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One day Europeans may thank Donald Trump for forcing them to do what they should have done long ago: reassert their own military and technological independence. For years, Europe’s strategic stance has been to hope for the best and prepare for the best. But the US president’s message could not have been blunter in Davos this week: Europe must now prepare for the worst. Trump may have backed off military action against Greenland and punitive tariffs against its European supporters, but his mocking antipathy towards Europe was overpowering. It is way beyond time for Europe to absorb that message, rip up eight decades of dependency and go it alone wherever it can.
As the transatlantic rift widens, Europe is slowly rebuilding its hard power to support Ukraine and counter a revanchist Russia. It must also wrestle with both the US and China, which have been weaponising tariffs, financial infrastructure and supply chains, as Canada’s prime minister Mark Carney warned. Global integration, for so long the watchword of European policymakers, risks subordination. European sovereignty must be made real.
But for Europe to wean itself off the US is a wicked challenge. Many would say it’s impossible given the depth of economic, financial, technological and military interconnections. Still, the effort must be made and Canada is showing the way. Commendably, the EU is already copying Canada’s playbook by reducing internal barriers to business, doubling down on technology investment and seeking to expand trade ties with South America and India to counterbalance the US. “It is time to seize this opportunity and build a new independent Europe,” Ursula von der Leyen, EU commission president, said in Davos.
In response to Trump’s goading, many of Europe’s Nato members are promising to lift defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP, albeit more slowly than the moment demands. But the region’s reliance on US defence companies, including tech firms such as drone maker Anduril and the data platform Palantir, looks reckless given Washington’s unreliability as a partner. Europe has to unify its fragmented defence procurement process enabling its own defence primes to grow. It should also nurture European defence tech start-ups, including Helsing, Quantum Systems and Tekever.
It will be just as difficult for Europe to disentangle itself from the US tech stack. According to one estimate, three US companies control 65 per cent of Europe’s cloud computing market. US companies also dominate AI foundation models, semiconductors, search engines, social media and messaging apps in Europe. Even if it cannot fully replace all these services, Europe can go much further in promoting its own tech sector. Deepening the single market would be the biggest contribution European leaders could make. But they could also help mobilise more private growth capital to boost Europe’s most promising start-ups and encourage governments and companies to buy European first.
European entrepreneurs have long despaired of meaningful help from the EU commission. But they have been encouraged by its enthusiasm for the 28th regime, a pan-European regulatory framework that would allow companies to expand more easily. They would cheer even more loudly if European politicians gave more incentives for entrepreneurs to stay in Europe and actively welcomed and rewarded footloose international researchers in the way that China is now doing.
Luis Garicano, a professor at the London School of Economics and co-author of the Silicon Continent newsletter, argues that the EU is too cumbersome to respond to the urgency of the situation. He supports the idea of coalitions of the willing in critical fields, such as military rearmament, capital markets consolidation and industrial policy. These coalitions should also include non-member countries, such as the UK and Ukraine.
“Europe desperately needed an external shock,” Garicano tells me. “I have lost count of the number of wake-up calls we have snoozed through.” But if Trump succeeds in uniting Europe around some hard-headed and pragmatic reforms, the region will be in a stronger place in 20 years’ time, he says.
The challenges remains daunting, but determination is building. Trump is wildly unpopular in Europe. And as Carney has shown in Canada, standing up to the US president can help defang populist nationalists, who loom so large in Europe. Just as pressure from the east during the cold war forced European consolidation, so may threats from the west in today’s hot peace forge European renewal.
john.thornhill@ft.com
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