At in informal dinner on Sunday 13 November that was dedicated to the consequences of the election of Donald Trump as US president, the foreign ministers of the EU member states insisted both on the need to continue investing in the transatlantic partnership and on the need to strengthen European policies and actions independently.
"There is unity among the 28 as to the need, first and foremost, to continue to work on the strength of the transatlantic relationship", High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini said at the end of the dinner. She underlined the need to work on maintaining the multilateral system at international level, be it for implementing the climate change agreement, for safeguarding the Iranian nuclear programme agreement, for trade issues or for crises on which the EU and USA have worked on together under US President Barack Obama's administration.
Mogherini added that the ministers had "also discussed the need to strengthen European unity around a few key questions, which will be still more important in the months to come". Belgium's Foreign Minister Didier Reynders was of the same opinion. In his view, Europeans must strengthen their voice on the international scene, especially as regards defence, security, climate change, trade and migration. "These are important subjects where we should perhaps take a stronger place", he said.
Mogherini and the ministers also announced that they were going to talk to Trump's transition team in order to obtain a better feel for the future directions of his presidency. Europeans currently remain uncertain of this. "Everyone said we had to wait because, in a rational way, it is difficult to know what the Trump administration wants to do. But while waiting, we should be active in Washington", Luxembourg's Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn summed up. "There is always a distance between a candidate and an elected president", said his Slovak counterpart, Mirsolav Lajcak. He added that it was important not to speculate on the policy that Trump will adopt, but to see the practical measures that will be taken. "We must tell him our expectations with regard to this partnership. We have a heritage to protect", he added. Mogherini announced that she would invite the new US secretary of state, whose name is as yet unknown, to the next Foreign Affairs Council.
And although the Europeans would have preferred to see Hillary Clinton in the White House, several ministers refused to describe the dinner as a crisis meeting. In their view, at a time when the whole world is talking about the US election result, it would have been strange for European foreign ministers not to have met to talk about it. The dinner was marked by the absence of two foreign ministers whose countries are on the United Nations Security Council – the UK and France. These two countries were represented at the dinner by their respective ambassadors to the EU. The Hungarian foreign minister, whose government is delighted about Trump's election, was also absent.
Meanwhile, outgoing US President Barack Obama said in an interview with Greek daily newspaper Ekathimerini on 12 November that the best chance for progress in the face of transnational challenges was to resist the desire to start looking inwards and to re-boot common (European and American) values and work together for political and economic institutions to guarantee security and prosperity. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)