A geopolitical Europe: Recognizing the European Union’s silent transformation while realizing the difficult leadership choices ahead
What follows is the extended version of the laudatio given by Marc De Vos at the 2025 Quadriga PolitikAward in honour of EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen receiving the award of ‘Politician of the Year’.
Marc De Vos stresses how, under the leadership of a geopolitical commission, the European Union has taken the transformational road towards geopolitics. He lauds this first phase of geoeconomics while warning that we have now embarked on a second phase, that of geostrategy: areas of defence, security and territory. A unified geostrategic European Union is a challenge we have to meet, but it is a challenge with severe flash points that could prove to be choke points for the future of a strong Europe in the new world order.
Dear ladies and gentlemen,
Dear Bundespräsident a. D. Gauck,
Dear awardees,
Dear members of the jury,
Dear Madame President von der Leyen,
It is an honour and a pleasure to be here with you in celebrating what is too often neglected in the daily churn of democratic politics: recognizing leadership and accomplishment.
The political leadership of Commission President von der Leyen is without question of historical significance for Europe, I believe potentially on a par with that of the legendary Jacques Delors. Indeed, the importance of her leadership might well become unique as it also represents a genuine transformation of the very essence of what the EU stands for.
It is right and it is important to recognize her leadership, but also – and more importantly – in doing so, to recognize that new European Union that we all live in and that we all need to become a success: the geopolitical EU.
The geopolitical EU symbolizes a new geopolitical EU we need to embrace, to explain and to defend, in our democracies and with the European citizens.
That is my first point: Ursula von der Leyen’s leadership of what she called a ‘geopolitical commission’ symbolizes a new geopolitical EU we need to embrace, to explain and to defend, in our democracies and with the European citizens.
We live through a time of global upheaval. The world order that was built in the aftermath of WWII and of the Cold War is being attacked: first from without – China by stealth, then Russia by force – and then from within by the US under Donald Trump.
The world of globalisation, built chronologically on peace, common institutions and norms, common human rights, and common financial and trade rules, is being dismantled or eroded, for each of these foundations.
This evolution is epochal for the European Union. For the EU was an exercise in intra-European globalisation, a poster child of the wider globalisation: nobody did free trade, open borders, peace, and common rules and norms, better than we did.
The EU marched on in European economic and financial integration with the tailwinds of globalisation. It now needs to do geopolitical integration with the headwinds of global power conflict.
We need to understand that the key mission, the raison d’être of the new EU, is now security, resilience, autonomy, defence, and that old EU of trade and commerce is either subservient to or supportive of these geopolitical goals.
Under the pressure of outside events, under the threats of war and great power conflict, and under Ms. Von der Leyen’s stewardship, the EU has equipped its economic base for geopolitics. It has developed the tools of what is known as ‘geoeconomic statecraft’, to build and defend more autonomy, more resilience, more protection for our common market, on European soil.
That build-up now has to live up to a new phase where the second coming of Donald Trump is unleashing a global tariff war, is emboldening warfare by enemies, and is eroding all norms and values by the very father of the global order in which the old EU thrived and upon which it could rely.
This is my second point and my first warning. We have entered a new geopolitical phase that is more threatening and more difficult for an EU that sits strategically alone vis-à-vis Russia, China, and the USA – for various reasons and in varying degrees.
The first phase – the first commission von der Leyen – was about geoeconomics: retooling trade, finance, and markets, for geopolitics.
The second phase – the present and the foreseeable future – is about geostrategy: defence, security, territory, borders. It is an area where we need European cohesion and coordination more than ever, but where the EU is weaker as the natural stepping stone and cornerstone for a continent of nation states.
Here we face areas of traditional and persistent national sovereignty, here we see differences in European history, identity, and geography, weigh heavily on strategic priorities, and indeed on national elections, as we have again seen in Poland yesterday.
Here we see the need to go beyond the very borders of the current EU to include critical third countries like the UK, Turkey, and of course Ukraine itself.
The key question is this: will the EU – and the commission as the key EU policy pillar – again be able to form a foundation of common geopolitical European action, or will individual countries, and lose alliances of willing countries, increasingly set the course?
Will this new phase of international crisis strengthen EU integration, for the EU to eventually institutionalize and quasi-federalize how European nations reconstruct a mastery of their own fate in the world, or will it instead sideline the EU for a more fluid, organic and – at the end of the day – more divided and weaker Europe in the world?
