The State of the European Union. The European states facing the reforms of the Union

THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION

drop of a crisis of multilateralism. It takes in the rela-

tions of the Union and its Member States with the

major powers (the United States, China and Russia),

Latin America, the Middle East and Africa; the chief

transversal issues marking the international political

agenda: trade and climate change; or enlargement

and neighbourhood policy

Suppressed tension with the United

States: from TTIP to trade war

Inevitably, relations with the world’s greatest

power, the United States, have marked European

external action in the first year-and-a-half of the

Trump Administration, after his inauguration in

January 2017. The United States has gradually

proven to be, as Council President Donald Tusk

put it early in the new US Administration, a stra-

tegic threat to the Union, rather than an un-

questionable ally. Overall, transatlantic relations

have not improved since May 2017. Following

Trump’s visit to Europe and the NATO summit in

Warsaw, both German Chancellor Angela

Merkel and Sigmar Gabriel, her foreign minister,

expressed deep pessimism about America’s sta-

tus as a “reliable partner” and about the impact

of its policies on the West. Since then, relations

appear to have deteriorated if anything, both

because of a fundamental disagreement over

the very conception of politics, the international

order or Europe – apparent in a contempt for

multilateralism – and because of an impulsive

and unpredictable

modus operandi

The World Economic Forum in Davos in

January 2018 made the terms of the dispute

Separate chapters of this report take an in-depth look at

the other two most important external-domestic dimen-

sions of Mogherini’s Global Strategy: defence and security

policy and migration policy.

very clear. In Davos, the Franco-German duo of

Macron and Merkel showed firm and solid re-

jection of President Trump’s “America First”

doctrine, something on which the rest of the

world’s leaders such as Justin Trudeau of

Canada, Xi Jinping of China, or Narendra Modi

of India coincided. It was confirmed then that

the political differences with the United States

over issues such as climate change, inequality,

trade protection, global governance and multi-

lateralism are difficult to reconcile. In a position

diametrically opposed to that of Trump, the ar-

guments of Macron, Merkel or Gentiloni re-

volved around a defence of the best aspects of

globalisation – trade and multilateralism –, but

from a critical point of view that addresses re-

forms to compensate the losers and improves

the representativeness of the main actors in the

international system.

France and Germany’s worst fears would

soon materialise with the protectionist drift

barely two months later. A couple of months of

relative calm was shattered by the sound of

trade war drums in early March. The US leader

picked up one of his central promises during the

election campaign, announcing, in the name of

“national security,” the unilateral imposition of

heavy tariffs on imports of steel (25 %) and alu-

minium (10 %) with a view to protecting American

industry. The immediate reaction from Brussels

was to announce possible reprisals on a list of cer-

tain US products – bourbon, cranberries, peanut

butter, or Harley-Davidson motorcycles – aimed at

affecting the various sectors and states of America

where President Trump enjoys most electoral sup-

port. Trump came back with a fresh threat to im-

pose new tariffs on cars from the EU, targeting

Germany. Subsequently, a second exploratory

phase began, headed by Trade Commissioner

Cecilia Malmström and Commission Vice-

President for Jobs Jyrki Katainen, giving way to