The Daily Populous Monday May 18th, 2026 night edition
Authored by politico.eu and submitted by DavidShaw90s

“I'm very worried, because I sometimes also see countries going down that lane,” she said. “The dividing is actually working.”

Several EU countries have sought to preserve their own channels with Washington since U.S. President Donald Trump returned to the White House, with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni positioning herself as a potential bridge between Europe and the U.S. before the strategy failed with Trump's criticism of Pope Leo XIV.

Kallas urged EU countries to defend the European Union and make agreements through the bloc, saying about the U.S., China and Russia: “Why these powers want to dismantle the European Union is because we are much stronger when we are together.”

The former Estonian prime minister also said Europe had “a very clear understanding of the diagnosis of the disease” when it came to China, but did not yet have an agreement on the cure.

She said there were two choices: either increasing the “morphine” — the subsidies EU countries are handing out to industry — or beginning “chemotherapy,” meaning using the tools the EU has at its disposal, such as foreign direct investment, public procurement, and diversifying its supply of critical raw materials.

“It will be painful to use the tools ... because then there's going to be retaliation,” she said. “We are not there yet and I'm worried that eventually also the rich countries will run out of taxpayers' money to subsidize and we haven't dealt with the underlying problem.”

Ilmeury83 on May 17th, 2026 at 11:54 UTC »

Of course: a United Europe would be a force to be reckoned with, both economically and militarily

DavidShaw90s on May 17th, 2026 at 11:54 UTC »

It is honestly just basic negotiating math. If you are a massive superpower like the US or China, you obviously prefer negotiating with 27 individual, smaller countries rather than one giant unified economic bloc.

It is the exact same logic as union busting. If a massive corporation negotiates with employees one by one, the company holds all the leverage. If the workers negotiate together as a single group, they can actually demand a fair deal.

Kallas is spot on here. Any European leader who thinks they are going to get a better bilateral deal by breaking away from the rest of the EU is just falling for the oldest negotiating trick in the book. You are always going to get a worse deal when you give up your collective bargaining power.

Deepfire_DM on May 17th, 2026 at 11:51 UTC »

That's why extreme right and fascist parties like the German AfD are so heavily financed and supported from Russia and by the US.