"It's Now or Never": Mairéad McGuinness on What Europe Must Do to Survive This Moment

Europe, Interrupted

The continent was already juggling a lot. Ukraine. A transactional White House. Trade fights. An existential identity crisis about what European power actually means when tested. Then 28 February happened.

Europe, which had spent four years trying to wean itself off Russian energy, is finding itself staring down a second supply shock before the first one is even close to being resolved.

This Week’s Headlines in Brief

The Strait of Hormuz has ground to a near standstill and it wasn’t missiles alone that closed it. Closing the strait only requires the appearance of intolerable risk in 2026.

📌 War risk insurance premiums have surged four to five times, with major underwriters cancelling cover entirely. Freight rates between Asia and Europe have followed — longer routes, costlier fuel, longer delays, all of which will reach consumers.

📌 US President Donald Trump threatened to bomb Iran's power grid if the Strait wasn't fully open within 48 hours, then abruptly announced a five-day pause citing "productive conversations" with Tehran. Iran has denied any talks took place and called it a retreat by the White House.

📌 Central banks including the Federal Reserve, ECB, and Bank of Japan have held rates, flagging inflation risk from the war. The outlier is Australia, which has raised its cash rate to 4.1%. This is the second consecutive hike this year.

📌 Israel struck Iran's South Pars natural gas field (the world's largest) with US coordination. In retaliation Iran attacked Qatar's LNG facility at Ras Laffan. Trump claimed he knew nothing about the South Pars strike and threatened to "massively blow up" the field himself if Iran kept hitting Qatar.

📌 Helium exports from the Gulf have halted, threatening semiconductor production for enterprise and AI applications globally. It is a supply chain risk almost no industry leader had modelled.

📌 Nitrogen, a byproduct of LNG production and the feedstock for synthetic fertiliser has also stopped moving through the Strait. The FAO warns of food security consequences worldwide, with prices spiking into the northern hemisphere’s spring planting season.

📌 Brent crude is up more than 40%, swinging with every announcement from Washington. LNG prices have jumped nearly 60% hitting Asia hardest, but Europe too, despite sourcing 58% of its gas from the US since the Ukraine war.

📌 Iran is accused of firing two ballistic missiles at Diego Garcia, the joint US-UK base in the Indian Ocean, 4,000km from Iranian territory. Neither hit. Israel's army chief used the strike as a warning shot of a different kind: "Berlin, Paris, and Rome are all within direct threat range." Iran calls it an Israeli false flag. NATO Secretary General Rutte won't confirm or deny — but his assessment is the quote that matters: "If it is true, it means they already have that capability. If it is not true, we know they are very close to having that capability." Either way, Europe is now potentially, in range.

War, Allies & EU Economy

Europe’s industries, already strained by high energy costs since 2022, are absorbing another hit on top of an economy that was already underperforming. Eurozone inflation is now headed above 4%. The trickle effects are going to be felt in upcoming elections be they national or local level.

The geopolitical whiplash is just as sharp. The EU was once the trusted intermediary between Washington and Tehran on nuclear issues. That role is gone. The 2015 nuclear deal is now one for the history books, basically diplomatic archaeology. Europe is now managing a crisis it didn’t start, caused partly by an ally it can no longer read, running on energy infrastructure it hasn’t finished rebuilding.

This is the scenario the EPP walked into for its 50th birthday party last week.

50 Candles, Plenty of Complications

What is the EPP and how powerful is it?

We skipped the champagne at the European People’s Party better known as the EPP’s 50th anniversary. We came for the harder conversation the party held, before the bubbles, in Brussels. A party that self-identifies as a ‘family’ decided to have an honest reckoning about the distance between the people who write European policy and the citizens who live with it.

The EPP is not a small operation. 82 parties and partners from 43 countries. 13 EU and 4 non-EU heads of state and government. The President of the European Commission and 14 members of the European Commission. The President of the European Parliament and 188 MEPs making it undoubtedly the largest bloc in the European Parliament. It is also without much contest, the most powerful political family in Europe. Centre-right, Christian democratic in origin, loudly pro-European, and currently in charge of most of the bloc’s decision making.

At 50, the question the party is wrestling with is not about power, of which it has plenty. It is wrestling with real reach and what it stands for. The party’s existential question? Whether the EPP’s leadership can hear what’s happening at the grassroots before the grassroots stops listening back. Does the legislation being drafted in Brussels’ committee rooms actually connect with or constructively contribute to citizens across all 27 member countries? In times of energy shocks, democratic backsliding, and a resurgent far-right that is seemingly getting stronger, the gap between institutions and citizens is both a communications and a political survival problem.

That tension was present across the celebrations. Be it question about internal workings of the vast party machine, or the understanding of roles within the varied groupings of the center right party, and even the party’s own position on dealings with the far-right. They’ve been the EPP’s “political enemies” so far but reports of staff-level coordination with Germany’s right wing party AfD on migration legislation via WhatsApp have created a furore. Fifty is complicated when you’re this powerful and this torn about what you stand for.

Those are exactly the conversations we went to Brussels to have and did.

Who is Mairéad McGuinness?

Mairéad McGuinness has spent two decades at the centre of European institutions and has never quite lost the journalistic instinct to say what she actually thinks.

