Contra the post immediately below, "D-W: "Germany's local governments face financial collapse"".
From Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, January 6:
Welcome to Wider Europe, RFE/RL's new newsletter focusing on the key issues concerning the European Union, NATO, and other institutions and their relationships with the Western Balkans and Europe's Eastern neighborhoods.
I'm RFE/RL Europe Editor Rikard Jozwiak, and this week I'm drilling down on my far-fetched prediction for 2026: The EU will do well!
2026: The EU Might Actually Do Rather Well This Year
Around this time of year, I always try to make a bold claim for the new year. For 2025, I was speculating that Transnistria and Moldova might reunite -- something that didn't even come close to happening. So, for 2026, I will make an even more outrageous claim. I predict that the European Union will actually do rather well.
It’s fair to say that there is a lot of doom and gloom in Brussels these days. Largely overlooked in talks over a potential future settlement of Russia’s war in Ukraine, facing countless hybrid attacks such as severed undersea cables and drone incursions, and enduring fraying transatlantic relations with a White House openly questioning the bloc have all taken their toll on Brussels. Rarely has the club been tested so much from all angles. “A sheep in a brand-new world of predators,” as one EU diplomat recently put it.
And frankly, it shouldn’t be better this year with the United States potentially pulling more of its troops out of the continent and stepping up support for various Eurosceptic parties, Ukraine either being forced to accept a humiliating deal with Moscow or being pushed back further militarily by a resurgent Russia that even might test an EU or NATO country – something that European officials have been warning about and cautioned that they aren’t really ready to face alone.
But there is an alternative, brighter vision for the EU -- admittedly a highly unlikely one involving some opportunities to grasp and a lot of “ifs”.
Ukraine Gets The Money
Let’s start with one of the major disappointments in the closing stages of last year: the failure to agree to a reparations loan for Ukraine. This was admittedly a major blow for both European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and German chancellor Friedrich Merz, who were pushing hard to leverage frozen Russian state assets in the bloc to generate a 90-billion-euro loan for Ukraine for the next two years. The rationale was, why should EU taxpayers foot the bill for Moscow’s pillaging of Ukraine when Putin’s cash could be used instead?Yet, the alternative, to raise money backed by the EU budget and supported by 24 EU member states (the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia opted out) isn’t actually as awful as it seems. Sure, some EU leaders lost their prestige over the reparations loan and the bloc appeared indecisive but, in the end, Kyiv will get enough money to sustain its fight against Russia for the next couple of years and the Ukrainians don’t have to pay the money back until Russia pays reparations.
In the meantime, the Russian assets remain frozen for as long as the EU wishes to have them immobilized with the bloc keeping the option of using them later. It’s not ideal, but it’s more than any other country or organization is offering Kyiv at the moment.
Expanding The Club, Cutting Russian Energy
And then there are things that the bloc has already done that could start bearing fruit soon. Take enlargement for example. The bloc will continue to close accession chapters with Montenegro and Albania in the new year with the former now set to become the EU's 28th member state by 2028. Brussels' thinking, albeit wishful at this moment, goes that by adding Montenegro and potentially even Albania rather soon would motivate Kosovo and Serbia to engage in talks to normalize relations between them, which have been dormant for years. But given that Serbia didn’t even show up at the latest EU-Western Balkans summit in Brussels just before Christmas, this might be easier said than done.With the EU having shed more members than it gained in the last decade with Brexit, adding one or even a few will give Brussels a boost by showing the EU is still an attractive club for outsiders. Iceland potentially holding a referendum this year to resume EU accession talks suspended over a decade ago would further reinforce this image....
....MUCH MORE
If Queen Ursala and her sclerotic court in Brussels can get out of the way and allow the natural dynamism of the continent's inhabitants to flourish there is a chance the optimistic version carries the day.
