September Rentrée 2026
A year ago, in the August 29 edition of Diário de Notícias (Portugal), I wrote that the 2025-2026 rentrée appeared unpromising: paralysed multilateral institutions, diplomacy reduced to a spectacle, frequent violations of international norms, and protracted conflicts, all within the framework of a threatened, hesitant, and divided European Union. The subsequent 12 months have confirmed this diagnosis. This year's rentrée is even more challenging: instability and threats to global peace and security have increased considerably.
What makes this rentrée decisive is not merely the simultaneous gravity of these multiple crises and their unpredictability. It is the fact that they reveal, ever more clearly, that Europe will only be able to protect its interests, its citizens, and its values if it strengthens its political unity.
We face a continuum of progressively interconnected crises: the environmental crisis has worsened; the war against Ukraine has intensified, parallel to a crescendo of Russian threats against democratic Europe; in the Middle East, violence has no end in sight; in Sudan, the humanitarian collapse continues with an indifference and brutality that mirror the international disorder in which we live. Upon this web has now fallen a dangerous race to develop artificial intelligence, contested by Washington, Beijing, and a small number of corporate behemoths with inconceivable financial and political capabilities.
The clearest symptom of this disorder is the lack of respect for the political role of the UN, today held hostage by rivalries among the US, China, and Russia. António Guterres concludes his mandate this coming December 31. There is still no consensus on a candidate capable of breaching the wall of the great powers' veto. There is a risk of entering a carousel of uncertainty—a geopolitical death pit that will lead to the selection of a candidate who is convenient and obedient across the board. The United Nations, which we so desperately need, would in that case enter a new level of decadence.
It was within this vacuum that, at the end of August, the CIA Director, John Ratcliffe, travelled to Moscow—not to speak with Putin, but with the heads of the SVR (foreign intelligence) and the FSB (internal security), to whom he went so far as to propose a trilateral summit between Trump, Putin, and Zelensky. Washington called this routine. In practice, it was an exercise in excluding European intelligence services and UN rules. It was also, on the Russian side, an example of their customary guile: discussing matters among spies, rather than with the Head of State, is the classic way to deny Kremlin involvement, buy time, and pursue the intent of fracturing NATO and the EU. Moscow's objective has little to do with peace in Ukraine or with inviolability and security in democratic Europe. Moscow seeks to gain time to achieve its ends. And it is precisely this episode that accurately measures the true weight of the European Union: as long as the timetable is defined by Washington and Moscow, without Brussels having a seat in the room, Europe will continue to be the object, the spectator, and a passive element in the global game.
There are those who draw a pessimistic conclusion from this and look to the near future with great concern—those who believe Europe is condemned to irrelevance. It is fundamental to combat this idea and to remember, with courage and concrete proposals, that it is necessary to advance towards a federation of European States. Where Europe has genuinely united—in the areas of trade, competition, the single market, and currency—it negotiates as a power. Where it has settled for intergovernmental coordination, subject to the veto of each member—in Defence, foreign relations, financial markets, and critical industries—the EU carries little to no weight against Washington, Moscow, or Beijing, as the Ratcliffe episode has just confirmed. Nor can it count on the support or respect of any leader from those capitals.
In realistic terms, the 2026-2027 political year should translate into a strengthening of integration among those States that grasp the scale of the risks we face. As Mario Draghi has argued, whoever wishes to join, joins; whoever wishes to block, can no longer impede the others. This is not merely about the economy. At stake are sovereignty, defence, our geopolitical choices, the dignity of citizens, and the protection of our humanistic values.
Yet this institutional federalism does not, by itself, resolve the other fracture crossing the European space: the worsening of social inequalities. There is an increasing concentration of wealth at the top of social pyramids, running parallel to the precarisation of the middle classes and the poorest. This results in an erosion of the material foundation of democracies, allowing the expansion of demagogic and populist movements. This applies to the Portuguese situation as to so many other European societies, where the mainstream governing parties convince citizens less and less, and social impatience grows. Many of our governments manage reality with the rhetoric of the last century.
The external strength of the EU must rest upon an internal social contract that promotes optimism, equality, and trust in political leaders. Without this foundation, any attempt at federation will be an architecture without foundations.
A year ago, I found it difficult to be optimistic. I continue to think so. But we cannot lose hope or fall into naivety. Now, in September 2026, the die is cast. Therefore, the challenge is to strengthen our union, without subordination and without having to ask permission from those who wish to make calculations without consulting us.
