U.S. under Trump among external threats to EU – council president Tusk
RT,
31
January, 2017
European
Council President Donald Tusk has called the US under President
Donald Trump one of the external threats to the EU along with China,
Russia and radical Islam.
The
senior EU official added that the bloc must take “spectacular
steps”
to avoid disintegration. He said that if this did not happen,
separated European nations would become dependent on the US, China
and Russia.
Tusk
said the EU could capitalize on Trump’s trade strategy to boost
European economic ties around the world.
LIVE press conference in Tallinn with @ratasjuri,@MarisKucinskis, & @SkvernelisLttwitter.com/EUCouncilPress…
The
remarks were made in the Estonian capital, Tallinn, where Tusk was
meeting leaders of the three Baltic states. His speech mirrored an
open letter to European leaders he had written earlier, ahead of a
summit in Malta on Friday.
The European Council president suggested that the EU should borrow the American motto: “United we stand, divided we fall.” Variations of the phase have been used since antiquity, although its American roots date back to a pre-Revolutionary song by John Dickinson, one of the Founding Fathers.“The disintegration of the European Union will not lead to the restoration of some mythical, full sovereignty of its member states, but to their real and factual dependence on the great superpowers: the United States, Russia and China,” Tusk wrote to EU leaders. “Only together can we be fully independent.”
Tusk
believes that the EU is currently facing a threat unprecedented since
the since the signature of the Treaty of Rome in 1957, which founded
the European Economic Community, EU’s predecessor.
“For
the first time in our history, in an increasingly multipolar external
world, so many are becoming openly anti-European, or Euroskeptic at
best. 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 said
in the letter.
Tusk
said that in addition to external threats, the EU has to deal with
domestic nationalism, “national
egoism,”
a “decline
of faith in political integration” and
rising doubts about “the
fundamental values of liberal democracy.”
Tusk
warned against seeing any potential end of the EU as a positive
development.Read more
The European Council president suggested that the EU should borrow the American motto: “United we stand, divided we fall.” Variations of the phase have been used since antiquity, although its American roots date back to a pre-Revolutionary song by John Dickinson, one of the Founding Fathers.“The disintegration of the European Union will not lead to the restoration of some mythical, full sovereignty of its member states, but to their real and factual dependence on the great superpowers: the United States, Russia and China,” Tusk wrote to EU leaders. “Only together can we be fully independent.”
While
Tusk’s criticism of Trump is among the most vocal by EU officials
since the Republican’s election, he is far from being alone.
Earlier, Guy Verhofstadt, the EU’s chief negotiator on
Brexit,said Trump
and his chief strategist, Steve Bannon, are determined to break up
the European Union.
Verhofstadt
identified three major threats to the EU, with radical Islam and
Russia being the first two.
“My
impression is we have a third front undermining the EU, and that is
Donald Trump, who ... has spoken very favorably that other countries
will want to break away from the EU, and that he hoped for a
disintegration of the EU,” he
added.
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