Davos: Europe braces for the transatlantic relationship’s toughest week

Three days ago, EU leaders were preparing to spend this week in Davos convincing Trump to promise security guarantees to postwar Ukraine. Today, they wake wondering whether they can even trust his promises to them, ‘Financial Times’ writes.

The furore over Trump’s wish to “have” the Denmark-controlled Arctic island has exploded from a bilateral dispute to the biggest threat to the Nato alliance in decades, and the deepest rift in transatlantic relations since the Suez Crisis.

EU leaders and their delegations, who are set to meet Trump and US officials at the World Economic Forum starting in Davos today, are tearing up their Ukraine briefing notes and replacing them with what one senior EU diplomat described as “carrots and sticks” — how Brussels could retaliate against the tariffs, alongside offers to de-escalate.

“How can you sit down across the table with this guy and discuss his security guarantees to Ukraine?” the diplomat added. “You can’t trust him, unless you suspend reality.”

EU leaders will meet for an emergency summit later this week, provisionally slated for Thursday after the Davos meetings with Trump.

In preparation, EU ambassadors last night discussed the possibility of hitting the US with tariffs worth €93bn already drawn up last year, or using the so-called Anti-Coercion Instrument to restrict American companies’ access to the EU single market.

Many participants voiced their support for putting retaliatory measures on the table as negotiation leverage, but to not pull the trigger until diplomacy has run its course, according to officials briefed on the discussion.

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