U.S. President Donald Trump blinked first, averting trade war with the European Union for now—but the damage is done. After weeks of turmoil and insults from senior members of the Trump administration, Europeans are rapidly becoming disenchanted with the United States.
According to a poll conducted in nine European countries in March, 63 percent of the people surveyed think that Trump makes the world “less safe,” and 51 percent said that he is an “enemy of Europe.” Interestingly, people were by far the most negative in countries that are traditionally trans-Atlantic-oriented, such as Denmark and the Netherlands.
Such public opinion, in turn, has a curious side effect: Some far-right parties in Europe, seen as allies of the Trump administration, have already begun to lose public support. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who are among Europe’s staunchest far-right Trump supporters, are going down in the polls.
For them, it was one thing to cheer Trump’s overtures toward Russia, but now that the United States is trying to undermine the EU and to pit one country against another, far-right leaders on the continent are becoming uncomfortable.
The perhaps unexpected result of Trump’s anti-European maneuvering is that Europeans are rallying around the flag—yes, the European flag. According to the European Parliament’s winter Eurobarometer, survey 74 percent of Europeans polled now think membership is beneficial for their country—the highest score since the question was first asked in 1983. In March, thousands of people marched through Rome to demand more European unity, a rare sight.
Europe’s far-right leaders once hoped that Trump’s second term would boost their influence, but they are now distancing themselves. Orban, who often compares the reach of the EU to Soviet repression, has fallen silent. The leader of the French far right, Marine Le Pen, was recently convicted of embezzlement; she ignored Trump’s call to “free” her.
Instead, during a meager far-right rally in Paris, Le Pen professed her respect for independent courts, as if to say directly that she is not Trump. Wilders stopped wearing his Russian-Dutch friendship pin, now that it is clear that Trump doesn’t really want to make peace in Ukraine.
With friends such as Trump, even Europe’s far right doesn’t need enemies.
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