European leaders welcome Democrats' US midterms election win

Well, again, foreign policy then may not have been at the top of voters' minds, but the change in color of the U.S. Congress will likely come with foreign policy implications. Some of Washington's closest historic allies are likely to breathe a sigh of relief at Tuesday's results, notably here in Europe, where, of course, the Trump administration has caused anxiety on a range of multilateral issues, even though resistance to the White House has been quite limited. So for more on this, our Brussels correspondent, who's actually here in Paris today, Dave Keating, joins me on set. Hi, Dave. Glad to have you with us. in person. So how have Europeans reacted to this democratic victory? Well, we've had kind of muted expressions of pleasure, I would say, from European leaders. They've maintained diplomacy, been diplomatic about it, except for Spain's Pedro Sanchez, who called this a victory against hate. He is, of course, in the middle of campaign mode. We had in the UK, Andy Burnham saying that he hopes this makes the US. Join a kind of global focus on cost of living. One of the really noticeable to me reactions came from Poland's Donald Tusk, certainly no friend of the MAGA movement, and actually U.S. government officials campaigned against his party in the last election. He just by coincidence was doing a press conference with the prime minister of the Czech Republic, Andrzej Babiš, who was a close Trump ally, and he didn't hold back. He said this was a victory for democracy. He congratulated the Democrats. Babiš looking very uncomfortable in that press conference. So I think, look, European leaders and let's say, you know, EU officials in Brussels are pleased with this result for sure. But they're also realistic about the fact that the U.S. Congress does not control foreign policy, at least not the way that U.S. politics has developed over the past decades. So they're not expecting some kind of major shift. I think they're all just waiting to see how does Trump react to this defeat, because there is some worry that if he's stymied on domestic matters because of the Congress blocking him, he'll focus on the thing that they can't stop him on, which is foreign policy, which is declaring wars. And so there's a fear that he could kind of double up on his aggression toward Europe. Because he's stymied at home in the Congress. Now, one of the things that European allies are, of course, going to be paying close attention to is how this might affect the war in Ukraine. It's something that's not necessarily top of mind for American voters, but of course, here in Europe, it is. So what impact might this have specifically on that war, if any at all? Well, in the short term, you could say it's good news for Ukraine because a democratic Congress can lock in some of that funding. They can, the Congress has the power of the purse. We've heard that expression a lot today, which means that they control funding. Even if they don't control specific foreign policy decisions, they can block the money going to that foreign policy. Even in an extreme scenario, you could envision if Trump tried to force Ukraine to surrender or if Trump tried to start a new war with Cuba, let's say. Congress can actually shut down the government to prevent that war. So they have some tools to kind of take extreme steps to stop foreign policy. They probably wouldn't do that. In the long term, though, it's possible that this could be bad news for Ukraine. Again, if Trump decides to kind of lash out at the people he perceives as his enemies around the world, it's clear that he considers Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to be one of those enemies. It's not clear that he would think of Russia's Vladimir Putin. Putin any differently today than he did last week. And we saw basically expressions of sympathy from the Russian government today. The Russian government saying, well, foreign policy hasn't changed and they're still fully behind President Trump. So this could cause him to even double down on trying to force Ukraine to surrender. Basically, we don't know how he's going to react, although I will say. The President Trump we have seen in the past hours today does seem to be uncharacteristically conciliatory, so it's anybody's guess, really. Indeed, a very muted response, and we haven't heard much else since this morning, Dave. So, again, turning back to Europe, do you think this might embolden the few European leaders, people like Pedro Sanchez, for example, that have been critical of the Trump administration to maybe dare to say a little bit more now? Yeah, I mean, like I said, the Congress is pretty limited in what it can do to block Trump's threats or aggressions toward Europe. You know, if Trump wanted to pick up on the Greenland thing again, he now seems to think that Europe did give him Greenland. He's made that statement over and over, over the past two weeks. If he wants to send troops in some way to Greenland that would violate the existing deal, the Congress can't stop him. Could European leaders feel more emboldened now to stand up to him? I mean, they have been very, very acquiescent to Donald Trump over the past two years, afraid to ruffle feathers, afraid to anger him in any way. Again. Except Pedro Sanchez, the big exception. So now that the Congress is in Democratic control and they know they have friends and allies running the Congress, could that embolden them to stand up to Trump in a way that they haven't over the past two years? Again, the Congress can't really do much to help them out. It can do a little, but it could just be the kind of. moral backing, that they, European leaders, will feel a little bit safer to criticize Trump, to push back on Trump, to push back, for instance, against his tariff threats, which they didn't do. They immediately surrendered to his tariff threats before. Maybe, particularly if they're getting messages of encouragement from Democrats in their Congress. I will say, though, Foreign policy is clearly not the Democrats' main focus here, and it was not the main focus of voters. So if Europeans are thinking that a Democratic Congress is going to come in and save them from Donald Trump, that's very unlikely. But it could be that just having them there gives Europeans some kind of courage or moral moral support to stay. stand up for Europe a little bit more than they've been doing. As a last question, Dave, I mean, it begs the question, especially with important elections coming up here in Europe next year, notably here in France as well. Do you think that there are any leaders that are satisfied, not are upset about the results of these midterm elections or maybe even see them as a word of warning for their own programs. This is very awkward for Europe's far right, who has embraced Donald Trump very, very tightly in the past. I'm thinking of Italy's Giorgia Meloni, who has spoken at CPAC, given full throated endorsements of Donald Trump. Her relationship with Donald Trump really fell apart over the past year. Marine Le Pen has also been backing away from Donald Trump ever since the Iran war. They are going to now run away. from Donald Trump. That is very clear. But they have all those past statements. They have all those photo ops with him in the past. They have the full-throated endorsement that they gave him in the past. That is bad news for them. I'm sure they know that. So I'm sure the far-right parties across Europe are right now trying to calculate, okay, how do we position ourselves vis-a-vis MAGA and the U.S. government now that they've become so toxic, not only in Europe, but also in the United States? It's going to be a tricky tightrope for them to walk. Hard times then for the far right, at least for now. Dave Keating, thank you very much.