The optics were bad. Last night EU prime ministers and presidents were forced to trudge to Brussels, at great taxpayer expense, for a summit at which they felt obliged to praise the importance of the transatlantic relationship. Rather than brandishing the retaliatory tools that Europe possesses, the leaders declined to task the Commission with preparing the Anti-Coercion instrument against the United States in case Trump changes his mind. They could find no united position on whether or not to join Trump’s “Board of Peace”. The only action they took was cancelling the scheduled imposition of retaliatory tariffs against the US that would have taken effect on 6 February, and demanding that the European Parliament unfreeze its ratification of the EU-US “surrender deal” from last July.
It was, in short, embarrassing.
Fearful of provoking the US president into retracting his retraction, the EU leaders felt they could not make any sudden moves to even prepare retaliation. Entering the summit, which had been hastily rebranded as 'a broad discussion of transatlantic relations’ yesterday morning after Trump’s about-face, many leaders felt compelled to praise the United States. Lithuania’s President Gitanas Nauseda said it would be “inappropriate” for the EU to be preparing any retaliatory measures against the US. “Why did we pull out the heaviest weapon, the bazooka, and start threatening our partner with it?” he asked. He said instead Europe should be ingratiating itself to Trump by “offering a positive agenda” and he wanted the summit to be focused on increased cooperation with America, not “how to trip each other up.” Romania’s President Nicosur Dan was asked whether the EU-US relationship is broken, and he seemed flummoxed by the question, saying it absolutely isn’t. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni also came in praising the restraint.
It was clear from the leaders’ statements as they entered last night’s summit that, as I wrote yesterday, they are not on the same page about the lessons to be drawn from the past week. One on side, leaders like France’s Macron, Spain’s Sanchez, Denmark’s Frederiksen and Austria’s Stocker think that it was Europe’s firmness and its show of strength in sending troops to Greenland that made Trump back down. On the other, leaders like Italy’s Meloni, Lithuania’s Nauseda, Greece’s Mitsotakis and (it seems) Germany’s Merz believe it was Europe’s continued appeasement strategy and offers of negotiation that bought us peace in our time.
And so, at her closing press conference, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen tried to please both sides by saying over and over that it was Europe’s “firm and non-escalatory” response that had gotten Trump to change his mind. But it was clear she leans more toward the latter when she didn’t even want to mention the Anti-Coercion Instrument by name. Von der Leyen and Costa looked anything but firm standing on that podium.
In this Substack Live with Luke Johnson from the Public Sphere Substack, I discussed what went wrong at this summit and why it probably would have been better if Costa had never called it in the first place.
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