EU reveals weak hand as Trump raids Venezuela and threatens Greenland
On Sunday morning, a little more than 24 hours after US bombers, fighter jets and helicopters attacked Caracas and special forces seized Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, the European Commission posted on social media. The EU’s executive said nothing about an operation that multiple national leaders outside Europe, opposition politicians inside it and pretty much every available legal expert had denounced as a gross violation of international law. Instead, it wished Europeans a safe return from their holidays and pointed out that if they could travel across borders with only their ID cards and were guaranteed refunds or compensation in the event of bus, train or plane delays, it was thanks to the EU. This stuff – free movement, consumer protection, holiday entitlements – the EU can do. Condemning a powerful, longtime ally and standing up for liberal democracy, multilateralism and the rules-based international order? Not quite so much. The EU is in a deep, deep bind over Donald Trump’s smash-and-grab raid on Venezuela – just as it is over his repeated assertions that the US “absolutely” needs to take control of Greenland, a self-governing territory of the Kingdom of Denmark. “If Europe acquiesces in US actions against the Maduro regime, it risks weakening the legal principles that underpin its opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” said Alberto Alemanno, a professor of EU law, neatly summing up the dilemma. “If, however, it condemns those actions,” Alemanno said, “Europe risks alienating its primary security guarantor and straining transatlantic unity – at a moment when collective defence against Russia is especially critical.” Europe’s leaders, who have heard Volodymyr Zelenskyy say a peace deal is “90% ready” and on Tuesday met the Ukrainian president and the US envoy Steve Witkoff in Paris to discuss US-backed postwar security guarantees for Kyiv, are desperate not to derail it. More broadly, they are also keen to avoid antagonising a US president who has made no secret of his contempt for Europe and its leaders for fear of reviving trade tensions or undermining already withered US security guarantees to Europe generally. The weak position this has left them in was on full display in the aftermath of Trump’s Venezuela operation. In a statement, France’s Emmanuel Macron said he would shed no tears for Maduro. In an even more contorted response, the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, also stressed Maduro’s illegitimacy as Venezuela’s leader – and added that “legal assessment” of the US raid was “complex and requires careful consideration”. Italy’s Giorgia Meloni went further, describing the attack as “legitimate” self-defence, while the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, resorted to the well-worn formula that the bloc was “following the situation closely”. A few leaders, most notably Spain’s Pedro Sánchez, were more outspoken. Spain “did not recognise the Maduro regime”, the Spanish prime minister said bluntly, “but neither will it recognise an intervention that violates international law”. But the overall response came across as circumspect and was perhaps best characterised by the fact that Trump himself gleefully endorsed the French president’s remarks, reposting them on his Truth Social network. Europe’s populist far right, meanwhile, had a field day. Unburdened by the responsibilities of government, Marine Le Pen of France’s National Rally (RN) declared the sovereignty of states “inviolable, sacred … and never negotiable”. Her protege, Jordan Bardella, also jumped at the chance to make elected leaders look bad, saying that the “forcible overthrow of a government from the outside” was never “an acceptable response”, even to a “bloodthirsty and ruthless dictatorship”. Was Europe’s response right? Nathalie Tocci of Rome’s Istituto Affari Internazionali argued forcefully it was not. “The more European countries act as colonies, unable and unwilling to stand up to Trump, the more they’ll be treated as such,” she said. Dr John Cotter, a researcher in EU constitutional law at Keele University, was equally forthright. European leaders who failed to condemn the US attack “out of fear of provoking Trump’s ire” were missing two fundamental points, he said. “First, Trump clearly doesn’t care what they think. Second, he couldn’t hold them in more contempt anyway. In fact their mealy mouthed responses … will only heighten his contempt. European leaders might as well have shown some dignity.” There are signs, though, that European resolve may finally be hardening when it comes to Greenland – led by straight-talking Denmark. “I have to say this very directly to the United States,” the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said. “The US has no right to annex any … of the Kingdom of Denmark.” Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, went further, accusing the US of “completely and utterly unacceptable” rhetoric and telling it to give up “fantasies about annexation”. On Tuesday, the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and the UK backed Denmark. “Greenland belongs to its people,” they said. “It is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland.” Few experts think Trump will attempt a military intervention on the Arctic territory, which is covered by the Nato alliance. But nor do many rule out a political operation to boost US military clout on the strategically located, resource-rich island. And while their verbal rebuff of Trump’s Greenland threats may be significantly stiffer than their responses to his Venezuela raid, no one is willing to say what actual steps the EU and its members may take were the US to attempt any kind of grab. Mujtaba Rahman of the Eurasia Group risk consultancy warned: “A possible US intervention in Greenland is the biggest source of risk to the transatlantic alliance, and to intra-Nato and intra-EU cohesion – arguably far greater than [the risk] presented by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.” To receive the complete version of This Is Europe in your inbox every Wednesday, please subscribe here.
