BRUSSELS ― European governments and corporations are racing to reduce their exposure to U.S. technology, military hardware and energy resources as transatlantic relations sour.  For decades, the EU relied on NATO guarantees to ensure security in the bloc, and on American technology to power its business. Donald Trump’s threats to take over Greenland, and aggressive comments about Europe by members of his administration, have given fresh impetus to European leaders’ call for “independence.” “If we want to be taken seriously again, we will have to learn the language of power politics,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said last week. From orders banning civil servants from using U.S.-based videoconferencing tools to trade deals with countries like India to a push to diversify Europe’s energy suppliers, efforts to minimize European dependence on the U.S. are gathering pace. EU leaders warn that transatlantic relations are unlikely to return to the pre-Trump status quo. EU officials stress that such measures amount to “de-risking” Europe’s relationship with the U.S., rather than “decoupling” — a term that implies a clean break in economic and strategic ties. Until recently, both expressions were mainly applied to European efforts to reduce dependence on China. Now, they are coming up in relation to the U.S., Europe’s main trade partner and security benefactor. The decoupling drive is in its infancy. The U.S. remains by far the largest trading partner for Europe, and it will take years for the bloc to wean itself off American tech and military support, according to Jean-Luc Demarty, who was in charge of the European Commission’s trade department under the body’s former president, Jean-Claude Juncker. Donald Trump’s threats to take over Greenland, and aggressive comments about Europe by members of his administration, have given fresh impetus to European leaders’ call for “independence.” | Kristian Tuxen Ladegaard Berg/NurPhoto via Getty Images “In terms of trade, they [the U.S.] represent a significant share of our exports,” said Demarty. “So it’s a lot, but it’s not a matter of life and death.” The push to diversify away from the U.S. has seen Brussels strike trade deals with the Mercosur bloc of Latin American countries, India and Indonesia in recent months. The Commission also revamped its deal with Mexico, and revived stalled negotiations with Australia. DEFENDING EUROPE: FROM NATO TO THE EU Since the continent emerged from the ashes of World War II, Europe has relied for its security on NATO — which the U.S. contributes the bulk of funding to. At a weekend retreat in Zagreb, Croatia, conservative European leaders including Merz said it was time for the bloc to beef up its homegrown mutual-defense clause, which binds EU countries to an agreement to defend any EU country that comes under attack. While it has existed since 2009, the EU’s Article 42.7 mutual defense clause was rarely seen as necessary because NATO’s Article 5 served a similar purpose. But Europe’s governments have started to doubt whether the U.S. really would come to Europe’s rescue. In Zagreb, the leaders embraced the EU’s new role as a security actor, tasking two leaders, as yet unnamed, with rapidly cooking up plans to turn the EU clause from words to an ironclad security guarantee. “For decades, some countries said ‘We have NATO, why should we have parallel structures?’” said a senior EU diplomat who was granted anonymity to talk about confidential summit preparations. After Trump’s Greenland saber-rattling, “we are faced with the necessity, we have to set up military command structures within the EU.” At a weekend retreat in Zagreb, Croatia, conservative European leaders including Merz said it was time for the bloc to beef up its homegrown mutual-defense clause, which binds EU countries to an agreement to defend any EU country that comes under attack. | Marko Perkov/AFP via Getty Images In comments to EU lawmakers last week, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said that anyone who believes Europe can defend itself without the U.S. should “keep on dreaming.” Europe remains heavily reliant on U.S. military capabilities, most notably in its support for Ukraine’s fight against Russia. But some Europeans are now openly talking about the price of reducing exposure to the U.S. — and saying it’s manageable. TECHNOLOGY: TEAMS OUT, VISIO IN The mood shift is clearest when it comes to technology, where European reliance on platforms such as X, Meta and Google has long troubled EU voters, as evidenced by broad support for the bloc’s tech legislation. French President Emmanuel Macron’s government is planning to ban officials from using U.S.-based videoconferencing tools. Other countries like Germany are contemplating similar moves. “It’s very clear that Europe is having our independence moment,” EU tech czar Henna Virkkunen told a POLITICO conference last week. “During the last year, everybody has really realized how important it is that we are not dependent on one country or one company when it comes to some very critical technologies.” France is moving to ban public officials from using American platforms including Google Meet, Zoom and Teams, a government spokesperson told POLITICO. Officials will soon make the switch to Visio, a videoconferencing tool that runs on infrastructure provided by French firm Outscale. In the European Parliament, lawmakers are urging its president, Roberta Metsola, to ditch U.S. software and hardware, as well as a U.S.-based travel booking tool. In Germany, politicians want a potential German or European substitute for software made by U.S. data analysis firm Palantir. “Such dependencies on key technologies are naturally a major problem,” Sebastian Fiedler, an SPD lawmaker and expert on policing, told POLITICO. Even in the Netherlands, among Europe’s more pro-American countries, there are growing calls from lawmakers and voters to ring-fence sensitive technologies from U.S. influence. Dutch lawmakers are reviewing a petition signed by 140,000 people calling on the state to block the acquisition of a state identity verification tool by a U.S. company. