Marc Champion explains why the EU is the wrong player for Ukraine

From UNIAN:

"The EU cannot become a geopolitical player that will resolve the Ukrainian issue, Bloomberg says 

Karina Bovsunovskaya, 02.12.25 

In late summer 1939, Soviet and German foreign ministers Vyacheslav Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop signed the infamous non-aggression pact, which divided Eastern Europe between their countries and allowed Hitler to invade Poland just days later. Meanwhile, the proposed US-Russian plan to end the war in Ukraine suggests that the major military powers have once again conspired to divide the continent to their advantage, according to Bloomberg columnist Mark Champion. 

"This should have been clear a long time ago. I've been saying since at least February that the Trump administration was interested not so much in concluding a peace agreement for Ukraine as in resetting relations between the US and Russia at the expense of Kyiv and its European allies. The publication of the 28-point US-Russian proposal made this impossible to ignore," the author noted.

According to Champion, now that European leaders have finally acknowledged that they are left alone on the Ukraine issue, the question arises: can the European Union become a geopolitical player capable of standing up to Russia, China, and its nominal ally, the United States? The observer believes the honest answer to this question is "no."

"This would require a significant demonstration of force, and that simply isn't in the bloc's DNA. The European project was designed to ensure that its members would never again fight among themselves, as they did during two catastrophic conflicts and for centuries before that. The EU accomplished this so well that it won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012. But when it comes to defending against external threats, the path to the modern EU is littered with failed cooperative security projects, dating back to the Western European Union of 1954, if not earlier. That task was quickly handed over to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, i.e., the United States, and remains so to this day," the author explained.

In particular, Kiran Klaus Patel, head of the department of modern history at Germany's Ludwig Maximilian University, noted that asking the EU to demonstrate hard power is like "telling a professional footballer that from now on he will play rugby."

According to Champion, the EU's unpreparedness for a world of "geopolitical rugby" has no clear institutional solution. However, Europe has no choice but to bridge the gap if it doesn't want to be "torn to pieces." 

"The key is to make Europe—not the EU—the driving force behind diplomacy and the projection of hard power. A hard foreign policy should be pursued outside the EU, preferably within NATO, and if that's not possible, through specially created coalitions," the commentator wrote...   

Champion added that this may also be the only way for Europe to act effectively, as too many geopolitically important players in the region, including NATO members Norway, the United Kingdom, and Turkey, are not part of the EU. 

"As is often said, Europe is returning to history after several decades of utopian respite, so its first priority is rearmament. But Europe has always united against external threats only when they were perceived as common and extreme, obvious examples of which are the Soviet Union during the Cold War and the Ottoman Empire in the late 17th century," the observer recalled. 

 Champion also concluded: "Finding a way to do both—preserve peace at home while projecting strength abroad—may be the most significant challenge European leaders have faced since the fateful Russian-German 'peace' agreement of 1939." "