If water started disappearing from the European continent, glaciers melted, rivers ran dry, rain stopped falling, you would think Europeans would come together to do something about it.  They would look closely and compare notes about the sources and uses of water.  They would study why the supply was running down and they would find ways to restrict demand to match.  This would not be an easy task.  It was not an easy task for the communities of the ancient world that lived between the Tigris and the Euphrates either.  Humankind has learned to adapt to these sorts of challenges through bitter experience.  Europeans might fail to pull together, and Europe might be overtaken by the desert.  But they would try very hard to find a solution before they let that happen, and they would work with whomever is necessary to ensure their success.

Most people living anywhere can understand that kind of solidarity.  When water is disappearing, the alternative is collective action, war, or drought.  Few would embrace either war or drought as the first-best choice, particularly if they are uncertain about why the water is disappearing and if they realize that conflict is likely to delay or prevent finding a real solution to the problem.  Most would focus on ensuring collective action – however difficult it is technically, in terms of sacrifice and self-discipline, or in terms of dealing with unfamiliar people – is a success.  When faced with dangerous uncertainty, pulling together makes sense.

‘Europe’ is the framework or context for Europeans to pull together.  The threats they face are not ‘thirst’, at least not yet.  They are more intangible if no less important.  They connect to things like prosperity, stability, or security rather than elemental factors like water, air, or soil.  Those threats are existential, nonetheless.  Europe – as we know it – cannot survive without prosperity, it cannot tolerate excessive volatility, and it must have security in order to exist.  We may speak about Europe as a kind of club that is nice to have in secure, stable, prosperous times where a rules-based international system and a powerful ally in the United States provides for a high degree of predictability in terms of what the future will bring.  But Europe means something altogether different when power replaces rules to make a more anarchical international system and when the United States cannot be trusted.

In periods where the future is uncertain, Europe is more than just a single market, to borrow from Enrico Letta.  It is the essential framework to bring Europeans together to push back against uncertainty and reclaim their future.  Within that framework, Europeans will need to work together to understand what is putting their prosperity at risk and how they can share resources – intellectual, financial, material, institutional – to address the problem.  They will also need to decide who to bring into this collaboration and how to cooperate or cut ties with those who remain outside.  ‘Enlargement’ is a necessary part of the conversation because the boundaries of Europe connect to the solution as well as the problem.

In a similar way, European ‘competitiveness’ is not some abstract economic concept associated with market dynamics.  Competitiveness – to borrow from Mario Draghi – is about how Europeans take charge of their own destiny in the face of international power politics.  It is about taking control over European intellectual, financial, material, and institutional assets and focusing them on European the promotion of interests.  Exercising such control is no easy task.  It depends on Europeans’ ability to accept compromises and exercise self-discipline.  When the international system no longer abides by rules, then Europeans must reinforce those rules that shape their interaction with one-another and that ensure they are able collectively to exercise discretion.  Here too, the boundaries of Europe are important because those who are allowed into the community must be capable of meeting its requirements.

That combination of necessity and capability is what makes ‘Europeans’ within this arrangement.  If Europe is to succeed in pushing back against uncertainty, then it must include those groups necessary to ensure prosperity, stability, and security.  And those groups – or the members of those groups – must be able to work together to ensure that Europe is ‘resilient’ in two senses of the term.  Europe must be flexible in adapting to new threats, and yet Europeans must not lose sight of those values and interests that make it possible for them to identify with one-another and to internalise that sense of collective solidarity.  This kind of Europe necessarily has a sense of ‘strategic awareness’, to borrow from Sauli Niinistö, just as those Europeans necessarily recognise their own role as individuals in contributing to their common success.

This understanding of Europe is not familiar to people who have studied European integration or politics.  For too long, we have taken the rules-based-international system and the transatlantic alliance for granted.  Those were the certainties that allowed us to imagine Europe as something ‘nice to have’ and not something necessary.  But this understanding of Europe will be familiar to anyone who has faced or imagined a world defined by existential threats and fundamental uncertainty.  It is time for Europeans to embrace a more fundamental perspective on their common project.  Europe is necessary for Europeans to exist.

*** This short essay originally appeared in a special issue of the Quarterly Electronic Newsletter edited by Andreas Theophanous and Mary Varda, and is based on my recent book with Veronica Anghel, From Club to Commons: Enlargement, Reform and Sustainability in European Integration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025).  That book is open access and so free to download.