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in late January, German entrepreneur Anna Zeiter announced the launch of a Europe-based social media platform called W that could rival Elon Musk’s X, which has faced fines for breaching the EU’s content moderation rules. W plans to host its data on “European servers owned by European companies” and limits its investors to Europeans, Zeiter told Euronews. So far, Brussels has yet to codify any such moves into law. But upcoming legislation on cloud and AI services are expected to send signals about the need to Europeanize the bloc’s tech offerings. ENERGY: TIME TO DIVERSIFY On energy, the same trend is apparent. The United States provides more than a quarter of the EU’s gas, a share set to rise further as a full ban on Russian imports takes effect. But EU officials warn about the risk of increasing Europe’s dependency on the U.S. in yet another area. Trump’s claims on Greenland were a “clear wake-up call” for the EU, showing that energy can no longer be seen in isolation from geopolitical trends, EU Energy Commissioner Dan Jørgensen said last Wednesday. The Greenland crisis reinforced concerns that the bloc risks “replacing one dependency with another,” said Jørgensen, adding that as a result, Brussels is stepping up efforts to diversify, deepening talks with alternative suppliers including Canada, Qatar and North African countries such as Algeria. FINANCE: MOVING TO EUROPEAN PAYMENTS Payment systems are also drawing scrutiny, with lawmakers warning about over-reliance on U.S. payment systems such as Mastercard and Visa. The digital euro, a digital version of cash that the European Central Bank is preparing to issue in 2029, aims to cut these dependencies and provide a pan-European sovereign means of payment. “With the digital euro, Europeans would remain in control of their money, their choices and their future,” ECB President Christine Lagarde said last year. In Germany, some politicians are sounding the alarm about 1,236 tons of gold reserves that Germany keeps in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. “In a time of growing global uncertainty and under President Trump’s unpredictable U.S. policy, it’s no longer acceptable” to have that much in gold reserves in the U.S., Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, the German politician from the liberal Free Democratic Party, who chairs the Parliament’s defense committee, told Der Spiegel. Several European countries are pushing the EU to privilege European manufacturers when it comes to spending EU public money via “Buy European” clauses. Until a few years ago, countries like Poland, the Netherlands or the Baltic states would never have agreed on such “Buy European” clauses. But even those countries are now backing calls to prioritize purchases from EU-based companies. MILITARY INVESTMENT: BOOSTING OWN CAPACITY A €150 billion EU program to help countries boost their defense investments, finalized in May of last year, states that no more than 35 percent of the components in a given purchase, by cost, should originate from outside the EU and partner states like Norway and Ukraine. The U.S. is not considered a partner country under the scheme. For now, European countries rely heavily on the U.S. for military enablers including surveillance and reconnaissance, intelligence, strategic lift, missile defense and space-based assets. But the powerful conservative umbrella group, the European People Party, says these are precisely the areas where Europe needs to ramp up its own capacities. When EU leaders from the EPP agreed on their 2026 roadmap in Zagreb, they stated that the “Buy European” principle should apply to an upcoming Commission proposal on joint procurement. The title of the EPP’s 2026 roadmap? “Time for independence.” Camille Gijs, Jacopo Barigazzi, Mathieu Pollet, Giovanna Faggionato, Eliza Gkritsi, Elena Giordano, Ben Munster and Sam Clark contributed reporting from Brussels. James Angelos contributed reporting from Berlin.

KYIV — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said late Thursday he couldn’t say whether U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposal of a weeklong truce would work, but cast the initiative as an “opportunity.” Trump’s ceasefire initiative is an attempt to spare the residents of Ukrainian cities from an onslaught of Russian attacks that have plunged civilians into sub-zero conditions by devastating their power grids and central heating systems. The U.S. president had said Thursday that he secured an assurance from Russian President Vladimir Putin that Moscow’s forces would not fire on Ukrainian cities during a period of bitter cold. “This is an initiative of the American side and personally of the president of the United States. We can regard it as an opportunity rather than an agreement. Whether it will work or not, and what exactly will work, I cannot say at this point. There is no ceasefire. There is no official agreement on a ceasefire, as is typically reached during negotiations,” Zelenskyy told reporters Thursday evening. Zelenskyy said the prospect of such a truce reopened a long-running discussion to de-escalate the war via an agreement that the Kremlin would stop destroying Ukrainian energy infrastructure, and Kyiv would halt attacks on Russian oil depots and refining facilities. Zelenskyy said the Russians had not accepted such a deal last year and he sounded skeptical about their sincerity this time. “At that time, Russia’s responses to such de-escalation steps were negative. We will see how it unfolds now,” he told the reporters. DAMAGE ALREADY DONE A truce would come very late, given the scale of damage already wrought by the Russians. In Kyiv, Russian forces have destroyed an entire power plant in the biggest residential district, depriving almost 500,000 residents of heating and electricity. The situation is so dire that the European Commission had to send 447 emergency generators worth €3.7 million, with individual countries, such as Germany and Poland, also sending other energy equipment worth millions of euros to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe in Kyiv and other cities. The Ukrainians have hit back by striking Russian oil refineries and power plants in Belgorod, and some other Russian cities within the range of strike capabilities. “The Americans said they want to raise the issue of de-escalation, with both sides demonstrating certain steps toward refraining from the use of long-range capabilities to create more space for diplomacy,” Zelenskyy said.   He added that Kyiv has agreed with the U.S. initiative, as it always agrees to “all American rational ideas.” “If Russia does not strike our energy infrastructure — generation facilities or any other energy assets — we will not strike theirs. I believe this is the answer the mediator of the negotiations, namely the United States of America, was expecting,” Zelenskyy said. Whether Russia is really serious about a ceasefire was another question, Zelenskyy cautioned. NEW BOMBARDMENT Indeed, there was little sign of goodwill from the Russian side on Friday. The Russian armed forces shelled Ukraine with more than 112 drones and various missiles, the Ukrainian Air Force reported Friday.  Although Kyiv has not been attacked on Friday, and no strikes on energy facilities were reported, the eastern region of Kharkiv was heavily shelled. Two people there were wounded, and one person was killed, the governor, Oleh Synegubov, said in a Telegram statement. Civilian infrastructure was hit and power cables were damaged by the attacks. The air force also reported Russian drones in Sumy, Dnipro and Chernihiv regions, as the attacks continued. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also sounded skeptical about a ceasefire on Thursday. “We have spoken many times. President Vladimir Putin has often reminded us that a truce, which is again being sought by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, at least for 60 days, and preferably longer, is unacceptable for us,” he told Turkish media. Lavrov claimed all the previous periods in which Russia has slowed its offensives were used by the West “to pump Ukraine with weapons, and restore the strength of its army.”

