BRUSSELS — The provocations of Vladimir Putin and the semi-detachment of Donald Trump are forcing the European Union to radically transform itself. Wednesday’s summit of EU leaders will offer the starkest evidence yet the bloc as it once was is no more.
The warlike threats surrounding the gathering in Copenhagen could scarcely be more ominous. Not only have Russian fighter jets flown into NATO airspace prompting Trump and EU chiefs to publicly back the idea of shooting them down, the very airport in the Danish capital that scores of leaders and officials will fly into saw major disruptions last week because of mysterious drones described by Denmark as a “hybrid attack.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen — a former German defense minister — has pushed for an unprecedented discussion at the summit of the EU’s military capabilities, moving far beyond the bloc’s traditional focus on trade, antitrust and economics. Among the options being touted is the creation of a “drone wall,” a system that would detect, track and shoot down drones, as well as projects to ensure planes intruding on European skies are quickly countered.
“Scrambling fighter jets is NATO’s job,” said a senior EU official. The EU’s “job is to be ready to be in the position we need to be when we have to respond — to enhance our readiness and have the tools to be able to react to threats when needed, reinforcing common tools and capabilities in the face of a common threat.”
The meeting is the first since the EU’s 27 leaders huddled in Brussels in June. The three months since offered a brief glimmer of optimism after Trump and Putin met in Alaska — and soon reverted to saber-rattling and behavior even more threatening than before. With a second summit planned for Brussels at the end of October, the bloc wants real decisions on bulking up Europe’s defenses and getting cash to Ukraine.
Acknowledging the risk posed by Moscow is the easy part, how to respond within an EU full of competing priorities is another. At least they can agree on a bottom line: Do nothing that makes all-out war more likely.
“The challenges for European leaders in Copenhagen is to find a deterrence equilibrium with an increasingly risk-seeking Russian leadership that allows for the effective management of such incidents, short of them spiraling into a crisis or then potentially into conflict,” said Rafael Loss, defense policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank. “That is very difficult when the U.S. president, the biggest ally in the NATO alliance, says ‘feel free to shoot [Russian jets] down, but whether I have your backs, I don’t know.’”
And yet this more dangerous phase of European politics is strewn with potential disasters. Privately, government officials have expressed worries about the prospect of a “Franz Ferdinand moment,” where a sudden escalation threatens to drag the continent into conflict, like the 1914 assassination of the archduke that triggered World War I.
Poland scrambled fighter jets and temporarily closed some Polish airspace on Sunday after a Russian attack on Ukraine that the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said lasted for more than 12 hours. In calling on Europe to ramp up its defense, Zelenskyy warned that the Kremlin had set its sights even beyond Ukraine.
“Putin will not wait to finish his war in Ukraine ― he will open up some other direction,” Zelenskyy said. “Nobody knows where.”
Ready to spend
If the fundamentals of defense draw general consensus ― even with Europe bitterly divided politically between a crumbling center ground and a rising populist right ― how to pay for what needs to come next is pitting leader against leader. The EU’s transformation into an effective global power costs money and not all capitals are aligned on just how much should be spent, let alone on what.
Military leaders insist Europe is already dealing with a low-intensity war with Russia. Historically, they say, wars have been won only with public debt — and a signal the EU is ready to spend can form part of the deterrence.
But handing the EU a bigger budget to spend on anything has rarely been popular, and even less so now when national leaders have ridden into government on anti-Europe rhetoric.
While even Kremlin-friendly countries like Hungary and Slovakia have welcomed additional cash for weapons, training and hardware as a boost for their economies, others like Spain play down the risk of war as they try to protect their already-stretched budgets. The Netherlands, Sweden and Germany have consistently been concerned about additional borrowing to pay for military rearmament and for aid to Ukraine.
But there’s nothing like the threat of invasion to focus the mind. Diplomats said they hope the growing threats will help reach decisions they would previously have been reluctant to take.
“It’s a difficult balance because you don’t want to terrify people but you want leaders to be aware of the risks enough to take them seriously,” said a diplomat involved in the European discussions.
Isolating Orbán
Time isn’t on the EU’s side. Ukraine faces a budget shortfall of about $23 billion next year, giving governments just months to deliver a sizeable pot of cash that can sustain Kyiv’s war effort. Von der Leyen believes she’s found the answer in the shape of a €140 billion “reparations loan” that’s financed by sanctioned Russian cash. The cash would come from Russian assets frozen by the EU since the start of the Ukraine conflict in 2022.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is standing in the way of the EU’s plan to seize the assets but the Commission thinks it’s found a legal workaround to cut Hungary out of the decision-making process. Leaders will discuss the plan on Wednesday and then hope to reach a formal decision at the second summit at the end of October.
“The goal [in Copenhagen] is to gather sufficient support from other countries to isolate Orbán,” an EU diplomat said. “We’re in the gray area.”
The Copenhagen summit is another step in the EU’s new chapter. But what’s not changed is how the bloc still struggles to get on the front foot and how its options appear slim.
“I don’t think there’s any interest in wanting to confront Vladimir Putin, getting in a shooting war of any kind to defend ‘socialist Europeans,’” said Max Bergmann, director of the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. Having already imposed hefty sanctions, Europe has no obvious “silver bullet” left.Jordyn Dahl in Brussels contributed to this report.
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