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European leaders are seeking to clarify a little-used mutual defence clause in the European Union treaty as questions grow over Washington’s long-term commitment to NATO during a deepening rift with the United States.

NATO, founded in 1949, is a military alliance of North American and European countries built on the principle that an attack on one member is an attack on all. But years of tension between Washington under President Donald Trump and its European allies have pushed European governments to place greater emphasis on their own defence capabilities.

The shift has come as Trump has repeatedly criticised NATO members over their defence spending. He has also questioned the value of the alliance and clashed with European leaders over Ukraine and Iran while threatening to seize Greenland from NATO ally Denmark. The latest tensions escalated after the US and Israel began their war on Iran when Trump accused allies of failing to support Washington and dismissed NATO as a “paper tiger”.

Media reports have said that the Pentagon has also prepared a memo examining options to punish allies viewed as insufficiently supportive during the Iran war. Those options reportedly include exploring the suspension of Spain, which has been particularly critical of the war, from NATO and reviewing the US position on Britain’s claim to the Falkland Islands. NATO has no formal mechanism to expel a member, but the episode has cast doubt over the alliance’s unity and revived questions about Europe defending itself without Washington.

At the heart of Europe’s bid to look for alternative security arrangements beyond NATO is Article 42.7 of the European Union’s founding treaty.

What is Article 42.7?

Article 42.7 of the Treaty on European Union is the bloc’s mutual defence clause. It says that if an EU member state is the victim of armed aggression on its territory, the other member states are obliged to provide aid and assistance by all means in their power in line with the United Nations Charter.

By comparison, Article 5 in NATO’s North Atlantic Treaty states that an attack on one member is considered an attack on all. It is supported by common planning and joint exercises and is underpinned by the military weight of the US.

Unlike NATO’s Article 5, however, the EU clause is not backed by an integrated military command structure, standing defence plans or a permanent force able to respond automatically and the US has no obligation to intervene.

That means it is often seen as less credible as a military guarantee in practice although it remains an important political commitment.

Who is calling for Europe to turn to Article 42.7?

Cyprus, which is an EU member but not a NATO member, has been especially eager to strengthen the clause after a drone struck a British airbase on the island during the Iran war last month. While such an incident may not have been enough to invoke NATO’s Article 5, it could raise questions about Article 42.7, particularly at a time of growing strain between the US and Europe.

Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides said leaders had agreed it was time to define how the provision would work in practice if it were triggered.

“We agreed last night that the [European] Commission will prepare a blueprint on how we respond in case a member state triggers Article 42.7,” he said on Friday at an EU summit.

French President Emmanuel Macron has also stressed that the clause should be treated as a binding commitment rather than a symbolic gesture. “On Article 42, paragraph 7, it’s not just words,” he said during a weekend visit to Greece. “For us, it is clear, and there is no room for interpretation or ambiguity.”

Antonio Costa, president of the European Council, said the bloc was drawing up a “handbook” for the use of the clause.

And EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said Europe must step up its defence efforts after Trump has “shaken the transatlantic relationship to its foundation”.

“Let me be clear: We want strong transatlantic ties. The US will remain Europe’s partner and ally. But Europe needs to adapt to the new realities. Europe is no longer Washington’s primary centre of gravity,” she said at a defence conference in Brussels.

“This shift has been ongoing for a while. It is structural, not temporary. It means that Europe must step up. No great power in history has outsourced its survival and survived.”

Has the article ever been invoked?

The clause has been used only once before when France invoked it after the 2015 Paris attacks claimed by ISIL (ISIS), in which 130 people were killed and hundreds wounded.

The attacks were the deadliest in France since World War II. After Article 47.2 was invoked, other EU states shared intelligence aimed at helping French authorities unravel the conspiracy that led to the attacks.

NATO’s Article 5 has also been invoked just once – after the September 11, 2001, attacks in the US.

But NATO’s help to the US wasn’t limited to intelligence sharing. Allies contributed tens of thousands of soldiers to the US-led war in Afghanistan. The operations lasted two decades, and more than 46,000 Afghan civilians were killed alongside 2,461 US personnel and about 1,160 non-US coalition soldiers, according to Brown University’s Cost of War project.

Can countries be kicked out or leave NATO?

