Europe on the Brink

The urgent questions facing Europe were the highly topical subject of last week’s Industry Forum roundtable to discuss our research paper, ‘Europe on the Brink.’ In particular, the proposal that European nations should consider creating a new ‘Alliance for Defence and Democracy,’ which could rapidly assume responsibility for the unified defence of Europe. The meeting was hosted by Stephen Hockman KC at his chambers, 6 Pump Court, and the meeting was opened by a strong panel of European experts, Dr Denis MacShane, Dr Jonathan Leader Maynard and Brendan Donnelly, and followed by a discussion involving the businesspeople, diplomats and academics present. The gravity of Europe’s current position was agreed, and the dangers arising from a lack of political unity among the European nations, and serious policy disagreements with the US. Other important factors discussed were that in conventional arms Russia has likely been weakened by sanctions and the Ukraine war while Europe has increased its conventional arms capability. Political developments and initiatives are changing the situation almost daily and there was a view that the existing 34 nation ‘Coalition of the Willing’ on Ukraine, together with initiatives by the EU such as the ‘Security Action For Europe,’ may evolve into an approach which could meet the Russian threat, and also avoid a deep split with the US. This is a crucial topic, with big implications for European businesses and economies. Almost at the same time as our meeting, the German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz was powerfully covering similar points on the much larger stage of the Munich Security conference. The key factors which will influence decision-makers include: the heavy price of US military support for Europe; the need to combat Russian efforts to prevent European unity and split NATO, and how to give Europe a strong independent voice in international affairs. We hope to work with other organisations to address some of these subjects later in the year. We apologise that we didn’t cover the enormous implications for climate change of the major diversion of investment to defence - we haven’t forgotten.