Over the weekend, the EU called an emergency meeting on how to deal with the Donald Trump’s impending presidency. The theme was to “send a signal of what the EU expects” of Trump.

Britain and France on Sunday night snubbed a contentious EU emergency meeting to align the bloc’s approach to Donald Trump’s election, exposing rifts in Europe over the US vote.

How did that work out for them?

Britain and France on Sunday night snubbed a contentious EU emergency meeting to align the bloc’s approach to Donald Trump’s election, exposing rifts in Europe over the US vote.
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British foreign secretary Boris Johnson dropped out of the Brussels meeting, with officials arguing that it created an air of panic, while French foreign minister Jean-Marc Ayrault opted to stay in Paris to meet the new UN secretary-general. Hungary’s foreign minister boycotted the meeting, labelling the response from some EU leaders as “hysterical”.

A combination of Mr Trump’s election and Britain’s vote to leave the EU had triggered calls for a total overhaul of the EU’s foreign and defence policy, with Berlin and Paris demanding greater integration. “If the US disengages from Europe, we need to look after our own security,” said one EU diplomat.

What makes this so delicious is that France and Germany were the moving forces behind the meeting in the first place but France pulled out and left Germany holding the bag.

The German foreign minister had wanted to demonstrate that the EU was capable of rapid response when it came to foreign policy. Instead the disarray highlighted a familiar problem for Berlin, according to diplomats. “When the EU’s most powerful country wants to lead, other member states don’t necessarily follow,” said one EU diplomat.

And therein lies the problem. The EU has morphed from an economic union, formerly known as the Common Market, that aimed to enable a freer flow of capital and people within its member states, into a bureaucratic monster that sees itself as a super-state. Brussels and Berlin don’t want to lead they want to command. Rarely, however, is there the overall consensus in the EU that allows unified action. For all of its bluster, the EU is an unreliable ally and feeble enemy. We need to keep that in mind.