In freezing progress on a deal that had been in the works for over 25 years, the European Union sent a signal around the world that it is so riven by internal rivalries that it can no longer deliver.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know exactly who is going to be ready to negotiate the trade agreements with the European Union. That\u2019s going to be a huge setback,\u201d said Ignacio Garc\u00eda Bercero, who was the European Commission\u2019s chief negotiator on deals with the United States and India.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to weaken the Commission very, very significantly. Politically, that is also a very strong signal that the European Union has become so inward-looking that it’s not really able to act externally,\u201d added Garc\u00eda Bercero, who became a senior fellow at the Bruegel think tank after he retired from the Commission in 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a sudden, and serious, reversal.<\/p>\n
The European Commission president had only just signed the long-stalled pact with Mercosur after revamping the EU\u2019s partnership with Mexico and wrapping up talks with Indonesia. She even, somehow, managed to shake hands on a trade deal with mercurial U.S. President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
At the end of 2025, von der Leyen\u2019s trusted trade commissioner, Maro\u0161 \u0160ef\u010dovi\u010d, dared to take a small victory lap.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In freezing progress on a deal that had been in the works for over 25 years, the European…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9972,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[137],"tags":[333,6605,363,8868,8412,8920,5397,12,2056,5818,5819,245,249,8921,2431,4093,8922,952,8869,8817,1430,5821,5399,4477,1432,7933,388,329,2444,3601,1745,7934,330,17,403,8923],"class_list":{"0":"post-9971","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ursula-von-der-leyen","8":"tag-agriculture","9":"tag-argentina","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-beef","12":"tag-brazil","13":"tag-carbon-border-tax","14":"tag-cars","15":"tag-donald-trump","16":"tag-exports","17":"tag-farmers","18":"tag-farms","19":"tag-france","20":"tag-germany","21":"tag-ignacio-garcia-bercero","22":"tag-imports","23":"tag-india","24":"tag-indonesia","25":"tag-italy","26":"tag-maros-sefcovic","27":"tag-meat","28":"tag-meps","29":"tag-mercosur","30":"tag-mexico","31":"tag-narendra-modi","32":"tag-negotiations","33":"tag-paraguay","34":"tag-parliament","35":"tag-russia","36":"tag-steel","37":"tag-tariffs","38":"tag-trade","39":"tag-trade-agreements","40":"tag-ukraine","41":"tag-united-states","42":"tag-ursula-von-der-leyen","43":"tag-uruguay"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116349814946432060","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}