Europe can

More than six months after Donald Trump's inauguration, it is already clear that the United States is heading toward authoritarianism. The most recent and humiliating impositions on its traditional European partners regarding tariffs and defense measures are evident. But the most significant is its contempt for its own country's institutions. Thus, the attack on the Federal Reserve or the dismissal of the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics because employment figures were not favorable to its interests are implausible.

But the most surprising aspect of this path toward autocracy is the silence of the citizenry. What was considered an example of independent and articulate politics and civil society turns out to fall silent and self-censor when it is most needed. It seems as if, in order to compete with China, its great rival in the fight for global hegemony, the Americans consider it appropriate to emulate the Asian giant's forms of government, breaking with its best liberal and democratic tradition.

The noise of the moment cannot hide the EU's enormous strengths in all areas.

In the midst of this global mess, fueled largely by a Russia incapable of enforcing its own respect but with an enormous capacity for distortion, lies a European Union that is dejected and shaken from all sides, especially after the Scottish episode. Europe appears as a relic of the past, full of good intentions but incapable of defending itself against strongmen like Trump, Putin, Netanyahu, or Xi Jinping. However, there is no reason to justify this widespread pessimism.

The European response can only be based on what is most characteristic of its character: respect for freedoms and minorities. Furthermore, the noise of the moment cannot obscure the enormous strengths of the European Union in all areas. The key is to be able to combine its diversity, a source of dynamism, with full scientific and military integration, because our only weakness is fragmentation.

To this end, our shared history should serve as a stimulus, without needing to go back to the origins, which took place in a highly turbulent context following the tragedy of World War II. More recently, and in stable circumstances, it is worth recalling the creation and consolidation of the euro, which has now become a global benchmark currency. At the time, adopting the single currency represented an extraordinary renunciation by the old states, far greater than what a common defense or technology requires today.

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Responding to the moment depends solely on our conviction: the same conviction that inspired the founders of the euro and people like Mario Draghi, who unrestrictedly developed the potential of the European Central Bank. A conviction that traditional parties often lack, allowing themselves to be intimidated by Trump's apprentices, who, emerging across the continent, are our first danger. With conviction, Europe can do it.