The Trump administration has helped Europeans stop hitting the snooze button and “wake up,” US Ambassador to the EU Andrew Puzder said, hailing Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s call for greater alignment between the two in his speech at the Munich Security Conference as “positive” for the trans-Atlantic alliance.
It is a “hallmark of a great diplomat” to be able to say the things people “need to hear and may not want to hear,” Puzder told Euronews’ flagship morning show Europe Today on Wednesday.
Rubio’s speech comes a year after US Vice President JD Vance appeared on stage at the same conference and delivered what was seen as a hostile and unfriendly message to European allies.
This time, said Puzder, the European audience “was very open” and Rubio “got a standing ovation”.
Puzder also hailed European “progress” in aligning its approach to migration policy with the US. “I actually think the EU’s position on immigration has come a great distance towards the American position,” said the ambassador.
He pointed to what he thinks is one of Europe’s key issues: the impact of mass immigration. According to Puzder, “they have different values, not right or wrong, but they are different from ours.”
“There’s a difference between managed and mass migration. What we’ve seen over the past decade is just flows of people coming onto the continent, and the reaction has not been positive”, said the ambassador.
When asked about numbers showing that migrant arrivals in the EU have declined compared with previous years, Puzder argued that Rubio “was talking about the impact of the past mass migration and the civilisational challenge that poses”.
According to the US ambassador, “the impact of climate policies on the economy and on GDP per capita” is also one of the issues the continent may face.
Rubio’s visit to Munich was not his only stop in Europe. The US top diplomat also visited Slovakia and Hungary, home to two of the closest Trump allies in the EU.
His visit to Premier Viktor Orbán, who is facing elections in April, sparked concerns over a possible US interference. Puzder disagreed. “I think he has every right to visit Budapest. Hungary is an ally of the US, it’s a member of the European Union”, said the ambassador.