The Executive Vice-president of the European Commission for a Clean, Just and Competitive Transition, Teresa Ribera, maintained this Monday a cautious tone at the Forum Europa in Brussels regarding the return of Donald Trump to the White House, which will materialize in a few hours, and stated that "it does not seem very opportune to think that the best response that can be given to a provocation is to escalate provocations".
This is what Ribera said in response to questions from the media within the framework of an informative meeting organised by New Economy Forum in the capital of the EU, where she argued that neither is the "best response to questioning the international order to undo that international order".
In Ribera's opinion, the "opposite" is happening, since we must choose to "keep a cool head and defend the application of the rules and the defence of our values, our borders and the principles that have governed relations between countries since the end of the Second World War".
In any case, in response to Trump's words about Greenland, now dependent on Denmark, an EU country, Ribera responded that "it is obvious that we cannot remain without defending our values and our territorial integrity". In her opinion, the "alternative" to the current world order "is not something acceptable either for Europeans or in general for the world".
"The United Nations has 192 countries and it seems to me that what Europe does in a context that can sometimes be complicated in relation to one, another, the one beyond, is important not only for that bilateral relationship with one neighbour or another, but in general for the defence of that scheme of international and geopolitical relations". added the former Vice-president of the Government of Spain.
Ribera didn´t want to go into the concrete consequences for the EU of Trump's return to the Presidency of the most economically powerful country on the planet. "We don't know. We don't know and I don't think we should go beyond what we know", Ribera dismissed the question.
Nevertheless, she maintained that "we should look at our own capacities and weaknesses to build a stronger European Union" and rejected approaches based on "confrontation." She also commented that, regardless of who governs the United States at any given time, it is a country to which the EU will remain open because, among other things, "we share values and understandings on many issues".
