Big six plot to crash through on CMU

politico.eu · Feb 16, 2026 · Collected from GDELT

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Presented by Neste By NICHOLAS VINOCUR On today’s Brussels Playbook Podcast: Host Zoya Sheftalovich and your Playbook author discuss the latest informal European Union grouping seeking to accelerate the bloc’s responses to its economic and geopolitical challenges … and Brussels finally has a new regional government! WELCOME TO THE WEEK. This is Nick Vinocur. DRIVING THE DAY TUGBOAT DIPLOMACY: On the heels of a summit where EU leaders cautiously embraced the idea of a two-speed Europe, finance ministers from the bloc’s six biggest economies meet this morning in a bid put this vision into action — starting with a unified capital market. Is this Europe’s Seal Team 6, an elite group assembled to crack the union’s trickiest problems? Not quite — it’s more like a tugboat that can pull Europe in its wake, partly through sheer FOMO. According to a diplomat from one of the countries involved, the idea is “to create a gravitational pull with a few countries that might then pull along the rest.” **A message from Neste: The world needs to keep moving, but with reduced emissions. Neste’s sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and renewable diesel are available today. Let’s fuel change. Learn more at neste.com/change.** Who’s in? France, Germany, Poland, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands. The “E6” is a format that their finance ministers have already used for virtual catch-ups. This time, though, they’ll meet in person, ahead of the Eurogroup gathering taking place in Brussels, our Pro Financial Services team reports. The Bruno blueprint: It was back in February 2024 that former French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said during a speech in Belgium that EU countries should form “coalitions of the willing” to pursue hard-to-reach reforms. “Since it’s impossible to move forward at 27, let’s start with a few countries,” Le Maire said. What’s the idea? To break logjams and get things done — starting with the Capital Markets Union (CMU). The thinking is that integrating the EU’s disparate financial markets would make it easier for European companies to grow and compete and help channel trillions of euros of private savings into the bloc’s investment priorities. CM-what? The CMU was Le Maire’s target back in 2024 and it remains a policy aim of the E6 today. As former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi wrote in his September 2024 tome of recommendations, a CMU would allow EU businesses to raise more money, carry out more research and compete more effectively against Chinese or American rivals. Road blocks: But efforts to get talks going on the CMU have floundered. A concerted push to move things forward in April 2024 was given the kibosh by a group of EU members banding together against the CMU’s ambitious language. Here’s the alternative: “If we’re being held back by 15 or 20 of Europe’s smaller countries, maybe the big ones should move forward together to create something that works for us and creates a sense of inevitability for the rest,” added the EU diplomat, who was granted anonymity to discuss preparations for the non-public finance minister talks today. Skepticism: While participants who spoke to Playbook voiced confidence, it’s hard to ignore that this group (unlike, say, the Germany and Italy axis, or the Nordics and Baltics, or the Germany-Italy-Belgium brotherhood) has yet to produce any sort of discussion paper. Brussels runs on documents — preferably leaked. The E6 has yet to make its mark. More skepticism: As our FS colleagues point out, a cluster of six countries does not meet the nine-member threshold required to invoke an enhanced cooperation deal under EU law. Even if the six do manage to get enough national governments on board, previous efforts to enact reforms via enhanced cooperation have failed. Going on your record: There’s also griping from members that aren’t invited to the exclusive meetings, amid fears the biggest European economies will pre-cook decisions to be discussed later by all 27 EU countries. The controversy over last week’s two-speed breakfast before the informal leaders’ summit in Belgium may be a sign of things to come. But participants are optimistic. More countries could join the E6, the diplomat said, mentioning Sweden, Denmark and Austria as possible add-ons for CMU reforms. The schedule has changed. This group of powerful EU countries now plans to meet once a month on the sidelines of finance minister meetings. The circumstances are also different: Europe’s push for greater autonomy and stronger economics is now coming from the top. The bottom line: Some skepticism may be justified. But the E6 concept has the potential to pack a punch. The only thing holding the group back is its political will. MUNICH SECURITY CONFERENCE EUROPE STILL WARY OF TRUMP: It was arguably the defining moment of this year’s Munich Security Conference (MSC): Audience members offered Marco Rubio a standing O, after a speech in which the U.S. secretary of state affirmed the transatlantic alliance, saying America “will always be a child of Europe.” Reset button: As Playbook has reported, Europeans were interested in a reset of their relationship with Washington — something that appeared to be shared by the American side. Before Rubio’s speech, U.S. Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby delivered a conciliatory address to NATO. Vice President JD Vance, whose MSC speech shocked Europeans last year, was nowhere to be seen. Second thoughts: Even so, EU officials who spoke to POLITICO pointed out that Rubio had not mentioned China or Russia in his speech, despite an ongoing war on Europe’s doorstep. Stripping away the smoother delivery, his speech was functionally the same as Vance’s, they said. Paul McLeary and Laura Kayali chronicle how trust between Europe and America has been severely eroded. The stumbling block. “MAGA means anti-EU,” Finnish President Alexander Stubb told POLITICO in Munich. “It means anti-liberal world order. It means anti-climate change. That’s the undercurrent guiding U.S. policy.” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said U.S. leadership on the world stage was “being challenged, perhaps already lost.” He added: “The international order based on rights and rules … no longer exists in the way it once did.” No turning back: Other EU leaders echoed the skepticism. “I don’t think we will be doing business as usual” after Donald Trump’s threats to annex Greenland, Latvian Prime Minister Evika Siliņa told Victor Jack on the sidelines of the conference. Instead, she argued that something shifted irreversibly in the dynamic between the EU and U.S., as a result of Europe’s unanimity in supporting Greenland and Denmark. Not going anywhere: Top EU diplomat Kaja Kallas also welcomed the more positive tone from the U.S., but shot back: “Contrary to what some may say, ‘Woke, decadent Europe’ is not facing civilizational erasure.” EUROPEAN NUKE TALKS: Multiple EU countries are publicly backing talks on a homegrown nuclear deterrent to complement that of the U.S., Laura and Victor report. Both Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron used their Munich speeches to address the potential for a European nuclear deterrent, and Polish President Karol Nawrocki told Polsat television Sunday that Warsaw should start developing its own nuclear capacity. Talking China. Merz surprised many in the MSC audience by taking a harder-than-expected stance toward Beijing ahead of a trip to the Chinese capital later this month. He warned that China’s power could soon rival that of the U.S. and accused Beijing of exploiting economic dependencies, citing rare-earth export controls that have disrupted German industry. MUNICH’S BEST AND WORST: Seb Starcevic hands out brownie points (and some demerits) to the participants of this year’s grand security confab. Sneak peek: Wolfgang Ischinger wins the fashion award for throwing on a pair of aviator shades in a wink to Macron’s Davos look. And U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham gets the “most colorful language” award for throwing some four-letter words into his on-stage intervention. EU-CHINA FORGET TRUMP … FOCUS ON CHINA: While European leaders pondered their relationship with Trump’s America, China is wreaking havoc on European industry, Macron’s former Europe Minister Clément Beaune warns in an interview with Playbook. The bloc must come up with a better response — and soon, he says. Flash vs. substance: “Every day Trump makes news with a kind of fireworks. Our attention is focused on Washington, which suggests that the Chinese threat has diminished or stabilized,” said Beaune, a former two-time minister who’s now in charge of France’s High Commission for Planning, which advises the government on strategy and reforms. T-word: “Two radical responses remain to be prepared and debated as quickly as possible: unprecedented trade protection, equivalent to a general 30 percent tariff on China; or a 20 percent to 30 percent depreciation of the euro against the renminbi [yuan],” reads a report put out by Beaune’s office just before this interview. Cost of production: “This corresponds to the difference between European production costs and Chinese production costs for the same quality,” said Beaune, referring to the tariff proposal. He said he hoped the report would “put the subject of China back at the center of the agenda.” Shaking things up: Ahead of Merz’s China trip and a formal gathering of EU leaders in March, Beaune said the debate on how to deal with China was “moving in Brussels and Berlin.” Sound the alarm: Beaune names Germany as the most obvious victim of China’s ability to export increasingly high-quality goods to Europe. “The alarm bells must be sounded — entire sectors of European industry are under threat,” added the former minister, who belongs to the left wing of Macron’s centrist Renaissance party. Passing marks: The EU had taken some important steps to protect itself in recent years, including the Anti-Coercion Instrument and the creation of prosecutors focused on commerci