Its being long since I wrote my bachelor degree thesis on International Relations on the possibilities of the EU to broken up with its historical alliance with the U.S. and become a world power out of their American tutelage.
It didn't work out at the moment during the mid-nineties, but now things can come up with something different.
My thesis was based on an Antonio Gramsci (Italian philosopher and political theoriest from the early 20 hundreds) postulate that establishes that a growing power, once it envisions itself strong enough to break out from a super-power tutelage, this will eventually fall apart from it becoming a new sovereign power itself, confronting, if necessary, its old ally for either a world or regional dominance.
Well, many things have happened since. Perhaps the EU was not strong enough to develop such an independence stance after the Maastrich agreement impeded them to act on a such individual self-interest.
Indeed, the EU, even now, lacks of a sovereign foreign policy and militarily depends 99% on the U.S. At present, the EU is a group of different stances incapable to launch an unique stance the way sovereign federalized countries do. On foreign policy and on the military the EU depends heavily on the U.S. and that is a fact. Being a group of 28 nations they've got 28 different stances with 28 different interests, often contradictory.
We've got the Eastern European “The Russians Are Coming” Baltic club of republics that have been playing the American Troy Horse within the EU profiting economically from the anti-Russia hysteria which pleads the U.S. global agenda.
We've got Germany and France (the two European “leaders”) glittering if such an agenda aligns with their own economical and political interests. We've got the U.K. playing solitary without knowing if they are in or out, or in a geopolitical limbo isolated from their former allies.
So, out of the American "common" transatlantic agenda, the EU is now an orphan with not friendly stances on any side of the Atlantic while being at odds with Europe's big brother Russia.
Merkel's and Macron's visit to Russia in the last weeks have to be seen under this new international politics of real politik. Germany and France have been betrayed by the new tenant in the White House and they know they cannot trust on their former American patronage they used to have on the other side of the Atlantic. As a result, both “leading” European powers have started to look for some kind of diversification into their foreign policy: China and Russia are the two obvious alternatives.
Conclusions:
The EU went too far in adding up countries with completely different political stances, economical development and general interests. Germany was well served economically speaking from the last wave of country’s acquisitions the bloc got in Eastern Europe in the mid-2000’s, however, it lacked the geopolitical sense that now Germany is paying the consequences against the pariah Baltic republics, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia, in topics that go from immigration and refugees to the energy security the German economical engine needs to feed up its robust economy and that these countries are trying to bloc because their own tiny intrests depend on the money they get for being transit countries between the Russian gas pipelines and Central Europe through the Ukraine alleging some sort of Russian hysteria.
The EU role in the world was based on being an American puppet state happy to buy American weaponry, being occupied by the American military through the NATO “alliance” (which is not an alliance but an American occupation army within Europe), while their first obligation was to back-up each of the American military adventures around the globe.
The problem now is that the central power (the U.S.) has started to ask more from its vassals, now it requires markets and more competitive conditions for its products and is ready to push for it. And of course, the EU is not happy because they want to keep having the childish role they have gotten for decades and that was so convenient for them for so many time. But Trump, as the good businessman he is, he is no longer to keep providing Europe with advantages unless they pay for them. And this applies from paying what they have to pay for being protected through NATO to open-up and facilitate the entrance of American products to the European markets on a more reciprocate basis.
So yes, the EU knows that her traditional vassal and convenient role has expired under Trump’s presidency. And because of that they are exploring new partners (Russia and China). The problem is that the EU is so integrated and dependent on the U.S. that it will require decades for Europe to disengage from the U.S., that’s a fact. Therefore, her searching of new partners and allies will be slow. However, that doesn’t guarantee that the EU will remain as loyal and submissive as they have been for so many decades.
A search of new paths will be necessary for the EU to adjust in order to be able to follow its own interests so the EU might evolve, change or collapse in doing so. The current battle between globalists and nationalists do not guarantee that the EU can remain the way it is if it really tries to gain some sort of independent stance away from that of the U.S.
Europe is trapped within herself. The change in the U.S. presidency changed from day one the role the EU used to have in the world. Now they are paying their submission to the U.S.
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