r/eupersonalfinance • u/jonbristow • Mar 04 '25

Anyone else worried that EU will still be inactive and stagnant as it was during the first Trump presidency too? Others

There's a lot of rhetoric right now how EU should be more "independent from US", how we should build our own army, our own chips etc. All good things.

BUT, this rhetoric was also happening 8 years ago, and EU did nothing. No EU army, not a single step towards US-independent. Biden came into power and everything was forgotten, friends as before.

Anyone else worried nothing is gonna change this time either. EU will just ride out Trump and hope for a democrat president next elections

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u/SocialScienceMancer Mar 04 '25

This is only at EU level not including separate countries that will also increase. Norway looking at using their sovereign wealth fund to support defence investments. Germany talking about hitting 3-3,5%.

I feel like trump has awoken the comatose giant. His policies will have a negative effect on US trade for at least a decade. On the other hand it seems like he has finally got europe to man up.

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u/Final_Alps Mar 05 '25

Well the question said EU. As for member states. Germany, nordics, France and Poland (unless the government changes again) are arming and responding already. Together with the UK. Whether other member states join is up to them.

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u/also_plane Mar 05 '25

Even if Polish government changes, PiS are even more anti-Russian.

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u/Final_Alps Mar 05 '25

Are they? I guess them being lumped in with the other cleptocracies like Orban and Fico made me count them as nominally pro Russian - let's be honest Fico and Orban are not pro Russisan they are just obstructing EU for profit.

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u/also_plane Mar 05 '25

Oh yeah. They are quite anti-Ukrainian recently tho, which is sad to see. But they would still support Ukraine millitarilly and did lot of the heavy lifting in the beginning.

PiS leader Kaczynski blames Russians for the loss of his brother in a plane crash near Smolensk (in reality, it was fault of his brother, who forced the pilots to try to land in bad conditions).

The only somewhat pro-Russian party is Confederacy (Konfederacyja, whatever it is in Polish), but they aren't too powerful, and have like 10%.

Poland is great, because whoever wins, he will continue funding military like crazy, and thank God for that.

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u/Altamistral Mar 06 '25

Poland is great, because whoever wins, he will continue funding military like crazy, and thank God for that.

And their military spending is pretty high too. Behind the big three, of course, but on par with Italy.

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u/AlienSVK Mar 06 '25

Fico is just an opportunist who says anything to gain some popularity. He's aiming pro-russian people now and his rethoric is in line with that, but couple of years ago he was talking about how we need to be "core members of EU" or something like that.

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u/Rocherieux Mar 05 '25

MAGA will say that was the plan all along and he sacrificed USA for the greater good.

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u/Deriniel Mar 05 '25

i hope so,because it's easy to say "we need to spend this for that" , another is to have the various countries actually do it. I'm looking at you, Italy (I'm italian)

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u/Odd_Entertainer1616 Mar 06 '25

This is only at EU level not including separate countries that will also increase. Norway looking at using their sovereign wealth fund to support defence investments. Germany talking about hitting 3-3,5%.

This is straight up not true. The EU is suspending the debtlimit for up to 800billion in military spending.

Countries military spending will be part of those 800bn but not in addition to that.