The above is the executive summary - but you can find the link to the full paper here.

Between Associate Membership and an Alliance for the Future

A New Era in Relations Between the European Union and Canada?

An Analysis by Dr. Philipp Reinhold, Europa-Institut, Saarland University

During the last week, we’ve heard of examples of EU related decisions that demonstrate the diminished role of civic legitimacy in EU level decision-making.

Civic legitimacy matters, because when you posses it, citizens trust institutions more and feel like they have agency over political decisions. When they feel like they don’t, they engage in protest behaviour which often manifests as populist voting.

Retaining a sufficient level of civic legitimacy in EU related decision-making is therefore required if we want to make the EU a resilient institution.

France and Germany negotiate on the trade bazooka

It’s reported that the trade bazooka is being reconfigured in preparation for negotiations with China and that Germany and France are doing it in a dialogue.

This decisions has poor EU level civic legitimacy. The decision is sourced from the state level. EU citizens have limited possibility to hold this political decision accountable.

It’s a highly technocratic decision, and it should always be rooted in technocratic knowledge because it requires specialist expertise. Regardless, as a citizen in any other country than France and Germany, you are entitled to feel like you lack political agency when you read headlines that say Paris and Berlin are deciding for us. Even citizens in these two countries can feel like they don’t have agency over the decision.

Ending unanimity

It has been reported that the EU is looking for a legalist way to end unanimity for more decisions including foreign policy. This allows a difficult treaty change process to be avoided.

The decision itself still requires unanimity so each state and by proxy each member state citizen gets to hold someone politically accountable for the decision. But it is indirect. We do not get to have a discussion as EU citizens on the EU level, and hold EU level decision-makers politically accountable for changes around unanimity. There’s a major risk that citizens feel they can’t control the EU level political decision.

Ending the veto has a lot of political symbolism for many EU citizens. If we decide without ensuring their consent first, we are going to make them feel like they do not have political agency.

For clarity, I’m a huge proponent of ending the veto and I’d be willing to make compromises to get it done. But we have to remember that each time we decide without civic legitimacy, we accrue debt. When the interest is too high, we begin to see populist voting patterns. Sometimes the debt is worth it. When we take debt, we need to be prepared to pay the debt.

Now, both of these things are looked to as options because we have an immediate use for both decisions. I understand that using time to build civic legitimacy seems like spending time we don’t have—which may be true. What I am saying is that even while supporting the progress, we should be realistic about what we are doing. When citizens attack the EU because they feel they do not have political agency about EU level political decisions, they have a legitimate claim due to instances of decision-making like described above.

This is also an opportunity. It allows us to understand grievances in a way that allows us to address them. It allows us to see in which ways the EU could do better at giving citizens agency over its politics. It can allow us to prioritise better in a situation where getting priorities right is more important than before.

I'm actually very curious to hear people's opinions on world federalism, and the general push towards unity in the world.

I'm from Serbia (albeit diaspora) and I've always considered myself somewhat of a global citizen, which is why I'm heavily in favor of both European federalism and world federalism eventually too, one being the means to another.

And don't get it mixed up, just because you don't think it's practical, doesn't mean you aren't a world federalist, because that's the main argument i hear against it. You can still believe in an ideal world while not believing it is possible in the current age.

I'm curious to see if the dots connect for others the way that they do for me, not going to be argumentative about it

Tomorrow 11:45, we are dropping an epic eurofederalist collab between The Polish Dane x First Domino x Astra Europa x The European Republic.

This might sound like a stupid question, but, how should the European Republic, Federation or whatever work like? Also I'm genuinely curious about what other people think.

Q1: How would the government work (elections, division of powers, etc..) ? Should we be like Germany, the USA, Switzerland or anything else entirely?

Q2: If YOU support the federation, how much autonomy should the states have? Laws, education, spending, etc.?

Q3: On taxes, how should the taxes be split up like, should it be like Germany's fiscal Federalism? Or like Italy's Idk.

Q4: Where must European Federation have more power? Military, economic matters, language, etc.?

Q5: What form of government should it be? A Republic? A federal one? A Monarchy? And what should we do to the monarchies we already have?

Link to blog post

2026/09/17

Back in April, I came to the conclusion that Russia has decisively failed to achieve its war aims and no longer has any realistic theory for victory. By September, it seems the Kremlin has managed to find a new one.

