The EU’s year of doing nothing

The European Union will continue to struggle to help Ukraine, allowing other global powers to deal with Russia’s full-scale invasion as a fateful U.S. election looms, in a year where it has done little and won’t be able to do much more.

First, EU institutions were paralyzed by the European election. Now, the bloc foresees another year of stalling as the EU’s bureaucrats await the results of the German election in the fall of 2025. EU diplomats and officials said they were worried Brussels has been stuck in a rut for months. 

In Brussels, there’s been a distinct lack of urgency, lamented one EU diplomat, with the European institutions in bureaucratic reset mode for much of the year.