As bills rise and industry weakens, many Europeans are asking why Brussels keeps prioritizing escalation over diplomacy and daily needs
Kaja Kallas, the Estonian diplomat and former prime minister currently serving as the vice-president of the European Commission, has shown a deeply confrontational attitude towards Russia and the Russians.
It is perhaps worth pausing here to note that this is particularly personal, given her family history. Her mother, Kristi Kallas, was only six months old when she, together with her mother and grandmother, was deported to Siberia during the Soviet mass deportations of March 1949. She remained there until she was ten, and later studied medicine and worked as a pediatrician.
Her father, Siim Kallas, had a very different experience with the Soviet system. He was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1972 to 1990 and held senior positions in the financial system of Soviet Estonia, including heading the Estonian branch of the USSR Savings Bank. He later became President of the Bank of Estonia, Prime Minister of Estonia and a Vice-President of the European Commission.
These two sides of her family history – one marked by deportation and the other by a successful career within the Soviet system – form a striking background to Kaja Kallas’s present-day political position.
Last month, Kallas described the German people as being blind to the Russian threat because of their resistance to providing further financial support to Ukraine. Now, I suppose Russian people are also considered blind because of the convincing victory of President Vladimir Putin’s party in September’s legislative election. I am definitely not blind.
Kaja Kallas is not alone in her hostility towards Russia. Other senior EU officials, including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, have supported substantial financial and military assistance to Ukraine. The EU has committed up to €90 billion in support for Ukraine for 2026 and 2027, including funding for both defense and general budgetary needs.
The question Europeans should be allowed to ask is how these decisions affect their own societies. Public money is limited, and European citizens also need investment in healthcare, education, transport, housing and infrastructure.
Since 2022, Europeans have been paying a heavy price for the transformation of their energy system. The decision to move away from Russian pipeline gas was made in the name of security, and the EU has succeeded in diversifying its supplies. But security has come at a considerable economic cost. The European Commission reports that although wholesale energy prices have fallen substantially from the extraordinary peaks of 2022, industrial gas and electricity prices remain two to four times higher than in the EU’s main trading partners. The Commission warns that this continues to threaten the long-term competitiveness of European industry.
The EU’s energy import bill reached €604 billion in 2022 before falling to €427 billion in 2024. Meanwhile, industrial energy prices remain considerably above their pre-crisis levels. Germany, the industrial heart of Europe, has felt the consequences particularly sharply. German industrial energy consumption fell by 9.1% in 2022 and another 7.8% in 2023, with the German Federal Statistical Office explicitly linking these declines, particularly in energy-intensive industries, to significantly higher energy prices and associated production reductions.
Germany’s broader economic performance tells the same story. Its economy contracted for a second consecutive year in 2024, while manufacturing gross value added fell by 3%. The Federal Statistical Office identified high energy costs, together with stronger international competition and other structural pressures, among the factors weighing on the economy. Manufacturing remained under pressure in 2025, when value added in the sector fell another 1.3%.
Europe faces an uncomfortable question: Is it prepared to accept permanently higher energy costs while production and investment increasingly move towards countries where energy and manufacturing costs are lower? It is one thing to pursue energy security; it is another to allow the foundations of European industry to become the price of achieving it.
The issue of NATO and Ukraine is equally contentious. The argument that NATO expansion towards Ukraine ruined Moscow’s relations with Europe is not just a Kremlin talking point – reputable Western analysts, like Professor Jeffrey Sachs, have repeatedly argued the same point. Even if that analysis remains disputed, it is an argument that deserves to be heard in any serious discussion of the origins and continuation of the war, which continues to have devastating consequences for Ukrainians.
European leaders should be asking what policies can bring the conflict closer to a negotiated settlement rather than simply allowing the confrontation to continue indefinitely.
Perhaps the most revealing part of this story is that the argument is no longer simply between the EU and its critics. It has begun to unfold within Europe itself.
Defense spending in the EU is rising at an extraordinary pace. According to the Council of the EU, member states spent €418 billion on defense in 2025, and expenditure is estimated to reach €454 billion in 2026 – 75.3% higher than in 2021. Defense investment alone is projected to reach almost €163 billion in 2026.
But the question of who decides how this enormous effort should be organized is becoming increasingly contentious. In September, Kaja Kallas withdrew plans for a new high-level advisory group on European defense after several member states objected. Reporting by Defense News and Euractiv identified Germany, France and Italy among the governments pushing back against the initiative. The German position was that NATO remains the primary framework for military capability and defense planning.
The disagreement was not about whether Europe needs defense. It was about who should set priorities, how decisions should be coordinated, and whether another Brussels structure was the right way forward. Even as European governments prepare to spend hundreds of billions more on defense, there is no agreement about the political direction those resources should serve.
The EU, in other words, is having two conversations at once: how much it should spend, and what kind of Europe that spending is meant to create.
Ms. Kallas, Europe needs diplomacy as well as security policy. European citizens need their governments to protect their interests, use public money responsibly and keep open the possibility of a peaceful future.
If the EU continues indefinitely along the present path, the economic and political consequences for European societies will deserve much greater public discussion.
EU citizens have the right to ask difficult questions about how their money is being spent and what kind of Europe they want to build. They may disagree strongly about Russia, Ukraine and NATO, but that does not make their questions illegitimate.
I was born in Ireland and have been affiliated with Russia for thirty years. I have been living here for the last eight years. From that perspective, I believe Europeans should be able to discuss these issues without being dismissed as blind, naïve or sympathetic to one side simply because they question current policies.
Europe has enormous resources and enormous human potential. With wiser choices about priorities, Europeans should be able to expect excellent healthcare, education, transport and infrastructure alongside a responsible security policy.