PARIS — Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen warned that democratic values and territorial integrity will guide his country’s talks with the United States over any future deal about the Arctic island. “We have some red lines we cannot cross but, from a Greenlandic perspective, we will try to sort out some sort of agreement,” he said alongside Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in Paris. “We have been working with the U.S. for many years now.” Tensions between Europe and the U.S. have cooled after President Donald Trump appeared to back down on his threats to take over the self-ruling Danish territory. Instead, he said he agreed on a framework to reach an agreement with Greenland during talks last week with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte in Switzerland. “Denmark is a sovereign state and it is one of the most basic democratic rules and values that territorial integrity has to be valued,” Frederiksen said during a conference at the Sciences Po Institute in Paris. “And next to that, don’t threaten an ally.” Frederiksen and Nielsen are in Paris for a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron after they held talks with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Tuesday. Nielsen painted a stark picture of the Greenlandic perspective as talks with the U.S. unfold. “We are under pressure, serious pressure … as Greenland leaders, we have to deal with people who are afraid and scared,” he said. “Imagine you are living in peace, you are a loyal partner, loyal to the alliance … and then some of your partners talk about taking, acquiring, and don’t rule out taking weapons,” he added. Frederiksen also warned that Europeans need to look beyond Greenland and consider the bigger picture of Washington’s changing relationship with the continent.

Just hours after federal agents shot and killed a 37-year-old man in Minneapolis, Trump administration officials called the deceased a “would-be assassin” and blamed Democrats for siding with “terrorists.” Democrats, meanwhile, renewed calls for Minnesota officials to investigate the shooting and characterized the president’s immigration actions as “a campaign of organized brutality.” With few official details released on the latest shooting in Minneapolis, the White House and Democrats retreated to heated rhetoric in the immediate aftermath of Saturday’s incident, with President Donald Trump accusing state officials of “inciting Insurrection” and Democrats accusing federal agents of “murder.” “A would-be assassin tried to murder federal law enforcement and the official Democrat account sides with the terrorists,” deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller wrote on X Saturday, referring to a tweet from the Democratic National Committee about the shooting that stated “Get ICE out of Minnesota NOW.” Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota focused her anger on ICE, posting on social media: “This appears to be an execution by immigration enforcement. I am absolutely heartbroken, horrified, and appalled that federal agents murdered another member of our community.” In Saturday morning’s shooting, a 37-year-old man was shot and killed by federal agents in Minneapolis who claimed he approached federal officers with a 9 mm gun but didn’t specify if he was holding or brandishing the weapon. Various videos of the incident appear to show the man holding a phone. Minneapolis has emerged as the epicenter of the debate over the Trump administration’s immigration actions and deployment of federal agents. It came to a head after a federal agent shot and killed a 37-year-old woman, Renee Good, earlier this month in an incident that has sparked weeks of demonstrations in the city and fights between the White House and state officials over who would investigate the shootings. Trump, in a post on Truth Social, described the man who was shot Saturday as a “gunman” and suggested a cover-up by Minnesota Democrats. The Justice Department has subpoenaed several Democratic Minneapolis state officials, including Gov. Tim Walz, who called the DOJ’s subpoena a “partisan distraction.” “AMONG OTHER THINGS, THIS IS A ‘COVER UP’ FOR THE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS THAT HAVE BEEN STOLEN FROM THE ONCE GREAT STATE (BUT SOON TO BE GREAT AGAIN!) OF MINNESOTA!” Trump wrote in a separate post. Trump also assailed Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat, and Walz in the first Saturday post, accusing them of “inciting Insurrection, with their pompous, dangerous, and arrogant rhetoric.” U.S. Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino told reporters at a Saturday press conference that the incident “looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement,” though he didn’t provide any evidence for his claim. “If you obstruct a law enforcement officer or assault a law enforcement officer, you are in violation of the law and will be arrested,” he added. “Our law enforcement officers take an oath to protect the public.” Video of the shooting, posted on social media and verified by The New York Times, shows the 37-year-old man appearing to film agents in Minneapolis on Saturday before they push him and several others back. The videos don’t appear to show the man drawing his weapon, but not all angles are accounted for. During a struggle with the man on the ground, an agent fires several shots, then the group of federal agents back away. The man, identified by the Minneapolis Star Tribune as Alex Pretti, had a legal permit to carry a firearm, according to Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara, who spoke during a press conference Saturday. Bovino told reporters that “an individual approached U.S. Border Patrol agents with a nine millimeter semi-automatic handgun. The agents attempted to disarm the individual, but he violently resisted. Fearing for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers, a border patrol agent fired defensive shots.” But when asked by a reporter when the individual drew his firearm, Bovino said the shooting is still under investigation. The latest POLITICO Poll illustrates just how sharply views of ICE — and its presence in cities across the country — diverge along partisan lines. A majority of voters who backed Trump in 2024 — 57 percent — say risks to the lives of anti-ICE protestors are a price worth paying to carry out immigration enforcement, compared with just 15 percent of voters who backed former Vice President Kamala Harris. By contrast, nearly three-quarters of Harris voters — 71 percent — say it is not worth risking the lives of anti-ICE protesters to conduct immigration enforcement, a view shared by just 31 percent of Trump voters, the poll, conducted from Jan. 16 to 19, found. The divide extends to perceptions of public safety: 64 percent of Trump voters say ICE agents make U.S. cities safer, while 80 percent of Harris voters say the opposite, that their presence is making them more dangerous. Democrats also used heated language to describe the shooting. During a Democratic Senate primary debate in Texas on Saturday, state Rep. James Talarico raised the Minneapolis shooting, saying: “ICE shot a mother in the face. ICE kidnapped a 5-year-old boy. ICE executed a man in broad daylight on our streets just this morning. It’s time to tear down this secret police force and replace it with an agency that actually is going to focus on public safety.” His opponent, Rep. Jasmine Crockett, also weighed in: “This is the fifth-highest funded military force in the entire world. And what are they doing? They’re killing people in the middle of the street.” Walz on Saturday urged the federal government to allow Minnesota officials to take control of the probe into the shooting. He told reporters that he said to the White House in an early morning call that “the federal government cannot be trusted to lead this investigation. The state will handle it, period.” “As I said last week, this federal occupation of Minnesota long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement,” Walz said at a press conference Saturday. “It’s a campaign of organized brutality against the people of our state. And today, that campaign claimed another life. I’ve seen the videos from several angles. And it’s sickening.” When asked for comment, the White House referred POLITICO to Trump’s Truth Social post and to a post on X from the Department of Homeland Security, which claimed, “The officers attempted to disarm the suspect but the armed suspect violently resisted.” They did not respond to requests to questions as to what evidence showed the man who was shot was a “terrorist.” Vice President JD Vance also placed the blame of Saturday’s shooting at Minnesota leaders’ feet, saying their unwillingness to work with immigration enforcement agents was the primary reason for the shooting. “When I visited Minnesota, what the ICE agents wanted more than anything was to work with local law enforcement so that situations on the ground didn’t get out of hand,” he wrote on X. “The local leadership in Minnesota has so far refused to answer those requests.” Liz Crampton contributed to this report.

