Reinhold Brender / Feb 2026
Photo: European Union, 2026
For over a decade, the European Union carefully managed its vocabulary. Since the concept first appeared in European Council conclusions in December 2013, the agreed formula has been "strategic autonomy" – later softened to "open strategic autonomy". Brussels avoided the word "independence". Autonomy signals capacity to act when necessary. Independence signals something more: self-determination. In every Council document from 2013 through early 2026, the distinction was maintained.
European Commission President von der Leyen herself had been testing the term “independence” for over a year. By her own account, she first spoke of "European independence" in early 2025 – and was met with scepticism. At Davos on 20 January 2026, she built an entire keynote around it. But the Davos speech deployed "independence" as an economic concept: trade diversification through Mercosur and India, the proposed "EU Inc." company structure, the Savings and Investment Union, an affordable energy plan. Where it touched security – the €90 billion Ukraine loan, Arctic policy, solidarity with Denmark over Greenland – it stayed within cooperative frameworks. Independence, at Davos, meant reducing commercial dependencies. It did not yet mean rethinking the security order.
Munich changed that. On 14 February, von der Leyen turned the word into a security doctrine. "Europe must become more independent – there is no other choice," she began. But the qualifier fell away as her speech progressed. "An independent Europe is a strong Europe. And a strong Europe makes for a stronger transatlantic alliance." She closed with "our quest for an independent Europe" and "Long live Europe." The escalation was deliberate. And this time, "independence" carried institutional freight: activating the EU's mutual defence clause, Article 42(7), as a permanent commitment; qualified majority voting on security; a European Security Strategy mainstreaming defence across all policy domains; the UK brought back into European security architecture. What had been an economic aspiration at Davos became a programme for strategic self-determination.
What enabled the leap? Paradoxically, Washington. The Trump administration's November 2025 National Security Strategy made the sharpest case for American retrenchment from the post-Cold War order that any US document has produced. Strategy, it argued, must focus on core national interests; alliances are instruments, not architectures. At Davos in January, Trump reinforced the message. Secretary of State Rubio, speaking immediately before von der Leyen, offered civilisational solidarity and insisted that America wants strong allies. But the underlying logic of the Trump administration's posture remained: Europe must carry its own weight, or lose relevance.
Von der Leyen seized on this, turning Rubio's call into a mandate far more ambitious than burden-sharing. She quoted a US Assistant Secretary of Defence from the 1970s to root European independence in American strategic logic itself – using Washington's own arguments to legitimise a doctrine Washington had never intended.
The other European leaders at Munich calibrated differently. President Macron came closest in substance – calling for Europe to be "much more independent" – but treated independence as a consequence of building capabilities, not a doctrine in its own right. Prime Minister Starmer chose the older, safer vocabulary: "greater European autonomy," a shift "from over-dependence to interdependence." And Chancellor Merz, for all his ambition – Germany as Europe's strongest conventional army, conversations with France on nuclear deterrence – never used the word Unabhängigkeit. His organising concepts were Souveränität, Selbstbehauptung, Freiheit – always within the alliance frame. Where Merz built a stronger European pillar within NATO, von der Leyen built something that could, in time, stand on its own.
She is right on the substance. The programme she laid out – a credible mutual defence commitment, majority decision-making on security, mainstreaming defence across trade and technology policy, tearing down the wall between civilian and military industry – identifies exactly the structural weaknesses that have kept European security dependent on American willingness. These are the institutional preconditions for a Europe that can act when it must. And the European public seems to agree: A January 2026 YouGov survey across six western European countries confirmed that majorities now prioritise European autonomy over the transatlantic alliance. Von der Leyen's language of independence is not running ahead of public opinion. It is catching up with it.
But a doctrine is only as strong as the political will behind it. Three weeks before Munich, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte had told the European Parliament bluntly: "If anyone thinks here that Europe as a whole can defend itself without the US, keep on dreaming. You can't. We can't. We need each other." Von der Leyen's speech was a direct answer to that verdict. But as a recent analysis suggests, a fundamental disconnect underpins the debate: for Europeans, doing more increasingly means a continent that can act on its own; for Americans, it means a Europe that spends more – but on US terms.
The gap between von der Leyen’s ambition and European realities is real. Qualified majority voting on security requires treaty change that several member states are nowhere near accepting. Activating Article 42(7) permanently demands force planning and command structures the EU currently lacks. Eastern and northern member states – for whom any distance from Washington remains an existential risk – have yet to signal readiness to follow where von der Leyen leads. The reluctance of some capitals to put even rhetorical distance between themselves and the United States reveals how far there is still to go.
This is where Merz's instinct remains the right one for the foreseeable path. Europe's preferred option must be to build itself as the European pillar within NATO – not as an alternative to the alliance, but as a credible force within it. That framing is most likely to carry the eastern flank, sustain American engagement on tolerable terms, and build capabilities without triggering the fractures an explicit independence doctrine risks. Macron's approach points in the same direction: build the capabilities first, and European self-determination follows as a consequence rather than a declared doctrine.
There need be no contradiction between this path and von der Leyen's – if one is clear-eyed about the logic. Building the European pillar credibly requires the capabilities she described: the defence commitment, the decision-making reform, the industrial base, the strategic coherence. And possessing those capabilities is what would allow Europe, if the alliance falters, to act on its own. But this holds only if Washington accepts a European pillar that decides, not merely one that spends. If the United States continues to insist that European defence remains subordinate to American command, then the contradiction becomes real – and von der Leyen's independence doctrine shifts from aspiration to necessity. The goal is a Europe that prefers partnership but does not depend on it. Von der Leyen has named the destination. The road there still runs through NATO. But it must be a road Europe can walk alone if it has to.
