EU ministers plan joint trip to US – Politico

Top diplomats of France, Poland and Germany reportedly want to send a signal of unity to Washington

The foreign ministers of France, Germany and Poland are planning a joint trip to the US as a show of unity, Politico EU has reported.

While the visit is still at the planning stage and no date has been set, the trio wants to arrive shortly after the January 20 inauguration of President Donald Trump, three EU diplomats told the outlet on condition of anonymity on Wednesday.

Jean-Noel Barrot of France, Annalena Baerbock of Germany and Radoslaw Sikorski of Poland might even be accompanied by EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, according to two of the diplomats.

The idea behind the trip would be to make a “show of European unity,” one of the diplomats said.

The EU has struggled to respond to Trump’s talk of the US taking over Greenland, an Arctic island that is currently an autonomous territory of Denmark. The Danish government has ruled out selling the island and suggested it would be unacceptable of the US to take it from a fellow NATO member by force.

“There is no question of the EU letting other nations in the world, whoever they may be, attack its sovereign borders,” Barrot has told France Inter radio.

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The European Commission, however, declined to take a position on the issue.

French President Emmanuel Macron has argued that Trump won’t be able to resolve the Russia-Ukraine conflict quickly and that the role of Washington should be to bring Moscow to the table.

Barrot, who has been France’s foreign minister since September, is a holdover from Michel Barnier’s cabinet that lost parliamentary confidence in early December. Germany’s ‘traffic light’ coalition that Baerbock is part of crumbled in November and faces a general election in February.

The current government of Poland took power in December 2023 through post-electoral coalition-building. While still in the opposition, Sikorski caused a minor scandal by posting “Thank you, USA” after the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines which had delivered Russian gas to Germany.

Trump has also rattled the European NATO members by declaring this week that their levels of military spending were too low. As many as 15 members of the bloc have failed to reach the minimum target of 2% of their GDP by mid-2024. According to the US president-elect, even that is nowhere near enough and they ought to be spending at least 5%, which none of the members of the bloc are currently capable of.