After President Trump shocked the world last week by threatening Europe with economic pain, humiliating its politicians and excoriating their values, leaders from across the continent wrestled with the fallout the next day at an emergency dinner meeting in Brussels.
The dishes were neat and traditional — chicken supreme, a classic French comfort food, with vanilla roast parsnips — but the question on the table was messy and recent. What should Europe do to cope with the rapid deterioration of its relationship with the United States, most recently manifested in Mr. Trump’s obsessive pursuit of Greenland?
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy, an ideological ally of Mr. Trump on many issues, arrived at the meeting urging ongoing dialogue with the president. Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany pushed for immediate steps to reduce business regulations across Europe, to lift growth and reduce dependence on the American economy. President Emmanuel Macron of France said that to win respect from Mr. Trump, Europe must show a willingness to strike back against his threats.
Deliberations ran into the early hours of the morning. What emerged was a sort of playbook for how to deal with a Trump administration that is expected to remain volatile, according to three officials briefed on the meeting and leaders’ public statements. The leaders’ plan is to remain calm during Mr. Trump’s future provocations, threaten to hit back with tariffs and, the officials said, work behind the scenes to make Europe less militarily and economically dependent on its increasingly unreliable ally. The officials requested anonymity to speak about the politically sensitive discussions.
The playbook — a relatively bold but still largely abstract approach — was an example of how Europe’s leaders were now verbally pushing harder than ever against Mr. Trump and yet are still struggling to bolster their statements with action.
To keep Mr. Trump placated in the short term, Europeans are talking about how to beef up Arctic security. To lessen their reliance on Washington in the long term, they are working to diversify their trade relationships, improve their militaries and make their countries less dependent on American technology.
Yet they still have no workable plan to rapidly establish military autonomy from the United States. Their financial and banking system remains fragmented, making it hard to finance ambitious projects. Their decision-making is protracted, and their leaders are divided over how to enact what could be a yearslong or even decades-long project to reduce their trans-Atlantic dependency.
“The past few weeks have made it painfully clear that the European Union often drifts on waves created by others, that we are too dependent on factors beyond our control and have not built on our strengths enough,” Prime Minister Bart De Wever of Belgium, who attended the dinner in Brussels, later told Belgian lawmakers.
The German and Italian governments jointly produced a brief policy paper last week, after a meeting of Mr. Merz and Ms. Meloni, that illustrated both a rising desire to increase Europe’s strategic independence as well as the obstacles to that goal.
The document urged immediate moves to cut regulations and kindle investment, including long-debated steps to create a single continental capital market and a Pan-European stock exchange. It will help to frame the next meeting of E.U. leaders, an informal gathering on Feb. 12 that the Germans and the Italians hope will produce immediate results.
When it comes to diversifying relationships, officials wrote in the paper, “We need more ambition, more focus, and more speed.”
Perhaps the most concrete steps Europe is taking are on trade. This past week, European leaders announced a long-sought trade agreement with India, the world’s fastest-growing major economy, in an effort to open markets outside America. It was one of a rash of trade deals officials have been working on to secure supply chains and future customers.
Freeing itself from dependencies on imported semiconductors, rare earths, American technology products and American arms would give Europe more leverage in its partnership with the United States — and more ability to respond to the tariff threats that have become a feature of Mr. Trump’s second-term foreign policy. Before softening his position over Greenland, the Danish territory that Mr. Trump covets, Mr. Trump had suggested he could use trade coercion to obtain the island.
Mr. Trump’s threats over Greenland also prompted Europeans to talk more urgently about reducing their military dependence on Washington.
Mette Frederiksen, the prime minister of Denmark, said in Berlin this past week that Europe must spend what it takes to fully defend itself by 2030. German defense officials have said that they want to be self-sufficient by 2029. The European Union is helping to accelerate that effort and this week took a step toward giving eight European countries access to loans worth billions of euros that will allow them to improve their military infrastructure.
European officials are also scaling up plans to jointly protect the Arctic from Russia and China, hoping to show Mr. Trump that they can do their part to protect American interests in the polar region without ceding Greenland.
The operation, led by NATO, would potentially be called “Arctic Sentry,” a nod to similarly named alliance missions of maritime surveillance and air patrols over the Baltic Sea and Eastern Europe. Officials and experts said that the Arctic operation would also extend reconnaissance missions, relying heavily on drones, that some alliance members have already launched in the High North to shadow and search for Russian ships and submarines.
The top French general met with Swedish troops last week to enhance Arctic cooperation. Other countries, including Italy, are adapting some of their Alpine brigades to Arctic operations, Minna Alander, an expert on Arctic security, told a panel at the Center for European Policy Analysis this month. And the British military said in January that it was broadening its deployments in northern Norway.
Like many European moves, the flurry of Arctic activity is more conceptual than actionable. Discussions over the proposed NATO campaign in the Arctic are still at a very early stage, according to one current and one former NATO official, both of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
Divisions between some NATO members might slow any progress. The operation, both officials said, would have to steer clear of a demilitarized island near the North Pole to avoid objections from an ally, Turkey, that has scientists stationed there. Canada, at least until recently, has been reluctant to cede more defense responsibilities to NATO. Such tensions risk projecting a sense of disunity, undermining Europe just as it tries to strengthen.
“Everyone has got national interests, but we need to be cautious about what and how we do things, and say and communicate things,” Gen. Karel Rehka, chief of the Czech armed forces, said in an interview. “We don’t want to send the wrong signals to any potential adversary.”
Similar differences have emerged in Europe over whether Ukraine is a more pressing priority than the Arctic. Some leaders, particularly in countries closer to Ukraine, are reluctant to stand up to Mr. Trump over Greenland when Europe still needs him to help Kyiv defend against Russia, experts and officials say.
“For Poland and the Baltics, the idea of defending Greenland is problematic,” said Rosa Balfour, the head of Carnegie Europe, a research group in Brussels. “Ukraine is the priority.”
There is at least one familiar strategy with Mr. Trump that Europeans continue to fall back on: patience, while they wait to see what Mr. Trump says and does next.
Denmark and Greenland are still waiting for a serious American offer that could expand the U.S. presence on the island without granting ownership, said Jon Rahbek-Clemmensen, head of the Center for Arctic Security Studies at the Royal Danish Defense College.
“That would be the cleverest way, to offer a significant carrot,” he said. “The problem for the Americans is that there’s been a lot of stick, but it’s very vague what the carrot is.”
Christopher F. Schuetze contributed reporting from Berlin, and Koba Ryckewaert from Brussels.
Jeanna Smialek is the Brussels bureau chief for The Times.
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