Jacques Attali is a renowned French economist, social theorist, and writer. He was a Special Adviser to the French President François Mitterrand and the founder and first President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. He is founder and Chairman of Positive Planet, an international non-profit organization assisting microfinance institutions all over the world, and CEO of Attali Associates, an international consulting firm. You may follow him on X @jattali.

Twenty years from now, people may say that the year 2025 was Europe’s last opportunity. It was the moment when the EU could have (had it chosen so) reclaimed its role as a central actor on the global stage—or, conversely, the year it resigned itself, through fatigue, fear, or blindness, to irrelevance. The moment it lost control over its destiny and the totality of its freedom.

Europe has all the tools to become number one in the world again, or at least to maintain its rank as number two: with over 440 million people, the EU is one of the most extensive and most integrated economic areas in the world, enabling the free movement of goods, services, capital, and people. The euro is the world’s second most widely used currency, reinforcing the EU’s monetary influence. The EU is a global trade giant, negotiating free trade agreements and setting global standards—especially in regulation, data, and sustainability. EU regulations often become de facto global standards, particularly in the tech, environmental, and consumer protection sectors.

Jacques Attali in front of the Élysée Palace after a meeting with President Macron | Source: Guliver Image

 

Through institutions such as the European Commission, the European Parliament, and the European Court of Justice, the EU has established a distinctive model of transnational governance. The EU champions democracy, the rule of law, and human rights—both internally and in its external diplomacy, particularly through its enlargement and neighborhood policies. It exerts global influence not through military force, but through normative appeal, diplomatic networks, development aid, and cultural outreach. Through programs like Horizon Europe, the EU is a significant funder of scientific innovation and cross-border research. It leads in setting climate goals (e.g., the Green Deal) and digital regulation (e.g., the Digital Markets Act and AI Act). By setting high standards for ethics and safety—particularly in the areas of AI and data privacy (e.g., GDPR)—the EU influences global technological norms.

Europe is also home to immense linguistic, artistic, and philosophical traditions that influence global thinking and soft power. Erasmus+, the European Research Council, and open academic networks make the EU a hub for higher education and intellectual exchange. EU institutions have withstood crises (e.g., Brexit, the euro crisis, and COVID-19). A robust network of NGOs, unions, and active citizen participation supports democratic life and policy innovation. It remains a magnet for neighboring countries and regions (e.g., Ukraine, the Western Balkans), offering stability and development in exchange for reforms. Through PESCO, Frontex, and its missions abroad, the EU is gradually developing more credible standard defense tools.

However, the stakes are numerous, existential, and planetary: climate change, exacerbation of poverty, water shortages, and uncontrolled technologies—not to mention the specific European issues: democracy threatened, European institutions slowed down by bureaucracy, the lack of real integration, the absence of a comprehensive migration policy, and the lack of a credible common defense and security arm.

And yet, although these challenges are so existential, Europe has rarely remained so silent, its voice so hollow, its actions so lacking. At a time when the world cries out for clear leadership, for vision, for collective will, Europe hides behind rhetoric, reports without follow-up, and sterile debate. Let us examine just a few of the most telling examples.

 

Industrial Decline

The evidence of industrial decline is overwhelming. Prominent voices—those of former Italian Prime Ministers Mario Draghi and Enrico Letta, and others—have painted a damning portrait: the absence of European champions in key future sectors, a steady erosion of competitiveness, loss of technological sovereignty, waning innovation, fragmented markets, absurd competition rules that block continental consolidation, and a stubborn refusal to fund even dual-use military industries. There is no coherent industrial policy, collective innovation financing, and strategic vision to prevent economic subjugation. And these reports, though accurate, have led nowhere. Neither the Commission nor the Council have moved to transform their insights into concrete directives. No political will has emerged to turn diagnosis into action.

The forces of inertia—within Brussels, national governments, corporations, and bureaucracies—cling to their micro-sovereignties and narrow privileges. They prefer a patchwork of petty kingdoms to the rise of continental giants. They defend an outdated doctrine that prioritizes consumer protection while sacrificing strategic foresight and the interests of producers and workers. Thus, we maintain a hundred telecom operators while the U.S. has four; we uphold a fragmented banking system; we keep on forbidding transborder mergers; we let our savings finance America’s trade deficit, which in turn erodes what remains of our industry. Meanwhile, China—now the world’s leading power—relentlessly expands its reach, undermining our markets, jobs, and our autonomy.

And yet, all is not lost. In many sectors, Europe remains the leader. In nearly every domain, the Union counts at least two companies among the global top ten. The EU possesses vast savings, world-class researchers, a great entrepreneurial spirit, and agile and inventive family businesses. All it lacks is shared political will to invest massively in the sectors of what I call the economy of life, which should be the priorities: renewable and nuclear energy, recycling, water, biodiversity, regenerative agriculture, healthy food, education, healthcare, culture, democracy, security, defense, and research. The moment has come to break with the economy of death—built on fossil fuels, pesticides, industrial food, and legalized addictions—and shift to a wartime economy, aiming not to destroy, but to rebuild.

