‘No turning back’: how the Ukraine war has profoundly changed the EU

Russia's invasion has had a major impact on the bloc's security and energy policies - and even its very raison d'etre

The EU has changed. There is no turning back. We have turned out the lights behind us and there is basically only one way."

The words of the Danish politician and EU commissioner Margrethe Vestager at a conference in May neatly reflect the mood among the Brussels elite, taken aback at their own ability to shed EU bureaucratic torpor, defend Ukraine, embrace enlargement and move closer to fulfilling Ursula von der Leyen's ambition for the EU to become a geopolitical force".