By Jorge Liboreiro
Gently, step by step, with very careful resolve, the European Union is coming to terms with the fact that, in just a couple of months, Donald Trump will be installed in the White House and be fully in charge of the world’s largest economy and mightiest army.
It’s a thought that, for some, still appears like a twisted fantasy on the distant horizon that, if we close our eyes and cross our fingers long enough, might never come to be. But the world is too cruel for wishful thinking: the times call for hard-cold realism. And this is what we’re being served now.
Although no strategy has yet been set in stone (this might take some weeks), leaders from across the bloc have already offered the first clues on how they intend to approach the impetuous commander-in-chief.
For starters, they want to talk. Despite their bruising experience with Trump’s first term, they want to give diplomacy a chance. The reason is self-evident: America is too big, too important, to sweep under the carpet and pretend like nothing’s going on. Crucially, it’s also Europe’s most long-standing ally and its main security provider. You just have to pick up the phone.
“We will now have to see what exactly President Trump will do, once he becomes president, whether he will apply everything that he has said during the election campaign, but a lot it's still very vague,” Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Luc Frieden said in Budapest last week. “So let's talk to him, let’s listen to him, and then we need to adapt with a strong European collective answer.”
EU leaders are, of course, under no illusion that talking alone will solve all the bumps on the road. The 27 are keenly aware of Trump’s notoriously transactional approach to global affairs that unabashedly favours short-term profits over long-cherished principles.
Ireland’s Simon Harris believes that appealing directly to Trump’s corporate instincts could be an effective way to appease his protectionist instincts and make him realise that America has more to lose than to gain from the across-the-board import tariffs he’s repeatedly threatened to impose.
“President Trump is a businessman, he’s somewhat transactional and I think he will understand that the relationship in terms of trade is a two-way relationship,” Harris said.
“We need to be aware that the risk of a transatlantic trade shock has now increased. That is a statement of fact, we need to walk our way through these things,” he added, dampening his optimism.
Ursula von der Leyen, an ardent believer in the EU-US bond, has suggested discussing “common interests” with the upcoming White House to “then go into negotiations.”
Her first pitch? Buy more American LNG.
“We still get a whole lot of LNG via Russia, from Russia,” she said in Budapest. “And why not replace it with American LNG, which is cheaper, and brings down our energy prices?” (A European Commission spokesperson later clarified the president was talking about geopolitical, not economic, costs when she claimed American LNG was “cheaper.”)
But let’s face it: even if the EU and the US manage to strike the sweetest possible deal, there’s no guarantee that Trump, an unruly, unpredictable man, will abide by the agreed terms. Leaders are at high risk of being promised one thing and being humiliated the next day. His uncompromising “America First” mindset will force them to walk a tightrope at all times.
That’s why heads of state and governments are quickly converging around a third action point: the urgent need to make the EU stronger against external storms. Call it “strategic autonomy” or “hardcore pragmatism” or just “serious homework that we’re all now rushing to finish.” There’s a profound realisation the bloc can no longer afford to be swayed back and forth by the capricious designs of the White House tenant. There’s simply too much at play.
Take Ukraine. Although Washington and Brussels have (until now) agreed that Ukraine’s territorial integrity must be protected and Vladimir Putin’s neo-imperialism must be stopped, their stakes are worlds apart – or more specifically, one ocean apart. For America, the war is a faraway conflict part of the decades-long rivalry with Russia. For Europe, the war is an existential threat creeping at its very doorstep, so close that it feels palpable. Any country in Eastern Europe could, in theory, be the next target of Putin’s brutal attempt to reengineer modern history.
“We need to be quite realistic as Europeans – we cannot approach this transatlantic alliance from a position of weakness,” said Greece’s Kyriakos Mitsotakis. “Europe cannot change the world. But it can certainly change itself to cope with the changing world.”
Italy’s Giorgia Meloni evoked John F. Kennedy’s iconic quote to put things in perspective: “Don’t ask yourself what the United States can do for you, ask yourself what Europe should do for itself.”
Even Viktor Orbán, one of Trump’s closest allies on this side of the Atlantic, is on board with the strategy and promises to “Make Europe Great Again.”
Granted, the meaning of “greatness” varies from country to country. It wouldn’t be the EU without a good old squabble over a keyword. But at least, we can take comfort that leaders are more prudent, tough-minded and unsentimental than they were in 2016. They plan to take on Trump one step at a time, lest everything spiral and explode in their faces. |
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One step at a time
