Who Could Act Now

The diagnosis is familiar. Europe is digitally a colony, financially coercible, militarily underfunded and politically paralysed. The concepts for a way out have been formulated — on this website and elsewhere. What is missing is not the analysis. What is missing is the person who says the first sentence out loud.

Who holds the levers in Europe today that could actually move something? And what prevents them from pulling?

Friedrich Merz — The Chancellor with the Wrong Compass

Friedrich Merz spoke at the Munich Security Conference 2026 about defence spending. He presented figures, named brigades, spoke of deterrence. He should have spoken about AGORA. Because Germany's greatest security gap is not the missing armoured brigade — it is the missing capacity to protect its own economy from foreign legal claims.

Merz understands business. He was a corporate lawyer, chairman of the supervisory board of BlackRock Germany, embedded in the financial world for decades. He knows how extraterritorial law works. He knows what it means when BNP Paribas pays 8.9 billion dollars in fines to the US Justice Department for transactions that were entirely legal under European law.

Germany is the EU's largest economy. A Federal Chancellor who says: We need a European clearing infrastructure that protects us from US extraterritoriality — and creates the framework to merge Hetzner, T-Systems and IONOS into a European cloud champion — would do more for European security with that than three new armoured battalions.

Why doesn't he? Because his frame of reference is the twentieth century. For Merz, security means: Bundeswehr, NATO, deterrence through weapons. That the decisive battlefields today are server rooms, payment systems and AI models — this has not yet found a structural place in his thinking. BlackRock did not teach him to think European. It taught him to think capital.

Emmanuel Macron — The Visionary Without a Coalition

Macron is the only European head of state or government who asks the right questions. His 2024 Sorbonne speech on European sovereignty contained more strategic substance than all the summit communiqués of the last ten years combined. He understands the architecture of the problem: that Europe regulates but does not build; that it sets standards but leaves the infrastructure to others; that it speaks the language of sovereignty but does not build the tools for it.

France has OVHcloud. It has Mistral AI. It has the strongest tradition of state industrial policy in Western Europe. It has a central bank tradition that could conceive the digital euro as a geopolitical instrument, not merely as a means of payment for citizens.

Macron's problem: he has the vision but no coalition. Germany under Merz does not follow him — not because Merz doesn't understand him, but because German industry is deeply integrated into US systems and fears the disruption. Poland, the Baltic states, Scandinavia think in security policy terms, not sovereignty policy terms. Macron often stands alone with his analysis.

And he makes the mistake of thinking big and acting small. He speaks of European sovereignty and then sends officials to Washington to salvage trade agreements. The rhetoric overtakes the action — and this undermines his credibility precisely with those he would need to convince.

Ursula von der Leyen — The Administrator of Possibility

Von der Leyen possesses the only instrument that can actually move all 27 member states simultaneously: the regulatory power of the European Commission. The AI Act, the Digital Markets Act, the Data Act — all adopted under her leadership. Europe has produced more digital regulation than any other region in the world.

The problem: regulation without infrastructure is facade. The DMA forces Apple to open its App Store — but no European company is ready to step into the gap that creates. The AI Act sets safety standards for AI systems — but the systems that must meet these standards come from San Francisco and are trained on US servers. Europe regulates foreign power without building its own.

What von der Leyen could do: bind the award of public EU contracts — billions of euros annually — to a "Buy European" clause. Adopt EUCS, the unified cloud sovereignty standard that has been blocked for years. Grant merger approval for a European cloud champion and explicitly place it above EU competition law, acknowledging that strategic industries require different rules than a weekly market.

What she actually does: commission reports. Hold consultations. Adopt communiqués. Von der Leyen is an excellent administrator of a system she does not transform. She knows what is needed. She lacks the political will — or the political base — to enforce it.

Keir Starmer — The Outsider with the Best Argument

Starmer is no longer an EU member. That makes him the outsider in this analysis — and perhaps the most interesting actor.

After Brexit, the United Kingdom has occupied a strange position: too small for unilateral moves, too large to be irrelevant, too proud to return to Europe, too poor to maintain the distance. Starmer's "reset" with the EU is the first serious attempt since 2016 to redefine the relationship — not through nostalgia for membership, but through pragmatic cooperation where interests align.

The interesting lever: Britain is Europe's largest AI and fintech centre. It has the deepest capital market integration, the strongest defence industry, the most experienced intelligence structure. If Starmer gathers the energy to position Britain as an active partner in European sovereignty projects — not a reluctant observer — he could be the catalyst that breaks the intra-EU deadlock.

A British-French-German triangle that jointly finances a European cloud champion, builds AGORA infrastructure and carries CIVITAS concepts into the G7 — that would be transformative. Starmer has the argument: We are outside, but we are affected. Let us act together without raising the institutional question. Whether he makes it is another matter.

Giorgia Meloni — The Surprise

Meloni is the most unlikely figure on this list — and perhaps therefore the most important.

She is the most underestimated European leader of the last two years. She has guided Italy through a difficult geopolitical phase without fracture. She has built bridges to Washington when others were burning. She has assumed a role in Brussels that nobody expected: constructive opposition rather than blocker.

Italy's levers are specific: Aruba Cloud is one of the largest European cloud providers — almost nobody knows it. STMicroelectronics is one of the few European semiconductor manufacturers with global relevance. Italy has the largest share of the European SME sector — companies that depend daily on AWS and Microsoft and whose dependency is concrete and measurable.

What Meloni could contribute: political credibility with the sceptics of European integration. If she — who campaigned as a Eurosceptic — advocates for a European cloud champion project, that carries different persuasive force than the same argument from Macron. She could build the coalition that Macron cannot, because she commands trust from governments that distrust Macron.

The risk: Meloni is pragmatic, not visionary. She acts from interests, not convictions. As long as the interest in European digital sovereignty is not greater than the interest in stable relations with Washington, she will not lead.

What All Five Have in Common — and What Is Missing

All five have levers. All five understand the problem — to varying degrees, with different blind spots, but the fundamental dilemma is unknown to none of them. And none of them pulls.

The reason is not stupidity. It is calculation. Each of the measures described — European cloud champion, EUCS, AGORA infrastructure, Buy-European procurement — would generate short-term costs: conflicts with Washington, disruption for domestic industry, resistance from national business associations. The benefit is long-term, abstract, difficult to translate into votes at the next election.

The democratic time structure does not match the strategic time structure. Those who invest today harvest in ten years. Those who speak today harvest at the next election.

That is the real diagnosis. Not bad faith, not stupidity, not betrayal. But an incentive system that systematically rewards the wrong behaviour. Short-sightedness is rational — for the individual politician. It is catastrophic — for Europe.

The levers are there.
The hands are there.
What is missing is the moment when the price of not acting
exceeds the price of acting.
That moment is coming. The question is only whether Europe chooses it
— or whether it happens to Europe.