It is always good to not look at what geopolitcal actors say, but what they do. For example the Make in Europe initative, the massive trade deals with Mercosur, India and a lot of other countries and blocks recently, a move towards local weapons and software purchases, working on replacing Visa and Mastercard with the digital Euro and so forth.
European countries were in general close allies of the US. That created a close reliance, which can not be cut without a lot of pain overnight. The biggest issue seems to be Russia right now. Having the US as a NATO member at least on paper defending members against Russia is usefull. As are the ability to purchase some American weapons, without European alternatives or with too low production numbers like Patriot. The smart move is to reduce the dependence on the US steadily, while not causing too many big breaks, which hurt Europe.
Probably a good comparison is what happened with Russia after the full scale invasion. A lot of yelling at each other. Massive fights on different positions and then half a year later the EU mostly cut off Russian fossil fuels, managed to set up a steady supply of arms and other aid to Ukraine, provide support for millions of refugees and so forth.
It is always good to not look at what geopolitcal actors say, but what they do. For example the Make in Europe initative, the massive trade deals with Mercosur, India and a lot of other countries and blocks recently, a move towards local weapons and software purchases, working on replacing Visa and Mastercard with the digital Euro and so forth.
European countries were in general close allies of the US. That created a close reliance, which can not be cut without a lot of pain overnight. The biggest issue seems to be Russia right now. Having the US as a NATO member at least on paper defending members against Russia is usefull. As are the ability to purchase some American weapons, without European alternatives or with too low production numbers like Patriot. The smart move is to reduce the dependence on the US steadily, while not causing too many big breaks, which hurt Europe.
Probably a good comparison is what happened with Russia after the full scale invasion. A lot of yelling at each other. Massive fights on different positions and then half a year later the EU mostly cut off Russian fossil fuels, managed to set up a steady supply of arms and other aid to Ukraine, provide support for millions of refugees and so forth.