Trump meets EU chiefs in Brussels

United States President Donald Trump met the heads of European Union institutions in Brussels on Thursday ahead of a summit of NATO leaders at the military alliance’s headquarters in the city later in the day.
Trump, on the fourth leg of his first foreign trip since taking office, was greeted by European Council President Donald Tusk, a former Polish prime minister who chairs meetings of the 28 EU leaders.
Also joining the talks will be the bloc’s chief executive, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.
Trump, who voiced scepticism while campaigning about the EU’s value and hailed Britain’s Brexit vote to quit the bloc, will hear a call from European leaders for him to maintain Washington’s longstanding support for integration on the continent, as well to support free trade and efforts to combat climate change.
Trump questioned the relevance of the NATO military alliance as a presidential candidate, and is considering pulling the US out of the Paris agreement on climate change, a huge concern in Europe.
The EU was also a party to the Iran nuclear agreement, which Trump has criticized sharply.
“We expect him to recommit to NATO’s founding rule that an attack against one ally is an attack against all,” said a senior European diplomat at the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.
“Words matter and there is a huge expectation on that.”
Trump will also meet Europe’s chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker and European Council President Donald Tusk, who chairs EU summits, in the morning.
He will then go to NATO’s new, billion-dollar headquarters where he will unveil a memorial to the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.
There Trump, in his only scheduled public remarks before a dinner with NATO leaders, is expected to pledge his full support to the alliance he once called “obsolete” because he said it was not doing enough to stop terrorism.
NATO hopes to impress Trump with military bands, allied jets flying overhead and a walk through the glass-and-steel headquarters, which replaces a leaking, 1960s prefab structure.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Trump would press NATO leaders hard to spend more on defense and take on more of the burden of paying for the alliance, a message Trump has reiterated repeatedly before and after entering the White House.
Trump wants NATO to join the battle against Islamic State, Tillerson told reporters on Air Force One.

SUN