5th March 2026, Oxfam staff in the south of Beirut distributing hygiene kits and menstrual health management kits to people who have been displaced by the escalating conflict.
A troubling idea has begun to circulate in European political circles: the idea that international law is exhausted. That it has little effect in today’s geopolitical world.
This argument has surfaced in speeches of several European leaders. Most notably, in that of the European Commission’s President to EU Ambassadors last week. She is not alone, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz comments have raised similar questions.
The implication is clear: the rules borne out of the horrors of the Second World War may no longer work in a world governed by power politics.
But is it international law that is failing, or is it political leaders who are meant to uphold it?
The prohibition on the use of force in the UN Charter is crystal clear: force is unlawful unless it is authorised by the UN Security Council or for reasons of self-defence against an imminent threat.
The principles of international humanitarian law were never designed to eliminate war. They were designed to limit its worst impacts – the human cost.
Those rules have not changed. What has changed is the willingness of states to abide and enforce them.
We see the consequences every day. Schools, hospitals, and humanitarian aid trucks – all protected under international law – have become targets.
For decades, the EU has presented itself as a defender of the rules-based international order grounded in international law.
But credibility requires consistency.
The rules only work when they apply everywhere. It cannot depend on geography or political convenience. A civilian caught in conflict in Ukraine, Gaza or Sudan is entitled to the same protection under international law.
Yet, when European leaders condemn violations in one conflict, but remain silent in another, the message received is: the rules are conditional.
The EU’s recent statements are a clear example of this silence and selective application. By failing to condemn the unlawful attack of the US and Israel on Iran, the EU allows impunity to reign undermining the validity of international law. Calls for the respect of international humanitarian law rings hollow when the EU refuses to name those responsible for violating it.
Instead, they focus on the impact on energy prices, economic disruption and evacuation of EU citizens.
This perception of double standards has been increasingly voiced by those who are most directly affected by war. At the same time, citizens across Europe see the gap between the values and norms so long espoused by the EU and the consistency in speaking out when those values and norms are violated.
None of this means the principles of international law are outdated.
The reality is that these rules were never designed for the comfortable moments of diplomacy. They exist precisely for the hardest moments of conflict, the moments when often the pressure to abandon them is greatest.
This is exactly when leadership matters most. Invoking geopolitical realism cannot be an excuse for retreat. Neither can suggesting that the rules-based order no longer works without a credible alternative.
What is needed now is not resignation but political courage. Some EU countries – like Spain – are demonstrating this courage.
The EU and other EU Member States would do well to follow their lead.
The alternative is unfathomable: a world where might makes right and where the EU’s founding commitments to international law and human rights are easily cast aside.