Von der Leyen urges overhaul of EU foreign policy decision-making

Ursula von der Leyen used a gathering of European Union ambassadors in Brussels on Monday to deliver her most direct challenge yet to the bloc's foreign policy architecture, arguing that the requirement for unanimity among 27 member states has become a strategic liability rather than a source of strength.

Speaking at the annual ambassadors' conference, the Commission president said the EU must take "a clear-eyed and hard look" at whether its reliance on "consensus and compromise" in foreign policy "is more a help or a hindrance." Her remarks, delivered against the backdrop of war in Ukraine, escalating conflict in the Middle East and Donald Trump's renewed threats to seize Greenland from Denmark, amounted to a call for treaty-level reform of how the Union projects power abroad.

The unanimity trap

The core of von der Leyen's argument is structural. The Common Foreign and Security Policy operates on unanimity for all major decisions, sanctions, military missions, strategic partnerships, financial assistance to third countries. Any single member state can block action. That design reflected the post-Cold War assumption that European capitals would broadly align on external threats. It has not survived contact with reality.

Hungary under Viktor Orbán has exploited the veto repeatedly since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Budapest delayed the sixth sanctions package for weeks over oil imports, held up an €18 billion macro-financial assistance package for Kyiv in late 2022, and most recently stalled the €90 billion loan agreed by all 27 leaders at the European Council in December 2024. The loan, backed by proceeds from frozen Russian central bank assets, remains undisbursed as of March 2026.

"You have all seen the challenges we have faced in getting this over the line, even after all 27 leaders have agreed to it," von der Leyen told the ambassadors. "This goes back to the point that I made earlier about whether our system is still able to deliver efficiently." She insisted the money would reach Kyiv "because our credibility, and more importantly, our security, is at stake."

A doctrine designed for a vanished world

Von der Leyen's diagnosis is not new. The European Security Strategy of 2003, drafted under Javier Solana, assumed a rules-based international order anchored by US engagement and multilateral institutions. The Strategic Compass adopted in 2022 acknowledged that world had ended but stopped short of recommending decision-making reform. The Commission president's speech suggests she believes the Compass is already obsolete.

"In times of radical change like ours, we can either cling to what used to make us strong and defend habits and certainties that history has already moved beyond, or we can choose a different destiny for Europe," she said. The phrase "different destiny" is deliberate. Moving from unanimity to qualified majority voting (QMV) in foreign policy would require unanimous agreement to change the treaties, a paradox that has defeated previous reform attempts, including the 2018 proposal by then-Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker to extend QMV to sanctions and human rights.

The Greenland factor

Von der Leyen's reference to Greenland was pointed. Since returning to the White House in January 2025, Donald Trump has repeatedly stated the United States should take control of the autonomous Danish territory, citing strategic minerals and Arctic security. Denmark is an EU member state; Greenland left the European Communities in 1985 but remains associated through the Overseas Countries and Territories framework. The EU has no collective defence clause that covers territory outside Europe, and Article 42.7 of the Treaty on European Union, the mutual assistance clause, has never been invoked.

The Commission president framed Greenland as "a symptom of the wider issue, as was Ukraine." The implication: an external actor can pressure a member state's territory while the EU lacks both the legal instruments and the decision-making speed to respond coherently. Denmark has sought EU solidarity; the Council has issued statements. No concrete measures have followed.

Power struggle behind the rhetoric

Von der Leyen's intervention cannot be separated from institutional politics. Since the start of her second term in December 2024, she has travelled to Kyiv, Washington, Beijing and the Gulf states more frequently than her predecessors, often without prior coordination with the High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Kaja Kallas, or the European Council president, António Costa. Diplomatic sources in Brussels describe growing irritation among member states at what they perceive as presidential overreach, the Commission encroaching on the Council's exclusive competence for foreign policy.

The Treaty of Lisbon created the High Representative precisely to give the EU a single diplomatic face. Von der Leyen's critics argue she is blurring that line, using the Commission's administrative muscle, control of the neighbourhood and development instruments, the European Peace Facility, the Ukraine loan facility, to set the political agenda. Her speech to ambassadors, who report to the Council via the European External Action Service, can be read as a direct appeal to the diplomatic corps over the heads of their capitals.

The Ukraine loan as test case

The €90 billion loan illustrates the friction. Agreed by leaders in December 2024 as part of the G7's $50 billion commitment, the EU portion relies on windfall profits from Russian sovereign assets immobilised in European depositories, primarily Euroclear in Belgium. The legal framework was adopted in May 2024. Disbursement requires a Council implementing decision, which Hungary has blocked since January 2026, demanding concessions on rule-of-law funds frozen under the conditionality regulation.

Von der Leyen's promise that the loan "will" reach Kyiv suggests the Commission is exploring workarounds. One option, discussed in legal circles but not publicly endorsed, would be to restructure the instrument as a Commission borrowing operation backed by the EU budget, bypassing the Council decision. That would test the limits of Article 311 TFEU and almost certainly provoke legal challenges from Budapest and possibly Warsaw.

Why member states resist QMV

The resistance to qualified majority voting in foreign policy runs deeper than Orbán's vetoes. France guards its UN Security Council seat and nuclear deterrent as sovereign prerogatives. Germany has historically preferred consensus to avoid being outvoted on issues like Russia policy or Middle East engagement. Smaller states fear QMV would let the big three, France, Germany, Italy, impose positions on the rest. The 2007 Lisbon Treaty included a "passerelle" clause allowing the European Council to unanimously switch specific CFSP areas to QMV, but it has never been used.

Von der Leyen knows this. Her speech did not explicitly demand treaty change or invoke the passerelle. Instead, she framed the question as an urgent reflection: "whether our doctrine, our institutions and our decision making... have kept pace with the speed of change." That language leaves room for incremental steps, more use of "constructive abstention" (Article 31 TEU), where a dissenting state does not block adoption but is not obliged to implement, or for a future convention if political momentum builds.

A conversation the Union has avoided

Von der Leyen closed her remarks by acknowledging the difficulty: "I know this is a stark message and a difficult conversation to have." That conversation, about sovereignty, solidarity, and the price of unity, has been deferred for two decades. The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the return of American transactionalism, and the Arctic ambitions of great powers have ended the deferral. Whether the EU's institutions can adapt faster than the world changes is no longer a theoretical question. The €90 billion loan, stuck in a Brussels corridor while the front line moves, is the measure of that gap.