I stand for the former. I think the EU should be the centripetal power, in the interest of all individual countries, but I am not certain we will avoid the age-old centrifugal power of European nationalism.
I want to mention three flashpoints that potentially could become choke points for the European Union.
One: we live under the reality of an American Brexit from global trade – an Amexit. Why do we not (yet) have a new Mr. Barnier, an new Mr. or Ms. Amexit? Why is the EU not the single point of contact, with one voice and one policy, in wheeling and dealing with the US, and – by extension – China? Why do we not now solve ‘the Kissinger problem’ and make sure that if anyone in Washington and Beijing wants to speak with Europe, they know who to call? There are manifold reasons behind this reality but whatever the reason: the reality is a lack of geopolitical EU.
Ukraine, the Western Balkans, Turkey. Why are we not seeing a dynamic of urgency to reinvent what EU-membership means
Two: a geostrategic European Union must extend European alliance and influence beyond its current membership borders. Ukraine, the Western Balkans, Turkey. Why are we not seeing a dynamic of urgency to reinvent what EU-membership means, to fast-track a ‘security and defence first’ partial membership, to ensure the EU has pulling power to entice countries to follow a European security and defence strategy, in short to deepen the EU by broadening its geography? We know it needs to happen and we know it needs to happen fast, or we risk losing our territorial integrity. The clock is ticking.
Three: we all know what collective challenge we face in having to secure Ukraine and Europe essentially on our own. Global great power conflict is the new pandemic. Why are we not seeing for defence and armament what we saw for vaccines under the previous pandemic: centralized funding, joint procurement, regulatory coordination, through the EU? Yes, the new Commission is trying its very best to indirectly incentivize individual member states to act jointly – by clever funding and spending strategies – another leadership example. But that is making the best of a weak hand. We should instead expect the EU’s hand to strengthened. We are not.
That brings me to my final point: Germany. If the EU is to be geopolitical, Germany must turn the page on its 20th century history and become geopolitical itself. Germany is to European stability what the US is to global stability: not a hegemon, but an indispensable nation. Just like the US of old, we hope and expect this indispensable nation to lead and build a post-national(ist) security order.
This is where I have new doubts.
I very much welcome the second German Zeitenwende under the new federal government in Germany – this time you seem the mean it! I laud its historical significance, domestically, geopolitically, but also – and foremost – for Europe itself.
But what is the message for the European Union now that Germany will reestablish itself as a premier military and security force on the continent? When Chancellor Merz announced his plan to invest 600 billion euro in defence and security for Germany, I could not help and wonder: what would Helmut Kohl have done?
I cannot help but think that the Chancellor who gave up the German Mark, who accepted the Oder-Neisse border, who stood hand in hand with Mitterrand at Verdun, would have wanted to stand hand in hand with other European nations as Germany takes the momentous step back to rearmament, would have wanted to ensure a new geopolitical Germany is fully embedded into a new geopolitical European Union of which it would be a founding father and the anchor.
If Germany does not lead the next phase of a geopolitical EU integration, it risks seeding the political alienation that may make that next phase eventually impossible.
Ladies and gentlemen, madam President von der Leyen,
The battle for a strong geopolitical Union, a for strong new common home for European nation states in the world order and disorder of the 21st century, has only just begun.
Maybe the prize for geopolitical leadership presented today comes too soon. Or maybe it will be awarded to the Commission President again in the not so distant future.
It is a battle which no one in Europe can afford to lose, lest we risk division, marginalization and fragmentation, for European countries and for the EU itself. Indeed it is a battle no single nation state in Europe can conceivably wage, let alone win, without a strong geopolitical EU.
As Benjamin Franklin put in another time and in another context: we all need to hang together, or we will hang separately.
The new geopolitical phase of security, defence and geography, requires more leadership, more urgency, more action, now.
On an evening such as this, we must celebrate the political accomplishments of the recent past in order to mobilize the political energy for the immediate future.
Jean Monnet famously wrote that “Europe will be forged in crises, and will be the sum of the solutions adopted for those crises.” Let us live up to that pragmatic wisdom.
The crisis of geopolitics and world disorder is well and truly upon us. We should never waste a good crisis, as Churchill reminds us, or risk wasting the future of a strong continent for the younger generations.
May we collectively stand for a strong and united geopolitical Europe as the best possible solution for defending our respective national interests in the face of global upheaval.
May we see the new commission von der Leyen, and president von der Leyen herself, continue in leading and building a geopolitical European Union as the solution to our common geopolitical crisis.
Thank you.