Europe is not in decline. It is in suspension.

Europe’s priorities for 2026 have been chosen. Defence. Competitiveness. Simplification. Budget. Migration. The nouns are reassuringly familiar and delivered with the quiet confidence of institutions that have, once again, produced a list.

It is unfair to be too scathing because lists are useful. They create the soothing impression that Brussels is awake. Busy with summits, packages, omnibuses, roadmaps. PowerPoint decks that circulate and draft regulations that thicken. If motion were strategy, the European Union would already be a superpower.

The problem is not inertia but animated suspension. Europe today is neither collapsing nor surging ahead. On the contrary, it is its relative wellbeing that enables it to delay or avoid hard choices. But this is leading to being viewed not as a partner, but as a space to be managed, pressured or quietly bypassed. For the past few years, its symptoms have been described with an emotionally satisfying word: decline. Europe is in decline. Europe is falling behind. Europe is missing its moment.

The decline narrative is tempting because it creates a sense of urgency and drama. It allows us to agree that something is wrong, without agreeing on what to do. We expect others to tell us what bitter pill we need to swallow, and then refuse to comply once we learn about the collateral effects. But decline is also a sloppy description of what is happening.

The problem with decline

If Europe were in decline, we would be able to see it in the data: A steady slide or a visible cliff would be clear signals. But that is not what we see.

Most measures of economic performance show that the EU does not trail the US as badly as narratives suggest. Output per hour worked, a measure of labour productivity, is comparable and in some cases it is higher in Western Europe. When European workers produce less it is because they work fewer hours and because population growth is weaker. This distinction points to different social priorities rather than simple failure.

Further, much of the difference comes from a specific part of the US economy: the small number of extremely large, extremely profitable firms, concentrated in the technology sector and, geographically, in California. These “superstar” companies invest vast sums in research, scale rapidly and generate extraordinary returns. The rest of the US economy looks different. This is what economists call a k-shaped economy: Simply put, it means that some sectors, firms and even workers take off while others stagnate. One arm of the “K” points up while the other one slopes down. Aggregate this together as growth and, by sleight of hand, the divergence disappears and the economy as a whole appears healthy.

With this picture in mind, Europe is not falling but it is sitting on the flatter, more stable part of that curve. This does not mean Europe has nothing to worry about. Investment problems are real, as is the relative weakness of institutions such as venture capitalism. As a consequence innovation has been lackluster and productivity growth has turned anaemic in several sectors.

The language of decline obscures more than it reveals. It suggests the EU is losing a race, when we are not even sure Europe agreed to run in that same race to begin with. And this is where economics stops being the main problem. Enter politics.

Where Europe’s vulnerability becomes real

Europe’s weakness today is not to be found in the economic sphere as much as in the political one. Not because EU politics is more polarised than elsewhere, or because institutions have ground to a halt. But because the EU has taught itself to avoid conflict, internally and externally.

This did not happen by accident. European integration has always relied on compromise and consensus. These were virtues in a period of expansion and little geopolitical tension, when the pie was growing and disagreements could be mollified by time and money. Over the past decade, however, the rug has been pulled from under our feet.

Internally, enlargement fatigue, fiscal battles of crumbs, rapid aging and far right rise have turned many national governments into veto players. The result is a system that still produces minimum command denominator agreements, at the cost of any ambition.

Externally, several shocks have left European elites reeling. From Ukraine to Gaza, the international order is fraying. Most importantly, the return of Donald Trump to the White House has delivered a deathblow to the transatlantic relationship. The US now treats Europe as a political arena in which its own ideological battles are being fought.

European leaders responded with what they considered realism. Defence spending was increased, often by committing to targets that everyone knows will not be met. Trade disputes were defused through concessions, if not outright submission. The strategy of open interference within EU member states, espoused black-and-white on the 2025 National Security Strategy, was met with meek silence.

This approach was sold as prudence, but it taught EU institutions that humiliation could be an acceptable price for stability, and it entrenched Trump in the idea that European leaders are “weak”. In trying to prevent domestic disruption, EU leaders reinforced the very forces that thrive on narratives of weakness. Appeasement abroad reduced democratic confidence at home and emboldened the politics of grievance.

