EU Commission president wants clarity from Trump on NATO, trade
The European Commission president expects that in the
next few months, US President-elect Donald Trump will clarify his stances on
NATO, trade with Europe, and climate change – issues on which he made
controversial statements during his campaign.
“We would like to know how things will proceed with
global trade policy,” Jean-Claude
Juncker said at a business event in Berlin. “We would like to know what
intentions he has regarding the (NATO) alliance. We must know what climate
policies he intends to pursue. This must be cleared up in the next few months.”
Trump said European members of NATO were not pulling
their weight and that the US may consider dropping out of the alliance because
of it. He also questioned global climate change and spoke out against free
trade, blaming it for job losses in the US.
Earlier on Wednesday, Junker said the EU needed an
army of its own to ensure its security. Part of the opposition to the idea of a
pan-European military force came over the fact that it would compete with NATO
as a security provider on the continent.
Junker, who spoke at a business event in the German
capital on Thursday, said he now did not expect the Transatlantic Trade and
Investment Partnership (TTIP), a trade deal between the US and the EU, to be
signed any time soon.
“The trade deal with the United States, I do not view
that as something that would happen in the next two years,” he said.
Seeing TTIP signed is one of the key goals of the
Obama administration, but the treaty has been stalled due to bickering between
Washington and European capitals. European powerhouses like Germany and France
blamed the US for this, saying America would not compromise on issues critical
for the Europeans. The negotiations came amid growing protest in Europe, with
critics concerned that TTIP would give too much power to big corporations while
eroding the EU’s labor, health, and environmental standards.
The European Commission head acknowledged that the
rise of Euroscepticism could be partially explained by the commission’s record
of “sticking its nose” into the details of people’s lives.
“There is now a draft for an EU directive, which I
stopped, about the height of heels of female hairdressers all over Europe,”Juncker said. “So I stopped that and now I
have a row with the European labor unions.”
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