Étiquettes
Europe is waking up to an election taking shape in a way few on the Continent had imagined.
On German breakfast television approaching 6 a.m. local time, a panel of senior members of parliament sat stunned and stone-faced trying to make sense of the growing likelihood of a President Trump.
The lawmakers on public broadcaster ZDF said they had little clue of how Mr. Trump would act as president, both because of what they called his contradictory public statements and because of his few links to the trans-Atlantic foreign-policy establishment.
“We must hope that we are able to build up lines of communication as quickly as possible” to Mr. Trump’s circle, said Niels Annen, a foreign-policy specialist for the center-left Social Democrats. Norbert Röttgen, an influential lawmaker with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, warned that the U.S. could lose its role as the linchpin of the Western world order under a President Trump.
“Nevertheless, we must respect the facts,” Mr. Röttgen added. “We must wait and see how he acts in office—I think he doesn’t know yet himself how he will act.”
Anton Troianovski
Groupe Gaulliste Sceaux 