Europe’s debate over its defence comes amid a string of disputes inside NATO. The reports that US officials have considered punitive measures against allies have revived questions over the alliance’s future cohesion.

Pablo Calderon Martinez, head of politics and international relations at Northeastern University London and a specialist in European affairs, told Al Jazeera that Spain cannot legally be removed from NATO.

“There is no legal mechanism to remove a member. There is, however, a mechanism through which a member can withdraw itself from the organisation,” he said.

He added that some countries have long fallen short of NATO commitments but that does not provide grounds for expulsion. A more likely scenario, he said, would be the US choosing to leave.

Carne Ross, a former British diplomat and founder of Independent Diplomat, a nonprofit diplomatic advisory group, said the deeper issue is whether Europe and Washington still share common values.

“It is abundantly clear that we do not. Trump is anti-democratic. He tried to subvert democracy, challenged the 2020 election result and whipped up a violent crowd to storm the Capitol,” Ross said.

“What more evidence do we need that the values of Europe are not shared in Washington?”

Is Europe preparing for a future without the US?

European countries have pledged to sharply increase their defence budgets with many aiming to spend 5 percent of their gross domestic products each year on their militaries.

Trump cannot withdraw the US from NATO without congressional approval, but doubts over Washington’s commitment have already unsettled many European capitals.

That has created new urgency around strengthening Europe’s own defence capabilities and building a more credible European pillar inside, or alongside, NATO.

Ross said Europe’s major powers should begin planning seriously for greater self-reliance.

“The Europeans themselves, particularly the most powerful countries – Britain, France, Germany and Italy – need to be talking about how to defend themselves without the US,” he said.

Three deals across three key regions : Mercosur, India and Australia.

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While the Commission hailed the Australia agreement as a new geostrategic win, EU farmers continue to express deep discontent stemming from the Mercosur deal.

In practice, the backlash around the agreement with Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay has done little to shift the Commission’s dual approach in its negotiating line. On the one hand, the commission kept making concessions on entry-level or mid-range farm goods such as beef, while on the other hand, it pushed for market access for high value-added exports —like wine, Geographical Indications (GI) and cars— with mixed results.

“The EU has all the assets to be an agri-food power,” Luc Vernet, from the export-focused brussels think tank Farm Europe, told Euronews, adding: “We should develop a broader strategy beyond high value-added products, covering all sectors and all levels of quality, because the European model delivers exceptional quality not just in luxury products.”

Yet the opposition to the Latin America deal — which triggered a legal challenge suspending its ratification — crystallised among EU farmers over fears of unfair competition from meat imports.

The Mercosur agreement granted quotas of 99,000 tonnes of beef per year, 25,000 tonnes of pork and 188,000 tonnes of poultry. Despite conditions added to new quotas in the Australia deal, EU farmers complain of imports piling up across successive agreements.

Concessions made on beef

Over eight years of talks with Canberra—the world’s second-largest beef exporter—Australia pushed hard for greater access for beef and sheep meat. Tensions intensified in 2023, when negotiations broke down after the EU rejected Australia’s demand for 40,000 tonnes of beef per year, offering no more than 30,000 tonnes instead.

The final deal agreed Tuesday allows 30,600 tonnes of beef annually into the EU. For sheep and goat meat, Brussels accepted a 25,000-tonne duty-free quota, while sugar was limited to 35,000 tonnes of raw cane for refining and rice to 8,500 tonnes a year.

However, perhaps drawing lessons from Mercosur, Brussels imposed multiple conditions on the quotas. Beef imports, which will have to be from grass-fed cattle, will be phased in over 10 years, sheep meat over 7 years, and rice over 5 years. Sugar will also be subject to certification under a private sustainability scheme.

Safeguard clauses, allowing both sides to react to market disruption, will apply for seven years – but are extended for sensitive farm goods : 15 years for beef, 12 for sheep and 10 for rice.

But a farmers’ representative told Euronews there were serious doubts about the effectiveness of the safeguard mechanisms: “Our experience in general with safeguards is that they are extremely difficult to activate because the burden of the proof is on us, farmers.”

The offensive agenda of the Commission

By contrast, agriculture was far less contentious in the India negotiations, where New Delhi itself resisted opening its market due to domestic farm sensitivities, particularly in dairy. EU sensitive products were largely excluded.

