On Friday 10 March, High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini announced that she would visit Washington in the coming days.
"I'll be in Washington again for my second visit in a month next week, for other meetings and for our joint work on the counter-terrorist and counter-Daesh coalition that we are part of", she said in a discussion at the AmCham EU Transatlantic Conference in Brussels.
When questioned by Europe Diplomacy & Defence, the spokesperson for the European External Action Service confirmed that Mogherini "will be in Washington next week, where she will have bilateral meetings with the administration and with Congress". Mogherini will make a speech at Carnegie on International Nuclear Policy conference on 20 March, and will attend the meeting of the Islamic State anti-organisation coalition on 22 March.
During the AmCham conference in Brussels, Mogherini spoke about the transatlantic relationship, calling on the Americans not to challenge the importance of the EU and the unity of Europeans. In her view, the "most pressing" challenge for the EU is the lack of self-confidence in the European identity. "If your best friend, the Americans, challenges the value of being European, and of being united, this does not help you out of the identity crisis", she added, saying that the USA recognised the added value of the EU and transatlantic cooperation. In her opinion, the EU will soon be 60 but it acts as if if is16. Mogherini compared the EU to a pretty teenage girl who thinks she is ugly, that everything is going badly and that she will never make it. "If your big brother tells you 'of course you're ugly' that doesn't help", she said.
"It would be better not to play with a dangerous, divisive message because there is a risk of ruining something good, necessary and vital, without realising that you are doing so", Mogherini added, saying that the EU was "the most successful project in history". "And the USA risks losing if it challenges the value of the EU and the unity of the Union. It risks losing 70 years of investment. Don't destroy what you have helped to build", she concluded. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)