again fault lines. Heroic Ukraine, the Western Balkans, Moldova – these are strategic necessities for Europe’s security, and security is the EU’s new raison d’être. Not since the collapse of the Eastern Bloc has Europe’s destiny been so visibly geographic. Either Europe seizes its geographic moment, or others will.

A once-in-a-generation turn of history, calling for a grand narrative and ripe with unique opportunity: this is what Europe Day, anno 2026, could mean. It could usher in a new European Union where economic and political integration rest upon a new foundation of security and defence, enabling a bigger EU-tent with easier access. We can only lament that this is not the spirit currently emanating from leading European capitals. We can only hope that this generation of leaders will not let history be turned against Europe.