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Work by Italian street artist TvBoy depicting U.S. President-elect Joe Biden on a wall in Barcelona, Spain.
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A clear sense of relief was perceptible in the reactions and congratulations sent in the last two days by European leaders to U.S. President-elect Joe Biden and Vice-president-elect Kamala Harris, with most messages insisting on the need to resume a pacified trans-Atlantic relationship.
- Most nations leaders stuck to diplomatic sobriety. German Chancellor Angela Merkel noted that “the trans-Atlantic relationship is indispensable if we are to deal with the major challenges of our time.”
- “There is a lot to do to overcome today’s challenges,” tweeted French President Emmanuel Macron. “Let’s work together,” he added. U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte tweeted TWTR, +1.91% similar greetings.
- Local or regional politicians, however, didn’t feel bound by the same diplomatic rules. London mayor Sadiq Khan said it was “time to build bridges not walls,” and Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo alluded to the likelihood that the U.S. would rejoin the Paris Agreement on climate change, tweeting “Welcome back America!”
- After an official silence of two days, a spokesman for Vladimir Putin said the Russian president would “wait for the official summing up of the results of the elections,” before congratulating Biden. In the meantime, the country’s media have devoted large spaces to U.S. President Donald Trump’s allegations of electoral fraud and vote rigging.
Read: Biden pledges to return No. 2 polluter U.S. to the defining Paris climate pact Trump just dropped
The outlook: A discreet competition is now on between European leaders: Who will be the first to have a phone conversation with the president-elect? And the key question they ask about Biden’s foreign policy: What place is there for Europe in his world view?
Europeans are reassured that trans-Atlantic trade discussions will be pacified, and conflicts resolved by compromise. They rejoice at the cooperative position the new administration will take on multilateral institutions such as the World Trade Organization or the World Health Organization. And they are relieved that the U.S. government will rejoin the club of countries eager to fight climate change, instead of siding with climate skeptics as in the last four years.
But however reassured they are by Biden’s election, Europeans also know that some of the key issues Trump raised in his own vociferous way — on trade, security and burden-sharing — won’t just vanish with the arrival of a new president.
Sept. 2020: EU offers ‘new trans-Atlantic agenda’ to the U.S., whoever is next president