BRUSSELS — Only a few days ago, EU diplomats and officials were whispering furtively about the idea they might one day need to think about how to push back against Donald Trump. They’re not whispering anymore.  Trump’s attempt, as EU leaders saw it, to “blackmail” them with the threat of tariffs into letting him take the sovereign Danish island of Greenland provoked a howl of outrage — and changed the world.  Previous emergency summits in Brussels focused on existential risks to the European Union, like the eurozone crisis, Brexit, the coronavirus pandemic, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This week, the EU’s 27 leaders cleared their diaries to discuss the assault they faced from America.  There can be little doubt that the transatlantic alliance has now been fundamentally transformed from a solid foundation for international law and order into a far looser arrangement in which neither side can be sure of the other.  “Trust was always the foundation for our relations with the United States,” said Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk as he arrived for the summit in Brussels on Thursday night. “We respected and accepted American leadership. But what we need today in our politics is trust and respect among all partners here, not domination and for sure not coercion. It doesn’t work in our world.”  The catalyst for the rupture in transatlantic relations was the U.S. president’s announcement on Saturday that he would hit eight European countries with tariffs of 10 percent for opposing his demand to annex Greenland.  That was just the start. In an avalanche of pressure, he then canceled his support for the U.K. premier’s decision to hand over the Chagos Islands, home to an important air base, to Mauritius; threatened France with tariffs on Champagne after Macron snubbed his Board of Peace initiative; slapped down the Norwegian prime minister over a Nobel Peace Prize; and ultimately dropped his threats both to take Greenland by military force and to hit countries that oppose him with tariffs.  Here was a leader, it seemed to many watching EU officials, so wild and unpredictable that he couldn’t even remain true to his own words.  But what dismayed the professional political class in Brussels and beyond was more mundane: Trump’s decision to leak the private text messages he’d received directly from other world leaders by publishing them to his 11.6 million followers on social media.  Trump’s screenshots of his phone revealed French President Emmanuel Macron offering to host a G7 meeting in Paris, and to invite the Russians in the sidelines. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, who once called Trump “daddy,” also found his private text to Trump made public, in which he praised the president’s “incredible” achievements, adding: “Can’t wait to see you.”  Leaking private messages “is not acceptable — you just don’t do it,” said one senior diplomat, like others, on condition of anonymity because the matter is sensitive. “It’s so important. After this, no one can trust him. If you were any leader you wouldn’t tell him anything. And this is a crucial means of communication because it is quick and direct. Now everything will go through layers of bureaucracy.”  Mark Carney had been one of the classic Davos set and was a regular attendee: suave, a little smug, and seeming entirely comfortable among snow-covered peaks and even loftier clientele. | Gian Ehrenzeller/EPA The value of direct contact through phone texts is well known to the leaders of Europe, who, as POLITICO revealed, have even set up their own private group chat to discuss how to respond when Trump does something inflammatory. Such messages enable ministers and officials at all levels to coordinate solutions before public statements have to be made, the same senior diplomat said. “If you don’t have trust, you can’t work together anymore.”  NO MORE NATO Diplomats and officials now fear the breakdown in personal trust between European leaders and Trump has potentially grave ramifications.  Take NATO. The military alliance is, at its core, a promise: that member countries will back each other up and rally to their defense if one of them comes under attack. Once that promise looks less than solid, the power of NATO to deter attacks is severely undermined. That’s why Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warned that if Trump invaded the sovereign Danish territory of Greenland it would be the end of NATO.  The fact he threatened to do so has already put the alliance into intensive care, another diplomat said.  Asked directly if she could still trust the U.S. as she arrived at the Brussels summit, Frederiksen declined to say yes. “We have been working very closely with the United States for many years,” she replied. “But we have to work together respectfully, without threatening each other.”  European leaders now face two tasks: To bring the focus back to the short-term priorities of peace in Ukraine and resolving tensions over Greenland; and then to turn their attention to mapping out a strategy for navigating a very different world. The question of trust, again, underpins both.  When it comes to Ukraine, European leaders like Macron, Germany’s Friedrich Merz and the U.K.’s Keir Starmer have spent endless hours trying to persuade Trump and his team that providing Kyiv with an American military element underpinning security guarantees is the only way to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin from attacking again in future.  Given how unreliable Trump has been as an ally to Europe, officials are now privately asking what those guarantees are really worth. Why would Russia take America’s word seriously? Why not, in a year or two, test it to make sure?  THE POST-DAVOS WORLD Then there’s the realignment of the entire international system.  There was something ironic about the setting for Trump’s assaults on the established world order, and about the identities of those who found themselves the harbingers of its end.  Among the snow-covered slopes of the Swiss resort of Davos, the world’s business and political elite gather each year to polish their networks, promote their products, brag about their successes, and party hard. The super rich, and the occasional president, generally arrive by helicopter.  As a central bank governor, Mark Carney had been one of the classic Davos set and was a regular attendee: suave, a little smug, and seeming entirely comfortable among snow-covered peaks and even loftier clientele.  Now prime minister of Canada, this sage of the centrist liberal orthodoxy had a shocking insight to share with his tribe: “Today,” Carney began this week, “I’ll talk about the rupture in the world order, the end of a nice story, and the beginning of a brutal reality where geopolitics among the great powers is not subject to any constraints.”  “The rules-based order is fading,” he intoned, to be replaced by a world of “great power rivalry” in which “the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”  “The old order is not coming back. We should not mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy.”  Carney impressed those European officials watching. He even quoted Finnish President Alexander Stubb, who has enjoyed outsized influence in recent months due to the connections he forged with Trump on the golf course.  NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, who once called Donald Trump “daddy,” also found his private text to Donald Trump made public, in which he praised the president’s “incredible” achievements, adding: “Can’t wait to see you.” |  Jim lo Scalzo/EPA Ultimately, Carney had a message for what he termed “middle powers” — countries like Canada. They could, he argued, retreat into isolation, building up their defenses against a hard and lawless world. Or they could build something “better, stronger and more just” by working together, and diversifying their alliances. Canada, another target of Trump’s territorial ambitions, has just signed a major partnership agreement with China. As they prepared for the summit in Brussels, European diplomats and officials contemplated the same questions. One official framed the new reality as the “post-Davos” world. “Now that the trust has gone, it’s not coming back,” another diplomat said. “I feel the world has changed fundamentally.”  A GOOD CRISIS It will be up to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and her team to devise ways to push the continent toward greater self-sufficiency, a state that Macron has called “strategic autonomy,” the diplomat said. This should cover energy, where the EU has now become reliant on imports of American gas.  The most urgent task is to reimagine a future for European defense that does not rely on NATO, the diplomat said. Already, there are many ideas in the air. These include a European Security Council, which would have the nuclear-armed non-EU U.K. as a member. Urgent efforts will be needed to create a drone industry and to boost air defenses.  The European Commission has already proposed a 100,000-strong standing EU army, so why not an elite special forces division as well? The Commission’s officials are world experts at designing common standards for manufacturing, which leaves them well suited to the task of integrating the patchwork of weapons systems used by EU countries, the same diplomat said.  Yet there is also a risk. Some officials fear that with Trump’s having backed down and a solution to the Greenland crisis now apparently much closer, EU leaders will lose the focus and clarity about the need for change they gained this past week. In a phrase often attributed to Churchill, the risk is that EU countries will “let a good crisis go to waste.”  Domestic political considerations will inevitably make it harder for national governments to commit funding to shared EU defense projects. As hard-right populism grows in major regional economies, like France, the U.K. and Germany, making the case for “more Europe” is harder than ever for the likes of Macron, Starmer and Merz. Even if NATO is in trouble, selling a European army will be tough.  While these leaders know they can no longer trust Trump’s America with Europe’s security, many of them lack the trust of their own voters to do what might be required instead. 

LONDON — Britain will not take part in Donald Trump’s controversial Board of Peace signing ceremony in Davos Thursday, the U.K.’s top diplomat said. Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said Britain will not be one of the opening signatories of the U.S. president’s body tasked with overseeing the reconstruction of Gaza after the Israel-Hamas war. “We won’t be one of the signatories today,” Cooper told the BBC, citing concerns the legal treaty “raises much broader issues.” “We do also have concerns about President Putin being part of something which is talking about peace when we have still not seen any signs from Putin that there will be a commitment to peace in Ukraine,” she added. The foreign secretary stressed Britain will still provide practical support for the Palestinian committee which is due to run Gaza and ensure humanitarian aid reaches citizens and Hamas’ weapons are decommissioned. She stressed “the other crucial issue that has a direct impact on U.K. security is getting a peace agreement for Ukraine. “And so far we have seen no sign that Putin is actually willing to come and make that agreement. That’s where the pressure needs to be now.” The U.S. president invited Russia’s Vladimir Putin to sit on the bloc tasked with resolving global conflicts. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he will take part, but France’s Emmanuel Macron has rejected membership over worries the U.N. will be undermined. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is expected to join the board’s executive committee.

BRUSSELS — European governments have reached a difficult conclusion: The Americans are the baddies now. As leaders of the EU’s 27 countries assemble in Brussels for an emergency summit Thursday, that assessment is predominant across almost all capitals in Europe, according to nine EU diplomats. These officials come from countries which have varying degrees of historic fondness of the U.S., and they made clear that this way of thinking is particularly stark in places that have previously had the strongest ties to Washington. The sense of dread and skepticism remains, and the summit will still go ahead, despite Donald Trump declaring late Wednesday that he’s struck a deal on Greenland and won’t impose tariffs on European countries after all — underscoring how the gathering has become more than just about the latest blowup. The U.S. president’s designs on Greenland, which he set out earlier in the day in Davos, Switzerland, demanding “immediate negotiations” to obtain the island, have come as a last straw for many leaders. Throughout the first year of his second term, they had clung to the hope that their worst fears about the country that has underpinned European security since 1945 wouldn’t be realized. But the moment for making nice “has ended” and “the time has come to stand up against Trump,” Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former NATO secretary-general and ex-Danish prime minister, told BBC radio. Several of the envoys that POLITICO spoke to for this article, all of whom were granted anonymity because of the sensitive nature of their work, said they felt personally betrayed, some having studied and worked in the U.S. or having advocated for closer transatlantic ties. “Our American Dream is dead,” said an EU diplomat from a country that has been among the bloc’s transatlantic champions. “Donald Trump murdered it.” Europe’s collective realization is likely to be in evidence at the summit ― not merely in potential decisions to prepare for retaliatory trade measures against the U.S., should Trump reverse course again and push ahead with his claims on Greenland. It will also be apparent in the statements leaders are likely to make to each other in private and then publicly. French President Emmanuel Macron foreshadowed that in his own speech in Davos, saying Europe had “very strong tools” and “we have to use them when we are not respected, and when the rules of the game are not respected.” LIMITED RELIEF Trump’s speech at Davos, during which he called Denmark’s self-governing island “our territory,” did nothing to dial down the temperature 24 hours before the leaders’ hastily arranged gathering in the Belgian capital to discuss