The EU must stand up to 'belligerence' from incoming Trump administration - analysts - video Dailymotion

euronews (in English)

Two experts have told Euronews that the EU must ready itself to stand firm in the face of belligerence from an incoming Donald Trump regime.

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00:00Donald Trump is returning to the White House and already he wants to take over Greenland,

00:12adopt Canada as the 51st state, and some of his team have talked about interfering in

00:17European politics.

00:18So what can Europe do?

00:19How can the EU respond?

00:21I catch up with Guntram Wolff, the senior fellow at Bruegel and professor of economics

00:26at ULB, and Georg Grekeles, a senior policy director at the European Policy Centre, for

00:31a look ahead at what's in store for 2025.

00:37Welcome to the Europe Conversation.

00:38I'm joined in studio by Guntram Wolff, professor of economics at ULB and a senior fellow at

00:44Bruegel, and Georg Grekeles, associate director at the European Policy Centre.

00:49Thank you very much for joining us.

00:51We have a lot to look forward to in 2025.

00:54A much more aggressive Trump White House, you might agree.

00:58I might just start with you, Guntram, because we've seen, before Christmas and very much

01:03into January, what looks like potential interference in the German elections by Elon Musk.

01:09As a German yourself, how do you feel about this?

01:12Do you think it's overplayed?

01:13Well, I would start, I think we were all taken aback by how aggressive both Musk and Donald

01:19Trump have been in this first half of January, really not attacking Russia or China, but

01:27really attacking allies, right, verbally.

01:30But with big announcements that Elon Musk has had a huge campaign against the UK current

01:35sitting government, and that has raised alarm bells all across Europe.

01:39And of course, yes, he has been involved in Germany.

01:43He has had an interview with Alice Weidel, the top candidate from the Alternative für Deutschland,

01:49the far right party.

01:52Now, is that undue or overextended interference?

01:57I would say the interview as such is fine.

02:00I don't think the interview is really a problem.

02:03What is a problem is if the algorithm of X gets manipulated to really drive far right content.

02:11But Georg, Europe has the tools there, has the Digital Services Act when it comes to,

02:15as what Guntram talked about, the algorithms.

02:19Is there a political will to act?

02:21Because we also saw just before Christmas, J.D. Vance, the vice president, saying that

02:27if there was any sort of interference from Europe to try to restrict what Elon Musk or

02:31X or social media are doing, that he would force the US administration to maybe reduce

02:36support for NATO.

02:37I mean, it's very complex.

02:39We need a political will to act.

02:41This is dead serious.

02:43This is about fundamental threats to our democracies.

02:46It is about the destructuring of our public space, the promotion of lies, of extreme content,

02:55which will make the exercise of democracy progressively more difficult or impossible.

03:02Like Guntram is saying, the problem is not an interview with the IFJ, that's freedom

03:05of expression.

03:06The problem is if these platforms have algorithms that are used to amplify lies.

03:13And that's not an acceptable period.

03:15We have not had rules against this in Europe for a long time, for too long.

03:20But now we do.

03:21It's called the Digital Services Act.

03:24It's really complex, though, because do we risk US support at NATO for Ukraine, which

03:28is existential, but at the same time we have to defend the rules that are necessary when

03:34it comes to disinformation which impacts democracy?

03:36Well, I would say you always have to stand up to bullying.

03:39If you give in immediately, the demands will only increase.

03:43And there's no guarantee whatsoever that if you don't stand up to X and bullying on X,

03:51that then all of a sudden all security problems will be solved.

03:54I mean, so let's be realistic here.

03:57This is quite a systematic confrontation of Europe and key European values.

04:05And it comes from, I think, a very unprecedented situation, one where the richest person on

04:12the planet has also direct access to the US president, meaning he has also full political

04:19support from the most powerful person on the planet.

04:23And on top of it, he has control of a major media outlet.

04:27So we have, I think, a combination of concentration of power in media, in business and in politics

04:35in one person.

04:36And if you leave that unaddressed, you basically accept that an outside billionaire with all

04:42these three powers massively intervenes into Europe and starts setting the agenda and shapes

04:48politics well beyond anything that we've seen before.

04:53So my view is we have to invest in security ourselves.

04:57We have to invest in security of Ukraine very rapidly.

04:59And what do you think is the game here?

05:02I just was listening to an interview from Steve Bannon, the former Trump adviser, who

05:07said, Musk just spent a quarter of a billion dollars to elect Trump.

05:10If he puts the same amount of money into all of Europe that he put behind Trump, he'll

05:14flip every nation to a populist agenda.

05:17It is certainly very worrying.

05:20I think this is not about left versus right anymore in any way, really.

05:25This is about, like Guntram was saying, an agenda that has nothing to do with the respect

05:31for democracy, the respect for the rule of law, and very, very strong intent of intervention

05:43into the functioning of our society.

05:44And what we're seeing in the international sphere, the relations between countries, the

05:50big power games, which now are all about might is right, well, this is the same thing we

05:55see in the economic sphere, in the media sphere, represented by Musk.

05:59And this is what one needs to stand up to.

06:02A, should have been preparing for that after the first Trump presidency, but B, I mean,

06:08he's in two days' time going to be in power.

