Much of the speech reflected trends since 2022, stronger defense cooperation, economic security measures, and greater focus on resilience in energy, technology, and supply chains. What stood out was the tone: von der Leyen questioned whether reliance on the rules-based order alone can still safeguard European interests, signaling a more realist approach. Supporters see this as overdue pragmatism; critics warn it could weaken the EU’s credibility as a defender of international law.
We asked four leading experts if Ursula von der Leyen’s call for a more “interest-driven” EU foreign policy a real turning point, or just new rhetoric for an evolving status quo? And what are the implications for the EU’s credibility as a geopolitical actor?
Europe’s power already exists—the real challenge is completing the single market and overcoming internal divisions – Dr. Ilke Toygür, Director, Global Policy Center & Professor of Practice, IE University, Madrid
Ursula von der Leyen’s call for a more “interest-driven” European Union reflects a growing recognition that Europe’s strategic environment has fundamentally shifted. As Mark Carney’s Davos remarks underscored, the erosion of a stable, US-led Western order is forcing the EU to rethink the foundations of its policy toolbox. The transatlantic relationship can no longer serve as Europe’s default organizing principle; instead, the Union must look inward to identify and mobilize its own sources of power.
In this context, a geopolitical EU is all about the strategic use of existing assets. The crown jewel of the European toolkit is the single market. If completed, as emphasized in this week’s European Council, it would become Europe’s most potent instrument of power. Yet its internal fragmentation—equivalent to significant intra-EU tariffs—continues to undermine its geopolitical potential. Completing and deepening the single market is therefore not just an economic priority, but a strategic imperative.
Equally important is the EU’s global network of partnerships. From trade agreements to sectoral cooperation, including in security and defense, the Union already operates a dense web of relationships with middle powers across regions. The challenge, however, is political: overcoming internal divisions that have increasingly politicized trade and weakened the EU’s external credibility, as illustrated by the ratification of the MERCOSUR agreement.
A geopolitical EU, then, is one that invests in and coherently deploys its real instruments of power. With its internal market, regulatory influence, and global partnerships, Europe has the capacity to shape outcomes even in a fragmented international order. The decisive question is whether member states can align behind a common strategy that fully leverages these strengths. Without such unity, calls for strategic autonomy risk remaining rhetorical rather than transformative.
Europe is speaking the language of power but still lacks the tools to exercise it – Director of the Europe’s Futures Initiative, Vienna
This is not a strategic shift. It is, rather, another attempt by von der Leyen to realign her action with a world that has moved faster than Europe’s categories. Much of what she – and many Europeans – believed in about the international order no longer holds. The assumption that a rules-based system could, by itself, protect European interests has been deeply shaken.
The paradox is that Europe is now speaking the language of power without fully possessing the instruments of power. For decades, it has cultivated influence without sovereignty, interdependence without hard leverage. Today, in a more fractured and competitive continent, it is compelled to act geopolitically yet still lacks the unity, speed, and instruments that such a posture requires.
In this sense, von der Leyen is less a strategist than a translator. She captures and articulates a shift already underway in European capitals: a growing awareness that interests must be named and defended. But language alone does not make power. Without the political cohesion and the tools to act, this moment risks remaining a semantic adjustment rather than a strategic one. Europe is beginning to speak power, but it has yet to fully inhabit it.
Shifting from rules to interests risks undermining the EU’s only real competitive advantage – Alberto Alemanno, Jean Monnet Professor in European Union Law, HEC Paris
The EU was not built as a conventional power that happens to respect rules. It was built as a rules-based order, one whose authority, influence, and very identity are constituted by legal commitments, not suspended by them. Von der Leyen’s call for a more “interest-driven” foreign policy may therefore be the most self-defeating move available: abandoning the only competitive advantage Europe actually has.
The institutional problem compounds the strategic one. Foreign policy is the domain of the High Representative and, at summit level, the European Council President. The Commission’s external role is treaty-limited to trade, sanctions, and energy. When von der Leyen signals strategic reorientation from a diplomat’s lectern, she is not pivoting EU foreign policy but performing it without mandate. The “geopolitical Commission” has always been more brand than architecture.
More substantively, the shift she describes, from rules to interests, mistakes a vocabulary change for a strategy. The EU’s real foreign policy lives in the internal market’s projection through legal consistency and predictability. EU standards derive their global reach precisely from being applied indiscriminately and unconditionally.
