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Macron urges EU to hit back against Trump’s threats: ‘brutalisation of the world’
French president advocates use of the EU’s anti-coercion mechanism against US tariffs, as he warns of moving ‘towards a world without rules’
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Finbarr Berminghamin Brussels
Europe must respond to US threats over Greenland and China’s industrial excesses, or else “passively accept … vassalisation and bloc politics”, French President Emmanuel Macron warned in a speech at Davos on Tuesday.
Macron warned of the “brutalisation of the world”, as he urged the use of the EU’s most powerful trade weapon in response to US President Donald Trump’s threat to slap tariffs on European countries who last week sent troops to Greenland.
Trump has pledged to make the giant Arctic island – a territory of the Kingdom of Denmark – part of the United States, sparking a messy debate in Europe over how to react.
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“Europe has very strong tools now, and we have to use them. The anti-coercion mechanism is a powerful instrument, and we should not hesitate to deploy it,” said Macron, who added that it was “crazy … that we can be put in a situation” to use the weapon “for the very first time, vis-a-vis the US”.
The anti-coercion instrument (ACI) must be triggered by the European Commission and agreed upon by a qualified majority of member states. It affords Brussels sweeping retaliatory powers, including tariffs, quotas and market bans.
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