06:11And we still will be relying on support through NATO for him not to apply tariffs in the way

06:17that he has.

06:18I mean, is Europe really just totally vulnerable now?

06:21Well, Europe hasn't sit idly since the first election of Donald Trump.

06:27When Donald Trump was first elected, collective European spending on defence was 1.3% of GDP.

06:33We are now above 2%.

06:35So we've seen quite a turnaround on defence spending.

06:38It's still not sufficient.

06:39We're going to have to increase that further.

06:41But the truth is that the US is our biggest ally, and the whole European construction

06:48has been extremely centred on a transatlantic relation.

06:52And if that relation goes sour, the European Union and all the member states really have

06:59a big problem.

07:00And the degree of policy response will have to be an order of magnitude bigger than it

07:07has been so far.

07:08And that will be a big challenge.

07:11And my biggest fear is that our domestic political systems, national political systems, they're

07:17actually far away from really getting to do the kind of things we are talking about

07:22here.

07:23Like what?

07:24What would you say?

07:25Well, we have an election in Germany and, you know, the German debate is about do we

07:27support three billion for Ukraine, yes or no?

07:31Which is ridiculous.

07:32Of course we should.

07:33It's a ridiculous amount of money compared to the size of the German economy.

07:37So yes, Germany has been a big supporter of Ukraine, but it's by far not big enough.

07:44And the same in France.

07:45We have a political situation that is very fragile.

07:48We are undoing a pension reform that is really important for the sustainability, long-term

07:54sustainability of French public finances.

07:57So we have really very deep political divisions within our societies.

08:03And that makes the implementation of an appropriate policy response really difficult.

08:08When you say policy response, what do you mean, though?

08:11Well, I mean, we need more defence spending.

08:14That's an economic incentive against tariffs.

08:17Should the EU respond likewise?

08:18In tariffs, we have to be prepared to have retaliatory tariffs against the US.

08:24Absolutely.

08:25Geir, one of the things that we discussed before was Timothy Schneider, who is the professor

08:30of an expert in totalitarianism.

08:32And he said that the language around invading Greenland, Canada becoming the 51st state,

08:40the Panama Canal is the language of Putin in 2013.

08:43I mean, that might be over-egging it a bit, but it still is an imperialistic language

08:50coming from the White House before they even take over.

08:53I think he's right.

08:54And I think it's important that he says so and that we are clear about this.

09:00What we're hearing from Trump, from Trump Jr., from a lot of sort of the MAGA crowd

09:07is language with respect to, like you said, Canada, Greenland, Panama, which is about

09:16suggesting that borders don't matter.

09:18I don't want to put Russia and the US and the future US administration on an equal footing.

09:24But this is very dangerous to start going down that road in terms of the norms we defend.

09:30So yes, I think Timothy Schneider is very, very right in pointing this out.

09:34But do you think there's therefore this lacking of leadership here in Brussels and across

09:38the EU then?

09:39Because really the language over the past few months since Trump became president-elect

09:44has been, we'll wait and see.

09:46I think the European institutions have shown more leadership on issues such as Ukraine

09:52than most of the national leaders.

09:55So I think at the end of the day, we have a leadership vacuum in Germany.

10:00The German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who's up for election and who failed his traffic

10:07light coalition just last year, has been showing insufficient leadership, clearly.

10:13I mean, Germany has not shown the kind of leadership that the biggest country in the

10:18centre of Europe in a situation of war has to show.

10:21So I think Germany is a big issue.

10:23But also France, France is an issue with the very divided politics at the moment.

10:28So I would really think it's more than at the national level.

10:31And then, of course, you've got member states like Slovakia, Hungary, who are not supportive

10:36of Ukraine, potentially Austria as well.

10:39So you don't have the unity within the EU either.

10:42Absolutely.

10:43There has been a clear element of lack of leadership.

10:45I mean, if you think back to the beginning of the Ukraine war or the Brussels aggression

10:49on Ukraine, the question was whether we could send helmets almost.

10:55So this we have not been able to react to quickly enough.

10:59We put too much effort or thought into thinking that sanctions would solve it and too little

11:04efforts into gearing up weapon support.

11:07So these are very clear elements.

11:11What sort of gives me hope at the beginning of this year is seeing, for instance, the

11:15prime minister of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen, who used to be, well, Denmark used to be one

11:20of the frugals, saying no more money to the EU budget.

11:23And Finns also talked about defence bonds as well.

11:26Exactly.

11:27What Mette Frederiksen is saying this beginning of the year is no taboos anymore.

11:32And I think that's the kind of discourse we need to have coming out of Berlin, coming

11:36out of Paris, and the capacity to act from Madrid, from Rome and so on and so forth,

11:41if we want to hold the future in our own hands.

11:43OK, well, Gunther Wolff, Professor of Economics at ULB and Senior Fellow at Bruegel, and Georg

11:49Rakeles, Associate Director at the European Policy Centre, thank you very much for joining

11:53us on the Europe Conversation.

11:54Thank you so much.

11:55Thanks for having us.

The EU must stand up to 'belligerence' from incoming Trump administration - analysts

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