BRUSSELS—U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence told a Europe rattled by U.S. President Donald Trump’s insults of European institutions and perplexing comments about nonexistent incidents in Sweden that Trump actually fully supported the European Union and NATO.
“The president did ask me to come here to Brussels to the home of the European Union and deliver an additional message,” Pence said while standing next to Donald Tusk, president of the European Council and a former prime minister of Poland. “So today it’s my privilege on behalf of President Trump to express the strong commitment of the United States to continued co-operation and partnership with the European Union.”
Smiles and handshakes abounded before and after Pence delivered his reassuring words, but Europeans — taken aback by Trump’s occasional fulminations against European institutions that had long been the bedrock of U.S. policy here — were still wary.
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In January, Trump called the EU “basically a vehicle for Germany,” language that stunned leaders of the bloc, which has been struggling with economic malaise, migration and Britain’s intention to withdraw. Days later, Tusk, who represents the union’s 28 national leaders, described Trump’s bombastic and skeptical language as a potential threat to European unity alongside Russian aggression, Chinese assertiveness and Islamist terrorism.
And just moments before Pence held his final news conference of his first overseas trip here, Trump posted on Twitter: “The FAKE NEWS media is trying to say that large scale immigration in Sweden is working out just beautifully. NOT!” (Sweden is a member of the EU, but not of NATO.)
On Monday, after meeting with Pence, Tusk said he felt reassured. In a detailed statement, he said he had asked Pence whether the Trump administration was committed to maintaining an international order based on rules and laws; whether Trump was committed to NATO and to “the closest possible trans-Atlantic co-operation”; and whether Europe could count “as always in the past, on the United States’ wholehearted and unequivocal, let me repeat, unequivocal support for the idea of a united Europe.”
Among the concerns shared by many European policy-makers is the possibility that the Trump administration will impose protectionist tariffs as part of the president’s goal of bringing jobs back to the United States.
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