An EU economic security council is an idea whose time has come, writes Luuk van Middelaar

Anand Menon rightly observes that the EU’s peacetime foundations leave it ill-suited to address the security challenges facing the continent now (The European Union was designed for peace – it is never going to be a war machine, 1 October). Luckily, Europe is not devoid of the tools required to rise to this moment. The European Political Community – which met in Copenhagen last week – was cobbled together to present a united front with Ukraine, but has quickly established itself as a fixture of the diplomatic calendar, and one of the sole forums that can still convene post-Brexit Britain, Erdoğan’s Turkey and the non-EU “eastern flank”. It’s already proving to be the flexible and inclusive vehicle for common action that European security demands.

Meanwhile, original thinking and a willingness to break out of institutional silos may yet help the EU itself overcome the “delay and fudge” Menon identifies. On this front, an EU economic security council is an idea whose time has come – a simple-to-implement framework, in the model of its American equivalent, which would deliver the geostrategic assessment of key decisions that the EU desperately needs. The EU itself will probably never exercise hard power, but if we can hardwire a sense of economic statecraft throughout Brussels policymaking, the institutions will be better able to leverage the power they do possess – not simply for peacetime prosperity, but in the service of continental security too.
Luuk van Middelaar
Founding director, Brussels Institute for Geopolitics