Decades pass, but we always remain at Henry Kissinger‘s famous quip about the absence of a telephone number to call Europe. Today, in the face of Donald Trump’s return to the White House, this lacuna resonates like a deafening roar: the European Union lacks clear and legitimised political leadership, capable of responding authoritatively and effectively to the bluster and arrogance with which the president-elect approaches the Atlantic relationship.

Ursula von der Leyen, Antonio Costa or Kaja Kallas cannot compete with Trump: they are not elected by European citizens and do not have the authority to represent a true global power. They have no nuclear button to push, or to conjure.

As Christian Spillmann has effectively written for the European Mattinale, in the face of Trump’s stated threats – from the annexation of Canada and Greenland to the militarisation of the Panama Canal – the European Union is taking refuge in a strategy of ‘easing the pressure’, dangerously reminiscent of the hesitations of 2021 in the face of Russia’s preparations to invade Ukraine. We know how that turned out, unfortunately. The invasion that was never going to happen, did happen. Today is no longer the time for silence, inaction or accommodation.

Trump is no bluff: he says what he wants to do, raises the price and seeks the most advantageous drop point possible. He may not annex Greenland and Panama, but if no one counters him with an equally strong and assertive strategy, he will still end up imposing American control over rare earth and hydrocarbon extraction on the Arctic island and trade routes, on whatever terms he wants. Europe can no longer afford to ignore this reality, any more than it can afford to watch the US, China and Russia make de facto peace by dividing up Greenland, Taiwan and Ukraine. The American president, with his brutal language and expansionist ambitions, makes no secret of the fact that he wants to redesign the world according to a logic of power relations more akin to that of Putin and Xi than to that of liberal democracies. Europe, for its part, appears immobile, paralysed by internal divisions, bureaucratic language and a total absence of elected and recognised leadership.

The heads of government of the individual countries of the Continent do not have more strength, even when they delude themselves into showing muscles they do not have: they are pampered if they waggle their tails, otherwise they are threatened with duties and retaliation, as well as media pillorying (see the Starmer case).

In the face of all this, the fundamental question is not how to answer Trump, but how to answer ourselves. Does Europe want to be a global power or does it prefer to remain an aggregation of states that delegate their destiny to the decisions of others? A leading Europe requires structural change. It is time to directly elect a president of the European Union, legitimised by the citizens’ vote and endowed with the authority to act on behalf of all Europeans. This is the only way to overcome institutional inertia and endow the Union with the credibility and speed of reaction that it lacks today. An elected leader will not solve all problems, but at least it will give Europe a direction, a face and a voice. If we continue to hide behind technicalities and bureaucracies, history will relegate us to the sidelines, powerless and paying spectators of a world dominated by Trump, Putin and Xi, and after them by whoever adopts their method.

The question to ask ourselves today is not whether Europeans are capable of responding to American threats, but whether they are willing to do so. There are those who may prefer the idea of doing good business with that tycoon and that oligarch, because after all, the crumbs of the great banquet that is being laid out are still enormous riches capable of enriching politicians, entrepreneurs and even political parties, even if it is freedom, the model of life and society that we have painstakingly built, the dignity of individuals and peoples that pays the price.

People also lived well as Greek tutors or freedmen in the homes of wealthy Roman masters, rejoicing in the fact that after all, masters and matrons now dressed and ate Greek-style. But Greece disappeared and so can Europe disappear today, which after all is not even a real continent geographically speaking, but ‘only’ a cultural expression.

Therefore, in order not to be remembered as a generation of Europeans who were born free but lived as other people’s dishwashers, we must raise our heads and renounce everything that seems comfortable and reassuring to us (the national dimension, the small old world, the attitude of pacifism, the illusion of being able to be consumers without being inventors, of having rights without factories) in the name of a new European Risorgimento.

You need a phone number and a button, and you see how the Trump, the Putin and the Xi change their attitude towards us Europeans. The real defenders of sovereignty are us European patriots.