Budapest hosts one of the most anticipated informal meetings of EU leaders in recent years on Thursday and Friday. The electoral result in the United States and the unpredictable choreography of authoritarian Prime Minister Víktor Orban constitute two of the highlights of the meeting. A meeting which, in any case, is called upon to establish the guidelines of the new European Commission to define the competitiveness strategy for the next few years.
EU leaders meeting The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, will not be present. that at the end of Tuesday, he canceled his participation due to the Dana which affects Levante and the south of Spain. The event begins with the meeting of the European Political Community. A particularly sensitive quote after Orbán unilaterally legitimized the new government resulting from the elections in Georgia concerning the EU.
The Budapest Parliament will then be the scene of the European leaders’ dinner, where they will try to find a common position. on the election results in the United States. This is a first reaction which will emphasize the importance of maintaining transatlantic relations, while awaiting a calmer and more detailed assessment from the new North American administration for the formal summit in December.
The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, already yesterday congratulated Republican leader Donald Trump and urged him to maintain ties with Europe, even if the ghosts of new trade and tariff tensions once again put the community block on guard. .
The objective of the joint message will be to underline the importance of the transatlantic link. Given the difficulty of determining what the outgoing administration’s elections and the formation of Congress will look like, the EU remains cautious. Donald Trump’s victory gives the European Commission a certain predictability facing an administration with a more transactional and predictable profile, to follow in the footsteps of previous legislatures.
The US elections always have a big impact on Europe because it is one of its main trading partners, so its economic impact is significant. Additionally, the energy crisis stemming from Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine has increased energy dependence on Washington. particularly relevant for imports of liquefied natural gas.
The competitiveness of European industry will be the central subject of Friday. The leaders will be accompanied by former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, who will present the report prepared to strengthen the EU’s competitiveness. A document in which he estimated at 800,000 million euros annually the financing needs of the bloc and opened the door to a new issuance of common debt at the community level.
The dialogue will focus on EU financing mechanisms intended to boost this competitiveness, opening the door to the availability of private capital, even if No concrete measures should be formulated regarding financing mechanisms. The idea is also to accelerate the implementation of the capital market union, for which the idea of creating a group of countries that would take the lead, and later the others would join, is beginning to take shape, as Spain proposed it. The idea is that this dialogue replaces the long and repetitive sessions at ministerial level which have not allowed us to emerge from the stagnation in which this project has been mired for years.