their next response to the disintegrating postwar order. While Trump ruled out the use of military force to seize Greenland, EU governments didn’t regard this as a climbdown because of the harshness of his language about Europe in general and clear confirmation of his intentions, according to two EU diplomats. Trump did eventually walk back his threat of issuing tariffs on the eight European countries which he considered to be standing in his way on Greenland, but by that point, things were already too far gone. “Our American Dream is dead,” said an EU diplomat from a country that has been among the bloc’s transatlantic champions. “Donald Trump murdered it.” | Mandel Ngan/Getty Images “After the back and forth of the last few days, we should now wait and see what substantive agreements are reached between [NATO Secretary-General] Mr. Rutte and Mr. Trump,” Germany’s Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil told German broadcaster ZDF. “No matter what solution is now found for Greenland, everyone must understand that we cannot sit back, relax, and be satisfied.” The moment the U.S. president threatened those tariffs on Saturday was when the schism “became real,” said an EU diplomat. “Maybe this push gets us a few months, maybe it’s a more permanent thing,” said another, referring to Trump’s about-face. “I think [Trump’s] speech earlier today will give food for thought in most if not all capitals, tariffs or not.” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen summed up the mood during her Davos speech Tuesday. “The world has changed permanently,” she said. “We need to change with it.” At their summit, EU leaders will discuss the state of the transatlantic relationship. Prior to Trump’s tariff climbdown, they were preparing to ask the Commission to ready its most powerful trade weapon against the U.S., the Anti-Coercion Instrument (ACI), as POLITICO reported on Tuesday. The EU created its “trade bazooka” in 2023 to deal with the threat posed by what it perceived as hostile countries, most notably China, which it feared were using their markets and their economies to blackmail the EU into doing their bidding. The idea that Brussels would deploy it against the U.S. had previously been unthinkable. “We are experiencing a great rupture of the world order,” said a senior envoy from a country that was seen in the EU as a key American ally. Leaders will discuss “de-risking” from the U.S., the diplomat said — a term that has previously been reserved for the EU’s relationship with Beijing. “Trust is lost,” they said. THE THERAPY SUMMIT The summit will be akin to “therapy,” said one EU official familiar with the preparation for the European Council. It will provide an opportunity for the leaders to issue a concrete response to Trump’s Davos speech and subsequent claim of a deal. The assessment that the U.S. is no longer a reliable ally has come gradually. The scales first fell from Europe’s leaders’ eyes when the Trump administration published its National Security Strategy in early December, in which it vowed to boost “patriotic European parties” to the detriment of the EU. (Which may go some way to explaining why some EU leaders, like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, are still clinging to Trump.) Then, Trump renewed his rhetoric about taking Greenland, the U.S. ambassador to Iceland called himself the governor of the 52nd U.S. state, and Trump sent a letter to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, in which he said that his failure to be awarded the Nobel Peace meant he would “no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace.”  One senior EU envoy said they were convinced the letter was a fake. Its authenticity was then confirmed. Two senior diplomats POLITICO spoke with separately compared the current state of the U.S. with the time leading up to World War II. “I think we are past Munich now,” said one, referring to a 1938 meeting where Britain, France and Italy appeased Adolf Hitler by allowing him to annex Czechoslovakia. “We realize that appeasement is not the right policy anymore.” The abrupt decline of U.S. standing has been particularly painful for Denmark, which Trump called “ungrateful” in Davos. Copenhagen has been shocked by his behavior, having for decades been among America’s most friendly allies. Denmark deployed forces in support of the U.S. to some of the most dangerous combat zones in the Middle East, including Helmand Province in Afghanistan. The country suffered among the worst per-capita losses of life. “So many of us have studied in the U.S., we all wanted to work there,” said one Danish official. “This is simply betrayal.” Gabriel Gavin, Nicholas Vinocur, Tim Ross and Nette Nöstlinger contributed reporting.

KYIV — Without electricity for 12 hours a day, the fridge is no longer any use. But it’s a stable minus 10 degrees Celsius on the balcony, so I store my food there. Outside today you’ll find chicken soup, my favorite vegetable salad and even my birthday cake — all staying fresh in the biting chill. This is the latest terror the Russians have inflicted on our capital — during the cruelest winter since their all-out invasion began in February 2022. They have smashed our energy grids and central heating networks with relentless drone attacks; the frost then does the rest, caking power cables and heating pipes in thick ice that prevents repairs.  At times the temperature drops to minus 20 C and the frost permeates my apartment, its crystals covering the windows and invading the walls. Russia’s latest attack disrupted heating for 5,600 residential buildings in Kyiv, including mine.  My daily routine now includes interspersing work with a lot of walking up and down from the 14th floor of my apartment block, carrying liters of water, most importantly to my grandmother. Granny turned 80 last year. Her apartment at least has a gas stove, meaning we can pour boiling water into rubber hot water bottles and tie them to her body. “Why can’t anyone do anything to make Putin stop?” she cries, complaining that the cold gnaws into every bone of her body. The Kremlin’s attempt to freeze us to death has been declared a national emergency, and millions of Ukrainians have certainly had it harder than I. Many have been forced to move out and stay in other cities, while others practically live in malls or emergency tents where they can work and charge their phones and laptops.  FEELING FORGOTTEN Kyiv is crying out for help, but our plight rarely makes the headlines these days. All the attention now seems focused on a potential U.S. invasion of Greenland. Our president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, complains he now has to fight tooth-and-nail to secure deliveries of air-defense missiles from allies in Europe and America.  “In these times when so many lives are being lost … you still have to fight for all these missiles for various air defenses. You beg for them, squeeze them out by force,” he said.   