While US President Donald Trump’s coercive campaign against Europe is a ‘wake-up call’ for the continent, it could also accelerate the long-stalled European integration, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde has said.
While US President Donald Trump’s campaign against Europe is a “wake-up call” for the continent, it could also accelerate the long-stalled European integration, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde has said.
In his second term, Trump has launched a full-scale coercive campaign against Europe in which he has slapped tariffs, threatened a military invasion, and put his weight behind far-right and neo-Nazi parties to oust moderate elected governments.
Under National Security Strategy, Trump has formalised the pursuit of regime change in Europe.
While such actions have undermined the trust that have been the foundation of the US-Europe relationship in the post-World War II era, the campaign could end up being beneficial to the European Union (EU) in the longer run.
“I think the trust is undermined. When you keep repeating the same pattern of undermining the rule of law, undermining the contract, undermining what has been agreed between parties, then parties begin questioning,” Lagarde told CNN.
Lagarde further said, “This is a wake-up call, a bigger one than we ever had. I think that what’s happening now is going to give a big accelerator to this (European integration) movement.”
In the wake of Trump’s threats, and his pivot to Russia, several countries have accelerated their negotiations to join the EU, such as Ukraine and Moldova.
Currently, at least nine countries hold the EU candidate status and are on their way to join the EU: Ukraine, Moldova, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Turkey.
Montenegro could join the EU as early as 2028 and Ukraine and Moldova are looking forward to a membership between 2028 and 2030.
In recent years, countries have expressed the desire to join the EU to be part of the economic security blanket that the bloc has. In the wake of an increasingly aggressive Russia, and an increasingly coercive Russia, the bloc has also been developing a security dimension and that has also drawn countries.
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