The European Union's plans to become a global giant

Friday 13 February 2026

When European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen speaks of making the European Union a ‘global giant’, she does not mean that Europe should suddenly acquire the habits of an empire. Rather she is invoking something more technocratic and yet more ambitious: that the European Union, long a regulatory superpower and an economic colossus, should learn to act with the strategic coherence of a great power.

The phrase has emerged against the background of war on the European continent, sharpening rivalry between the United States and China, and the persistent sense that Europe has too often been the object rather than the subject of geopolitical manoeuvre. For Brussels, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been not merely a humanitarian catastrophe but an existential alarm bell. Europe’s comfortable assumptions about peace, energy interdependence and the protective umbrella of American primacy have been shaken. The response, under von der Leyen’s presidency of the European Commission, has been to recast the European project as something more muscular.

Historically, the European Union has excelled at market integration. From the single market to the euro, its genius lay in dissolving internal barriers and exporting standards to the world. This so-called ‘Brussels effect’ allowed her to shape global norms in data protection, competition policy and environmental regulation. Yet for all her economic weight, she often appeared geopolitically timid — divided on defence, dependent on foreign energy, and hesitant in the face of authoritarian assertiveness.

Von der Leyen’s ‘global giant’ rhetoric seeks to close that gap between economic size and strategic agency.

The first pillar of this ambition is economic security. The European Union has moved from an almost doctrinal faith in open markets towards a more guarded approach — screening foreign investments, scrutinising supply chains and speaking openly of ‘de-risking’ from China. The war in Ukraine exposed how deeply dependent Europe had become on Russian gas. The subsequent scramble to diversify energy supplies was costly, but it also accelerated investment in renewables and liquefied natural gas infrastructure. The implication is clear: a global giant cannot afford strategic naivety.

Secondly, there is defence. For decades, European defence cooperation was the subject of lofty communiqués and modest budgets. That changed after 2022. The European Union began financing joint procurement of ammunition for Ukraine and encouraging member states to invest more seriously in defence production. Although NATO remains the cornerstone of European security, Brussels increasingly speaks the language of strategic autonomy. The aim is not to supplant the Atlantic alliance but to ensure that, should American priorities shift, Europe can defend her own interests.

This recalibration has geopolitical consequences. In Washington, a stronger Europe is welcomed in principle but sometimes regarded with ambivalence in practice. American administrations have long urged Europeans to shoulder more responsibility, yet they remain wary of any arrangement that might dilute NATO’s primacy. Meanwhile in Beijing, the European Union’s new assertiveness is scrutinised for signs of alignment with American containment policies.

The third pillar is industrial policy. Under von der Leyen, the European Union has embraced state-backed initiatives once considered suspect in Brussels orthodoxy. The Green Deal Industrial Plan and substantial subsidies for clean technologies reflect an understanding that global competition in batteries, semiconductors and artificial intelligence will not be won by regulatory finesse alone. If Europe is to be a ‘global giant’, she must manufacture as well as legislate.

Critics warn that this path risks protectionism and internal fragmentation. The European Union is not a unitary state; it is a complex federation of sovereignties, each with her own electoral cycles and fiscal constraints. Wealthier member states can subsidise their industries more easily than poorer ones, potentially distorting the single market. Moreover strategic autonomy may prove elusive if unanimity remains required in key areas of foreign policy.

Yet crises have often propelled European integration further than grand design. The eurozone crisis led to banking union. The pandemic produced joint debt issuance at an unprecedented scale. The war in Ukraine has pushed defence and energy policy into domains once thought politically untouchable. Von der Leyen’s wager is that necessity will continue to bind the Union together.

For Ukraine this evolution matters profoundly. A European Union that conceives of itself as a global giant is more likely to take enlargement seriously as a geopolitical act, not merely a bureaucratic process. Bringing Kyiv into the European family would not only stabilise Europe’s eastern frontier but also demonstrate that aggression cannot veto integration. In that sense, Europe’s global ambition intersects with her moral commitments.

There is also a question of values. Von der Leyen has framed Europe’s rise in explicitly normative terms — defending democracy, upholding the rule of law, and shaping global standards for digital governance and climate policy. To be a global giant, in her conception, is not to mimic authoritarian powers but to prove that liberal democracy can deliver prosperity and security in turbulent times.

Whether this vision will be realised depends less upon speeches in Brussels than upon political will in Berlin, Paris, Rome and Warsaw. It requires sustained defence spending, deeper capital markets, faster decision-making and the courage to speak with one voice abroad. It also requires persuading European citizens that integration is not a technocratic imposition but a strategic necessity.

Europe has long been a giant in trade and regulation. Von der Leyen’s project is to ensure that she is also a giant in strategy — capable of defending her interests, supporting her allies and shaping the global order rather than merely adapting to it.

In a world of resurgent empires and fragile alliances, that ambition is not vanity. It is survival dressed in the language of power.