I addressed a group of more than 100 European ambassadors recently on the big challenges facing the continent this year and next. My main point to these senior diplomats was that, perhaps counterintuitively, Europe’s biggest external challenges over the next 12 months will come from Russia and China, rather than the US.
Europe’s relationship with Trump’s America remains difficult. The US president has weakened confidence in Nato, raised new transatlantic trade tensions and introduced uncertainty into everything from US support for Ukraine to his territorial designs on Greenland. Yet paradoxically, and notwithstanding Trump’s latest tariff threats over the EU’s outreach to Canada, the transatlantic relationship is becoming the more stable part of Europe’s external environment. Not stable, but more stable.
