The recent European summit in Versailles missed a great opportunity: to launch, in a symbolic place, a new postwar order for Europe. We are not dreamers; we know that joining the European Union is no walk in the park and thatthe same procedures apply, in principle, to Ukraine as to the candidate countries in the Balkans. But there was an opportunity to establish a political union that would bridge the gap between a looser association and full membership. Instead, European leaders proceeded as if regular peacetime EU procedures are still appropriate in the extreme case of war in Europe. The freedom and peace project gave way to the EU of bureaucrats and officials.
But the EU is no longer the economic union of recent years; Vladimir Putin has unintentionally turned it back into the normative and institutional alliance of its founding years. It should become that again, since the task now is not only to protect Ukraine against Russian aggression, but also to strengthen the protection of its newer members, especially the Baltic states, and to include all those states that want to join the EU in that protection. What is needed is an “expanded Weimar Triangle” (which since 1991 has linked Germany, France and Poland). This would pay particular attention to the regional expansion of the security dimension within the EU. Germany, France, Poland and the Baltic states must enter into stronger security policy cooperation, if necessary also in the field of nuclear deterrence.
