MEP and Head of the European Parliament’s delegation for relations with the United States, told Euronews’ morning show Europe Today that he does not expect an upcoming vote on the EU-US trade deal scheduled for next week to proceed.
“Inevitably, the vote that was foreseen next week in the trade committee of the European Parliament to actually advance the deal will be frozen,” Benifei told Euronews. “I’m sure this will be the result.”
US President Donald Trump threatened on Saturday to impose new tariffs on eight European countries that don’t support his plans to annex Greenland. He then left the NATO alliance reeling with a letter to Norwegian prime minister Jonas Gahr Støre in which he said that he “no longer (felt) an obligation to think purely of Peace” when it comes to seizing the Danish territory.
After an emergency ambassadors meeting in Brussels on Sunday, several sources told Euronews that member states are prioritising diplomacy and dialogue with the US, but Benifei insisted there should be “a clear deadline” for establishing where Brussels and Washington’s relationship stands.
“If in a few weeks we do not have clarity and an agreement on the future of Greenland, I think we need to be clear that the measures will be activated”, he told Euronews.
One of those measures could be the anti-coercion instrument (ACI), a tool adopted in 2023 that has so far never been used. This would allow the bloc to punish unfriendly countries for “economic blackmail”.
Benifei said diplomacy “must be used until the very end”, but that “there must be an end”.
“The problem of Europe is that the attempt to find a diplomatic solution, sometimes seems to never end. And this benefits, in this case, the US, who think we are not credible.”
Benfei said he expects US counterparts to intervene and hopes “many more voices in the US Congress will raise to say that madness has to end, and that we need to sit down and work together as allies”.