Donald Trump may not have been in attendance at EU leaders’ first-ever ‘informal retreat’ on Monday, but his presence could be felt. Presidents and prime ministers were left shadow-boxing the whims of their supposed ally, wondering how to respond to threats of tariffs and even a military invasion of Greenland, all while preserving the transatlantic alliance that most of them still hold dear.
The new meeting format is the brainchild of António Costa, the new chair of the European Council, and was intended to foster candid conversations about Europe’s future away from the high-pressure decision-making at formal Council meetings. But it began with a bad omen – and a painful metaphor for Europe’s military weakness – when plans to hold it in the countryside outside Brussels had to be shelved because the organisers couldn’t guarantee its security.
The leaders eventually gathered at the Egmont Palace, just down the street from the normal summit location, and the informal atmosphere was quickly supplanted by one of crisis response. The lack of any decision or even a collective statement left the impression of an EU flailing and adrift, reduced to being a mere spectator of global events as leaders await Trump’s next move.
A dinner with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer did not yield any sign of a stronger post-Brexit relationship. Unlike the German and French leaders, Starmer would not criticise Trump’s threats to annex Greenland – a territory of Denmark – by coercion or military invasion. Nor did he have any statement of solidarity for the UK’s European neighbours when it comes to Trump’s trade threats. Over the weekend the US president hinted he may impose tariffs on the EU but not the UK, in a clear move to drive a wedge between London and other European capitals.
Internally, the meeting failed to resolve key disagreements around security policy, including a North-South divide over whether joint borrowing should be used to fund EU defence spending and an East-West argument over whether that spending should come with a ‘buy European’ requirement.
Leaving the retreat, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz made clear that he had not softened his opposition to EU defence bonds, despite a reported fiery conversation with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who is pushing for them. There is no “prospect of taking on joint debt,” he told reporters as he left the Egmont Palace. Tusk tried to put a softer spin on it: “It is my impression the approach of the German chancellor is today more positive,” he said, before imploring reporters not to twist his words ahead of the German election on 23 February.
EU leaders have already agreed to a €1.5 billion defence fund, the European Defence Industry Programme. This is a drop in the bucket in terms of what is needed, and Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has spoken about investing €500 billion over the next ten years. But the Commission is not expected to bring forward ideas on how to raise those funds until June.
French President Emmanuel Macron is insisting that money should be spent on military equipment made in Europe, not the United States, in order to reduce its dependency on Washington. Between mid-2022 and mid-2023, 63% of all European defence orders were placed with US companies, while only 22% came from European suppliers, according to Mario Draghi's 2024 competitiveness report.
But Germany and Eastern European countries have pushed back hard against Macron’s ‘buy European’ insistence, calling it unrealistic and warning that it could enrage Trump. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, who was at the retreat, is also opposed. Europe and the US should instead drop oversight checks to make it easier to purchase American weapons in order to placate Trump, he told German news agency DPA last month.
It wasn’t just on military spending that EU leaders could not overcome their divisions. Macron entered the meeting saying Europe should be aggressive in defending itself against Trump’s tariff threats, but then news began to filter in that Trump had granted a reprieve to Canada and Mexico in exchange for supposed concessions. Talk then shifted to how Trump could be appeased. As EU leaders left Brussels, they didn’t seem to be any closer to establishing a more robust posture towards Trump’s threats.