Noteworthy examples of bureaucratic delays within the European Union include the recently finalized trade agreement with Latin America’s Mercosur bloc, which required two decades of negotiations. At the same time, Turkey’s application to join the EU, which dates back to 1987, remains unresolved after more than three decades.
Recalling a conversation with an airline executive, former U.S. President Donald Trump shared, “I got a call from the head of a major airline. He said, ‘Sir, can you help us? Landing in Europe is brutal — they charge us fees on everything.’ I asked how it compared to China, and he said, ‘It’s much worse.’”
Trump remarked that his contacts within the EU have expressed frustration over the bloc’s slow-moving regulatory systems, stating, “They want to compete better, but you can’t compete when you can’t get through the approval process quickly.”
Using the opportunity to criticize the EU’s stance toward the United States, Trump argued, “They don’t accept our foreign products, and they don’t take our cars, yet they export cars to us by the millions.” He added that the EU treats the U.S. “very badly, very unfairly,” highlighting recent multibillion-euro fines imposed on American tech giants like Google for anticompetitive behavior and Apple for breaching state aid regulations.
Reporting contributions by Elena Giordano.
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