Ludovic Marin / EPA
Europe has built a political and regulatory order, which works as a whole, and which external powers can no longer circumvent. The intense opposition it has received from these powers is proof of its success. But, instead of reinforcing this path, its leaders are weakening the model.
For the first time in modern history, Europe is recognized by other powers as a political actor in his own right.
Over the past three decades, the European Union built a political system and regulations robust enough to shape global competition and unite much of the continent.
However, instead of reinforcing Along this path, its leaders are weakening the social and economic model that made this achievement possible, says Alberto Alemannoprofessor of Community Law at HEC Paris, in an opinion article in .
Let’s not fool ourselves, says Alemanno: despite the US president’s recurring statements, Donald TrumpVice President JD Vance and his MAGA acolytes, the European Union is not in decline. In many ways, the European project had a success that exceeded the most optimistic expectations of its founders.
For the first time in modern history, Europe is recognized by other powers as a political actor in his own rightand not just as a market or a vague collection of sovereign states.
This did not happen after the fall of the Berlin Wallin 1989, not even after the enlargement of the EU to the East, in the early 2000s. In these three decades, Europe built a political and regulatory order which external powers can no longer circumvent by negotiating individually with 27 national governments. On the contrary, they must dealing with Europe as a whole.
This becomes increasingly evident in the way foreign powers frame their policies and actions, notes Alberto Alemanno, who highlights that even Trump’s new (NSS), for example, speaks of a “Europe” in decline, instead of focusing on Member States individually.
The Russian President, Vladimir Putinin turn, justified its war against Ukraine invoking EU expansion (and above all from NATO), while the China sees Europe as a counterweightunified regulatory system.
At the heart of this change there is a deeper transformation. Europe is no longer seen just as a geopolitical actor, but as a competing model of organization of economic and political lifea.
As a result, European policymakers are forced to confront a fundamental question that they have avoided for decades: is the EU just a coordination mechanism or a political community with a shared destiny?
In reality, the world has already answered this question. Whether Europeans recognize it or not, Europe is a political communityconsiders Alemanno.
This recognition, however, is not automatic or guaranteed. It depends on the EU maintaining its distinct economic model.
Unlike American capitalismwith its emphasis on speed, size and accumulation, and Chinese authoritarianismwhich subjects markets and political authority to centralized state control, the European social market economy puts the democratic choicesocial protection and the rule of law at the center of economic life.
When seen through this lensit becomes clear that the Trump administration’s hostility toward the EU is not about individual regulations. This is the opposition to a system in which workers have a voice through collective decision-making, universal health care and education are rights, and legislation antitrust protects competition instead of supporting companies supported by the State or politically linked.
This model is possible thanks to the size. With 450 million consumers governed by a unified regulatory framework, the EU is the largest single market of the world.
Multinational companies seeking to access it they have no other choice if not adapt to European rules, allowing the EU to define the terms of global competition. Current external pressures to abandon this model are nothing new.
For decades, critics claimed that the European social model was unsustainable, its economically suicidal regulatory regime and its democratic limitations to naive markets. However, this model provided stability, prosperity and global influence.
A intense opposition it receives is proof of its success: It has become a force that others have to confront, rather than ignore.
The numbers speak for themselves. The EU’s main economies match or exceed US productivity per hour worked, enjoy longer life expectancy and have much lower income inequalities. The classifications of quality of life consistently place European cities like Vienna and Copenhagen ahead of their American counterparts.
Furthermore, despite the NSS warning about “civilizational erasure,” Europe absorbed millions of migrants without compromising social cohesion.
Germany alone naturalized more than half a million of citizens over the past five years, while the far-right Italian government approved record numbers of migrant arrivals in 2025, demonstrating that the EU’s immigration model can work even under ideologically opposed leaders to him.
Taken together, says Alemanno, these characteristics help to explain why authoritarian regimes see the EU as a threat and why companies seeking to maximize profits find it limiting. What’s missing from the block It is not institutional capacity, but political will to defend its model and complete the European integration process.
It is certain that Europe faces serious challenges. Economic growth is uneven, capital markets remain fragmented and defense capabilities have not kept up with security threats. But these weaknesses are not the product of the EU social model, and dismantling it would only make them worse.
Regrettably, European leaders are addressing resistance international approach to the EU’s economic and regulatory model as proof of your failure. In response to fears of deindustrialization and relative decline, EU policymakers converged on a single diagnosis: overregulation.
The prescribed cure, inevitably, is deregulation. Both the report by the former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi on EU competitiveness and the European Commission’s “Omnibus” package, for example, treat the European regulatory approach as a liability rather than an asset.
A logic behind this regulatory retreat is straightforward: in a world dominated by the United States and China, Europe must abandon its social market model to remain competitive.
But This reasoning confuses success with failure. Europe cannot simply imitate America or China, as it does not have the financial and military dominance of the former nor the centralized control over labor and capital of the latter.
E why would the world need a smaller version and slow process of American capitalism or Chinese state control?
Ultimately, when Washington pressures Europe to dilute its environmental or industrial rules in order to protect American interestsis intervening directly in European self-government.
By opposing the EU’s economic and political model, Putin, Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping did what 70 years of gradual integration failed: led Europeans to see themselves as Europeans.
In a world of rival empires and raw power politicsEurope’s greatest strength continues to be precisely the model that makes it inconvenient for others, concludes Alemanno.
