At Harvard, Frieden Tells Europe to Stop Taking the US for Granted

On 11 February 2026, Luxembourg's Prime Minister Luc Frieden took the podium at Harvard's Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies and delivered a speech that has been quoted across European capitals ever since. Moderated by Harvard government professor Daniel Ziblatt, the Institute of Politics forum gave Frieden a transatlantic audience for a message aimed squarely at Europe.

'Reducing our dependency'

The headline line came early: "It is not about cutting ourselves off our bonds with the United States. It is about making a conscious choice and reducing our dependency." Frieden was careful not to frame the argument as anti-American. Instead, he positioned European autonomy as a function of European seriousness: "We as Europeans need to be stronger and more independent than in the past."

Defence at a turning point

The Prime Minister described the current moment as a critical juncture marked by geopolitical instability and renewed security threats. He cited the heightened concerns triggered by the Trump administration's renewed statements on Greenland and broader questions about Arctic security. For a country that has just launched a tax-exempt sovereign Defence Bond, the message dovetailed neatly with domestic policy.

Capital markets union — for real this time

Frieden was perhaps most pointed on the economic file. "A unified European capital market must finally become a reality," he said, "through a different approach to investing — using European money to finance European success." Coming from the prime minister of the EU's largest investment fund jurisdiction, the line was as much industrial policy as it was rhetoric.

Energy as the original wake-up call

Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Frieden argued, was the watershed moment that forced Europe to confront its energy dependencies — and it should serve as a template for the same conversation on defence and technology. The continent, in his telling, has the capital, the know-how, and the institutions; what it lacks is the political resolve to use them in concert.

Why it landed

Coming from Berlin or Paris, the same speech would have been read as positioning. Coming from Luxembourg — small, AAA-rated, deeply integrated with US capital and intelligence networks — it carries a different weight. Frieden was making the case that European strategic autonomy is no longer the project of the largest member states; it is the consensus position, even among those who have most to lose from a transatlantic breach.