Europe's summer of decisions begins quietly

The European institutions moved into the late spring with the agenda that the year had set, and the agenda’s weight was the measure of the decisions that the summer will have to carry. The defence budgets that the war on the continent’s edge has forced into the open, the trade negotiations that the American tariff policy has made urgent, the enlargement questions that the war’s geography has revived, and the governance of the continent’s largest economies, all of it is scheduled for the months ahead, and the scheduling is the quiet part of the story: the summer of decisions is being prepared in the spring’s technical work, the documents, the committees, the negotiations that the headlines will not carry until the decisions are made.

The defence question is the one that the year has made impossible to defer. The member states have committed, in the statements and the budgets, to the increases that the security environment demands, and the commitments have been followed by the hard work of the procurement, the capability gaps, the coordination that the rearmament requires; the American administration’s insistence on the burden-sharing has provided the pressure, and the war’s course has provided the urgency, and the two forces have produced the defence debate that the continent has avoided for three decades. The summer’s decisions will be the first tests of the commitments, and the tests will be conducted in the procurement contracts and the capability reviews that the member states will approve.

The trade negotiations that the spring opened are the other part of the summer’s agenda. The talks with the American administration, conducted through the spring with the pauses and the deadlines that the year has produced, will continue through the summer, with the window that the truce opened providing the calendar; the European negotiators will carry the mandate that the member states authorised, and the mandate’s limits will be tested by the American demands and the domestic pressures. The summer’s trade decisions will be the ones that the negotiators bring back from the talks, and the bringing will be conducted in the full presence of the industries and the voters that the decisions will affect.

The enlargement questions, revived by the war’s geography, will also find their place in the summer’s schedule. The candidacies that the war has made urgent, the western Balkans and the eastern neighbours, have been advanced through the channels that the institutions maintain, and the advancement has been conducted at the pace that the member states’ politics allow; the summer’s meetings will produce the decisions that the candidates need, and the decisions will be shaped by the balance between the strategic case for the enlargement and the institutional caution that the decades have built. The balance is the negotiation that the summer will conduct, and the outcome will be the continent’s answer to the question of its own borders.

The summer of decisions will be conducted in the context that the year has created, and the context is the part that the analysts keep returning to: the American redefinition of the alliance, the war’s uncertainties, and the domestic politics of the member states, all of it pressing on the institutions that were built for a different era. The decisions will be made, as the European decisions always are, through the negotiations and the compromises that the continent’s method requires, and the making will be the story of the season; the summer will be the test of whether the continent can convert the year’s pressures into the decisions that its future requires, and the test’s outcome will be written in the budgets, the treaties and the negotiations that the quiet spring has been preparing.