5:59 v originále: Test of EUnity. Henry Foy on Europe’s Trumpian challenge

Europe is learning to navigate the world upended by Donald Trump’s transactional approach to all, friends and foes alike. But amid all the chaos he has caused, hasn't he also unwittingly helped to kickstart the long overdue changes within the EU that European politicians could not?

As the head of the Financial Times' Brussels bureau, Henry Foy gets to talk to a lot of movers and shakers inside the European Union institutions. So he is well positioned to measure the impact that Donald Trump's return to power - and international arena - has had on the EU nerve centre.

„They obviously prepared for Trump. They knew roughly what he would come with on defense spending, on trade, on a more transactional foreign policy relationship (…) [But] this is a man who's in a hurry and isn't afraid to break things, and the European Union, while they were prepared for the topics, they weren't prepared for the force,“ Foy shared in a recent interview for the 5:59 podcast.

Listen to the full interview with Henry Foy for the 5:59 podcast in English:

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„The biggest issue around Trump is that he is a financial crisis, a geopolitical crisis, a military crisis, all wrapped into one. (…) And so it really is the ultimate test of European unity if the United States of America, which has protected this continent for the best part of the last 80 years, is becoming more adversarial. That is a crisis that the European Union has never dealt with at this scale,“ the FT's Brussels bureau chief explains.

What are some the encouraging signs that Henry Foy sees in the initial reactions of the EU to the increased pressure coming from the Washington, DC? What can be the role of China in the new situation created by the reordering of the relationship between Europe and the United States? Find out by listening to the full 5:59 podcast in the audio player above.