Trump assault opens EU rift as leaders split on US strategy
European institutions and capitals divided over how far to push back against Washington without hurting Ukraine
Donald Trump’s assault on the EU has opened rifts within the bloc’s executive and set national leaders at odds, threatening to paralyse Europe’s response over fears that standing up to the US will hurt Ukraine.
Trump has lambasted EU leaders as “weak” and issued a security strategy that called for “cultivating resistance” on the continent, reflecting disdain for European institutions that his officials see as “adverse” to US interests and bent on “civilisational suicide”.
The co-ordinated attack on the EU this month, which also drew on long-standing criticism of the bloc’s digital regulations, sustainability laws and approach to migration, prompted widespread shock inside the European Commission and disagreement over how to respond, according to officials.
Commission president Ursula von der Leyen was urged not to retaliate in Europe’s defence, the people said, in an attempt to smother the conflict and try to maintain US engagement with the Ukraine peace process.
Other senior EU officials were outraged that the Trump administration’s barrage was being met with silence.
That weak response prompted some national leaders to suggest that Brussels be bypassed as a conduit to Trump, challenging the previous united approach that saw the EU negotiate with Washington as a 27-strong bloc.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Thursday that if Trump “cannot relate” to the EU institutions, as appeared “quite obvious”, then “at least there are individual member states, including Germany first and foremost, of course, with which such co-operation can continue”.
Other national officials were also discussing how to bypass the Commission and talk to the US president about European issues bilaterally, an EU leader told the Financial Times.
Despite the intensity of the Trump criticism, the ongoing peace talks in Ukraine have complicated the response given Kyiv’s fate is largely dependent on maintaining a working relationship with the US. It has forced the EU to believe it needs to absorb criticism rather than hit back, for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s sake.
“We can hardly tell Zelenskyy: ‘Look we’ve supported you all this way but now we have some more important stuff to focus on like sustainability rules and social media fines,’” said one of the people.
Zelenskyy and Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte last week asked von der Leyen not to criticise Trump in response to his attacks, two people briefed on their interactions told the FT.
“We told ourselves in the summer that we were negotiating three different deals with the US,” the EU leader said, referring to a EU-US trade deal, a new Nato spending pledge and a military supply line for Ukraine. “But we were kidding ourselves. It was always just one negotiation: keeping the US in Europe.”
“Now that is crystal clear, but also so is the lack of a clear response,” they added.
Some officials compared the EU’s approach to its strategy around trade negotiations with Trump’s administration this summer. Hit with large tariffs and threatened with more, the bloc chose not to retaliate and instead agreed a deal that imposed 15 per cent levies on its imports and has been widely analysed by experts as pro-American appeasement.
“The text on Europe in the National Security strategy is a scandal. It undermines 80 years of bipartisan policy,” said Anthony Gardner, former US ambassador to the EU. “The Trump administration has declared war on the EU. It has been clear for some time, but now it is official policy. Our friends are now our enemies.”
“The EU’s unbalanced trade agreement with the US is now revealed to have been based on hopelessly naive hopes of buying US commitment to Europe and Ukraine,” he added.
The US president’s assault, and the increased focus on maintaining his engagement with Ukraine, has particularly complicated Brussels’ handling of its tech regulations, which was already a geopolitical minefield for the Commission’s regulatory enforcers.
The Commission has repeatedly stressed that its tech regulations, aimed at opening markets and setting a regulatory framework for Silicon Valley giants, were non-negotiable and objectively applied. But it has struggled over the past year to push ahead with enforcement, partly because of concerns over how Trump and his allies in Silicon Valley would react.
The Commission has opened probes into Amazon and Microsoft’s dominance in the cloud sector, launched investigations into the artificial intelligence models of Google and Meta’s WhatsApp, and last week handed out a €120mn fine to Elon Musk’s X for breaking digital transparency rules.
But those decisions have been carefully balanced in order to avoid drawing the ire of Trump, with new decisions against American tech companies often coinciding with the closing of another case. The Commission has also pressed with high-profile cases against companies from other jurisdictions, such as Chinese online marketplaces Temu and Shein.
Officials involved in the investigations said that striking the balance was hard because there was a constant push from the European parliament and others to enforce its digital rule book without compromise.
“We are not going to accept any kind of subordination on how we play our roles,” said Teresa Ribera, von der Leyen’s vice-president and the Commission’s competition chief told reporters on Tuesday. “On the contrary, we are going to stand up and defend what I think is our duty.”
Ribera’s rhetoric is not expected to be fully matched by Commission action, the officials said, at least while there is still belief that the US can be steered towards a fair peace deal in Ukraine.
“I think they’re weak,” Trump said of Europe’s leaders. “But I also think that they want to be so politically correct.”
“I think they don’t know what to do,” he told Politico. “Europe doesn’t know what to do.”