Leadership Quote by Ursula von der Leyen

“Breaking global economic ties benefits no one” is diplomatic language doing two jobs at once: soothing markets and drawing a bright line against the new fashion for economic nationalism. Von der Leyen is speaking from the EU’s peculiar position - a trade superpower that can’t afford either naive globalization or full-spectrum decoupling. The sentence is built to sound like common sense, but it’s also a warning to specific capitals, especially Washington and Beijing, where “security” increasingly doubles as a catch-all justification for tariffs, export controls, and industrial policy.

The subtext is less kumbaya than conditional: interdependence is still the default, but it must be managed. When she adds “we must avoid a global race toward the abyss,” she’s borrowing the moral urgency of climate rhetoric and applying it to trade fragmentation. “Race” implies competitive escalation; “abyss” implies irreversible damage. That’s not accidental. It reframes tit-for-tat restrictions as a collective-action disaster rather than a series of justified exceptions.

Context matters: Europe is navigating supply-chain shocks, Russia’s war, energy vulnerability, and the US-China tech rivalry. The EU’s buzzword here is “de-risking,” not “decoupling” - a posture meant to protect critical sectors without detonating the trading system that underwrites European prosperity. The line also functions as a subtle assertion of EU agency: don’t force us to pick sides; don’t treat the global economy like a battlefield where everyone must mobilize.

Politically, it’s an attempt to make moderation sound muscular - a plea for restraint dressed as strategic realism.