Suddenly Donald Trump looked at Ursula von der Leyen and held his hand by praising, with his taste for superlatives, “The biggest” deal “never passed”. So far static in her large green velvet chair, the president of the European Commission has accepted the handshake. The gesture closed, Sunday, July 27, dozens of hours of sometimes confusing negotiations between European and American delegations who culminated with this meeting organized in the ballroom of the vast Turnberry Golf Complex, ownership of Donald Trump, on the west coast of Scotland.
The suspense continued until the last minute. At the start of the interview, the Republican, pretending “Do not be in a good mood”still evaluated at 50 % the chances of touching the goal. The agreement was torn off five days from the deadline of 1is August, previously fixed by Donald Trump, beyond which European exports would have suffered punitive customs duties of 30 %.
Between two ailments, the twenty-seven therefore chose the one that seemed to them, the least: an unbalanced compromise for the benefit of the United States rather than the risk of a large-scale trade war with which no one could predict the outcome. “We prefer stability to total unpredictability”justified the European Commerce Commissioner, Maros Sefcovic, on the plane connecting Brussels to Glasgow. If the German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, and the president of the Italian council, Giorgia Meloni, praised without excess of enthusiasm the existence of the agreement, it is the Belgian Prime Minister, Bart de Wever, who best summed up the feeling of European leaders: “It’s a moment of relief but no celebration. »»
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