Irish by origin, she began as a broadcaster and agricultural economist before entering European politics in 2004. She served as an MEP for 16 years for Ireland Fine Gael party, rose to First Vice-President of the European Parliament, then took on one of the Commission’s weightiest portfolios, Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union. Last year she withdrew from Ireland’s Presidential election campaign as a result of a severe bout of post-viral fatigue syndrome. She is now also Vice-President of the EPP, moving from the institutional role she has held into a more political one, at precisely the moment that distinction matters most.

She has clear views on Europe’s place in the instability defining 2026’s world order. And on what it takes to lead when the ground keeps shifting, and most critically what the EPP needs to become, if it wants to remain relevant to the people it was built to represent. This is what she said exclusively to The Chief Brief’s editor, Maithreyi Seetharaman.

What can Europe do, to survive and thrive despite geopolitical uncertainty?

The transcript

Maithreyi: Mairead, thank you so much for joining us. Here’s a simple question. We’re in an uncertain world right now. Relationships with our closest allies are like a seesaw sometimes. How does Europe traverse this next year or two? Making sure that we don’t, once again, land up in a 2008 situation where external factors kind of drag the economy down.

Mairéad: That’s a very big question. I think Europe is preparing and has been preparing for quite some time. There’s an impression that Europe is suddenly caught like rabbit in the headlights and that’s not true. Because in my time in the European Parliament, sixteen years there but also in the commission, we were talking about strategic autonomy. Open strategic autonomy. We were looking at resilience. We were talking about weaning ourselves away from fossil fuels which now know we need to do more urgently.

So I think Europe needs to step up definitely because the heat is more intense. We need to try and find compromise, not only in between member states - but also in the European Parliament. And I think we need to know that without unity, not just unity sake - but without strong European leadership internally then we won’t be able get through what is particularly choppy waters at this time. And sometimes when you when you look at worst possible outcomes - I think it does tend to strengthen the backbone of the European Union. We are are strong, and I think sometimes we allow a narrative that is very weak and fragmented.

Yes, we have lots of issues to deal with, but we’re actually very strong in terms of our institutions. We are a wealthy part of the world despite our challenges and we have, I think, also the political capacity to lead people in the right direction. Not withstanding the enormous difficulties that are happening all around us. As you say, our allies our friends sometimes that dynamic, is will continue to change. And it isn’t that Europe needs to say that we are on our own now. Because I don’t think that’s good a solution either. Its just to say we know what we’re dealing with now - with our allies and friends. And global partnerships and relationships that are changing.

Maithreyi: Are changing - but are we fast enough to change with them? Because I go back to a statement that Angel Gurria told me, I think maybe 15 odd years ago, Europe is very slow to get where they want to. This is the OECD, former Secretary General. Um, he basically said you’re very slow to get to where they want to get to, but when they get to it, they do a really good job of it.

So, can we afford be as slow as we have been in the past? And do we fix our financial systems first, to be secure? Do we become more nationalistic? What do we do in terms partnerships? Where do we go as first step in 2026?

Mairéad: Look, there is a European way of doing things, which is going through our institutions - the parliament, the council, the commission. You know all of how it works. But you know what - When a crisis hits - When there was a food crisis, Europe reacted immediately and well. When Covid hit was panic and there was disunity. And there was the realisation that Europe acts together, collectively and defensively. So don’t underestimate the strength of the European Union when it comes to realising that we have no other way forward except to change.

I’m glad you brought up the financial system. I was commissioner for financial services. I know very well that the one area we don’t have free movement in Europe is capital. We need strong.. we need to strengthen our financial system always, with an eye to what happened in the past. So, not deregulation, but smart regulation. We need to look at digital evolution. We need to make sure that we don’t have just national banks serve national markets. So why is it that a citizen of my member state can’t borrow in the financial system of another?

It’s because there are national barriers. So what we is for an understanding, that for Europe to be stronger for the next 50 years, it needs to take big decisions now. They’ve been in progress slowly, over the last decades but now, rather now time to pick up the momentum. And I do believe that there is that within this Commission. And I think with the Parliament it is harder to find majorities, but you’ve got to live with what the elections give. And again it is about strong leadership, which I think is there and we will see that coming to the fore.

Maithreyi: Final question, if you had crystal ball in all the years of your experience and considering the dynamics changing around the world, do you think Parliament can push through all of the things that stop the barriers that have stopped the banking union, the capital markets union, um, with all the pressures externally soon enough - for us to stay protected and keep our values and all of the things we’re so proud in Europe for?

Mairéad: You know, the real problem with us making such slow progress is that voters don’t ask for these things when it comes to European elections. Because they’re technical and they’re about money and finance. So we need to democratise this discussion and I’m doing it where I possibly can. I don’t think we have a choice. I think it’s now or never. I pushed it so far as Commissioner. We have a current, very effective and active commissioner pushing it forward. I think member states is where the game is at actually. Because those who are saying, oh gosh we want that yes in theory, in practice, not quite so; have got to maybe be exposed a little or else own up that they have got real problems but they are willing to step forward. But staying as we are - the status quo is no solution for the challenges Europe faces. And that’s notjust in the area of finance, but also in our security and defence readiness. In migration, we’ve had big topics. All of these have to be handled now. Not rushed to make the wrong decisions but with more urgency perhaps, than over the previous years.

Maithreyi: Mairead McGinnis, thank you so much for those insights.