UEF IN THE PRESS | Weapons Alone Are Not Enough

This article was written by Guy Verhofstadt, President of the European Movement International, Former MEP and Former Prime Minister of Belgium and Domènec Ruiz Devesa, President of the Union of European Federalists and Former MEP, published on the 03 March 2025 in the weekly magazine il Venerdi di La Repubblica, about the need for the United States of Europe to stop TrumPutin.

You can read the article in Italian here: LINK.

Weapons Alone Are Not Enough: We Need the United States of Europe to Stop TrumPutin

The America of the tycoon can no longer be considered a partner. The EU needs more than just joint arms production; it needs defense and politics at the federal level.

Just over a month into his term, it is already abundantly clear that Trump's United States are no longer our allies. There is no need to recall the imperialist statements on the Panama Canal, Canada, or Greenland, the threats of trade wars, his direct dialogue with Putin—a bloodthirsty dictator responsible for the most severe war of aggression in Europe since 1945—the attack on European democracy by Vice President Vance, the insinuations by the U.S. Secretary of Defense about the end of American security guarantees or the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the continent.

With the verbal aggression and attempted humiliation of Zelensky in front of the cameras on February 28th, the U.S. President has certified the end of the transatlantic alliance born on the USS Augusta by Churchill and Roosevelt in the summer of 1941 against the Nazi threat. Instead, we see the emergence of a new Trump-Putin axis.

We no longer share the same vision of the world and the same values: defense of international law, multilateralism, and democracy. Regarding Ukraine, we disagree with his collusion with Putin to impose a solution that legitimizes the aggression and does not guarantee its long-term security and that of Europe.

It is clear that we cannot rely on the United States for the territorial defense and nuclear deterrence of Europe, and therefore not on NATO, at least as we have understood it so far. The military alliance is entering a period of hibernation for at least the next four years. What should we do in view of Thursday's European Council meeting?

First, we must collectively become aware of this new reality. Until February 28th, some EU leaders still denied it. Some refused to accept that the Americans are no longer our friends, continuing to repeat the Atlanticist mantra. This is unsustainable.

Like Britain in 1940, Europe stands alone in the face of a real and present danger and must take responsibility for helping Ukraine, ensuring its own competitiveness and security, and becoming a true federal power. Secondly, we must integrate Ukraine into the EU economy (except for agriculture), sign an agreement on the extraction of rare earths through the European Investment Bank, and intensify our financial and military support.

U.S. aid has been crucial so far, but it is not irreplaceable. In fact, the total amount of European aid is already higher than that of the U.S. Europe is one of the strongest economies in the world: Russia's GDP is barely equal to that of Spain. We have no less than 200 billion euros in frozen financial assets of the aggressor state, which we must seize to arm and rebuild Ukraine.

Germany must deliver the long-range Taurus missiles and remove any restrictions on the use of weapons against conventional Russian military targets. We must tighten sanctions against the Russian ghost oil fleet and close indirect trade through Central Asia that circumvents them.

Thirdly, we must address the dual geoeconomic and geostrategic threat posed by Trump with a new European industrial plan financed by common debt and new own resources to bridge the technological, investment, and competitiveness gap identified in the Draghi report and to strengthen our defense industrial capacity, including the creation of a European Armaments Bank.

An Existential Challenge

As with the pandemic, this is another existential challenge. But we cannot ensure our collective defense solely through the joint production of weapons. We must create a European Defense Community (EDC), with Ukraine's participation.

The EDC will be responsible for our territorial defense as the European pillar of NATO, which we can activate independently of Washington, applying the legal bases of the Lisbon Treaty on European common defense and Permanent Structured Cooperation. If Trump's allies in the Council were to block these possibilities, we would have to create them with a separate interim treaty, to be integrated into the EU framework as soon as possible.

We propose extending the scope of nuclear deterrence to all EU member states that wish to participate in financing the French arsenal. Simultaneously, we must strengthen our political union, eliminate national vetoes, and confer additional powers to the European Parliament through the federal reform of the treaties proposed by the European Parliament in 2023.

The well-intentioned still hesitate, but what else must happen for us to react? Russian tanks at the gates of Kiev or Warsaw? We must choose: the United States of Europe or TrumPutin.