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Behind the scenes, diplomats, NATO sources and EU officials have praised the “unprecedented levels of unity and coordination” which has “strengthened the transatlantic alliance” as both institutions have worked in lockstep with each other and the US, as one EU official put it.
A senior European diplomat working in NATO said they had been “really surprised but thankful” at the regular contact and cooperation between leaderships of both the EU and NATO which has allowed the messaging directed at Moscow to be “coordinated and consistent at the highest diplomatic level, despite the cultural and geographical differences of all the stakeholders.”
Macron has been Europe’s strongest proponent of what Brussels calls “strategic autonomy,” a catch-all term used to describe the EU’s diplomatic independence from larger global powers like the US and China.
A large part of this drive for autonomy has been the EU’s growing differences with traditional allies like the US and UK over economic and political relations with countries such as Russia and China. Across the EU’s 27 member states there are varying levels of reliance on Chinese investment and Russian gas. Some EU nations are relatively relaxed about friendly relations with Moscow as a matter of economic convenience, while others, particularly former Soviet nations, look at what is happening in Ukraine with…
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Source : cnn
