Europe’s long fade from the world stage by Marja Heikkinen

For all the outrage rippling through European political circles after the recent meeting between President Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, the truth is uncomfortably simple: this snub didn’t happen in a vacuum. Europe’s sense of being sidelined, ignored, and strategically irrelevant has been two decades in the making.

The image of two world leaders shaping the geopolitical weather without so much as a glance toward Brussels is symbolic, yes, but not new. The European Union’s diminishing clout in international affairs has been a slow erosion, not a sudden collapse. And while Ursula von der Leyen may have placed the final, polished tombstone on Europe’s global ambitions, the grave was dug years ago.

For the past twenty years, the EU has been more consumed with its internal contradictions than with projecting power abroad. Enlargement fatigue, Brexit, fiscal crises, the migration challenge, populism gnawing at the seams, Brussels has been playing whack-a-mole with domestic instability while others have been redrawing the global map. In a world increasingly defined by raw power politics, Europe has insisted on seeing itself as a moral superpower. Noble, perhaps. Effective? Rarely.

It’s not that Europe lacks the economic muscle. Collectively, the EU remains one of the largest economic entities on Earth. But wealth without the will and unity, to wield it strategically is just a number in a spreadsheet. Military capability? Fragmented. Foreign policy? A committee meeting that never ends. By the time consensus is reached, events have moved on.

Washington has long been aware of this drift. Moscow and Beijing have exploited it. Even mid-sized powers like Turkey and India now approach the geopolitical table with more swagger than Europe manages. And in the Trump–Putin spectacle, Europe’s absence wasn’t an oversight, it was a reflection of where the power actually sits.

Ursula von der Leyen’s tenure has symbolized this detachment. While she talks of “geopolitical commissions” and “strategic autonomy,” the delivery has been mostly rhetoric wrapped in bureaucratic delays. If the EU were truly serious about competing on the world stage, it would have invested heavily in common defence, spoken with one voice on foreign policy, and projected influence beyond its borders. Instead, it has relied on the comfort of moral posturing while leaving hard power to NATO, which, awkwardly, means to the United States.

So now, when Trump and Putin sit down without Europe at the table, it’s not an insult, it’s an acknowledgment of reality. And unless Europe wakes up from its self-reassuring dream, such scenes will become the norm.

History has little patience for those who confuse economic size with strategic importance. Europe may still imagine itself as a grand actor in global affairs, but the world has begun to see it for what it is: a polite audience member, clapping from the stalls while others write the script.

If Brussels wants that to change, it will take more than speeches and declarations. It will take resolve, unity, and a willingness to abandon the comforting illusion that the world will wait for Europe to catch up. Until then, meetings like Trump–Putin will continue to happen without an empty chair marked “EU.”

And no one at the table will even notice.