Developing out of this long lead into the 2022 war, a first strand of postwar adjustment has come from European powers’ efforts to strengthen the basic structural foundations upon which European order is built. These are the bedrock changes from which more specific policy changes have begun to flow – and that are examined in subsequent chapters. To some degree, the Ukraine invasion has tightened unity between European states and the chastening alarm of war has injected new meaning and urgency into governments’ cooperation. Despite this, however, European governments have still to commit to far-reaching, qualitative reform of the core EU integration model.

As in previous eras, a major external challenge has pushed European leaders to call for more cooperation and for the European integration project to move towards completion. Governments and EU institutions have also adopted a narrative that reinforcing the European order requires the assertive use of power. These ambitions represent the baseline of a geoliberal Europe, and yet have not been followed through in any comprehensive manner. If anything, the war has led to more varied and looser forms of European cooperation. The postwar European order is set to be rooted in a combination of more EU institutionalized unity, on the one hand, and nationally centred strategic flexibility, on the other hand. The tangible impact of governments’ new power-based narrative is also still difficult to pin down. The war on Ukraine has awoken efforts to reinforce the foundations of European order, although these efforts are yet to reach any decisive fruition.

IMPETUS

From the moment of Russia's full invasion of Ukraine, European leaders stressed that the EU needed to function as a more united and fully integrated political entity. They insisted that only in this way could the union deal effectively with the fraught geopolitical context and protect itself from external threats. In line with a long history of and extensive writing on war being a driver of polity formation, the Ukraine conflict has prompted a new era of rhetorical commitment to deepen cooperation between European governments. In the period since Russia's invasion, European governments have agreed measures to strengthen their cooperation, many of which had been blocked or were languishing in EU institutional black holes before the war.