But wine featured prominently on Brussels’ offensive agenda, with Indian tariffs cut from 150% to 20% for premium wines and 30% for mid-range products over seven years. Tariffs for cars will also fall from 110% to 10% but under a quota of 250,000 vehicles a year after a decade – by which point Chinese manufacturers have great chances to have strengthened their position.

In negotiations with Australia, the EU again sought greater access for its wine but encountered strong opposition from domestic producers. In the end, the deal protects more than 1,600 EU wine GIs, plus over 50 new ones from 12 member states.

On Prosecco, Australian producers will still be allowed to use the term domestically to designate a grey grape variety, provided it is linked to Australian GI, with Canberra agreeing to stop exporting such wines after 10 years.

The EU also secured protection for 165 agri-food GIs and 231 spirit drink GIs. But it failed to remove Australia’s luxury car tax, securing instead preferential treatment for EU electric vehicles. But Brussels won improved access to critical raw materials – a key EU demand, that may have lead to more concessions on meat.

The EU’s six largest economies are urging Brussels to accelerate the long-awaited integration of capital markets to “strengthen Europe’s growth potential”, according to a letter sent on Tuesday to the Eurogroup boss and several EU commissioners.

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The finance ministers of France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain say that making tangible progress on the rebranded “Savings and Investment Union” has become an “urgent necessity,” pledging to push “this important project forward”, in a letter addressed to EU economy chief Valdis Dombrovskis and Eurogroup President.

“Deeper and more integrated capital markets would strengthen Europe’s growth potential, enhance its economic sovereignty and provide a stronger foundation for financing common priorities,” the letter said.

In particular, the ministers call on EU institutions to reach an agreement among member states by summer on one of the key elements of the capital markets integration agenda: the Market Integration and Supervision Package (MISP).

The MISP is a set of legislative proposals by the European Commission aimed at strengthening the supervision of financial market infrastructures across the bloc and improving how they operate.

“A central purpose of the package is to remove national barriers and to improve cross border distribution of investment funds, so investors have better access to the EU capital markets and companies benefit from deeper pools of capital”, the letter says.

The six countries also ask the EU to advance its digital payments agenda, specifically by promoting private pan-European payment networks that can compete with US-based Visa and Mastercard, and by accelerating the adoption of the digital euro.

Agreement by the summer

Capital markets allow companies and governments to raise funds by selling assets such as shares or bonds to investors.

To strengthen and integrate these markets across the EU, the European Commission has proposed a series of legislative measures under the Savings and Investment Union package.

In recent months, EU countries and institutions have signalled a more ambitious goal, aiming for an agreement among co-legislators on most of the SIU legislation by June.

However, EU countries are not fully aligned on the technical aspects of capital markets integration, causing delays to the broader strategic agenda.

Another key legislative proposal is the revisions of the securitisation framework, which are EU rules introduced in 2019 with the objective of ensuring safer market practices, to avoid other financial crisis such as the 2008 global shock.

The revision, which aims to simplify certain requirements and reduce high operational costs, is to be approved by autumn 2026, according to signatories.

Digital payments

The six EU countries also support the development of additional pan-European private digital payment solutions, viewed as a key pillar of the EU’s strategic autonomy, since most digital payments are currently processed through US-based infrastructures.

According to 2025 European Central Bank data, Mastercard and Visa account for 61% of card payments and nearly 100% of cross-border ones.

In this context, the six countries are also calling for an accelerated rollout of a public digital payment solution: the digital euro. Currently under negotiation, it would be an electronic form of cash issued by the European Central Bank, serving as an additional payment option alongside cash and bank-issued cards.

The project is facing significant delays in the European Parliament. In particular, the leading rapporteur on the file, the Spanish centre-right MEP Fernando Navarrete, is pushing to reduce the scope of the digital euro to offline payments only, in order to avoid competing with other private infrastructure, such as Visa and Mastercard.

“We push for swift conclusions of the legislative process of the digital euro and we invite the European Parliament to follow the Council’s approach to establish the digital euro (in both its online and offline modalities) as a comprehensive, interoperable and sovereign European payment solution for European citizens”, the six countries wrote in the letter.

The co-legislators initially aimed for full adoption of the digital euro by the end of 2026. However, due to delays in the parliament, the six countries have not set a specific adoption deadline.