Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk revealed the bloc had to be “very innovative … sometimes maybe unpredictable — as our friends from the other side of Atlantic.”
Poland currently holds the six-month rotating presidency of the Council of the EU. And Tusk, a former European Council president, is a veteran of Brexit negotiations, having chaired late-night summits in Brussels in an attempt to get a deal with the U.K. on its divorce from the bloc. He couldn’t resist crowing about giving Trump a taste of his own medicine.
“I think all of us are aware about this new method how to negotiate and how to talk about trade and other communications,” Tusk said, clearly referring to Trump’s disruptive tactics. The U.S. is one of Europe’s closest partners, he noted, “but we need to be similar to our partners in some sense.”
Von der Leyen’s idea won public endorsement from Europe’s most powerful leader, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. “If the WTO is as dysfunctional as it has been for years and apparently remains so, then we, who continue to consider free trade important, must come up with something else,” he said.
But the truth is, von der Leyen’s proposal may ultimately prove only a temporary distraction from what threatens to be a major defeat, when an agreement with Trump is finally unveiled.
At the summit, European leaders grimly digested the news of a fresh proposal from the U.S. for further negotiations, POLITICO was first to reveal.
