Contenu du sommaire : Union européenne, l'illusion géopolitique ?

To deal with the internal and external challenges of a new era, the European Union must reform its institutions: review Member States' right of veto, strengthen the Commission, and take action on foreign policy and security matters, energy, the single market and the economy, social policy, health and immigration—while at the same time considering expansion. This is the only way for the Union to preserve the values of freedom and democracy that underlie European integration.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine that followed it have acted as gauges for Europe's dependencies and weaknesses. Lasting disruption to value chains and the challenge of energy transition have forced European leaders to react all the more vigorously, as the United States and China have been honing their weapons. Brussels institutions and Member States must go even further to preserve and affirm European sovereignty.

Due in no small part to the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, the European Union has made progress toward a veritable geopolitical reality. Against all expectations, it has demonstrated its unity and has been able to make important decisions in favor of its economic and energy resilience, its expansion, and even its defense. However, it remains heavily dependent on the United States for its security—a dependency that the war in Ukraine has only intensified.

The European Union has shown itself capable of quickly putting up a united front to meet the challenges posed by the war in Ukraine, in terms of both economic and military aid. Member States have also begun making significant increases to their defense budgets. But investment in industry is still haphazard. And the renewed reliance on the United States seems to rule out true European strategic autonomy on defense matters for many years to come.

Europe's space sector is currently faced with great difficulties, marked by the temporary loss of autonomous access to space, strong competition from the USA, and the transformation of the satellite market. The European Union is also lagging behind in the digital field, and space data is largely out of its reach. In this tense situation, with investments pouring in from the USA and China, Europe needs to wake up or risk losing its sovereignty.

The Oslo agreements signed in 1993 raised high hopes for peace in the Middle East. But appraising the state of affairs, thirty years on, the picture is bleak. The refusal to make particular compromises, the persistence of terrorism, and the continuation of settlement have plunged the process into a deadlock. Supporters of the annexation of the West Bank have been part of the Israeli government since the end of 2022, while the Palestinian Authority is sclerotic. In this highly uncertain situation, there seems to be no resolution in sight.

The Oslo Agreement of 1993 was a declaration of principles that later needed to be clarified through further negotiations. This peace process quickly ran into insurmountable difficulties. It ended up in a stalemate and led to cycles of violence. Thirty years on, there is no denying the failure of these efforts. Israeli settlement has made significant progress and the Palestinian territories are divided. The outlook is bleak, and it is impossible to predict what the future holds.

After seventy years of Communism, the Russian people aspired to live in a “normal country,” and at the end of 1999, Vladimir Putin emphasized that he was against the restoration of any official state ideology. Since then, the place of ideology in Putin's Russia has been much debated. The invasion of Ukraine, presented as a clash of civilizations, has challenged the cohesion of Russian society and the Russian State. The question of a return to an official ideology has been raised.

In the Sahel, domestic and foreign military forces have been unable to eradicate, or even contain, terrorism. New negotiations with the jihadists now appear inevitable. For several years there have been attempts at negotiating, sometimes supported by international mediators; at a local level and on specific issues, these talks have produced some positive results. However, in some respects, the situation has worsened. Negotiating peace more broadly is a path strewn with pitfalls, if not a pipe dream.

Against a backdrop of growing tensions between the United States and China, the nations of the Indo-Pacific region are coming under increasing pressure to pick sides. The island nations of the South Pacific are emerging as a major new battleground. The Solomon Islands are a case in point—traditionally allied with Australia and the United States, they made international headlines in 2022 after signing a security agreement with China.

The illusion that developing economic and trade interdependencies would make war impossible because it would be too costly, or that economic action could overcome an adversary over the long term, has proved difficult to dispel. It emerged in the nineteenth century and punctuated the twentieth, despite two world wars. It persists today in the increasing use of sanctions policies and in the economic sphere, right at the heart of the rivalry between China and America.

Migration to Europe is not as rampant as the poorly managed public debate might lead us to believe. It nevertheless poses problems that must be managed both by acting on local political imbalances and on the legal forms of reception in Europe: conditions of asylum, organization of removals, dismantling of networks of people smugglers, and so on. These are all policies that must be implemented collectively and with respect for the interests and values of the European Union.

In 2022, immigration reached record levels in Europe, recalling the migration crisis of 2015. This subject is instrumentalized by populist parties and contributes to the polarization of societies. Increasing numbers of politicians accuse the law of being too protective of migrants. Judges are described as going against the will of the people. Research studies are much less alarmist and deserve to be more fully taken into account by public decision-makers.