The EU closes the deal with the US after Trump's new threats

BrusselsThe European Union is moving towards the final approval of the trade agreement with the United States and is on track to meet the deadlines set by Donald Trump, who has threatened new tariffs if it does not definitively come into force by July 4. The trade pact, however, will not include the requests made by the European Parliament and will come into effect even if the White House applies customs duties higher than those agreed upon for steel and aluminum, and it will not be automatically suspended even if the US president again threatens the territorial integrity of the EU —as happened with Greenland— or generally breaches the agreement and negatively affects European companies.

Member states, the European Commission, and the European Parliament sealed the pact agreed upon by Brussels and Washington last summer in the early hours of Wednesday after more than four hours of negotiations and several failed attempts in previous meetings. In fact, the European institutions had planned to ratify it earlier, but they kept postponing the procedures, and negotiations between EU bodies became increasingly complicated due to doubts generated by Trump's constant threats against the European bloc, both territorially and commercially.

For this reason, the Eurochamber voted in favor of including several clauses in the legislative text of the transatlantic pact, although —in the best-case scenario— the vast majority of them have ended up being included in a diluted manner. Brussels and the member states, often fearful of further angering Trump, have avoided adding anything to the trade understanding that could be read as an offense to the White House. "An agreement is an agreement, and the EU fulfills its commitments," celebrated on social media early in the morning the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, who overlooked the fact that the US already breaches the pact in, for example, the steel sector.