Europe:
Strategic Transition

As of 18 October 2026. Under pressure Europe's decisions have taken the routes the study describes, by detour and by delay. On 18 December 2025 the European Council failed to agree on lending Russia's immobilised assets to Ukraine, after Belgium asked for “full and uncapped solidarity and risk-sharing”, and borrowed €90 billion instead. Hungary then blocked the budget change the loan required, and with Slovakia it held the loan and the twentieth sanctions package until 23 April over oil transit through the Druzhba pipeline.

Ten months later the question is back. On 12 October foreign ministers turned to Ukraine's financing gap for 2027, and the frozen assets were, in the words of the High Representative, Kaja Kallas, “back on the table”. She will propose an Emergency Security Protocol, because Europe needs “a mechanism to consult and to act rapidly”. Washington's clock keeps running: the Pentagon review begun on 28 July is meant, in Elbridge Colby's words, to move NATO “fast and irreversibly” towards Europe taking primary responsibility for its conventional defence.

On 16 October the European Council took the route of delay again. Its conclusions find the means for Ukraine's needs in 2026 identified and promise to “revert to the issue in a timely manner”. Russia's immobilised assets go unmentioned. Washington's next date is 6 November, when the options for American forces in Europe are due.

Equipment can be built over years. Authority is exercised in real time. A decision binds, the study argues, when three things meet: someone recognised to take it, agreement across the levels that must carry it, and the capacity to carry it out before the window closes. When one weakens, the others follow, often with little warning.

Control then slips in four ways. Statements fill the space where binding action is not yet possible. Responsibility spreads until it is unclear who decides. Disagreement surfaces as lowest-common-denominator outcomes, informal opt-outs and parallel tracks. Delivery slips, and the next decision meets doubt. December 2025 reads like the third pattern: the assets stayed frozen, the Union borrowed instead, and Czechia, Hungary and Slovakia took on no obligations from the loan.

In a capital a pause is prudence, the time a compromise needs. Outside, a signal meant for partners is read as hesitation or division and put to use. Meetings go on, consensus is declared and mandates stand, and their effect can still decline.

Formal strength can grow while the power to act shrinks. Where structures change faster than governments can authorise and carry out decisions together, new capability risks remaining, in the study's words, “politically non-deployable”. Each new layer of coordination changes how long a decision takes. Some raise activity and lower the power to act. Abroad, delay is watched and used. Expectations that harden in the meantime are hard to reverse. Kyiv carries the most direct cost: its financing for 2027 is still open, and the twenty-second sanctions package has yet to be agreed.

How many days would the proposed Emergency Security Protocol take out of the time between a European decision and its effect?

Washington sets the clock. Its security strategy of December 2025 and the Pentagon review make European responsibility for conventional defence an American planning goal.

In Brussels unanimity gives every government a brake. Belgium’s demand for full risk-sharing stopped the use of the frozen assets in December. Hungary and Slovakia turned a dispute over the Druzhba pipeline into a hold on the Ukraine loan and the twentieth sanctions package. The Commission borrows on the markets once governments agree. Moscow welcomed the American strategy as “largely consistent with our vision”.

Kyiv depends most directly on the outcome. Its money for 2027 and the next sanctions package wait on the same table.

The case rests on one study, written as a companion to a roadmap. From Capability Substitution to Decision Control appeared on 17 December 2025, a day before the European Council failed to agree on Russia’s frozen assets. It answers “Managing the Transatlantic Divorce”, the plan for a European way of war that Torben Schütz and Christian Mölling published with the European Policy Centre in March 2025. That paper asks how Europe replaces American capabilities and leadership. The study asks whether Europe can still decide while it does so. It defines control by three conditions, traces four ways it slips and asks of every reform how it behaves under time pressure and sustained load.

It sits between two other readings. A week earlier, Reclassified: Europe’s New Position in the 2025 U.S. National Security Strategy described the American strategy that recast Europe as a partner on conditions. Six months later, European Defence Autonomy: A Capable Answer, Wrong Layer put a related question to a concrete plan. The study’s test applies to any measure now on the table, the protocol Kallas has announced included: how it behaves when time is short and pressure lasts.