In the competition with the United States and China, the European Union lost ground by adopting an overly restrictive policy after the financial crisis. The macroeconomic efforts made during the pandemic must become more structural than cyclical. The European Union must now articulate its welfare state with maximum growth macroeconomic management, enabling it to strengthen European domestic demand, balance the continent's trade balance, rebalance its overdependence on exports and, in this way, place itself in a position of strategic autonomy.