 

Geopolitical Theaters

In Ukraine, European countries are diplomatically represented: the French, Germans, Poles, and Brits are visible and active. For now, they appear to have delayed the inevitable American withdrawal. But everyone knows—in Paris, Berlin, Warsaw, London, Moscow, Beijing, and Kyiv—that such a day will come: perhaps tomorrow, in a week, or a year. And everyone knows Russia awaits that moment to deal a fatal blow to the heroic Ukrainian army. Yet nothing is being done—or far too little—to ramp up the production of urgently needed weapons, either for ourselves or Ukraine: no ammunition, no drones, no advanced warfare systems. And yet, the list of needs is clear: the Ukrainians themselves are handing it to us, at the cost of their lives.

Once again, we are not in a wartime economy. We act as if the Ukraine conflict will resolve itself, as if we won’t soon face shortages of raw materials monopolized by China, of components, of strategic supplies. Even the U.S. President is beginning to realize this—belatedly and painfully.

The U.S. President has openly and repeatedly expressed his desire—perfectly rational from a geopolitical standpoint—to take control of Greenland, rich in resources and strategically located along the future Northwest Passage. Meanwhile, Europe remains idle. Nothing is being done to secure this land, a Danish sovereign territory under international law, and by extension, part of the EU. There are no guarantees of this EU member state’s sovereignty. And yet, it is of vital importance to Europe for the same reason as it is to Washington.

Changing this equation would require Denmark receiving far more robust and explicit support from its European partners, including military backing. Why, then, has no proposal been made to station European troops there, to build fortifications, ports, and airbases on a collective basis? Unless such a request was made in secret and denied just as secretly, which would be absurd. Let us imagine: would U.S. troops dare to confront NATO allies on that soil? They would lose all credibility in Europe—and perhaps in Asia as well.

In Africa, as the United States turns its back, China advances economically, Russia expands militarily, and ideologies and religions spread their influence, no one can deny that Africa is Europe’s natural and strategic partner. Africa is the future of Europe. It could be its most fabulous opportunity—or its gravest threat.

Working with African institutions, countries, peoples, and diasporas is the only way forward. But if we abandon the continent, catastrophe looms. In the immediate future, Africa will be home to a third of the world’s youth. Soon after, a third of the world’s total population. And if we do nothing, hundreds of millions of climate migrants will be knocking at our doors. The next migratory wave must be anticipated, managed, and co-created. Yet neither Brussels nor major European capitals seem willing to rethink our relationship with Africa, to extend a hand, or build a shared future.

In the Middle East, the EU remains a mere spectator. It announces imaginary conferences, issues weak statements, and postures at the margins—but stays absent from real negotiations. Its paralysis prevents it from sanctioning, as it should, both corrupt or terrorist Palestinian factions and the Israeli government guilty of war crimes and betrayal of the Zionist ideal. Europe is incapable of aiding the devastated population of Gaza, of contributing to the elimination of Hamas, of helping to build a Palestinian Authority that is credible, honest, and capable of governing a peaceful sovereign state alongside Israel. And yet, Europe bears historic responsibility: its powers once drew the region’s borders. Its nations know the scars of war. It could use its tragic experience to propose peace. Why not imagine a Middle Eastern Common Market, stretching from Ethiopia to Iran, from the Arabian Peninsula to Turkey, including Israel and Palestine?

 

Environmental Issues

If Europe wishes to remain true to what it once was, it must now dare to become what it could be: a power of the universal. Not through weapons, but through ideas. Not through domination, but through exemplarity. Not through fear, but through hope. And first of all, by becoming the vanguard of a civilization reconciled with life itself. For there is no time left to waste: the planet is suffocating, the oceans are rising, and species are collapsing. We have entered the age of runaway dynamics, where the fragile balances of the world are unraveling faster than we can comprehend them. In the face of this, Europe can no longer be content with being a regional model of ecological virtue. It must become the architect of a global pact for life, built on five essential pillars. Europe can make every trade agreement a lever for environmental progress. No more free trade without climate clauses. No more investments without guarantees for nature. The Union can forge strategic green alliances with emerging powers—such as India, Brazil, Indonesia, and African nations—that combine financial support, technology transfer, and shared sustainability goals. It can lead to the creation of a World Environment Organization, with binding rules mirroring the WTO’s power over trade. And why not, tomorrow, a Climate G20, enforcing a global carbon price, a planetary tax on fossil-fueled transport, and minimum biodiversity standards?