His outrage that Ukraine’s allies are losing interest has struck a bitter chord this winter. The West’s reluctance to give us security guarantees makes us feel the Kremlin’s crimes are being normalized. Watching Greenland only makes us more afraid. Many Ukrainians no longer believe international law can do anything to rein in the world’s superpowers. Might is right, once again. We are living through what happens when an unchecked superpower is allowed to kill at will. Russia’s goal is to break our defiance, mentally and physically. Weapons designed to sink warships are being turned against our power plants, government buildings and apartments.  KEEP GOING When you’re forced to shiver in the dark for so long, deprived of sleep by nightly missile barrages, you can quickly slide into despair.   “What can I do to cheer you up, Mom?” I asked via a late-night WhatsApp message. “Do something with Putin,” she replied sarcastically, adding she can handle everything else. That means getting up and working every day, no matter how cold or miserable she feels. Veronika Melkozerova/POLITICO Whenever workers manage to restore the grid after yet another attack, the light brings with it a brief moment of elation, then a huge to-do list. We charge our gadgets, fill bottles and buckets with water, cook our food — and then put it out on our balconies.  What’s inspiring is the genuine sense that people will carry on and keep the country running — even though there’s no end in sight to this sub-zero terror. Just do your job, pay your rent, pay your taxes, keep the country afloat. That’s the mission.  So much of the city functions regardless. I can get my granny an emergency dental surgery appointment the same day. Recently, when I went for my evening Pilates — ’cause what else you gonna do in the dark and cold — I saw a woman defiantly getting a manicure in her coat and hat, from a manicurist who wore a flashlight strapped to her head. Bundled-up couriers still deliver food, but the deal is they won’t climb beyond the fifth floor, so those of us up on the 14th have to go down to meet them. Personally, I have access to any kind of food — from our iconic borscht to sushi. I can charge my gadgets and find warmth and shelter at a mall down the street. The eternally humming generators, many of them gifts from Ukrainian businesses and European allies, rekindle memories of a European unity that now seems faded.  Critically, everything comes back to the resilience of the people. Amid all the despair, you see your fellow Ukrainians — people labeled as weak, or bad managers — pressing on with their duties and chores at temperatures where hypothermia and frostbite are a real danger. That’s not to say cracks aren’t showing. The central and local governments have been passing the buck over who failed to prepare Kyiv for this apocalypse. Some streets are covered with ice, with municipal services having to fight frost and the consequences of Russian bombing at the same time. But there’s a real solidarity, a sense that all of us have to dig in — just like our army, our air defenses, our energy workers and rescue services. I find it impossible not to love our nation as it endures endless murderous onslaughts from a superpower. No matter how hard the Russians try to make our lives unbearable, we’re going to make it.

BRUSSELS — Donald Trump’s address to the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday will help determine the tone of Europe’s response to the U.S. president’s tariff threats as leaders desperately search for an off-ramp from the standoff. European governments are holding out hope they can lower the temperature and get Trump to abandon his vow to slap punitive tariffs on European countries that have opposed the sale of Greenland to the U.S. POLITICO spoke to 11 diplomats and two EU officials, all of whom said they want to avoid retaliation and are betting that a diplomatic solution to the crisis can still be found. “The focus is getting the ball rolling in Davos. Then, we will take stock” at an emergency EU leaders’ summit convened for Thursday, said one EU diplomat. “The pressure needs to come down.” Trump’s announcement on Saturday, in which he threatened six EU countries plus the U.K. and Norway with additional 10 per cent tariffs as of next month because they haven’t supported his designs on Greenland, a semi-autonomous territory in the Kingdom of Denmark, has sparked the biggest rupture in transatlantic relations in decades. A key reason the EU is loath to come out swinging is that no one knows whether Trump will actually follow through on his threats — and they are terrified of needlessly exploding already-frayed transatlantic ties, according to the diplomats. All the diplomats and EU officials POLITICO spoke with cautioned that it was too early to threaten to deploy the EU’s Anti-Coercion Instrument, or “trade bazooka,” an idea being championed by French President Emmanuel Macron. Wielding the instrument — an all-purpose tool meant to deter other countries from using trade tactics to extort concessions in other areas — still faces significant opposition. The leader of the EU’s biggest political force, the European People’s Party group, said at an internal meeting on Monday that the option should be off the table and that the EU must be tough with the Americans in private but deescalate in public, according to two people in the room. German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul and his Italian counterpart Antonio Tajani took a similar line at the same meeting. “We need to be very moderate because our goal is not to fight with the Americans. Our goal is to strengthen our economies.” Tajani told POLITICO. “We want to talk” with the Americans. MEP Nicola Procaccini, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s right-hand man in the European Parliament, added: “We have to avoid the escalations.” Three diplomats POLITICO spoke with said the tool was still being considered — but as a last-resort option that requires more consideration within capitals. Ambassadors on Monday relayed a growing resolve to hit back that had emerged from their three-hour meeting on Sunday. “The mood is shifting,” said a senior EU diplomat. “We need to be stronger and firmer. He [Trump] probably respects the show of force more than the hand that you extend to him because this is for him a sign of weakness.” In parallel, European embassies in Washington are coordinating among themselves to reach out to key U.S. industries and firms that would be hit by potential EU countermeasures in an effort to build pressure on Trump to abandon the plan, according to two of the diplomats. They are also reaching out to members of Trump’s entourage and to Republicans running for reelection in mid-term elections in the U.S. in November. “What we are trying to do is influence members of Congress,” said the senior EU diplomat above, who was in the room when ambassadors held their emergency meeting on Sunday evening. “They are Republicans, they are up for reelection in November. They have to think about their audiences at home. We are trying to convince them to do something.” “European patience and tolerance are at an all-time low. But that doesn’t mean that collectively we would be prepared to use” the full force of the EU’s trade weapons, said a national official. “We’re trying to deescalate this week.” Zoya Sheftalovich and Nicholas Vinocur reported from Brussels; Max Griera reported from Strasbourg. Gerardo Fortuna, Gabriel Gavin, Jacopo Barigazzi and Seb Starcevic contributed reporting.

