The time for New Year’s wishes is over; for Europe, 2026 is officially about survival. In a blistering New Year’s assessment, Dr. Alexander Wolf, Head of the Hanns-Seidel-Foundation in Berlin, has declared the “old world order” dead, buried by the tectonic shifts of 2025. From the “Liberation Day” tariff shocks of April to the unprecedented White House attacks on the independence of the US Federal Reserve, the warning shots have been fired. Wolf argues that Berlin, Brussels, and Paris are still clinging to a ghost of the West that no longer exists.
The report demands a radical “recalibration” of European sovereignty. According to Wolf, the era of strategic naïveté must end with the immediate abandonment of three comfortable but paralyzing illusions: that the U.S. will return to its traditional role, that trade will eventually “fix” China, and that AI is merely a job-killer rather than a demographic life-raft. With gold surging 70% in 2025 as a “structural vote of no confidence” in the dollar, the message is clear: Europe must learn to swim alone or capsize as the global tide turns.
