57 / 150
THE UNITED STATES AND EUROPE: THE END OF AN ERA
57
growing influence of populist and xenophobic
forces from France and Holland to Hungary and
Poland. However, the greatest shock to the
European body politic was the outcome of the
British referendum on EU membership held on 23
June 2016, by which Britons voted by a narrow
margin (51.9 % to 48.1 %) to leave the Union, a
decision that supposes a long and difficult period
of Brexit negotiations ahead. The immediate con-
sequence is an uncomfortable breach between
the EU’s remaining 27 member states and Great
Britain, which has been plunged into a protracted
political and governmental crisis that began with
the resignation of David Cameron and the rise of
the Eurosceptic Theresa May to the position of
prime minister and appears to be far from over.
On 29 March 2017, after fending off resistance in
Parliament and the House of Lords, May triggered
activation of Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, the
formal step required to begin the process of Great
Britain’s withdrawal from the Union.
The turbulence on both sides of the Atlantic
– a brusque change of political direction in the
US and division within Europe – has meant that
the basis of transatlantic relations in 2017 and
beyond will be profoundly different. Steps taken
by the Trump administration in this context have
not been heartening. The new president met
with Nigel Farage (UKIP) and Marine Le Pen
(Frente Nacional) in his private office in New
York prior to his inauguration and received en-
thusiastic congratulations upon his victory from
European heads of state such as Poland’s
Jarosław Kaczynsky and Hungary’s Víctor Orbàn.
German Chancellor Angel Merkel, in her ca-
pacity as the leader of the country that will in-
evitably be the linchpin of whatever new trans-
atlantic relations that are eventually negotiated,
has taken a different stance, choosing to send a
courteous but critical message of warning to
the incoming president that highlighted the
importance of a common respect for rights and
freedoms. On 19 March, she flew to Washington
for her first face-to-face encounter with her
new American counterpart. While the atmos-
phere between them was noticeably chilly, they
did manage to forge closer positions regarding
NATO and Merkel reiterated Germany’s deter-
mination to comply with the 2 % military ex-
penditure commitment it had made at the 2014
NATO Wales Summit by 2024 as scheduled.
Other points discussed during her visit, such as
their differing positions on Russia and possible
means of reducing the United States’ whopping
50-billion-dollar trade deficit with Germany
(which Trump maintains is the result of a Berlin-
driven weak-euro policy) were not resolved.
French President François Hollande and Spanish
President Mariano Rajoy adopted a more concil-
iatory tone in their first telephone conversations
with Trump. The high expectations for British
Prime Minister Theresa May’s visit to Washington
for a meeting and press session, which took
place only a week after the inauguration, were
only partially fulfilled. Although the two leaders
were obviously on the same page regarding
Brexit, their positions proved to be substantially
farther apart on issues such as free trade, NATO
(which London regards as a central, untoucha-
ble piece of British security strategy), relations
with Russia and Trump’s proposed measures for
US immigration control. On the basis of this ini-
tial contact, earlier suppositions that both a re-
newed “special relationship” between London
and Washington and an alternative Anglo-
Saxon world order were in the offing are begin-
ning to look more like naive wishful thinking.
Relations between Washington and Brussels
did little to help to dispel the fog of uncertainty
that had floated over initial bilateral contacts
between governments. Brussels’ first direct re-
sponse to the transition took the form of a letter