On 23 and 24 April, European Union leaders will gather in Nicosia for the informal meeting of heads of state or government, a summit that will have to confront the price Europe is paying for the ambitions of US foreign policy. The meeting comes between two wars, in Ukraine and Iran, both of which are driving up the cost for Europe and its citizens.
Of the four major crises that erupted around the European Union, Washington had substantial or direct involvement in three, while only one was led mainly by European countries. Whatever the reasons these crises began, the EU has ended up paying a heavy price, both economic and political.
At several levels inside the EU, the absence of a structured common foreign and defence policy is increasingly seen as the reason Brussels keeps running behind events created by others, above all, Washington.
The bill lands in Brussels
The EU did not start the wars in Ukraine, Syria, or Iran, yet it is carrying the heaviest economic burden on three fronts.
The first is economic. The wars in Ukraine and Iran have delivered an energy shock, higher prices and inflation. The cost for European consumers has been severe, with living standards worsening rather than improving.
The second is political. Europe has had to balance support for international law with the need to preserve its alliance with the United States. At the same time, domestic backlash over the effects of war has fuelled the rapid rise of Eurosceptic, populist and far-right forces.
The third is defence. Europe has been forced into a wholesale rethink of its security architecture through programmes such as ReArm Europe, Readiness 2030, SAFE and Article 42(7). It is now being pushed to rebuild its military strength almost from scratch. The European Commission says SAFE can provide up to €150 billion in loans and that the wider ReArm Europe Plan/Readiness 2030 aims to unlock more than €800 billion in defence spending.
The impact on the EU, conflict by conflict
Take Syria’s civil war in 2011. It triggered the biggest refugee crisis since World War Two. More than one million refugees reached Europe in 2015 and 2016. The far right surged in Germany, Austria, Sweden and Italy. The Dublin system buckled. The EU ended up striking a humiliating deal with Turkey in March 2016, worth 6 billion euros, to keep refugees away. Brexit, in part, fed off migration fears. Russia and Turkey carved up Syria, while the EU stood by as a spectator.
Then came Libya and North Africa in 2011. NATO’s intervention in Libya, led by France and Britain, created a collapsed state rather than a stable democracy. A broken Libya became a central route for migration flows from sub-Saharan Africa. Tens of thousands died in the Mediterranean. The EU ended up funding a Libyan coastguard accused of abuses. Instability spread into the Sahel, where European missions in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso failed.
Ukraine in 2022 was different only in scale. This was a war on Europe’s doorstep, and Europe has paid the highest price of all. The energy crisis of 2022 and 2023, driven by dependence on Russian gas, fed inflation, deindustrialisation and recession in Germany. Europe also paid more than 100 billion euros in aid and absorbed four million Ukrainian refugees. The war overturned the continent’s defence assumptions and forced a full strategic reset.
Now comes Iran in 2026. The war has produced another energy shock, with oil moving above $110 a barrel, carrying predictable consequences across the economy. Tensions between Europe and the United States have sharpened. There is also a risk of escalation in Lebanon and fresh migration flows. In parallel, the split inside NATO has become harder to ignore after Donald Trump accused allies of failing to back the United States during the Iran war. Reuters reported this week that transatlantic strains have deepened over the conflict.
What each side did
In Syria, the United States backed anti-regime forces in an effort to topple the government, then gradually stepped back, signalling that the fallout was no longer its problem. The abandonment of the Kurds under Trump became the clearest symbol of that shift. For Washington, the cost was limited. The EU initially stayed within the bounds of diplomacy and humanitarian assistance, but it was then left to absorb more than a million refugees and pay billions to Turkey under coercive terms. The political cost was destabilisation, financial strain and, to some extent, Brexit. In practice, the United States lit the fire, let it spread and left Europe to deal with the ashes.
In Libya, the United States led from behind, allowing France and Britain to take the front line, both seemingly seeing an opportunity to recover influence. After the first year, Washington stepped away and again paid almost no price. France and Britain’s role, along with NATO’s intervention, deepened divisions inside the EU. In the end, Europe, which had been indirectly involved in Libya’s destruction, was left to pay the bill alone while the United States disappeared from the scene.
Ukraine was more complicated. Both the EU and the United States pursued eastward expansion while underestimating Russia’s reaction. Washington’s early role centred on NATO enlargement and, after the war broke out, it bore a high cost mainly in arms. But it did not suffer an energy shock or the wider economic effects felt by Europe. The EU promised integration without a clear roadmap. For Europe, the cost was immediate and exceptionally high: not just more than 100 billion euros in aid, but also the energy shock, the refugees, Germany’s downturn and inflation.
The recent war in Iran, as is widely understood, grew out of US-Israeli cooperation aimed at the Iranian regime, which, despite the loss of its leadership, appears to have remained stable after a month of fighting. For the United States, the cost so far has been military, while energy independence has shielded it from the kind of pain Europe is now feeling. The EU had no role in the conflict and was not consulted. Yet the cost is already rising, with oil above $110 a barrel. At the same time, Israeli attacks in Lebanon targeting Hezbollah are creating fresh risks of migration flows.
Looking for the day after
European Commissioner Andrius Kubilius made the point bluntly when he said that “450 million EU citizens should not depend on 340 million Americans to defend themselves”. That debate has now begun in earnest inside the EU, but events are moving faster than its institutions. The Nicosia summit comes at a moment when the gap between rhetoric and reality remains huge, and the war in Iran has only accelerated the clock. Variants of that line have appeared in official remarks by Kubilius and the Commission’s defence package announcements.
The EU is trying to build up its own defence structures through ReArm Europe and Readiness 2030, with the aim of mobilising 800 billion euros in defence investment through five pillars. SAFE is intended to provide 150 billion euros in loans for joint defence procurement, with the declared aim of improving interoperability and strategic coordination.
Even so, none of this comes without internal cost. The very label “ReArm” was softened into “Readiness 2030” after objections from countries such as Italy and Spain, while Slovakia and Hungary remain obstacles. ReArm Europe is still largely centred on national spending and does not solve the deeper problem of joint procurement and interoperability. More ambitious tools, such as a NextGenerationEU-style mechanism, were left aside.
In essence, Europe has been pushed to move not by its own strategic will but by the unreliability in Washington that Trump has come to embody. As Mark Rutte, NATO secretary-general, put it, “without Trump, none of this would have happened”.
There is also the admission, as one EU diplomat put it to Politico, that as a European Union “we do not show our will to the world. We get stuck trying to negotiate and talk our way out of situations and minimise the fallout”. The diagnosis is clear: the EU suffers because it remains weak on the global stage. The summit in Nicosia may yet prove a first step forward.