“OUR mentality is not ‘America elects and Europe reacts,’” the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, told EU leaders gathered in Budapest for an informal European Council (EUCO) meeting last Friday. Rather, Ms Metsola said, the approach was simply: “Europe Acts.”

Speaking two days after Donald Trump’s victory (News, 8 November), Ms Metsola was clearly trying to play down the impact of the US election outcome on Europe’s strategic position. Her argument echoed the Polish Prime Minster, Donald Tusk, who had written on X two days before polling day that, regardless of the result, Europe’s future “depends first and foremost on us”. It was urgent, he argued, that “Europe finally grows up and believes in its own strength”. Indeed, regardless of the outcome, “the era of geopolitical outsourcing is over.”

Unfortunately, though, as consultations between the leaders of Europe unfolded over two days in Budapest, it became clear that their scope to chart an independent geopolitical course independent of the US is severely constrained. There were also strong signs that the Trump victory has reordered Europe’s internal balance of power.

THE Budapest gathering had two parts. First, a meeting of the European Political Community (EPC), on Thursday of last week, involved 42 national leaders. This was followed by a smaller EUCO meeting the next day. The presidents of the EU’s three key institutions -— Parliament, Commission, and Council — also participated in the EPC, as did the secretary general of NATO, Mark Rutte.

Established in 2022, the EPC seeks to foster wider European solidarity after the full-scale invasion by Russia of Ukraine. The EPC includes all European countries, regardless of EU membership (except Belarus, Russia, and the Vatican). The EUCO, meanwhile, is the EU’s forum for heads of state and government.

On 5 November, European leaders, who had a difficult relationship with Mr Trump in his first term, rushed to offer him their enthusiastic congratulations. Among them was the European Commission President, Dr Ursula von der Leyen.

In 2021, Dr von der Leyen described herself as being left “aghast” and “deeply concerned” by Mr Trump’s attitude towards NATO in 2017, when she was Germany’s Defence Minister. Last week, however, she welcomed Mr Trump’s victory “warmly”; the next day, she said that she was “looking forward to working with him again”.

The French President, Emmanuel Macron, was also quick to congratulate Mr Trump. Yet, during the EPC meeting, he reiterated his call for Europe to embrace “strategic autonomy” in defence: a stance that is independent of (but not hostile to) the United States. “The world is made up of herbivores and carnivores,” he said. “If we decide to remain herbivores, then the carnivores will win, and we will be a market for them. I don’t want to be aggressive — just that we know how to defend ourselves.”

President Macron’s proposal rings hollow, however, given that at neither the EPC nor the EUCO was any indication given about European countries’ willingness to bolster support for Ukraine, should Mr Trump cut off American aid to Kyiv.

Furthermore, no comprehensive defence plan, even for the EU alone, is plausible without strong Franco-German co-operation. After Germany’s three-party governing coalition collapsed in acrimony last week, this is impossible. Chancellor Olaf Scholz now has no working parliamentary majority, but wants to use procedural delays to stay in office until elections in March 2025. This leaves his country in limbo, and Scholz unable to make any reliable pledges to either Ukraine or EU partners.

AGAINST this background, Europeans simply cannot present a strong united front to the Trump administration. It is even possible that the EU might seek to cultivate Mr Trump through the agency of those (until now peripheral) European politicians who have become close to him during his years in opposition.

Chief among them is the Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, who hosted both of last week’s summits, on account of his country’s holding the rotating presidency of the EU. Mr Orbán has developed a notably close relationship with Mr Trump in recent times. Mr Trump praised the Hungarian premier while on the campaign trail. During a televised debate with Kamala Harris on 11 September, he even described Mr Orbán as “one of the most respected men”.

Disturbingly, the reverse in Mr Orbán’s fortunes from being a pariah to being “Trump whisperer” was, seemingly, already evident during last week’s summits. For one thing, unlike other events in Hungary’s EU Presidency programme, the EPC and EUCO meetings did not face a boycott by either the Commission or member states.

For another European politician, the personal mood has become notably warmer. Only last month, Dr von der Leyen clashed angrily with Mr Orbán in the European Parliament on account of Hungary’s deteriorating rule-of-law situation and its government’s ties to Russia. In Budapest last week, however, the Commission President addressed Hungary’s premier tenderly before the cameras as “dear Viktor”.


The Revd Alexander Faludy is a freelance journalist based in Budapest.