With Donald Trump days away from returning to the White House for a second term, what's next for EU-US relations?
Will Donald Trump invade Greenland? Will Elon Musk boost the far right in Germany? And what of poor Panama?
Those are just a few of the questions dominating headlines in the first week of 2025.
But beyond the bluster and bravado, the coming of the second Trump administration reignites an existential crisis for the European Union. With the transatlantic alliance fraying and the security umbrella long provided by the US in doubt, the bloc has failed to articulate a coherent response – let alone a vision for its role in a rapidly shifting geopolitical order.
At the same time, right-wing forces across the EU, long skeptical of the European project, have been emboldened by Trump’s imminent return. Chief among them is Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, who paid a visit to the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago residence at the start of the year and is poised to become Europe’s ‘Trump whisperer.’
“Meloni wants to be the leader. And now that Trump is elected, she really wants to show that she's able to have a direct dialogue with Trump,” Jean-Pierre Darnis, a professor at Côte d'Azur University in Nice, told The Parliament. “She’s into power.”
Still, Meloni’s ideological rapport with Trump – and his right-hand man, Musk – might not be enough to keep tariffs at bay or NATO together. What's next for Ukraine, after three years of war against Russian invaders, is anyone's guess. That puts the EU’s economic and physical security at risk.
While the bloc is aiming to expand its own defence capabilities, possibly through €500bn in joint investments and increased weapons production, it will be harder to implement those grand plans at the national level.
“Manufacturers of military equipment can’t produce more from one day to the next; this will be a process of years,” Dick Zandee, a senior research fellow at the Clingendael Institute in the Netherlands, told The Parliament. “Saying that production should be scaled up is a very easy political statement, but in reality it requires expanding infrastructure and hiring more workers who are specially trained.”
But are there any silver linings for the EU in a second Trump term? Trump’s unpredictability might, some suggest, jolt the EU out of its complacency to move faster and more cohesively on matters of trade and defence. As Ian Lesser, the head of the German Marshall Fund’s Brussels office, told The Parliament: "The incoming administration has an opportunity to shake things up for Europe.”
— Christopher Alessi, Editor-in-Chief