'Donald Trump's administration, alongside China, Russia, terrorism and radical Islam is a threat to us' - European Union

Wednesday, 1 February 2017

The president of the European Union, Donald Tusk, has classified Donald Trump's new administration as a threat to the European Union alongside Vladmir Putin's Russia, China, Terrorism and radical Islam.

In a letter sent to European leaders on Tuesday, Tusk wrote that factors such as Trump's ban on immigration, increased friendliness with Vladmir Putin, publicly blasting NATO and “worrying declarations by the new American administration all make our future highly unpredictable.”

 

U.S President Trump has at one point called NATO "obsolete," dismissed the 28-member EU as a "vehicle for Germany" and publicly said he's had "a very bad experience" with the EU as a businessman.

Tusk wondered whether the United States would maintain its commitment to European security under Mr. Trump’s leadership.

“For the first time in our history, in an increasingly multipolar external world, so many are becoming openly anti-European, or Eurosceptic at best,” Mr. Tusk wrote. The letter was released ahead of an E.U summit meeting in Malta on Friday; and Tusk is responsible for setting the agenda for the meetings.

“Particularly the change in Washington puts the European Union in a difficult situation; with the new administration seeming to put into question the last 70 years of American foreign policy,” he wrote.

“An increasingly, let us call it, assertive China, especially on the seas,” he wrote, “Russia’s aggressive policy toward Ukraine and its neighbors, wars, terror and anarchy in the Middle East and in Africa, with radical Islam playing a major role, as well as worrying declarations by the new American administration all make our future highly unpredictable.”

"We cannot surrender to those who want to weaken or invalidate the Transatlantic bond, without which global order and peace cannot survive. We should remind our American friends of their own motto: United we stand, divided we fall."

Guntram B. Wolff, director of Bruegel, a research organization in Brussels said the E.U shouldn't enter into a war of words with the Trump administration.

 

“We need to uphold our values here, but does it mean that we need now a declaration where we put the United States on the same level as ISIS?”

“No, I don’t think so. I don’t think it that would be helpful in any way.”