The European Union cannot and will never be able to pursue a true foreign policy. The reasons for this irrefutable and apodictic judgment can essentially be summarized in a few points.

The first, and most important, concerns the very legal nature of the Union and has to do with the concept of sovereignty. The European Union is not a sovereign state.

The countries that comprise it, in fact, have not deemed it appropriate to cede their sovereignty in matters of foreign policy and security, but have retained a de facto permanent veto power through a decision-making process that requires unanimity among the various national governments, which often take divergent positions on many international issues.

My thoughts come to mind, after all that I can mention, the competition between the Italian ENI and the French Total in Africa, France’s appeal to General Haftar and the Libyan bombing in 2011.

But even more recently, it’s enough to recall the painful spectacle that emerged at the European Council of 26-27 October 2023, where the discussion over the choice of language to use regarding the Gaza Strip issue in the final communiqué dragged on for hours. Or the position taken at the UN on the call for a ceasefire, in which some countries voted in favor (France, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Belgium), some against (Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Croatia), while others abstained (Germany, Italy, Greece, the Netherlands).

The European Union is not a sovereign state and therefore lacks the tools needed to be considered a genuine diplomatic actor and have a concrete impact on international affairs.

Anyone with a grasp of international geopolitics knows that three elements enable a state to play a decisive role in international relations: first, having a foreign policy strategy; second, being able to conduct effective diplomacy; and third, having adequate military capacity. The European Union, however, is lacking in all three of these aspects.

Regarding the first point, in particular, the slow decision-making process within European institutions, burdened by the unanimity rule, prevents the development of a long-term, and therefore strategic, vision. This vision is instead well-established among the leaders of so-called “autocratic regimes,” who have no strict time limits on their government and, above all, are unaware of the excessive instability of executive branches that engages and distracts politicians in constant re-election campaigns and sometimes leads to frequent shifts in national political positions. This is hardly compatible with the prospect of strategic planning for the future.

For the past twenty years, the European Union has remained virtually immobile, stalled in its integration process, which is unlikely to be achieved. The federal union remains a utopia for some and a nightmare for others, but it will never see the light of day. The reason is that this artificial, baroque construction is the product of a process imposed from above and never fully accepted by the people.

Just look at what happened in 2005, when French and Dutch citizens rejected the treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe in a referendum, rejecting the very idea of ​​a European Constitution. Now, we certainly can’t say that treaty marked the beginning of a federal state, but it nevertheless represented a decisive step toward that process.

The point is that when French and Dutch citizens were asked directly for confirmation of the path toward a federal perspective and greater integration, the response was negative. Some have even recalled that in 2005, not all citizens of the twenty-five states that had signed the treaty had the opportunity to express their opinion.

If they had been given the opportunity, how would they have responded? In reality, if people are given the opportunity to express themselves and decide directly, the natural response is to reclaim each homeland’s sovereignty and not to cede it to an artificial supranational body.

Today, the European Union is perceived by its citizens as an institution dominated by suffocating bureaucracy and plutocratic greed, by pressure from powerful forces and Masonic cliques, by the ironclad logic of legal positivism, by the undue influence of multinational lobbies, by the pernicious ideology of political correctness, by forms of anti-Christian resentment, by the perspective of reckless multiculturalism, by “value neutralism,” and by anticlerical secularism that demand a Europe without identity and without God.

From this point of view, the criticisms launched in the harsh indictment held by the Vice President of the United States of America, James David Vance, at the Munich Security Conference on February 14, 2025 are not so far from reality.

The European Union committed suicide when it decided to remove from the draft Constitution every reference to its Christian roots, the only common identity that could have united twenty-seven countries with different languages, customs, traditions, histories, physical features, cultures, interests, mentalities, and cuisines. The European Union has revealed itself to be a mayonnaise gone haywire, to use a culinary metaphor.

This is why the sovereign states that comprise it persist in pursuing their own foreign policy, which is a consequence of the historical relationships they have cultivated over time with the rest of the world, while the nations heirs of the former colonial empires, such as France and Great Britain, have always claimed to move autonomously, demonstrating a certain allergy to adapting to decisions taken by the community.

In the eyes of American pragmatism, the European Union is a mere chimerical absurdity. It is neither a sovereign state nor even a federal state. It may have taken Trump a while to grasp this, but once he grasped the true nature of the Union, he understood that the only concrete way to operate was through personal and direct relationships with the leaders of individual sovereign states, and that Baroness Ursula von der Leyen was merely an elegant yet useless ornament.

I would add two other reasons for the European Union’s current inability to develop a genuine foreign policy. One concerns the excessively juridical and insufficiently geopolitical approach of European institutional staff, who too often limit themselves to reasoning in predominantly technical and bureaucratic terms, with tones that at times even resemble self-referential delirium. For those aspiring to become players on the international geopolitical chessboard, it is completely futile to focus on procedural issues and the language of documents, rather than on their actual impact on reality.

The other reason for the weakness of the EU’s foreign policy, however, concerns the serious qualitative shortcomings of the current leadership, which has never been so poor in the last twenty years.

 The decline of the European Union is also felt in this twilight of the Late Empire. With the current President of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, it truly seems we have reached the level of Romulus Augustulus.

Even from a moral standpoint, considering the sordid background surrounding the “Pfizergate” scandal. Not to mention the current High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Estonian Kaja Kallas, whose sheer inconsistency and incompetence appear at times even embarrassing. In all fairness, the qualitatively low level of the political leadership affects not only the European Union, but also its individual member countries, and has serious repercussions on society as a whole.

I recently came across an interesting essay by a Spanish philosopher and thinker, José Ortega y Gasset, entitled España Invertebrada, which contains a passage that appears truly prophetic – considering it was written in 1921 – and which deserves to be quoted: “Now, if for several generations there is a lack or shortage of men of vigorous intelligence, who serve as a tuning fork and standard for others, who set the tone of mental intensity demanded by the problems of the time, the masses will tend, according to the law of least effort, to think with less and less rigor; the repertoire of curiosities, ideas, points of view, will progressively diminish until it falls below the level imposed by the needs of the time. We will have the case of a stultified, intellectually degenerate race”.

The historic event in Anchorage marked the curtain falling on what could still have the semblance of a European foreign policy. But it is the meeting in Washington on August 18, 2025, between Trump and European leaders that represents the clearest demonstration of the new world order and the inconsistency of the Old Continent: the Emperor summons his vassals to his court, who rush to pay homage and receive his instructions.

Everyone, seen worldwide, understood who it is who holds the scepter in the West today. It couldn’t be clearer.