Europe did not become powerless overnight. It learned, gradually, to behave as if power were dangerous.

The managerial present

Nowhere is this clearer than in the EU’s current policy agenda. The priorities for 2026, as set out in the EU institutions’ Joint Declaration on legislative priorities, are not wrong. Defence matters. Competitiveness matters. Simplification matters. Migration matters. Finally, the long-term budget will shape everything that matters.

What is striking are not the items on the list, but what is missing: a story that shows why these priorities fit together, what trade-offs they imply and what is the Europe they are meant to produce.

What we get instead, is a Europe scrambling to govern an eternal present. Problems are addressed as homework checklists without no structure and no clear priorities, through deliberately limited instruments and politically cautious, reversible, mechanisms. This is why the legislative agenda bundles defence, housing, industrial policy, labour mobility and regulatory simplification into a single year’s priorities. If everything is a priority, nothing is.

Take defence. The EU has created tools such as SAFE and the European Defence Industry Programme to support joint procurement and industrial cooperation. The sums to be mobilised sound impressive until they are confronted with national budgets or the scale of the challenge. In addition, they mostly come as loans, not grants, making them almost useless. Coordination remains voluntary and strategic autonomy is invoked, but external dependency is never confronted and new dependencies are being created (such as the growing dependency from US LNG).

What about competitiveness? The key idea is the “28th regime whose aim is to create a unique legal framework enabling companies to operate without having to navigate 27 different national systems. In theory, it could help European firms scale but it leaves difficult questions on labour protection and taxation off the table. It is a bold technical fix wrapped in political hesitation.

Simplification follows a similar pattern. Omnibus packages promise to cut red tape by bundling amendments to existing laws. This may indeed reduce the administrative burden, but it dilutes standards that were achieved through hard-fought battles. In so doing, it makes climate targets just numbers on paper and it destroys the EU’s credibility.

The effect is cumulative: Europe tries to appear active, even industrious, but it rarely tackles the underlying tensions.

The choices we keep postponing

Europe faces a relatively small number of real choices. The first concerns its economic model. The EU can continue to rely on fragmented capital markets, national champions and ad hoc fiscal coordination, accepting slower growth and greater external dependence. Or it can complete the architecture it has discussed endlessly: integrated capital markets, a banking union and permanent mechanisms for common borrowing (as it recently did for Ukraine).

This is not a technical debate. It is a political one with a clear-cut question: Is Europe willing to pool risk in order to pool power?

The second choice concerns defence and foreign policy. Europe can remain a collection of national armies loosely coordinated through NATO, wishfully hoping that US guarantees will work despite the US officials repeatedly thrashing them. Or it can treat defence as a public good with shared planning, shared procurement and shared financing. This, too, is not primarily about money. It is about trust and shared sovereignty.

The third concerns democracy itself. Europe can continue to manage illiberal forces through silence and proceduralism, avoiding confrontation in the name of fake unity. Or it can defend its own rule of law standards with the same seriousness it demands from others.

To be clear, none of these choices are cost-free. All of them would provoke backlash. That is precisely why they are postponed. In the meantime, Europe drifts.

Not decline, but anesthesia

The danger of the decline narrative is that it invites panic or resignation. Panic leads to overcorrection and resignation leads to a politics of managed retreat. As identified in this piece, Europe’s condition today is different. It is closer to anaesthesia.

The continent is not collapsing. Its citizens are not suddenly poorer and its institutions are still functional. But the capacity to act when it matters has been dulled by relative comfort and institutional habit. Decisions are delayed not because they are impossible, but because delay feels safer.

The gap between language and reality has become too wide to ignore. Europe speaks the language of power while acting like a nervous subcontractor. It celebrates its values while shrinking from defending them. It announces priorities while avoiding hierarchy.

Europe does not need more lists. It needs fewer evasions.

The question is not whether Europe can “catch up” with the US or “compete” with China on their terms. The question is whether Europe is still capable of choosing what it wants to protect, what it is willing to risk and what kind of power it is prepared to exercise.

Decline is fate. But suspension is a condition. And conditions, unlike destinies, can be changed.