How can 2025 be a successful European year?

We are almost in 2025. I am trying to answer the classic December question, what are the political topics that will mark the next year? However, the events of 2024 have fundamentally changed my narrative. I will try an approach in which the European project is filtered by the pragmatism of the member states.

 

Let's start with a concrete case, to observe the distance between Brussels and citizens. The discussion about the EU's immigration policy is notorious. It is a complicated file, very difficult to approach and most of the time left to evolve without any proactive accountability. But let's see what is there at the grassroots level, at the level of the average person. Speaking to a teacher from Belgium, she told me: "I was involved in welcoming children from two waves of immigrants into the Flemish education system. There were Syrians, and a few years ago there were young Afghans. Now, for March 2025, we are waiting for groups of Palestinian children. But we do not know how they will get to Belgium, it is more complicated in this case".

 

It is imperative to analyze the European integration system from this point of view. After a year full of elections, we have all the European leaders in their positions. There is also a 100-day plan that Ursula von der Leyen has started to implement. The EU institutional system seems stable, with a good team at the European Commission level, with a European Parliament led by a pro-European majority and with a European Council president also respected for his work. Let us not forget, however, that we have two European Commissioners who belong to European parties that come from the sovereigntist side. In November 2024, only the intervention of Prime Ministers Pedro Sanchez and Donald Tusk unblocked the S&D and EPP groups to have a favorable investiture vote at the European Parliament level.

 

Although everything seems stable at the European level, the national reality is very volatile. The first seven largest countries in the EU are not stable in terms of government. President Macron has an almost hopeless situation in France, with a national parliament divided into three blocks. Germany has early elections in a few weeks, with great prospects of changing the chancellor and the governing coalition. Prime Minister Sanchez has big problems maintaining a stable coalition in Spain, and the recent floods and the Catalan file complicate the picture a lot. Italy has the president of the ECR party as prime minister, i.e. the main political force that took Britain out of the EU. The general elections in Poland in the spring of 2025 will mark a key moment for the country's political scene, given the tensions between the main parties and the difficult cohabitation between President Andrzej Duda, supported by the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, and the pro-European government led by Donald Tusk. In Romania, we are waiting for the presidential elections to be rescheduled. And in the Netherlands, we have a government with a far-right component and a politically independent prime minister.

 

This whole series of situations does not predict a calm of European governance. Any European step must be strategized to analyze the impact at the level of each state. Even across the Atlantic, with the new American administration, we cannot say that only milk and honey awaits us.

 

The good part is that we know the reality we live in. We will not complain in February 2025 that the price of energy for industry in the EU is double that in the United States. This situation does not derive from the impact of Donald Trump's election to the White House. In this context, we want to implement the competitiveness plan, the star of the new European governance program.

 

Russia's aggression against Ukraine will not surprise us next year, because we have experienced the current conflict for over 1000 days now. We even have a new triangle of responsible politicians, who are called upon to find solutions in the field of the European defense policy: Kaja Kallas, elected to lead the EU diplomacy and security policy; Andrius Kubilius, European Commissioner for Defense and Henna Virkkunen, Executive Vice-President of the European Commission also responsible for EU security. Of course, NATO's evolution is worth following, especially since an increase in the contribution to 4% of the GDP of the member countries is estimated.

 

Let's not forget that tensions between great powers, such as the USA, China and Russia, could generate new regional conflicts or the escalation of existing ones, such as in the Ukraine or the Middle East. The situation in Israel and Gaza is particularly volatile, with major implications for the energy market and global stability.

 

A new issue to watch in 2025 is that of cooperation between the EU and the UK. The Labour government has taken significant steps towards rapprochement, a process that has had a major impact in Brussels.

The EU is a project under construction, attacked from within by some member countries, but also from the outside. I believe in the maturity of the current European leaders to find the best way to act. More than ever, an integrated approach with the member countries is needed.

 

However, I also expect something new in 2025, a new European leap, following the model of the single market or common European currency projects. Will 2025 be the year that will signal the next integrative leap? Is there such a vision? Is there such courage?

 

Dr. Dan LUCA is an expert in European affairs and strategic communication, working in Brussels since 1997.