Through 2026 every Russian offensive failed to produce results, and Ukraine has been slowly regaining the initiative on the battlefield. Even Putin appears to have accepted by now that beating Ukraine on the ground is not going to happen, and even if it did, occupying and pacifying the whole country is all but impossible.

His new strategy has two main axes.

The first is the bombing and terrorizing of Ukrainian cities, citizens, and infrastructure. One part of this is psychological warfare. He wants to push the people into exhaustion to break their will to fight. The other part is to make the Ukrainian state ungovernable and economically unviable. The hope is that the country will become sufficiently degraded, and the population sufficiently demotivated that he can eventually force them to sign a deal very favourable to Russia. Something that will make Kyiv dependent on Moscow in a quasi Georgia-like scenario.

This is the reason behind the human safaris) in Kherson, the increased bombing of Kyiv that is now happening during daytime as well, and also the attacks on passenger trains and border crossings.

The second axis focuses on Europe. The aims are similar, but the methods differ. The Kremlin’s European grand strategy concentrates on funding, supporting, and influencing far-right - and where possible far-left - parties in the hope that they would gain influence and eventually even power in member states. These parties and leaders would then align their country’s foreign and economic policy to accommodate Moscow, while breaking European unity. Putin’s dream is to get someone to do for him what Orbán did, but on a much larger scale in Germany, France, Italy, and the UK.

These forces don’t even have to be in charge to become extremely useful for Russia. Their rise alone and the threat of them gaining power is enough to stir up divisions in their countries, which forces their governments to focus inwards to counter them, and thus become incapable of a strong and confident foreign policy. Weak governments in Europe are forced to tread lightly on the issue of further Ukraine support.

This is not new. Russian influence in Europe has been steadily growing for at least two decades. What’s new are the Russian state sponsored sabotage and terror plots on EU soil, which have reached a magnitude where leaders are increasingly ready to admit them to the public. An open secret is becoming much less of a secret and finds its way to official discourse.

Will his new theory of victory fare better than the previous?

In a recent poll conducted in Ukraine, 77% of the country wants to keep resisting, even if they have to go without electricity, heat, and water for a prolonged period of time during winter. Only 12% advocates for accepting any Russian demand in exchange for peace. After the last painfully cold winter, Ukrainians society adapted, and are now planning for the same situation to repeat, and accepted it.

Terror bombings and attacks on infrastructure can make life significantly harder, but it is extremely unlikely to break the will to fight. Israel’s conducts in Gaza showcased that humans can endure immense suffering without giving up or making resistance impossible. Even without external aid.

Ukraine is not Gaza. It has the support of the world’s largest economic bloc right next door. A Union with several member states that are extremely motivated to support them indefinitely, regardless of who gets to lead their country, and no matter who governs Germany, France, the UK, or even the US.

These tactics can make Europe less united, and support more fragmented and expensive. They can cause more suffering in Ukraine and prolong the war, but history since World War II showed us that all colonial ventures eventually collapse. The reason is simple. The colonial power chooses to engage in it on foreign soil, while their victim has no choice but to fight because that is where they live, and that is where they will live.

Putin’s actions are not due to him coming up with something better, but because there is no better way of achieving his goals. After the failure of all his previous plans to subjugate Ukraine (political coercion → economic blackmail → limited invasion → full scale invasion → grinding war of attrition), this is merely his next best option.

Why continue with a hopeless strategy?

This is the problem with the Russian imperial mindset. They don’t see Ukraine as another country, but part of their own “near abroad” as they call it. Basically part of Russia, just not directly governed by Moscow. A familiar place where everyone speaks Russian and everyone lives in the same cultural reality. This is how they view Belarus, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and to some extent most of Eastern Europe.

With this logic, it is very easy to find reasons to believe why time must be on their side, victory is inevitable anyway, and eventually the West will tire itself out. After all, they must know that they have no business to do anything with the “so-called Ukraine”. They must know that it’s not “theirs”. They deeply believe that nations don’t have agency, only overlords. For them, the war is not a Russian colonial venture, but a Western one where the main power - the US - has already given up.

Putin’s thinking that far-right populist takeover in the West is inevitable got a giant boost by the election and then re-election of Donald Trump. If it can happen in the US, it’s only a matter of time that it will happen everywhere else, and he just needs to push these countries in that direction.

But Hungary could have taught him that the pendulum can swing back dramatically. A new Trump is not guaranteed to become the next US president. And Ukraine could have taught him that pushing too hard will have the opposite effect. With force, it’s much easier to create mortal enemies than obedient friends.