After nine years of war, Damascus is asserting control over most of Syria. Yet institutions and social support systems are collapsing, intensifying a humanitarian and developmental crisis. The country has experienced structural transformation, an entrenched war economy that siphons away resources and aggravates poverty, endemic human rights abuses, and radicalisation. Since 2011, the European modus operandi on Syria has been defined by short planning cycles, a legacy of the hypothesis that the regime would fall. This policy limited aid to narrow humanitarian support out of fear of legitimising the regime. While urgent humanitarian action is essential to address the needs of hundreds of thousands of newly displaced people and to support shattered livelihoods – with millions on the brink of famine across the country – European narratives on Syria need to take a new, broader approach.

European actors have long supported the UN-led political process, yet European policy did not explore other strategic and workable entry points for peace. Under UN Security Council Resolution 2254, Europeans no longer demand the downfall of the regime – yet they still require an undefined “meaningful transition”. The resolution outlines the key elements needed to unlock the political process: governance, a constitution, and elections. However, it fails to tackle deeper structural problems. As such, even if the conflicting parties broker a political deal in Geneva, it won’t have a leg to stand on.

Three paradigm shifts are needed to help Europeans regain the initiative.

Firstly, Europeans should put their weight behind decentralisation within a unified territorial order. Decentralisation has been removed from the political menu due to the political opposition’s failure to develop a footprint inside Syria, a lack of traction for the Kurdish-dominated governance model in the north-east, and the Syrian government’s hostility towards negotiations with local leaders. However, Europeans need to move the decentralisation question away from dividing the country into distinct areas of control and towards a process of developing credible local agency. They need to strengthen new local leadership (inclusive of women) and enable them to progressively ascend to the national level. Europe can contribute to this goal by prioritising the creation of safe local spaces, as part of its support for a “meaningful transition.”

Secondly, European funding should have greater room to manoeuvre, including around sanctions. Europe’s risk-averse approach has reduced its ability to engage with local actors in all parts of Syria; this will have lasting implications on societal resilience. Europe has focused on supply-side instruments that create dependency on aid and compete with local resilience structures. Aid should now shift to demand-driven, bottom-up funding instruments (such as those involving microcredit, support for local initiatives to leverage community resources, and the recreation of local economic value chains). This approach should focus on channelling funds to the lower levels of Syrian society and using small disbursements to make it less vulnerable to corruption. Syrians in the diaspora can contribute to this process with their knowledge and resources. As part of this approach, European countries should negotiate a comprehensive aid package with the UN to create greater leverage over aid modalities.

Thirdly, to create a credible process of transformation, Europe needs to change its benchmarks for defining such a transformation. Currently, neither Europeans’ expectations of the process nor what they are willing to offer in return are clearly benchmarked to create a realistic blueprint for change. Moving beyond a regime change narrative towards a focus on incremental but meaningful transformation, Europeans should lay out clear measures that the Syrian government needs to implement to receive external support. This should entail a shift away from the assumption that the regime is a singular agent and towards an understanding of it as a system involving many actors – some of whom Europe can incentivise to support the process. Benchmarks should also be transparent to Syrian communities, to assure continued accountability.

The time to act is now. Syria’s deepening crisis is sinking the whole region into chaos. Paradigms need to shift to allow for a more effective approach. Zero-sum positioning may be politically expedient, but it is morally and practically short-sighted. Europe cannot afford an even deeper crisis in Syria. Moving back from the precipice is not a glorious act but it is the lesser evil.