One year after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States for a second term, Europe is still in shock. The EU is, again, confronted with an American leader who considers it to be an unfair economic competitor, an ideological foe, and a club of countries fecklessly freeloading on U.S. military strength. In February, Trump explicitly said, “The European Union was formed to screw the United States, that’s the purpose of it, and they’ve done a good job of it.”
Trump’s hostile language, the economic damage inflicted by his tariffs, and the rejection of former shared principles all leave Europeans with a feeling of huge uncertainty about their future in a world that is being aggressively reshaped by U.S. power.
But could this crisis also be a moment of opportunity for the EU? Could the bloc respond to Trumpian disruption by getting its act together and strengthening its capacity for collective action? The answer to this will depend to a large degree on the union’s ability to contain far-right forces and their attempts to cripple the European project.
The Trump challenge is different from other crises the EU has faced. It is a “polycrisis,” which simultaneously impacts European foreign policy, military security, trade, and technology, as well as ideology and values.
Trump “floods the zone” with improvised messages and a rapid stream of new initiatives. The EU, with its cumbersome modus operandi of long-term diplomacy, struggles to keep up. Socialized by decades of following the U.S. lead, many European politicians still desperately seek to stay on Trump’s good side, even if that requires undignified subservience and sycophancy. The U.S. president probably considers this kind of behavior to be a sign of weakness and feels encouraged to come back with further demands.
Trump disdains EU institutions and prefers to deal with individual national leaders, flattering some and dressing down others. Although European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen recently regained some ground as an interlocutor, the U.S. president’s tendency to play EU members off against each other can weaken the bloc’s cohesion and exacerbate divisions.
Trump’s questioning of security guarantee and his constantly shifting messages on Ukraine have both reinforced the case for Europe’s strategic autonomy and highlighted the continent’s continued dependence on U.S. military support. In this situation, EU leaders resemble Saint Augustine who famously prayed “Lord, make me chaste, but not yet!” Only, their prayer seems to be “Lord, make us autonomous, but not just yet!”—a confusing message, both to the outside world and to their own public.
For the past year, European leaders have mainly responded to the storm of Trumpian policies by trying to gain time and limit the damage. The union certainly has not projected an image of strength and resilience. However, this is early days. Trump will be around for at least three more years, and the old transatlantic relationship will probably never return.
Depressing as it all sounds, this also has its positive side: It makes Europeans painfully aware of their vulnerabilities.
It is evident that they must urgently rebuild military strength and that this will be more effective if it is done through joined-up efforts, both within the EU and within NATO. When it comes to technology, they can no longer rely on the EU’s regulatory prowess and the famous “Brussels effect.” They need to ramp up investment in their own capabilities if they don’t want to end up as a U.S.—or Chinese—colony. In order to counter the “weaponization of dependencies,” as von der Leyen calls it, Europeans will have to diversify supply chains and build stocks of critical materials.
As the Draghi and Letta reports amply demonstrated, Europe’s competitiveness in a fragmenting world economy will crucially depend on completing the internal market and on finally creating a fully integrated market for savings and investment.
Finally, Europeans also need to form alliances with like-minded countries across the globe in order to protect and shore up the indispensable foundations of international order.
This agenda shows that ideology rather than security or trade may emerge as Europe’s central battleground with Trumpism. All these tasks require more collective action and more solidarity on the European level. Yet this program runs directly against the plans of Trump’s ideological allies in Europe: the radical-right parties, which continue to gain ground across the continent. For the most part, they have abandoned the idea of leaving the EU. Now, their aim is to push the union back into a looser arrangement led by sovereign nations, which can set their own course unencumbered by European rules and institutions. There is much that divides far-right leaders Marine Le Pen, Viktor Orbán, Alice Weidel, and Giorgia Meloni, but they all are hostile to deeper integration of the EU.
Throughout this year, Trump and his collaborators have repeatedly interfered in election campaigns to boost the chances of their far-right friends. MAGA representatives have forged a wide-ranging network with their European counterparts for sharing ideas and coordinating mutual support. At this stage, it is not evident that Trump’s meddling in European party politics produces the desired results. He certainly emboldens and energizes some radical-right politicians and their base. But his economic policies that hurt European interests are likely to drive some voters away.
While the direct impact of Trump’s involvement is hard to determine, the struggle between his allies who promote weakening the European project and returning to traditional state sovereignty and those who favor a stronger and more united Europe will be decisive in shaping the future of the union. A continuing success of the radical right is unlikely to immediately destroy the EU such as it is—the cost would be simply too high—but it can certainly prevent it from rising to the challenges of a world reshaped by Trump.
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