European leaders have called for greater unity and military cooperation across the continent in response to comments from Donald Trump that threatened to undermine the basis of Nato.
Donald Tusk, Poland’s prime minister, said on a visit to Paris on Monday that there was “no alternative” to the EU and the transatlantic alliance before a summit in which he discussed deepening defence relationships with the French president, Emmanuel Macron.
“It is probably here in Paris that the words from The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas resonate most clearly: ‘All for one, and one for all,’” said Tusk, in a thinly veiled riposte to the former US president and frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination.
On Saturday, Trump caused outrage and concern in Europe when he said he would not defend any Nato member that had failed to meet a longstanding target of spending 2% of its gross domestic product on defence – and would even encourage Russia to continue attacking.
Recalling a conversation he said he had had with the leader of a “big country” discussing such a scenario, Trump told a rally in South Carolina: “No, I would not protect you, in fact I would encourage them to do whatever they want. You gotta pay.”
Nato countries are in theory protected by article 5 of the alliance’s founding treaty, which obliges all member states to respond with “such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force” to restore security in the north Atlantic area. Crucially it stops short of requiring alliance members to declare war in support of a country under attack.
On Monday, some European leaders were openly critical of Trump. On a visit to Cyprus, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany’s president, said: “These statements are not responsible, and they help Russia.”
Others were more nuanced. David Cameron, the UK foreign secretary, said Trump’s remarks were unhelpful: “Of course we want all countries, like us, to spend 2% [of GDP], but I think what was said was not a sensible approach.”
There was a more sympathetic response from an EU neighbour of Russia. Kaja Kallas, Estonia’s prime minister, said: “I think what the presidential candidate in America said is also something to maybe wake up some of the allies who haven’t done that much.”
Tusk, who leads the Nato country with the highest proportion of defence spending, said: “The European Union, France and Poland must become strong and ready to defend their own borders and to defend and support our allies and friends from outside the union.”
The Polish prime minister, a centrist who took over in December, later visited Berlin, where he met the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, a trip billed as an effort by Tusk and his Civic Coalition to bolster EU defence links alongside Nato.
Tusk’s political grouping traditionally values closer relationships within continental Europe, compared with its predecessor the Law and Justice party, which preferred a more direct relationship with the US and the UK.
Macron said it was “a joy to have you back” and to have, through Tusk’s government, “partners who we can trust, are pro-European and clear on European security and the major challenges we face”. Tusk previously led Poland between 2007 and 2014.
The French president said France and Poland would negotiate a new treaty covering defence, energy and cultural issues – and that Europe needed to increase the production of arms for Ukraine at a time when Republicans in the US Congress were blocking a $61bn (£48bn) military aid package.
Weapons manufacturing would build up Europe’s industrial base and military role, Macron said: “This is what will also make it possible to make Europe a security and defence power complementary to Nato, the European pillar of the Atlantic alliance.”
Shortly before Macron’s remarks, Scholz and his defence minister, Boris Pistorius, attended the groundbreaking ceremony of an ammunition factory in Lower Saxony. The plant, which is run by Germany’s largest defence contractor, Rheinmetall, will produce 200,000 artillery shells a year that will probably be bound for Ukraine.
Scholz said: “Not only the United States, but all European countries must do even more to support Ukraine. The pledges made so far are not enough. Germany’s power alone is not enough.”
Ukraine is desperately short of artillery ammunition, the principal weapon in the near two-year war, and is being outgunned by a ratio of five to one. While Russia has transitioned to a war economy and is expected to make 4.5m shells during 2024, supplies from the US have halted while Europe has struggled to make good the gap.
A pledge by EU leaders to manufacture 1m shells in the year to March 2024 has fallen short, and European leaders have been criticised for being slow to issue contracts significant enough to allow private sector manufacturers to rebuild.
Scholz also recommitted Germany, traditionally hesitant about military spending, to meeting the Nato target of 2% of GDP, arguing that would help arms manufacturers invest. Berlin, often considered a target of Trump’s spending rhetoric, spends 1.57% of its GDP on defence, according to Nato data.
Britain is expected to have spent 2.03% in 2023, according to Nato’s figures,while for France, Europe’s other nuclear power, the proportion is slightly less at 1.9%. Poland’s defence budget amounts to 3.9% of GDP, the country having dramatically lifted spending in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, while the US, the world’s largest military power, spends 3.49%.
Dr Karin von Hippel, the director general of the Royal United Services Institute thinktank, said European countries were quickly adjusting to the possibility of a Trump presidency. “I think leaders across the continent are much more aware of what it could mean this time – and even if Biden wins they know Congress could still be dysfunctional,” she said.