On Monday, Emmanuel Macron hosted 25 heads of state and government at the Hôtel national des Invalides in Paris for a summit of the "Coalition of the Willing," the ad hoc grouping of Ukraine's supporters that has become a key forum for military decision-making on the war. Alongside Macron, Germany's Friedrich Merz and Britain's outgoing prime minister co-chaired the meeting, with Volodymyr Zelensky in attendance. The leaders announced a new integrated anti-ballistic-missile coalition, agreed further arms supplies and training for multinational forces, and discussed help for Ukraine's energy grid ahead of another wartime winter.
The contrast with Brussels was stark. The same week, EU foreign ministers meeting there failed to agree the bloc's 21st sanctions package against Russia — sanctions requiring unanimous approval from all 27 member states, a bar that a handful of governments with their own economic interests at stake have repeatedly used to slow or dilute the process.
The Coalition of the Willing isn't an EU body — it includes non-EU members like the UK — but it has increasingly become the venue where Europe's most consequential decisions on Ukraine actually get made, precisely because it doesn't require unanimity among 27 governments. Sanctions, by contrast, remain squarely an EU competence, and therefore subject to the EU's veto-prone decision-making. The result is a two-speed Europe: fast and unified on battlefield support delivered outside Brussels, slow and fractious on the economic-pressure tools that only Brussels can wield.
Germany's posture was notable. Merz pledged continued support for Ukraine "beyond a ceasefire" — language that goes further than simply backing a future peace deal, implying a long-term German security commitment regardless of how or when the fighting ends. It's consistent with a broader shift in Berlin's defence policy this year, from stepped-up weapons purchases to a more assertive read of what European security requires from Germany specifically.
The gap between Paris and Brussels this week illustrates a structural problem for EU Ukraine policy: the tools that require unanimity — sanctions chief among them — are the ones most exposed to a single government's veto, while the coalition that can move fast operates entirely outside EU institutions. That's a workable arrangement for military support, which the Coalition of the Willing can deliver on its own. It's a much bigger problem for economic pressure on Russia, which has no equivalent workaround and depends entirely on the EU getting all 27 capitals to agree.
