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In Europe, a Growing Push To Escape the Shadow of the U.S.

Aug 22, 2018 | 22:08 GMT

Supporters of the pro-EU movement Pulse of Europe wave EU flags as they gather in front of Berlin's Brandenburg Gate on April 8.

Supporters of the pro-EU movement Pulse of Europe wave EU flags as they gather in front of Berlin's Brandenburg Gate on April 8. EU leaders are considering taking steps to carve out greater autonomy from the United States.

Highlights

  • The German foreign minister's bold demand to create independent financial and defense mechanisms will lend greater political weight to France's earlier call to reclaim Europe's sovereignty from the United States.
  • In addition to earlier moves, the European Union could go further by formalizing an economic bailout fund to lower dependency on the International Monetary Fund and expanding the scope of an EU-centric payment and settlements system to insulate itself from U.S. secondary sanctions over Iran.
  • More consequentially over the longer term, the European Union could pursue discussions with China and Russia to create a global, blockchain-based financial payment and settlements system that would severely erode the United States' financial clout.

On Aug. 21, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas took to German daily Handelsblatt to pen a candid op-ed that boldly called on Europe to re-evaluate the trans-Atlantic partnership and bolster its own autonomy in response to U.S. unilateralism. Maas, a member of the Social Democratic Party (the junior partner in Germany's ruling coalition) dismissed policy prescriptions that simply advise Europe to wait out the Donald Trump presidency. Instead, he argued that the forces that have led to the chasm in the trans-Atlantic relationship have been long in the making and that a more strategic approach to rebalance the relationship is required. Specifically, Maas called for a separate payment system to SWIFT (a Brussels-based company that facilitates global financial transactions) that would be insulated from U.S. secondary sanctions. He also proposed a European Monetary Fund (EMF) that would act independently of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), as well as a European...

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