How summits of EU leaders became dysfunctional
Is the European Council unfit for purpose? Plenty of those who have sat around the table believe the new world order demands changes to the EU.
By SEBASTIAN STARCEVIC
Illustration by Natália Delgado/POLITICO
When the EU was formed in the shadow of World War II, it was built for economic integration, not hard power — its security outsourced to the U.S., and its politics and institutions set up for consensus.
But the world that birthed the bloc is no more. And in Brussels and beyond, aggravation is growing at the speed and urgency — or lack thereof — with which its 27 leaders, collectively known as the European Council, confront challenges and make decisions, especially on security and foreign policy.
“Europe today is in permanent crisis mode and its decision-making architecture was simply not designed for it,” former Danish Prime Minister and NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told POLITICO. “You cannot wait for the Council to agree a statement while the world is burning.”
The EU has failed repeatedly in recent months to make unified calls on issues of seismic geopolitical importance — from unblocking a €90 billion tranche of funds for Ukraine, to imposing sanctions on Russia and violent West Bank settlers, to responding cohesively to the war in Iran. At the most recent EU leaders’ summit in March, leaders spent hours squabbling about the finer details of the bloc’s ETS carbon permit scheme even as Tehran struck Europe’s energy supplies in the Middle East.
“To say ETS is the biggest issue when big gas fields are burning is a bit weird,” an exasperated EU official, granted anonymity like others in this article to discuss the sensitive diplomacy they were involved in, told POLITICO.
A large share of the agendas of the October, December and March summits were dedicated to unfinished business from previous meetings, revisiting issues that were never resolved: from defense readiness to financing Kyiv and plans to fix the EU’s economy.
The idea that Europe is too slow to make decisions has almost become a cliché. Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten used his first trip to Brussels in the role last month to urge the EU to get a move on. “We cannot explain to our constituents that Europe is sometimes way too slow in reacting on great issues that affect us all,” he said.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, French President Emmanuel Macron, sporting sunglasses, declared that the EU “sometimes is too slow, for sure, and needs to be reformed, for sure.”
And last week, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen criticized the EU’s need for unanimity to take decisions on international affairs, saying it had created “systemic blockages” and calling for an end to the national veto, specifically on foreign policy.
Rasmussen argued the EU needed to move away from late-night talking shops and accelerate its ability to respond to security threats “with fast-moving structures that this era demands.”
Don’t blame Europe
Of course, the nature of the EU, its whole raison d’être even, is consensus-based decision-making among its member countries.
Under its ungainly structure, all 27 European leaders gather periodically to discuss the bloc’s priorities, set the political direction and, after hours of negotiating, wrangling and compromise, agree on collective statements. Much of what gets decided is pre-negotiated by national diplomats in formats such as Coreper, the committee of EU ambassadors.
“Could it be more efficient?” an EU official mused to POLITICO. “Probably. I do understand the criticism.”
“There are some issues that can be a little bit difficult to tackle at the European Council level,” the official added. “Where there is a huge focus right now is how to change those policy agreements into concrete action, because there is so much pressure on Europe right now.”
That said, the Council is “by far the best forum” to tackle the most pressing issues of the day, the official insisted.
A second EU official agreed. “It’s a democratic institution, it gathers all the heads of state, it is the right place to discuss these kinds of issues,” the official said, arguing there was no real alternative to the mandate and legitimacy of the Council.
It’s “not entirely fair to evaluate” the Council by its response to crises alone because it was set up to decide the EU’s “long-term” political goals, said Steven Van Hecke, professor in European Politics at KU Leuven Public Governance Institute. But it has been “acting like a supreme executive” when it needs to, including during the financial crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic.
The body certainly has its defenders, including former Belgian Prime Minister and United Nations Development Programme chief Alexander De Croo. “The European construction sometimes takes time to come to decisions,” he told POLITICO. “But I’ve been part of moments where they were very decisive.”
De Croo, who sat at the Council table from 2020 to 2025, also pointed to the EU’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, which included a massive recovery fund and vaccine cooperation.
“The speed of decision of execution was actually quite high. And the effectiveness of the response from the European level was high,” he said. “So I don’t think it’s a structural issue.”
In a world rocked by decisions taken by U.S. President Donald Trump on foreign policy and tariffs, Europe’s more ponderous ways are also to its credit, he argued.
“For me, one of the main learnings of what is happening now is that … it’s sometimes not bad to consult with your partners and to think ahead of what is happening,” he said. “You can’t really blame European countries for being thoughtful and being prudent in what is the right response.”
Macron made a similar point in his Davos speech, saying Europe had proven “predictable” and “loyal” to its partners.
A new world
Yet even if the EU is predictable, the world increasingly is not.
In the last decade the international order has tilted sharply on its axis, old alliances have shattered and crises have multiplied. Europe’s old ways of taking decisions simply don’t cut it, Rasmussen said.
“When I attended the European Council between 2001 and 2009, the world was a fundamentally different place,” he said. “Russia was still a G8 partner. America was an unambiguous ally. We had our share of crises, but also the space to deliberate. That world no longer exists.”
Rasmussen called for the EU to “fundamentally reinvent its security frameworks.” Some of the ideas that have been floated, along with doing away with the veto for foreign policy matters, include creating a European Security Council, a high-level body with a mandate to make defense decisions for the continent, and reinforcing the powers of the European Commission.
“Of course, if you say, well, we need to reform the EU to make it faster, then the question is OK, but how?” said Gilles Pittoors, a political science lecturer at KU Leuven.
“You could, for example, introduce QMV (Qualified Majority Voting) in the European Council on these foreign policy issues. But that raises a hell of a democratic issue,” he said.
Creating new bodies would solve nothing, he argued. “I think the best way forward here, if you’re really serious about reforming the EU to make it more agile, to make it respond more quickly, is to basically strengthen the powers of the Commission.” Yet that too faces skepticism from member countries wary of giving the EU executive too much power, he acknowledged.
When leaders gather for a summit this week, there will be one notable absence: Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who after suffering a crushing defeat in an election this month said he would not attend. Without the chronic consensus-blocker in the room, one official said, the Council could overcome its divisions and reach compromises faster.
But time is of the essence. The meeting is once again set to be hijacked by war and geopolitics, with the U.S. blockading the Strait of Hormuz after Washington’s negotiations with Tehran fell through, and no end to the global energy shock in sight.
At least one headache should finally be alleviated: Ukraine is set to finally get its €90 billion loan from the EU, four months after the bloc’s leaders first agreed on it at a summit in December.
But the memory of the months-long impasse won’t fade quickly.
“I think that the recent experience with how we responded to Ukraine and the €90 billion loan is an example of how easily the EU gets stuck,” Pittoors said.
