Thomas Fazi: The anatomy of European power

Among the several tragic implications of the war in Ukraine, there is one that has gone relatively unnoticed: the way in which Ursula von der Leyen has used the Ukraine crisis to push for an expansion of the Commission’s top-down executive powers, leading to a de facto ‘supranationalisation’ of the EU’s foreign policy, including on defence and security matters, over which the Commission has no formal competence, ensuring the bloc’s alignment with (or better, subordination to) the US-NATO strategy, writes Thomas Fazi, a well-known columnist for "UnHerd" and "Compact".

Traditionally, the Commission has held a weak position in the foreign policy domain and particularly in defence and security policy — over which the Commission has no direct jurisdiction under the European treaties — and supranational integration in this area has long been seen as a “least likely” case. Prior to the von der Leyen presidency, the Commission had already slowly been expanding its role in the foreign policy domain as well, often by “circumventing” formal decision-making processes, but its role remained limited.

Shortly after first assuming the presidency of the Commission, in 2019, von der Leyen identified the creation of a “geopolitical Commission” as one of her main priorities. The EU, she asserted, needed to become a major “geopolitical” actor “to shape a better world order”.

She was anticipating, in other words, yet another institutional coup aimed at achieving yet more supranational unification and centralisation, in the one area where governments have historically been most reluctant to grant the EU and its institutions a greater policy role.

Following the war in Ukraine, however, the EU, through the European Commission, suddenly adopted a much more activist role, with von der Leyen once again seizing the window of opportunity created by the crisis to place herself at the lead of the bloc’s response, just as she had done at the onset of the Covid crisis. This allowed her to pursue two mutually reinforcing goals: expand the Commission’s mandate on security, while at the same time ensuring the bloc’s alignment with (or better, subordination to) the US-NATO strategy, by essentially transforming the Commission into “an extended European arm of NATO and the United States”, as Wolfgang Streeck aptly put it:

“Lacking jurisdiction under the European treaties on military and defense matters, the Commission sought to identify gaps in the capacities of EU member states and NATO that it could offer to fill, hoping thereby to enhance, or restore, its governing capabilities as an international institution.”

Von der Leyen’s first step was devising in record time an unprecedented, wide-ranging sanctions regime against Russia. The first sanctions package was adopted literally the day after Russia’s invasion, on February 25, to which dozens of other packages followed. These included asset freezes and travel bans, banking and central banking restrictions such as the exclusion from the SWIFT system, export controls and import bans, and embargoes on Russian energy.

As POLITICO explained:

“Throughout the preparation process, it was the Commission that [took] the lead on sanctions, consulting some national capitals like Berlin, Paris and Rome — but for the most part meeting representatives of member countries in small groups to sound out their views. Fearful that the ambitious package of sanctions could leak, the Commission never provided a draft text, until the final moment when member countries were poised to consider it.”

Von der Leyen has seized a firm grip on the transatlantic dialogue on Russia and sanctions policy, becoming US President Joe Biden’s primary interlocutor — the woman the White House calls when America wants to talk to the EU. And she and her team are given credit for navigating the typical pitfalls of EU discord over sanctions policy, successfully delivering round after round of punishing measures with relatively limited dissent.

As Wolfgang Streeck noted, aligning the EU with the US-NATO strategy also served von der Leyen’s self-aggrandising strategy:

“In its effort at supranational European state-building, the European Commission under von der Leyen deploy[ed] American pressure for European support in Ukraine as a lever to wrest from its member states additional powers and competences, a strategy supported by large sections of the European Parliament.”

Von der Leyen could also count on the fact that Björn Seibert, her then (and still today) head of cabinet, is a personal friend of US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. As the Financial Times reported, “in a departure from previous practices, the EU effort was co-ordinated directly [with Washington] from von der Leyen’s office through Björn Seibert”. Rather shockingly, one EU ambassador noted that the cooperation between the United States and the EU leadership meant that “the US at the beginning knew more about the work on EU sanctions than the EU member states”.

This, in turn created an institutional path dependency, whereby the marginalisation of member states in the formulation of the sanctions regime resulted in von der Leyen and her cabinet becoming the “only actors with an overview of the overall sanctions discussions”, which in turn created a self-reinforcing dynamic that led to a growing centralisation and de facto supranationalisation of the whole process.

The Commission also played a crucial role getting the EU to break the taboo on financing lethal weapons when it decided to fund the provision of lethal military aid to Ukraine. As article 41.2 of the Treaty of the European Union explicitly prohibits “expenditure arising from operations having military or defence implications”, this move required some creativity to circumvent. To this end, the Commission diverted €3.6 billion of its European Peace Facility (EPF) — an off-budget funding mechanism created to “prevent conflicts, build and preserve peace and strengthen international security and stability”— to provide lethal and non-lethal military support for Ukraine. It was the first time the European Peace Facility, somewhat of a misnomer at this point, had ever been used to provide weapons to a country at war.

In this regard, it’s worth reminding that, for all of the US’s berating of Europe for refusing to “pay their fair share” for defence, as of June 2024, EU countries and EU institutions have allocated altogether €110 billion to Ukraine, while the total financial aid allocated by the United States stands at “only” €75 billion — and this tendency is becoming even more pronounced. Meanwhile, there has been no discussion about the challenges that admitting a country like Ukraine into the EU, with its requirement for prolonged financial aid, would pose to the EU’s internal political and financial stability.

What’s particularly tragic is that von der Leyen’s authoritarian, top-down approach to the Ukraine crisis hasn’t transformed the EU into a “geopolitical actor” capable of standing on its own on the world stage, and standing up for its interests, as she had heralded at the start of her presidency, which may have partly justified this approach; on the contrary, by unquestioningly deferring to US strategy, von der Leyen has made the EU more “vassalised” to the US (in the words of an analyst for the European Council on Foreign Relations) than ever before.

Thus, it’s no surprise that, at the outbreak of the Israel-Gaza war, von der Leyen once again saw fit to speak (and act) on behalf on the whole bloc. A week after the October 7 attack, for example, she made an unscheduled trip to Israel, of which she had reportedly informed no one, where she affirmed the EU’s unwavering support for Israel. Not only had she not consulted with EU leaders prior to the trip — or even told them about it — but while there she did not even relay the position adopted by European foreign ministers calling for Israel to respect international law. This caused sharp criticism from several EU leaders and officials. “I don’t understand what the president of the Commission has to do with foreign policy, which is not her mandate”, Nathalie Loiseau, a European lawmaker and senior member of French President Emmanuel Macron’s Renew Europe group, wrote.

Even Josep Borrell, formally the EU’s foreign policy chief, issued a rare public rebuke of von der Leyen, saying that she isn’t entitled to represent EU views on foreign policy, which are normally coordinated between member countries.

Most EU leaders bear a big responsibility for this situation. By allowing von der Leyen and the Commission to relentlessly broaden their powers, one silent coup after another — first during the pandemic, then over the Ukraine war — they have contributed to this new reality coming into being. And, by re-electing von der Leyen, they have ensured that this process of creeping supranationalisation will continue in the years to come.

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