Donald Trump's progress in the polls increases concerns in Europe

Donald Trump appears more than ever as the undisputed favorite of the Republican primaries which will begin on January 15 with the state of Iowa, despite the legal actions which hinder the return of the businessman to the top of the Grand Old Party .

At the same time, in the hypothesis of a victory for Trump concerning the Republican nomination, the polls seem to turn, in a limited but significant way, in favor of him against Joe Biden, to become (or remain) , the next tenant of the White House.

For a long time, this possibility had been ruled out, or at least ignored, by European leaders, particularly for NATO member countries whose defense relies mainly on American military support.

Already in 2020, Donald Trump declared that NATO was dead, according to Thierry Breton

While the perspective is emerging more and more clearly through the polls, concerns are surfacing on both sides of the Atlantic, particularly regarding Trump's announced desire to put the United States out of the Alliance, and even to withdraw from it.

This January 9, the European Commissioner, Thierry Breton, related an anecdote on this subject, dating from 2020, when Trump was still president, about a meeting with Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the EU.

Asked about the United States' position regarding a possible attack against European NATO member countries, the American president was particularly direct. “You must understand that if Europe is attacked, we will never come to help and support you,” he directly responded to the European president.

“NATO is dead, and we will leave, we will leave NATO,” he added, while referring to the supposed German debt to the United States of $400 billion, for American defense efforts made to protecting Germany since 1949. Thierry Breton did not detail the response of the President of the European Union, even if one can easily imagine the shock that such remarks could have caused.

The European Commissioner recounted this anecdote while presenting a new European initiative, aimed at strengthening the strategic autonomy of the old continent, a European Defense investment fund with €100 billion, intended to support investments to increase defense industrial production within the EU.

Europeans are trying to react to a possible return of Donald Trump to the White House

Thierry Breton's digression is symptomatic of growing concern, in Brussels, but also in several European capitals, about thethe future American international policy if Donald Trump were to win the elections of this end of the year.

And the announcement of the new defense industrial investment fund is part of a series of measures put in place, or announced, in recent weeks, precisely to try to contain such a cataclysm.

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