Oceans are the beating heart of the planet. Yet they are being plundered, polluted, and exploited. Europe can initiate a global moratorium on deep-sea mining until science can assess its actual impact. It can establish a vast network of marine protected areas, particularly in the high seas, made possible by the new UN Treaty on Marine Biodiversity. Europe can help Southern nations monitor their exclusive economic zones by satellite and combat illegal fishing, often linked to organized crime.

We must now repair the living world. Europe can make a significant contribution to a Global Biodiversity Fund, which would finance reforestation, species reintroduction, agroecology, and the establishment of ecological corridors. It can mobilize banks, insurers, and investment giants to treat nature as a priceless asset—as essential as gold or oil. Above all, it must demand carbon-free, deforestation-free supply chains. Every product consumed in Europe—from tablets and steak to shirts—should display its biodiversity footprint. Buying can no longer be morally neutral. Europe can enforce this awareness.

Europe must go further: grant rights to nature, recognize ecocide as an international crime, and support the establishment of an International Criminal Court for Environmental Destruction—capable of prosecuting those responsible for oil spills, illegal deforestation, and the poisoning of rivers.

Just as it once led on human rights, Europe can now champion a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Nature—a legal and moral revolution, necessary and urgent.

None of this will succeed without a new alliance between science and youth. Europe could establish a Transcontinental Green University, connecting its top research centers with those in Africa, Latin America, and Asia to train a generation of planetary ecologists.

It could launch a Global Climate Erasmus, allowing millions of young people to gain hands-on ecological experience. And build a public, open-access platform for environmental data—a global observatory tracking both degradation and regeneration.

 

The AI Revolution

A new frontier has opened, silent and immense, made not of matter but of thought—a frontier where the machines we have created begin to think, decide, and act without us. Artificial intelligence is not coming. It is already here. And with it, the most radical upheaval humanity has ever known: a shift from the logic of tools to the logic of minds. A moment where decisions are taken before we think, where desires are anticipated before they are born, and where the boundaries between freedom and prediction, between democracy and algorithm, blur into opacity. In this grand transformation, the role of Europe is not to dominate, but to orient. Not to build the biggest servers, but to write the rules that will preserve our humanity. Not to chase others’ empires, but to become the guardian of meaning in a world flooded with data.

Europe has always had this singular vocation: to think about the world before transforming it. In the face of artificial intelligence, it is once again Europe’s task not to slow down progress, but to ensure that progress remains human. With the AI Act, the European Union is the first political entity in history to define the conditions under which artificial intelligence—even if it is not yet fully developed—can be considered acceptable. It classifies risks, sets boundaries, prohibits surveillance dystopias, and affirms that some technologies, however efficient, have no place in a democratic society. Thus, Europe sets a precedent: a civilization where machines are not above the law, and where the digital world adheres to the same moral imperatives as the physical one.

AI systems learn, decide, recommend, and exclude—sometimes without anyone understanding why. Europe refuses this opacity. It demands transparency, explicability, and accountability—principles that seem philosophical, but are deeply political. What is at stake is the very notion of justice. In tomorrow’s world, a decision to grant a loan, assign a school, detect a crime, or prescribe a treatment may be made by a machine. The EU reminds us that a decision is only legitimate if it can be explained, challenged, and appealed. It affirms that freedom begins where comprehension begins. Elsewhere, AI is seen as a lever of supremacy. In Europe, it is—or should be—viewed as a means to serve the common good.

The Union invests in collaborative research, funds cross-border scientific alliances, and supports projects that leverage AI to benefit climate, health, education, and urban life. Rather than selling attention, it seeks to optimize energy. Rather than manipulating emotions, it aspires to detect diseases. Rather than predicting consumption, it works to preserve life. It is the outline of another model: a knowledge-based economy where machines augment responsibility rather than replace it. Europe must serve as a counterweight to technological authoritarianism. It can lead the fight for global AI governance, the ban on lethal autonomous weapons, and the preservation of human dignity in the face of the algorithmic gaze. It can carry this message to the UN, the African Union, the G7, and to all who still believe that intelligence without conscience is nothing but ruin. Europe must make AI literacy a fundamental right: every child and every adult must know what an algorithm is, what it does, and how to live alongside it. Europe must also invent new professions, new ethics, and humanities—not to resist technology, but to better live with it. To ensure that the future belongs not to those who know how to code, but to those who understand why they code. And we could go on, about education, research, and health—so many domains where Europe could lead.

There are so many instances of silence and procrastination. How should one explain this passivity, abdication, and tragic drift? If not, it is due to the leaders’ failure to grasp the urgency of the moment. An inert Europe only strengthens populism, fuels extremism, and paves the way for its downfall.

It is not too late. We can still choose. We can still reclaim our sovereignty. We can still become a major actor in history. An extraordinary opportunity lies before Europe. But it must find the courage to seize it.

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