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The US\u2019s 250th anniversary celebration in Brussels<\/p>\n
According to Aburous and Lesser, the party was a significant diplomatic and communications success.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt does show you that at a certain level even people who spend all their time like us thinking about the policy side of these things, on some level, distinguish between the political disputes and the people- to-people things,\u201d Lesser told Euronews.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was an excellent communication exercise; it was a typical big branding transit from D.C. to here,\u201d Aburous added.<\/p>\n
According to Cendrowicz, the main issue with this event was the political context, marked by a big divide between the EU and the US. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing Europe feeling very much under threat by the Trump administration,\u201d he told us.<\/p>\n
Cendrowicz highlighted that President Trump’s threats over Greenland, his non-committal relationship with NATO and his strategy in Ukraine seem to suggest a US withdrawal from Europe and thus create a tense environment between Brussels and Washington.<\/p>\n
The US-Iran talks: What role can Europe have<\/p>\n
Yet, this week was also marked by some developments in the US-Iran war.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday (1 July), Tehran and Washington began indirect technical talks with mediators in Doha.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe lack a strategy to deal with Iran, and we lack a strategy to deal with greater conflicts in the Middle East,\u201d Aburous underlined.<\/p>\n
According to her, major steps need to be taken to achieve durable security in the Middle East and the EU, given its sophisticated sanctions structure, can have a role in this peace-building project.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, Cendrowicz said Europeans have \u201clittle leverage\u201d in the current context in the Middle East. \u201cThey [Europeans] have got hope that this deal is going to stick and that the prices will go down, but otherwise they can\u2019t really affect the negotiations,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The EU-US relationship and the US-Iran war will be further discussed at next week\u2019s NATO summit in Ankara.<\/p>\n
Lesser highlighted that Trump will also attend given his friendship with Turkey\u2019s president Erdo\u011fan, but that the final result of the meeting is difficult to foresee: \u201cThese things used to be very predictable. They’re not so predictable any more, for better or for worse,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
For more on that, make sure you keep following Brussels, My Love?, and listen to the full episode in the player above or wherever you get your podcast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last Sunday (28 June), the United States marked its 250th anniversary of independence, throwing a big party under…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25913,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5],"tags":[18,299,14825,14829,14828,14827,350,14058,1938,14826],"class_list":["post-25912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brussels","tag-brussels","tag-european-parliament","tag-european-quarter","tag-ian-lesser","tag-leo-cendrowicz","tag-lina-aburous","tag-mark-rutte","tag-parc-du-cinquantenaire","tag-roberta-metsola","tag-secretary-general-of-nato"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@be\/116855483100697735","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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