Just a few hours before the four leaders posed for a photo in front of 10 Downing Street, a Russian drone had struck a nuclear fuel storage facility near Chernobyl. As the war raged on, the heads of government of the UK, France and Germany sat down with Zelensky to draft a five-point statement. That same day, the channel that seemed to matter was elsewhere: the US-Russia track, with Kirill Dmitriev on one side and Steve Witkoff on the other, continued to work bilaterally on the terms of an agreement in Ukraine, with the tripartite format still on hold.

Europe is on board; the London document is in place. For Moscow, however, the situation remains unchanged.

He who bears arms does not decide

In 2025, for the first time, European countries allocated more military aid to Ukraine than the United States: €71.3 billion compared with $64.6 billion (data from the Kiel Institute and EPRS, December 2025). When looking at the total figures – military, financial and humanitarian – the gap widens further: over €200 billion from Europe compared to around $115 billion from the US.

Europe foots the bill, but doesn’t decide the menu.

It must be said: around 75% of European aid takes the form of loans, whereas American aid is predominantly in the form of grants. Even allowing for this caveat, Europe’s financial and military dominance does not translate into negotiating power. It is not the party with the most firepower that decides where the negotiators sit.

The conditional mood

Point 3 of the declaration signed in London stipulates that Ukraine should receive robust and legally binding security guarantees, including the deployment of the Multinational Force for Ukraine. However, these guarantees would only come into effect “once a ceasefire is already in place.”

It will be argued that conditionality is standard doctrine: no peacekeeping force is deployed whilst the war is ongoing, lest it risk becoming a co-belligerent with a nuclear power. That objection is correct. But it is irrelevant. The problem is not the timing: it is that this conditional force is the only operative element in a statement that is otherwise entirely declaratory. London offers nothing that would alter Moscow’s calculations prior to a ceasefire. And the ceasefire, according to the track that matters, is decided by Washington and Moscow.

Point 5 adds: “Any negotiating point relating to the EU and NATO must be agreed by the EU Member States and NATO allies.” This is not a negotiating position. It is a defensive veto. Nihil de nobis, sine nobis: a safeguard clause, not an initiative.

There is a certain logic to the procedural explanation. The CFSP requires unanimous decision-making: a structure based on consensus, and therefore designed to accommodate vetoes, which produces declaratory acts because it cannot produce anything else.

London, however, reveals something more profound. The E3 is not the CFSP: it is a coalition of three nation states, free from the constraint of unanimity. Yet, even with this freedom, it only signs symbolic acts. The problem, therefore, is not procedural, but structural. Europe has no power of its own: without a monopoly on legitimate force, without an autonomous army, economic primacy does not translate into negotiating power. The SAFE instrument, adopted in May 2025 with €150 billion under Article 122 TFEU, lends money to Member States for their national defences; it does not build a common coercive capacity. The two symptoms are not mutually exclusive: they are cumulative. The internal veto paralyses the Union; the absence of its own force also paralyses those who manage to circumvent the veto.

As long as the architecture remains as it is, the result is physiological, not pathological.

The final twist came from Zelensky. Ahead of the summit, he had written to Putin proposing direct bilateral talks, with the possibility that “other specific participants might join the negotiations already underway.” Speaking at Downing Street, he said: “Europe must be part of the negotiations and must stand firm.”

Europe is the third party that Kyiv is working to bring into the Russia-Ukraine bilateral talks, because a European presence would provide an additional safeguard for it. It is not the EU that is claiming its place at the table. It is Ukraine that is fighting to secure it for us. The paradox is becoming more acute: it is Kyiv that must invite Brussels to the European table.

Active but not in the limelight

There is one objection that must be taken seriously: the E3 does not merely issue statements; it establishes concrete guarantees. The Berlin commitments of December 2025 and the Paris Declaration of 6 January 2026 establish security frameworks. In April, despite Hungary’s veto, the EU released €90 billion in loans to Kyiv. On 15 June, Minister Crosetto will fly to Washington to meet Secretary Hegseth with a specific proposal: a European security network extended to the UK, Norway, Turkey and Ukraine, which would complement NATO without replacing it.

All this is real. But it is happening reactively. Europe is providing funding within a framework already set by others, establishing guarantees conditional on a peace that will be determined by the US-Russia axis, and proposing defence architectures when the agenda has already been decided. This is not inertia: it is action without initiative.

Italy’s empty chair captures this perfectly. The E3 is a format comprising three major powers: the UK, France and Germany. Rome was not structurally invited. This is not a failure on Meloni’s part: it is a snapshot of a Europe that, when it comes to security, continues to make decisions based on shifting alliances rather than a single centre. That void is no accident. It is the form, on the diplomatic front, of the very lack of structure that London has made visible on the operational front.

The crossroads

The G7 summit in Évian begins on 15 June. Three days later, the European Council meets with defence at the top of the agenda. The Coalition of the Willing returns to Paris on 13 July. Europe has a series of opportunities ahead to stop being a mere financial backer and spectator.

It can continue to coordinate, spend money and sign documents asking not to be excluded. Or it can build the coercive power it lacks: not because Washington is asking it to, but because without it, every billion it spends is funding a war that others will end.

As long as Europe speaks in the conditional tense and pays in the present, others will write the future that it will have to sign.