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[Opinion] Europe is selling its soul to Trump
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this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2025
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I'll be honest, I don't think the tariffs are such a big deal as it is made out to be. Trade and exports from the EU are generally up, the tarriff thing just shifted them out of the US. We're diversifying, that's actually good. VdL is a problem in that she is completely incompetent at her job, and it makes international diplomacy tricky.
When the EU went to negotiate with Trump on Ukraine, they didn't just send vdL, they sent Macron and Merz and a lot of other people, because someone actually needed to get the job done. The problem is that those people do not represent an economic superpower of an EU, they represent a collection of regional powers. We need to get to a point where we have an EU representation in such talks that can be trusted, we need a person of Macron's competence who has the whole of the EU behind him.
Not that I don't think Macron is a shitlib, but he's at least a competent one.
The EU broke the newly established convention that the people elect the president to make her president. It was a very explicit decision to have her as president. To top this off, she was in German headlines at the time for corruption at her defence ministry, which every other country must have known.
She must be very competent at something and people in power trust her deeply.
Von der Leyen shows that we need much more if the EU should work as promised.
edit:
Problem solved
Trump claims EU leaders call him ‘president of Europe’ - Euractiv
I think a big problem that the EU has is that it's still working as an international treaty rather than an elected representative body. As in, you don't elect people in the EU legislature, you elect people who elect people who elect people in there.
The problem is that each layer leaves an increasing proportion of people behind, and makes it more likely that the outcome does not align with what people want, and in a spectacular fashion. Like US presidential elections on steroids. Then, people don't feel represented, or feel better represented by the people they actually elect, and euroscepticism grows.
BTW, no, I'd guess most people didn't know about her corruption until after she got into office. Domestic corruption scandals rarely get EU-wide attention. She also got into a corruption scandal since with Pfizer, so I guess her antics didn't stop.
I feel that a lot of bigger member states use the EU and NATO as a dumping ground for well connected but domestically unpalatable politicians. Like Mark Rutte became NATO chief right after falling out of favor in Dutch national politics.
That's not a mistake. Together with EU law having precedence over national law, that's the lever to control Europe.
It looks like that but
going against the population is the qualification needed for the job.
People didn't elect her but national governments. It's impossible that they didn't know. I would assume that they even knew details that weren't published.
That's the small part. The big part is that she was allowed to delete the messages.