The European summit in Versailles missed a great opportunity: to initiate a new post-war order for Europe at the symbolic location.

We are not dreamers and we know that admission to the European Union is no walk in the park and that in principle the same procedures apply to Ukraine as to the candidate countries in the Balkans.

But there was an opportunity to establish a political union bridging the gap between sectoral association and full membership.

Instead, the heads of state in Versailles acted procedurally, as if well-practiced EU regulations also applied to extreme wars in Europe.

The freedom and peace project gave way again to the EU of muddlers and civil servants.

However, the EU is no longer the economic union of recent years. Putin has unintentionally turned it back into the normative and institutional alliance of its founding years.

It should be that again, since the task now is not only to protect Ukraine against Russian aggression, but also to strengthen the protection of the new members, especially in the Baltic States, and to include all those states in the protection that belong to the EU want to join.

What is required is an “extended Weimar Triangle”, which would pay particular attention to the regional and concerted expansion of the security policy dimension within the EU.

Germany, France, Poland and the Baltic States must enter into closer security policy cooperation, if necessary also in the area of ​​nuclear armaments.

Great Britain must move closer again to Europe's political community of destiny, which has been frivolously gambled away as a result of Brexit.

However, increased protection from Russia also means that Putin's Trojan horses, such as Orbán's Hungary and Vučić's Serbia, should be countered with more determination.

This raises questions about whether Hungary's EU membership is binding and about Serbia's status as an EU candidate.

Bosnia-Hercegovina deserves special attention in this context.

There, Serbian politicians in Banja Luka and Belgrade are fomenting tendencies towards division that, 30 years after the start of the war in Yugoslavia, is breaking up the fragile confederation and even making a new war between the ethnic groups appear possible.

The Greater Serbian separatists can count on Putin's support.

Vladimir Putin has provided the blueprint for such shameful maneuvers in front of all our eyes and ears since 2008 in Georgia and 2013/14 in Ukraine.

The EU accepted them, ignored provocations and announcements by the Kremlin and watched as opponents of European unity, from Marine Le Pen to Viktor Orbán, intended to split and leave.

While Putin meticulously prepared his attack plans, Europe's energy dependency has increased drastically and, above all, German defense has decreased inversely proportionally.

All of this was actively promoted, not least in Germany, by front-line political actors despite clear evidence of Russian neo-imperialism.

This results in a special obligation today.

Europeans have now heard the shot and are standing closer together in defense of their values ​​and institutions.

Together they have decided on sanctions against Russia and arms deliveries to Ukraine, which can hardly alleviate the suffering of the civilian population.

Just as sanctions and arms deliveries should have taken place at the latest since the Russian army deployed at the borders in 2021, one should not wait in Bosnia-Hercegovina until it is too late there too.

In 1992 we spoke out in favor of Europe taking a firm stand against the besieged city of Sarajevo, but in vain.

Only a completed genocide then triggered a belated intervention that was not followed by a stable peace order in the Balkans.

Today, the EU should be more vigilant and declare Bosnia-Hercegovina's clear intention to include the country in a Political Union that includes assistance against eventual provocations and aggressions.

And an alliance that warns the Serbian separatists and obliges Croatia and Slovenia to support the federation and to participate in a stable post-war order in the entire Balkans.

It must be clear to the Serbian government that its option to join the EU will expire if it jeopardizes the precarious order of peace in the Balkans and wants to gain ground in the slipstream of the Ukraine war.

As is well known, Putin's project of the "Russian world" had a forerunner in Slobodan Milošević's "Serbian world", to which the compatriots in Bosnia and Montenegro were to be taken home, just like the ethnic Russians in Donbass in 2014.

As is well known, Milošević's dream ended before the International Criminal Court.

The Serbs in Banja Luka and Belgrade must decide which side they belong on.

Milorad Dodik has refused the sanctions against Russia, and Russian (and Chinese) interested parties are coming and going in Belgrade.

A clear signal to Bosnia-Hercegovina and to the NATO member Montenegro would show that these two states are counted among the democratic world and belong in an enlarged Europe.

The efforts to no longer align the electoral laws and the state administration with ethical proportional representation are finding increasing resonance in Bosnian civil society, especially among the younger generation, because ethnic nationalism offers no chances for peace and prosperity.

In this way, Putin may have inadvertently strengthened the political cohesion of the European Union.