Policy Brief - Europe as Central Power: Leading the Like-Minded, Building Partnerships Worldwide

Executive Summary

Amidst growing great power rivalries and imperial designs, a vibrant debate about the role and responsibilities of middle powers has emerged.

The middle power debate has undergone a radical shift, tracking the convulsions of international relations, which often revolve around great power dynamics of cooperation and conflict.

It began as a discussion about the budding role of the Global South, amidst the growing confrontation between the Global West and the Global East.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, at the Davos 2026 conference, then reframed the middle power mission as a quest to save and re-imagine a rules-based international order.

Europe sits uneasily in this debate, seeing itself as too small if divided and too large if united, and unsure whether, how, and to what extent it should shed its traditional understanding as a principled global player and endorse the cruder transactional turn in international relations.

In this Policy Brief, we map the evolution of the middle power debate in time and space, pointing to its contradictions. We then turn to Europe: it is precisely in the reconciliation of these middle power contradictions that Europe can carve out its global role.

The European Union represents the only power whose economy is similar in size to that of the two superpowers, China and the US. This invites the temptation to use economic levers in a similar manner, unilaterally and without regard for the interests of others.

But this temptation should be resisted.

Europe should remember that self-restraint is the road to becoming a central power, not just as it leads the like-minded middle powers but also as it partners with others.

Recent events have amply demonstrated the limits of unrestrained hard power. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the US attack on Iran have clearly backfired. There is also little evidence that the wanton use of tariffs by the US has achieved much, apart from alienating allies.

The EU would do well to remember that this lesson applies to itself as well. Using tariffs, quotas and other ways to favour domestic manufacturers at the expense of potential allies and other partners leads to isolation that Europe can afford even less than the US or China, given that it has no levers of hard power.

The insight that restraint pays off is not new. During the so-called period of the warring states in China, the Tao school advised that a large power:

“Wins over smaller and weaker ones
With respect and appreciation.
Not threatened, smaller countries support and sustain the larger”

The EU is also uniquely placed to exercise global coalition building through strategic restraint because it is a community of rules and law. Without it, the continent would slip back into a Europe of nations, which is precisely what far-right forces in Europe and imperial aspirants in Moscow and Washington would like it to be.

If Europe abandons its principles and laws, rather than working to reassert them alongside other small and middle powers, it will not emerge as a muscular global player but will instead be pulled apart by predatory powers like Russia and the US.

To do so, it should overcome the middle power challenge, forging a differentiated strategy towards it. Provided it stands united (admittedly a big if), Europe can aspire to become a central power, leading like-minded middle powers.

The EU cannot replace the United States as global hegemon. But it can offer something more useful for the present moment: leadership without domination.

That means giving like-minded partners a voice before decisions are taken, treating their inputs as part of European resilience, and avoiding unilateral measures that export costs to allies. Such restraint may look like a concession. It is not. In a world of predatory powers, Europe’s long-term interest lies in becoming first among equals.

And while it does this, it should partner as one among equals with other small, middle and large powers in the Global South that know, or have now been reminded of, the existential importance of having basic norms, laws and institutions governing the international system.

Yes, those norms will not be as thick as those regulating relations between like-minded middle powers, but they will be essential, in fact existential. And while norms will occasionally be violated, including by Europeans, it is way better to affirm rules and create mechanisms to implement them than meekly accept to dispense with them altogether.

IEP Bocconi does not express opinions of its own. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors. Any errors or omissions are the responsibility of the authors.

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