The Trump detonator has exploded. Not even two months after his inauguration, marked by the tycoon and his acolytes’ frenzied international activism, the world and in particular the West have literally been thrown into the subatomic accelerator of history.

‘What was, is no more‘ ; this laconic motto would suffice to define the state of transatlantic relations in 2025, in which we see the new US administration busy redesigning the global chessboard, with particular disgruntlement towards us historical European allies.

Recent developments, not least the Trump-Zelensky rift over Ukraine’s future, urgently require us to act. We must first be aware that Trump is not a mistake in history, and that on 20 January 2029 America will not placidly retrace its steps.

In fact, ‘The Donald’s’ second presidency essentially acts as a catalyst for a paradigm shift that has been taking place in society and politics not only in the US for more than two decades, advocating the dismissal of globalisation in favour of a world shared between predatory techno-nuclear powers.

The willingness of the United States of America to abdicate its role as guarantor of the global order, in favour of a return to the state of nature and the law of the strongest as the regulating principle of international equilibrium, requires a new and sudden reorientation of the strategic policy of the states of Europe in a unitary key, no longer out of idealism, but out of survival instinct.

In the short term, autonomous deterrence and common defence policy

Being found unprepared is the speciality of modern European states, but we cannot afford it this time, so a path must be quickly mapped out leading to the formation of a truly credible continental political entity, unlike the current EU.

The new Europe is not made overnight, but the present imposes big, quick and pragmatic choices. The military bogeyman rekindled by the war in Ukraine and the possible disengagement of the US armed forces from the defence of our lands brings the creation of a viable European army, the result of the harmonisation of the armed forces of the acceding states, to the agenda. The ability to defend and protect its citizens and economic assets is the foundation of any relevant political entity, so Europe cannot do without its own autonomous protection.

This is why it is not enough to simply increase defence spending, rather it is necessary to develop a strong centralised structure to oversee much of the military apparatus of the member countries, including the ‘nuclear shield’ currently in the hands of France alone, which President Macron has declared he can share.

The common security policy is already enshrined in European and international law, and on paper the EU is also already endowed with bodies such as the EU Military Committee or operational units such as the EU Battlegroups . The challenge lies in reinforcing them and making them operational, without excluding cooperation schemes that do not coincide with the current EU, perhaps extending participation to the United Kingdom, or in some areas also to Turkey, which was present at the informal summit between some European leaders on Sunday in London.

Transcending the political scheme of the current European Union means freeing oneself from the Brussels bureaucracy, but above all, it means freeing oneself from the deadly vetoes of countries such as Slovakia and Hungary, which are too enslaved to Putin’s power to perceive the existential threat to the continent. This format cannot and must not be limited to the military plan, but must result in a wide-ranging perspective, which can only be political.

In the long term: a new European constituent

Let’s not beat about the bush, the matrix of most of the contradictions of the European Union is the lack of a true single regulatory charter. As things stand, the EU is legally still aninternational organisation governed by treaties, despite having almost all the elements of an order, except its own constitution. In addition to moving pragmatically to guarantee our security, the time has come to give Europe political form and to gather the Union’s vast body of law into a single text.

The constitution is the supreme mother of a territory’s order, an indispensable passepartout for obtaining the status of a legal and political subject. We need precisely this, and not just on an ideological level, but on a strictly practical one.

We have no international weight, we need a popularly legitimised European governmentwith the strength to deal with other powers: it must be regulated by the constitution.

There are too many regulations due to too many treaties in force and functional misalignment between organs: let’s rationalise them in the Constitution.

Europe imposes its diktats on us from above: then we choose how to govern it, but we need a constitution.

There are many other examples that support the need for this qualitative leap for the eurozone; but this does not mean that we should again make the mistake of lowering the measure from above, as happened with the first European Constitution, whose project ran aground in 2005.

This time we Europeans must be the first authors of our future, and it must be us through an extraordinary vote to elect the members of the ‘Constituent Assemblyfor the New Europe‘, an assembly of 500 representatives voted by us citizens with the task of writing our Constitutional Charter.

The Assembly must be a great democratic and confrontational process, closely followed by the public, concluding – after the drafting of the Charter – in a great Continental Election Day to approve the adoption of the document.

This does not mean destroying the current national autonomies, which would remain in an even more defined form, but finally giving a recognisable and authoritative structure to our Europe, which comprises no less than 500 million people.

Now is the time for courage, those who are ready will lead the change, the others will follow.

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