A Century Later – The Same Question: The Vienna Declaration for a Strong Europe

A hundred years after the first Paneuropean Congress, the Paneuropean movement returned to Vienna and adopted the Vienna Declaration for a Strong Europe. In this article, Ambassador David Dondua argues that the Declaration’s central diagnosis is right: Europe has built impressive institutions but still lacks a geopolitical approach. Its most convincing element is its treatment of enlargement as a security measure, with a single European strategy for Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and Armenia. Georgia shows what happens when it ignores the security dimension. What Russia could not achieve with tanks in 2008, it has pursued through cognitive and political warfare. The author offers three friendly reflections on how Europe frames its approach to Russia’s future, on interim steps towards a common foreign and defence policy, and on calmer language. He also sets out what is needed to turn the Declaration into policy. The proposals include more qualified majority voting in foreign policy, gradual and visible integration for candidate countries, treating information warfare as a security threat, keeping doors open to societies when governments turn away, and an annual review of progress. The Declaration’s test will be whether Europe delivers the security and opportunities its eastern neighbours need to decide their own future.