BRUSSELS — The trade war is back. Donald Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on European countries over Greenland has blown up last year’s transatlantic trade truce and forced the EU into a familiar dilemma: hit back hard, or try to buy time.  On paper, Brussels has options. It could target politically sensitive U.S. exports like Republican-state soybeans. Or it could unleash its trade “bazooka,” the Anti-Coercion Instrument. Here are the actions that EU leaders can consider when they gather for an emergency summit on Thursday: HITTING BACK AGAINST U.S. PRODUCTS Retaliatory tariffs on €93 billion worth of U.S. goods are still sitting in the EU’s pantry. These date back to Trump’s first round of tariffs last year and were frozen for six months in August. This package will automatically kick into force on Feb. 7 unless the Commission proposes to extend the freeze and the 27 EU countries agree with that. Such a suspension can happen very quickly, however, as the Commission typically sounds out support from capitals several times a week. Part of the package targets distinctively American products like Levi’s jeans, Harley Davidson motorcycles and Kentucky bourbon. Other goods would be targeted because they originate in states that lean towards the Republican side of the spectrum. A tariff on soy beans, for instance, would target the red state of Louisiana from which House Speaker Mike Johnson hails. DEPLOYING THE TRADE “BAZOOKA” The biggest weapon in the EU’s arsenal is its Anti-Coercion Instrument. This all-purpose tool is meant to deter other countries from using trade tactics to extort concessions in other areas. With it, Brussels can impose or increase customs duties, restrict exports or imports through quotas or licenses, and impose restrictions on trade in services. It also can curb access to public procurement, foreign direct investment, intellectual property rights and access to the bloc’s financial markets.  But in a case like this, it would take a few months to first clear diplomatic hurdles between the Commission and the Trump administration. Because it has never been triggered before, the EU is in uncharted waters. That is especially true for the dynamics between the Commission and national capitals. Brussels needs to propose launching the mechanism, and would only do so if it knows enough capitals will agree. France is keen, but Germany and other countries? Not so much. Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images “It’s one of the cards,” but “it’s really not the first in the line that you use,” Lithuanian Finance Minister Kristupas Vaitiekūnas told POLITICO in an interview. PLAYING THE CHINA CARD Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney did something unprecedented last Friday. Turning the page on the acrimonious relationship between Canada and China born out of the arrest of a high-profile Huawei executive, the Canadian leader struck a preliminary trade deal with Beijing to liberalize imports of Chinese electric vehicles in exchange for a steep reduction in tariffs on Canadian agricultural goods. Carney didn’t mention Trump by name, but the message was clear: Canada has other partners, and it won’t sit quietly while Washington tries to strong-arm it.   A blueprint for Brussels? It’s not that simple. While the EU has tried to thread the needle on its trade relations with Beijing — the Asian country remains its second-largest trading partner  — policymakers are keenly aware of the competitive threat posed by China, Inc. Germany’s automotive industry is reeling from high energy prices and fierce competition from China (now the world’s top automotive exporter). In general, overcapacity — the term for China’s dizzying output of products that, unable to be absorbed by its domestic market, are sold abroad — keeps EU business leaders up at night. Compared with Canada, for the EU China is a “whole different can of worms,” said trade expert David Kleimann. “The Chinese are outcompeting us on all of our main exports and domestic production,” he said. “We will need more barriers, more managed trade with China.”  AN ASSET FIRESALE America’s enormous debt pile is one Achilles heel. The U.S. loves to spend, and Europeans, in turn, snap up that debt. George Saravelos, head of foreign exchange research at Deutsche Bank, said that European public and private sector entities hold a combined total of $8 trillion of U.S. stocks and debt — “twice as much as the rest of the world combined.”  “In an environment where the geoeconomic stability of the western alliance is being disrupted existentially, it is not clear why Europeans would be as willing to play this part,” the analyst wrote in a note to clients. If European governments order their banks and pension funds to dump their holdings, that would almost certainly spark a financial crisis, sending America’s borrowing costs soaring. The ensuing financial Armageddon would engulf Europe as well, though. The firesale of financial assets would crush prices, and European lenders would book huge losses — the financial equivalent of nuclear mutually assured destruction.  Increasing decoupling from the U.S. financial system looks likely, but a violent wholesale break is extremely unlikely.  PLAYING FOR TIME Restraint is the EU’s weapon of choice for now. “The priority here is to engage, not escalate, and avoid the imposition of tariffs,” Olof Gill, deputy chief spokesperson for the European Commission, said on Monday. Under their trade deal struck last year, the United States has already lowered tariffs on most EU products to 15 percent, while the EU has yet to make good on its pledge to cut its tariffs on U.S. industrial goods to zero. That’s because Trump’s threats have derailed a vote in the European Parliament on lowering tariffs for U.S. products. While this stalemate lasts, EU companies actually benefit from lower costs while the reverse is not true for their American counterparts. “Trade continues to flow, investment continues to flow,” Gill added. “So we need to be very sensible in how we approach the difference between a threat and operational reality.” With Trump trying to drive a wedge between European leaders by threatening tariffs against some countries, including France and Germany, while sparing others, like Italy, maintaining cohesion will be a huge challenge. Any serious retaliation, such as wielding the bloc’s trade “bazooka,” the Anti-Coercion Instrument, would require very broad support. WHAT COMES NEXT The U.S. Supreme Court might rule on some of Trump’s tariffs as soon as Tuesday. If the administration loses the case, Trump would have to deal with the fallout while he’s attending this week’s World Economic Forum in Davos.  “On a purely economic warfare basis, that would play in our favor,” said Kleimann. “But we haven’t considered Trump’s ambitions to actually put boots on the ground.” At Davos, Trump might meet with Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, although no bilateral is yet confirmed. Von der Leyen will speak at Davos on Tuesday; Trump is due to arrive the day after.  Then on Thursday, EU government leaders hold an emergency summit in Brussels to discuss transatlantic relations and the latest tariff threats. The meeting is not expected to create a glitzy attack plan but rather to sound out whether the EU should indeed target the U.S. goods or maybe shoulder its trade bazooka. By Feb. 1, the U.S. tariffs on the European allies would kick in, if Trump follows through on his threats. A week later, the EU’s retaliation package automatically kicks in if no solution is found. If that happens, we really will be in a trade war.