EU leaders attack Donald Trump at Malta summit
EU leaders, led by French president Francois Hollande, have denounced recent attacks on Europe by Donald Trump as they met for a summit to debate the future of the union.
Hollande described Trump’s statements as “unacceptable”, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel called on the EU to press ahead with its own plans whatever the US says.
EU leaders have been rattled by Trump’s comments on Europe and the NATO transatlantic alliance. He has voiced his support for Britain’s departure from the EU, criticized European refugee policies and called NATO “obsolete”.
Hollande hit out at Trump as he arrived at the informal summit on the future of the EU in Malta. “There are threats, there are challenges. What is at stake is the very future of the European Union,” he said.
“It is unacceptable that there should be, through a number of statements by the US President, pressure on what Europe should be or what it should no longer be.”
Merkel called on fellow EU leaders to unite, as she arrived for the summit in Valletta, Malta’s capital. “I already said that Europe has its destiny in its own hands. And I believe the stronger we state clearly how we define our role in the world, the better we can take care with our transatlantic relations,” she said.
Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern criticized Trump’s ban on travel from seven Muslim-majority countries as “highly problematic.” He blamed some of the migration problems on US intervention in the Middle East. “There is no doubt that America shares responsibility for the refugee flows by the way how it intervened militarily,” he said, according to AFP.
The criticism of Trump came after it was revealed that the European Parliament’s main political party is attempting to block Trump’s expected choice for US ambassador to the European Union.
A letter from the Group of the European People’s Party, or EPP, urges the EU to reject US businessman Ted Malloch, calling him “hostile and malevolent” and accusing him of “denigrating the EU.”
“In these statements, the prospective nominee expressed his ambitions ‘to tame the bloc like he brought down the Soviet Union,’ eloquently supported dissolution of the European Union and explicitly bet on the demise of the common currency within months,” they say in the letter to the presidents of the European Council and European Commission.
“We are strongly convinced that persons seeing as their mission to disrupt or dissolve the EU, should not be accredited as official representatives to the EU.”
The letter ends by urging EU leaders Donald Tusk and JeanClaude Juncker not to accept Malloch should he be Trump’s pick. Envoys to the EU must be approved by the European Council, the European Commission and signed off by EU leaders.
Malloch told the BBC last week: “Mr. Trump has clearly said that any trade deals with anyone frankly in the future will be done on a bilateral basis.”
In Malta, Hollande called on the EU to speak with one voice in its relations with the United States. “There is no future with Trump if it’s not worked out together. What counts is the internal solidarity of the European Union,” he said.