Paola Tamma

And most certainly, any kind of retaliation measures from the EU could result in US withdrawing support from other fora and other fronts on which Europe very much needs and wants the US to stay engaged.

Obviously, NATO is the obvious one.

Europe still relies on the US for its own security.

And this is something that no government in Europe that's a member of NATO can take lightly.

And Ukraine is another one where Europeans are very aware of the peace negotiations that are ongoing and that are being led by the US between Ukraine and Russia.

and absolutely do not want an outcome that would cut them out or have some serious consequences for European security in a forum where they're not at the table.

So because of the fundamental nature of these two issues,

fronts in which the EU still needs the US, all of the potential measures.

And there is many.

There's been a lot of talk of putting counter tariffs.

Of course, you can go and hurt US interest in, for instance, taxing

big tech and preventing them from offering services in our market.

There's been some talk of dumping U.S.

treasuries, but all of those have, A, the potential of escalating the fight, which is an outcome that the EU wants to avoid because we do not have escalation dominance.

In the end, there is a collective realization that we would be hurt more by these actions than the U.S.

would.

And secondly, there is the very real risk that

Anything we do on the economic front could backfire in terms of the U.S.

withdrawing support on the military and security front, which is the ultimate side of this relationship, which Europeans do not want to hurt.

I think that one very key moment where this shift happened was the Alaska summit last summer, where there appeared to be the potential peace deal between the US and Russia being drawn up completely without consulting, not just Ukraine, but the whole of Europe.