The European Union, which for decades built its well-being on three pillars, has faced the simultaneous collapse of all supports. Panic among Eurocrats, but analysts do not rule out a renaissance under certain conditions, RIA Novosti reports.

At a meeting of the International Business Council of the World Economic Forum in Geneva, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde named the components of past success: growth in world trade, cheap energy, and a global order under US protection. "Europe's post-war growth model is collapsing. Only last year, more than 2,500 trade restrictions were introduced worldwide. And it is unlikely that the situation will return to what we knew before," she said.

Back in 2023, former ECB head and ex-Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi expressed a similar thought: "The growth model has fallen apart. We need to invent a new way, but to do that we must become a state. The European market is too small, and businesses prefer to move to the US."

The numbers confirm the alarm: the EU's real GDP grew by 6.3 percent in 2021, only 0.5 in 2023, 1.0 in 2024, and 1.4 in 2025.

Marco Forgione, Director General of The Chartered Institute of Export and International Trade, insists on urgent fundamental reforms - both political and economic.

Lagarde, however, sees "significant strengths" in the EU: the world's largest network of trade agreements, huge production capacity, and a single market. But she warns against repeating past mistakes - Europe missed the first digital revolution and should not miss the second, related to artificial intelligence.

However, this seems to be already happening. The European technology sector lags significantly behind the American one. According to Oxford Economics, since 2021, AI investments in the US have grown three times faster than in the EU.

Protectionism and geoeconomic fragmentation have become the new norm, notes Yulia Davydova, associate professor at the Department of Political Analysis and Socio-Psychological Processes of the Plekhanov Russian University of Economics. One can forget about the expansion of world trade now.

Economist Andrei Barkhota adds: cheap energy resources have disappeared, Europe itself abandoned them, which increased production costs and weakened its position in competition with China. In addition, with the arrival of Donald Trump in the White House, relations with the US have changed, and there has been a partial departure from traditional cooperation.

Geopolitical tension, according to Davydova, creates threats to logistics chains and reduces investment activity. If the EU does not take radical steps, long-term stagnation and creeping deindustrialization are inevitable.

The RIA Novosti interlocutor emphasizes: the Old World, which prospered thanks to cheap energy, globalization, and American security, is a thing of the past. The future depends on European political leaders who, instead of pressing problems and breakthrough technologies, are engaged in anti-Russian sanctions and spend resources on Zelensky's unrealistic projects.

Barkhota, in turn, predicts a downturn in the EU until 2029 - until the end of Ursula von der Leyen's term as head of the European Commission. After that, with a change of political elites and normalization of relations with Moscow, Europe will have chances for economic revival.

Source: RIA Novosti