President Donald Trump's new National Security Strategy accuses European allies of censorship and "civilizational erasure." Brando Benifei, MEP and chair of the EU's Delegation for Relations with the US, pushes back and explains how Europe should react.
00:00For more on this, we can speak now with Brando Benefe.
00:03He's an Italian member of the European Parliament with the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats,
00:08and he chairs the Parliament's delegation for relations with the United States.
00:12Welcome to DW.
00:14So, Mr. Benefe, we just heard Donald Trump there doubling down on a key theme in his new national security strategy,
00:20and that is that Europe is headed in a bad direction and needs U.S. prodding to get back on track.
00:27What do you make of that?
00:29Well, I think it's our transatlantic ally, the United States, that is in fact going in a bad direction
00:38in the sense that proposing such a national security strategy with such harsh and extreme sentences
00:48regarding the European Union specifically is something that is not helpful for what we have to do together.
00:56I am the chair of the delegation for the relations with the United States, and now we are following very closely
01:05the issue of the trade relations, and we see it clearly that we need to find solutions together, and these kind of messages are hindering the complex negotiations that are now on the table.
01:20And when we see an attack on digital sovereignty, because that's another front of this discussion, we see a backlash coming from our citizens and our governments.
01:35And some of them try to stay away from rebutting to this discourse, but it becomes impossible at some point, because in fact we have seen that the initial approach that we have seen from people like Kalas, that you have heard earlier, it has been welcomed with further tension, with further escalation.
02:02So we need to put some answer to what we have heard, because we need to reaffirm that we cannot be pushed in an angle by our transatlantic ally.
02:16Well, maybe you can help us with some of those answers.
02:19The strategy document calls Europe's path civilizational erasure through migration and censorship.
02:26First of all, were you surprised to see that kind of language in this document?
02:31This kind of language is the language I hear when I go to Washington and meet with ultra-nationalist members of Congress or with some think tanks that are in the Washington bubble.
02:50It's important to talk to these people, to have an exchange, but this was never an official way of writing of the administration, because, to be frank, some form of interference, electoral interference, already happened.
03:08Think of the candidate and now president of Poland that was received by the White House during the electoral campaign.
03:16And if we go back, we could see the acts of Elon Musk during the UK campaign.
03:23Right.
03:24But this is another step.
03:25It's putting in written that they want to interfere on our internal politics, because it says that there must be support for movements that resist this wrong trajectory of the European Union.
03:40And it's identifying the European Union as the problem for Europe.
03:44But unfortunately, the European Union is, in fact, the one that has to negotiate with the US.
03:50So this is not helpful.
03:52I mean, in the next days, I will meet online with representatives from Congress, and I will meet also with the new ambassador of the US to the EU in person.
04:04And I will convey this message.
04:06This is not helpful for what we need to do together.
04:09And be sure that we will not allow our sovereignty to be overstepped.
04:14At least I would say there are people that think so.
04:17And we will push also our governments to be a bit more assertive, because we also need to send a message to our people.
04:25Some people are starting to think that the US and Russia, they will find some agreement together.
04:32Look at Ukraine, but more broadly as powers.
04:37They will decide, and the EU has only to wait and accept.
04:41This is something we can't go in terms of direction, because it will be the end of European sovereignty.
04:51As head of the EU Parliament's Delegation for US Relations, how would you describe the transatlantic bond at this point, and what needs to happen in order to make it better?
05:03Well, I want to be pragmatic and realistic.
05:08I don't think we will change the course of the administration very much, although we must clarify that putting on an official text such phrases is unacceptable and must be retracted.
05:20But let's be realistic again.
05:22I think the main thing for us is to build more unity, more sovereignty, more pooled capacity of action, from security to investments, to common fiscal capacity, to a more integrated European market.
05:38To be able to stand together in front of a complicated lie as it is today, the United States.
05:45Because if we stay fragmented, if we keep the EU as it is today, where all our government leaders are only looking for the next elections, they are ill of short-termism,
05:59I think we will never succeed in building a future for our union.
06:04And so I think it's very important that we take a step forward in sovereignty together, which means also doing what Mario Draghi was presenting in his report, not only simplifying rules, but also building common initiatives, not accepting anymore to have a veto power by one country on foreign policy issues, for example, and building more common initiatives.
06:32I think we really need to go in this direction.
06:36European Parliamentarian Brando Benifei, thank you very much.
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