A Union that offers the thin version of international order, that is rules when convenient, interests when not, will find that others apply the same logic back. Worse, it becomes indistinguishable from the powers it seeks to balance against.
Greater clarity on interests—without abandoning values—will define the EU’s credibility – Monika Sus, Professor at the Institute of Political Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw
Ursula von der Leyen’s call for a more “interestdriven” EU foreign policy is, in my view, less a strategic break and more a sharpening of language around a longstanding reality. The EU’s external action has always been shaped by interests – from market access and energy security to migration management and stability in its neighbourhood. What is changing is the level of frankness and clarity with which those interests are expressed, especially in the context of security partnerships, trade deals, and connectivity initiatives with regions such as Africa, Latin America, or the IndoPacific. A more openly interestdriven framing may help the EU negotiate more firmly, prioritise resources, and avoid naïveté in an era of greatpower competition.
At the same time, the EU will not, and cannot, turn into a “wild wild West” power where interests always trump values. A certain level of normative commitments to human rights, the rule of law, and climate action will continue to play a role and remain important to the Union’s identity and self-image. The key test for the EU’s geopolitical credibility will therefore lie in its ability to connect interests and values in a coherent way – to show partners that it can defend its own security and prosperity while still offering a rulesbased, predictable alternative to more purely transactional competitors.
Beyond theory: security, strategic autonomy and decision-making capacity now take centre stage – Alessandro Marrone, Head Defence Programme, Istituto Affari Internazionali, Rome
The latest statements by Ursula Von Der Leyen rightly take stock of a long-term trend of the international systems towards greater geopolitical confrontation and more acute conflicts. The change of tone in favour of realism, pragmatism and interest-driven foreign policy is somehow necessary to pave the way for EU policies more fit to protect not only European interests but the very same survival of the Union as a virtuous example of rule of law, multilateralism, and cooperation. Considering the Russian threat to Europe and the Trump administration’ s destabilising acts, a change is needed in Europe to protect the Union.
The firm anchor to values remains in the EU strategic communication and acts under this Commission and should continue to do so. But the recognition such anchor per sé is not sufficient to achieve results without greater strength and strategic autonomy is needed too. And this recognition is not that different from the traditional foreign policy of major European countries, including Union’s members.
The crucial issue for Europe nowadays is not a theoretical debate on values Vs interests. It is rather a concrete reflection, negotiation, and decision of two inter-linked stream-work. On the one hand, several dossiers on the EU table, from the Middle East to Ukraine, to greater autonomy on defence, energy, and technology. On the other hand, the functioning of Union’s decision-making to face an international security environment different from the and 2000s when much of the current EU institutional setting was defined.
An interest-driven EU is a survival strategy—but only a federal leap can make it credible – Arturo Varvelli, Head of Office and Senior Policy Fellow, European Council on Foreign Relations, Rome
The shift toward an “interest-driven” EU is not merely a change in tone; it is a survival response to a world where the “enchanted garden” of the rules-based order has vanished. As the U.S. evolves into “Atlantis”—a power focused on force and efficiency over universal values—the EU finds itself isolated, caught between Russia’s revisionism and a transactional Washington. This strategy signals a move toward “defensive realism” to protect the “True West.”
Von der Leyen’s rhetoric reflects a necessary decoupling from a U.S. administration that increasingly views the West through a techno-oligarchic, pre-Enlightenment lens. To maintain credibility, Europe must stop trading its “soul for armor.” However, this shift only gains strategic weight if backed by the “Draghi Model.” Transitioning from a regulatory power to a geopolitical actor requires a profound move toward fiscal integration, moving beyond intergovernmental hesitance and the constraints of national debt toward a federal “common safe asset.” This must be paired with a massive investment capacity, mobilizing up to €1,200 billion annually for defense and energy to achieve true autonomy, while maintaining a value-based leadership that acts as a sanctuary for the rule of law while the U.S. flirts with autocracy.
Ultimately, the EU’s credibility depends on whether it uses this “interest-driven” turn to become a sovereign federal power. By embracing the Letta-Draghi vision, Europe can transform its friction with Washington into a propulsive force, ensuring that Western power remains inseparable from the primacy of law and human dignity.
