BRUSSELS — A coalition of European leaders has convinced U.S. President Donald Trump that Russia is not interested in ending its war in Ukraine and must be forced to the negotiating table. Now they have to persuade an unpredictable White House to agree on how to make that happen.
A flurry of diplomatic visits over the past week has seen top officials on both sides of the Atlantic meet to talk about new financial restrictions and plans to cut off the flow of Russian oil and gas. A high-level EU technical team was even dispatched to Washington to work on the details of the proposals, whose core aims enjoy mutual agreement, officials and diplomats told POLITICO.
“Trump is finally on our side. The question now is how do you reconcile the two approaches?” said one EU diplomat, who was granted anonymity to discuss the closed-door discussions. While the bloc is putting the finishing touches on a new package of sanctions — the 19th to be imposed on Russia since Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 — negotiators say privately that the most effective action needs to be taken in partnership with the Americans.
And although there is a broad consensus on the need to pressure Putin to come to the table, the Trump administration prefers to use trade tools like tariffs to drain the Kremlin’s war chest while the EU pushes for formal sanctions on the businesses and financial institutions that deal with Moscow.
A second EU diplomat said they expected “heated discussions” with the U.S. on how to actually go about hitting Russia.
Red lines
The U.S. president told EU officials this week that he wanted to impose a 100 percent tariff on India and China for buying Russian energy, provided Brussels follows suit. That, however, is an economic and political impossibility for the EU.
Such a move would go against the EU’s core principles, particularly after European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen reiterated her opposition to tariffs, insisting that “tariffs are taxes” on domestic consumers. Slapping tariffs on India, with whom Brussels is nearing a major trade deal, and on China, to which its open economy is heavily exposed, would amount to colossal acts of self-harm.
“We don’t do tariffs. We are a trading bloc. We are exporters. Exports are the engine of the EU economy. This is our DNA,” said Agathe Demarais, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
“This is simply a way for the Trump administration to make an unrealistic demand from partners,” Demarais added. “The partners will say no, because there is no way on earth that the EU is going to impose tariffs, especially at that level, on China and India, and then say, OK, so our partners refuse to go forward, and so we cannot move forward.”
A recent discussion paper floated by the Danish presidency of the Council of the EU, seen by POLITICO, explored whether capitals would be open to imposing tariffs on Moscow as part of the bloc’s 19th sanctions package. That idea, according to several diplomats briefed on the talks, won little traction among ministers when it was discussed last month.
Pump for Trump
The U.S. president has also called on Europe to stop buying Russian fossil fuels — the Kremlin uses the proceeds to pay for its tanks and troops — providing helpful leverage to EU leaders already pushing for a total end to imports from the country.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright landed in Brussels for meetings on Thursday, where he hoped to cement the details of an agreement struck between Trump and von der Leyen for the bloc to buy an additional $750 billion worth of American gas, oil and nuclear fuel.
“These are ambitious energy import targets,” Wright told reporters on a conference call. “Certainly the U.S. can supply that, but that’s a framework that’s expecting energy trade to grow significantly from our country … the U.S.’s liquefied natural gas exports growing to displace the rest of Russian natural gas that is still imported into Europe.”
At a press conference following the meeting with his American counterpart, Energy Commissioner Dan Jørgensen said he intended to accelerate the bloc’s commitment to end all imports of Russian natural gas by the end of 2027 — potentially bringing the deadline forward if it can be agreed as part of a compromise with member countries.
“I have put forward a proposal to ban the import of Russian gas,” he said. “For that to … happen in a way that doesn’t lead to increases in prices and security of supply problems in Europe, we need help from our American friends. We need to import more LNG from the U.S.”
Aside from being a major commercial opportunity for the U.S., the proposal also gives Brussels a stronger hand in dealing with Kremlin-friendly countries like Hungary and Slovakia, which have been holding out against the plans to sever ties with Russia.
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