Good morning, dear readers.
Europe is demanding a place at the negotiating table on Ukraine, as Kyriakos Mitsotakis has also said. And rightly so.
But at the negotiating table, being right is not enough. You also need cards to play, and the strongest cards in European security are held by others.
Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in Dublin yesterday that there can be no lasting peace in Ukraine, or new architecture for European security, without Europe at the negotiating table. Quite right. But what strength will the EU bring to the table?
With a defence that still depends on the US security umbrella? With energy security that relies increasingly on the United States? Or with a common foreign policy that often founders on disagreements among the 27 member states?
Let us be clear.
Europe wants to negotiate as a great power, but it is still organised as a collection of states. And it is paying the price for that contradiction now.
As Washington takes diplomatic initiatives with Moscow to end the war, Brussels is preparing a 22nd package of sanctions. The 22nd!
Sanctions clearly come at a cost to Russia. But after 21 previous packages, who can explain how the next one will give Europe a stronger say in negotiations? Sanctions are a policy tool. They are no substitute for strategy. And strategy requires power.
The 27 member states spent a total of €418 billion on defence in 2025. And yet they still depend on the United States for critical military capabilities.
The problem is not that Europe is failing to spend. It is that it is spending without achieving the autonomy it invokes.
Things are no better in energy. The Union decided to reduce its dependence on Russian natural gas. Rightly so. But in 2025, almost 58% of liquefied natural gas imports came from the United States.
The geography of dependence has changed, then. Not the need to depend on others.
And now Europe is demanding an independent voice in its dealings with Washington, on which it depends both for its security and for a significant share of its energy supplies. How, exactly?
To be sure, Europe is no poor relation. It has one of the largest markets in the world, a technological base, capital and considerable economic influence.
But economic power can buy influence. It does not automatically deliver geostrategic clout. That requires common decisions, common capabilities and the political will to use them.
Instead, Europe is still debating who will represent it, how to coordinate its governments and when it will achieve its much-discussed strategic autonomy. More than four years after Russia’s invasion. And while others negotiate peace.
The problem, then, is not that Mr Mitsotakis is asking for Europe to have a place at the table. Nor is it that Brussels is preparing new sanctions.
The problem is that Europe continues to confuse claiming a role with possessing power. And the longer this confusion persists, the wider the gap between declarations and reality will grow.
Europe has every right to demand a place at the table where its future is being decided.
But first, it should answer one question: when someone else guarantees your security, supplies much of your energy and negotiates peace, what exactly do you bring to the table? The 22nd package of sanctions?