On the role of the European Union as an international actor, much has been written even recently where the (apparent) economic strength, the unquestionable political weakness and the dramatic military inconsistency have most often been emphasised, as Mario Draghi, Enrico Letta and Sauli Niinistö have done in their three reports that focus more on diagnoses than on proposals for short-term and even more so on long-term solutions.
Some obsessively reiterate their contempt for those who have shown us the reasonable way of overcoming absolute sovereignties and nationalisms as imagined in the Ventotene Manifesto of 1941 but also in the Schuman Declaration of 1950 or seems to suggest to oppose Reagan and Trumpian nationalism (Make America great again) with a European nationalism (Make Europe great again), for now propagated not by chance by Viktor Orban and Elon Musk, which would be guaranteed by limiting European action to its current competences without expanding them in areas in which the European Union is moving uncertainly and has few powers.
Others appropriately reminded us of the political and moral legacy of US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt eighty years after his death (12 April 1945).
Beyond the economic policy and the New Deal that brought America out of the Great Depression, Giovanni Farese reminds us of the ‘four freedoms’ of the human person and Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s prophecy: of worship, i.e. to have or not to have a worship, of expression, of needs and fears, the first two of which are carved in our European Charter of Fundamental Rights (Articles 10 and 11) but the other two are still struggling to be part of the goods guaranteed by the European Union.
We would like to draw your attention to the freedoms from fears and needs by linking them to the role of the European Union as an international actor and by reflecting on the effects that the solutions imagined in recent months for European security and defence can have in freeing us from fears and guaranteeing us the enjoyment of goods according to the principle underpinning the 2030 Agenda: no one left behind.
We link the role of the European Union as an international actor to the freedoms from fears and needs – certainly not underestimating the freedom of thought, conscience and religion together with the freedom of expression and information that are the salt of democracies – because there is now a widespread conviction that European defence cannot be separated from European foreign policy.
Proposals abound as to how common defence should be realised, but the fog is thick when it comes to identifying the strategic interests of the European Union, setting its objectives, defining its direction and pointing out the obstacles that have prevented it from overcoming its political weakness and erasing its strategic inconsistency.
The fog is thick not only if one reads the conclusions of the meetings of the European Council to which the Lisbon Treaty assigns this task (Art. 26 TEU) but also the more than four hundred paragraphs of the resolutions adopted by the European Parliament on 2 April 2025 in which the Assembly finally acted on the power entrusted to it in Art. 36 TEU to hold a debate twice a year on the progress of the CFSP and the ESDP.
If we reread the Lisbon Treaty in its two parts (TEU and TFEU), namely the short one originated by the draft Constitutional Treaty and the very long one that the governments wanted to impose at the request of Angela Merkel and Tony Blair in order to evaporate its supranational dimension, we realise how many unfortunate choices have emerged in the intergovernmental negotiations, confirming the political weakness and strategic inconsistency of the European Union that make a wide-ranging reform of the European system indispensable before its enlargement:
- the apparently nominal decision not to call the former Mr CFSP, born in Amsterdam in 1997, ‘Foreign Minister’ but ‘High Representative’,
- the more substantive decisions to safeguard the confederal nature of the entire foreign and security policy including common defence, to maintain the principle of unanimous voting, to create a duopoly between the President of the European Council and the President of the Commission by depriving it of the right of autonomous initiative, to confirm the NATO umbrella for its member countries, to make the role of the European Parliament purely formal by avoiding any reference to the political control of national parliaments
- the choice, contrary to the objective of convergence and coherence, to separate the confederal dimension of the CFSP and the ESDP enshrined in the Treaty on European Union together with the accession procedures and the neighbourhood policy from the Community dimension of the European Union’s external action, which includes the exclusive competence for the common trade policy, cooperation with third countries and humanitarian aid, restrictive measures, international agreements, relations with international organisations and third countries and EU delegations, the solidarity clause.
Freedom from fears concerns the possible danger of armed aggression after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a freedom from which we should theoretically be guaranteed by the strengthening of our national military arsenals (ReArm Europe now renamed Readiness 2030) – every one for itself but none for all – if there is no agreement to create common debt and investment or to bring together groups of willing countries.
Without prejudice to the commitment to renewed and strengthened economic, financial, humanitarian and military solidarity to Ukraine, which is increasingly urgent in order to cope with Moscow’s brutal violence and which requires the interoperability of European aid after Donald Trump’s disengagement, freedom from fears affects Russia’s neighbouring countries (Baltics, Finland and Poland) and those whose land borders do not coincide with those of the Russian Federation in different ways
The mutual defence clause included in Article 42.7 TEU specifies that commitments and cooperation in this area shall remain in accordance with the commitments undertaken in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation which remains, for the states that are members of it, the foundation of their collective defence and the instance of its implementation and that this clause becomes more uncertain in the face of Washington’s possible disengagement with the consequence that the terms of a European pillar of NATO or European strategic independence need to be defined.
Freedom from fears does not only concern armed aggression, but also cybersecurity, trade wars, or dependence on the ICT and satellite systems of third countries, or the unfounded fear of migratory flows that require policies of welcome and inclusion along with new forms of cooperation with the countries of origin of migrants and those entitled to international protection.
Quite different choices concern the freedoms from needs that would be endangered if it were decided to prioritise military expenditure by reducing spending on health, welfare, ecological and digital transition, interventions in inland areas and regions in industrial decline, knowing that the competitiveness of the European system is linked to the democratic, economic and social sustainability of European society as a whole.
Let us embrace the legacy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his prophecies not to be wasted in the face of the challenges of the global and European economy!
Pier Virgilio Dastoli
24 April 2025