The European Union’s (EU) transformation from a peace project to an assertive geopolitical actor reflects enduring tensions in integration theory dating back to the inter-war period. This paper develops a comparative framework distinguishing territorial integration logic, which emphasises bounded political communities and collective defence, from cooperative integration logic, which prioritises issue-specific, transnational problem-solving. It traces the EU’s strategic shift from the cooperative ethos of the 2003 European Security Strategy towards the territorially oriented integration principle represented by the 2016 Global Strategy and subsequent defence initiatives, including Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) and the Strategic Compass. It then revisits inter-war debates, focusing on Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi’s Pan-Europe vision, Aristide Briand’s United States of Europe proposal and David Mitrany’s functionalist critique. Through a systematic comparison of threat perceptions – Russian expansionism, American economic competition and the declining influence of individual European states – and integration responses across both eras, the analysis points to a recurring pattern whereby external crises activate territorial
integration impulses.

We are today undoubtedly at a revolutionary turning point in every respect, and not only in Europe. We know what is coming to an end, but we do not know what comes next. The end of John Biden's US presidency generally marks the end of the international liberal order. According to his successor, President Trump, the United States was not the ruler of the international liberal order, but its hostage. What can be deduced from this insight about US policy on a global level can be soberly described as follows: The US was once the guarantor of world order and now acts like a mobster resorting to blackmail to prevent its collapse. The changes in the United States will ultimately have a similar impact on the political identity of the US and its political system as Gorbachev's decision to pursue a policy of liberalization (perestroika) in the USSR had on the communist system. The impact of these changes on Europe, as one of the closest allies of the US, is unpredictable. We only know that the immediate effects will be negative. The public debate in Europe makes it clear that the development of a new world order is perceived as sinking into the quicksand of history. Europe was the biggest winner of the liberal order. Now it finds itself in a much more hostile world. Europe needs time to adapt. Time it probably does not have. Against this backdrop, this paper attempts to analyse how Europe can prepare itself politically, economically, and culturally for a future that will be anything but easy.

"Who am I? Which role do I seek to play on the world stage?" This is the starting point of producing Grand Strategy. For the longest time, most European political and military leaders had a very simple answer to those questions: "We are the most loyal allies of the United States". But the second Trump Administration has created a revolution in international politics: it has de facto broken the Transatlantic Alliance. The institutions of NATO continue to operate, bt the credibility of Article 5 has been irreparably damaged. Europe needs new answers to these core strategic questions, therefore. Early in 2026, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called for a new "European Security Strategy". In order to craft an effective European role on the world stage, that strategy must be a European declaration of independence. Vis-à-vis the US, and, of course, vis-à-vis the other great powers as well. This paper will explore how Europe (through the EU, the European members of NATO and coalitions of the willing) could give substance to an independent global role.

The identity narrative of the European Union was founded on its being a normative power until the outbreak of the Russo-Ukraine war. The deteriorating security environment, however, has created contradiction by transforming the EU from a peace project into a securitising actor. A further dilemma is which institution of the EU has the power to securitise and which has the power of purse in defence matters. In 2025, the adoption of the SAFE regulation (Security Action for Europe) served to demonstrate the effectiveness of the European Commission’s role in the securitisation of European defence. When the EU’s 27 Member States accepted the process recommended by the Commission, effectively bypassing the involvement of the European Parliament in the decision-making process, the EP decided to take legal action against the Council of the EU. The SAFE entered into force on 29 May 2025 and the implementation process is proceeding according to the original plans. As the leadership of the EU tries to adapt to the new geopolitical realities, the Commission announces extraordinary measures. Our paper presents multidisciplinary research results of the analysis of Commission speeches between 2019 and 2025 from the perspective of the securitisation theory of the Copenhagen School and the Speech Act Theory. The findings test and re-define the components of securitisation by providing deeper insight into the types of speech acts and their functioning in strategic communication. The talk investigates how the Commission has become a security actor and what role it took in the securitising process.

Can the European Union defend one of its own member states if it comes under military attack? The EU’s founding treaties were written for peacetime governance and contain no mechanism for declaring a state of war, no pre-authorised emergency funding, and no procedure for rapidly suspending the fiscal, regulatory, and trade rules that would immediately constrain a wartime response. This paper uses the concept of institutional path dependency to analyse how design choices embedded in the EU treaties during decades of peace have created a structural defence-response gap - a systematic mismatch between the speed at which a military crisis unfolds (hours to days) and the speed of the EU’s decision cycle (weeks to months). Drawing on a detailed process-tracing of the EU’s financial, energy, and sanctions responses to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine between 2022 and 2025, the paper identifies six domains where inherited institutional constraints produced delays ranging from months to years for measures that a wartime scenario would require. The six domains are budget and off-budget support, fiscal governance, energy mobilisation, trade measures, sanctions, and emergency legal bases. The paper extends this analysis to the hypothetical scenario of a direct attack on an EU member state and find that the gap would not merely slow the EU’s response but could paralyse it at the moment when speed is existential. The emergency legal basis most frequently used to work around these constraints has been stretched far beyond its original purpose and faces growing legal challenges. The paper concludes that the EU’s defence-response gap is not a policy failure that can be corrected by political will alone, but a structural condition produced by path-dependent institutional design, requiring either fundamental treaty reform or the pre-positioning of emergency frameworks before a crisis forces improvisation under fire.