WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM (WEF), an annual event bringing together a diverse array of politicians, technocrats, corporate executives, intellectuals, thought leaders, pressure groups and non-governmental organisations every January, played host to world leaders last week in Davos, Switzerland. The star of the entire event turned out to be Donald J. Trump, president of the United States of America. He was not a star at the event by accident. He became a cynosure for his speech and the unapologetic policies he laid out for implementation, for his home country — the USA— and for other countries in his new international relations framework.Â
The WEF, over the years, has tended towards a direction in its trajectory of intervention, especially considering the issues promoted on its platform. Lately, this direction was amplified by the ideological leaning towards which the platform was pointing. Western Europe in particular was speedily going with the flow on the assumption that it was riding the waves. The risks and dangers have been largely ignored or minimised even while they burgeon. This is made a lot difficult because of the sower of leadership giving direction to the European Union member countries. The supra-national government, basically aloof from the member countries has shown every bit of what has gone wrong with Europe in recent times.Â
The EU, in reality, is not a democracy. It is ruled by a modern aristocracy, not elected. The EU Commission is the most powerful institution of the Union, but not a single commissioner is elected by the people. The parliament is voted every five years, but hardly has any real power. It cannot make laws. Is that a democracy or a feudal rule? The EU looks like living in a bubble, with officials sitting in Brussels and Strasbourg, aloof from the everyday life of citizens, but best connected with lobby groups, NGOs and corporations. Â
Ideological bent is topmost in the European government’s priority, a major cause of its crises. Europe is 12 percent of the world’s population, 25 percent of the world GDP and 60 percent of the world welfare spending. Europe got comfortable, lazy and has lost the ability to realise that it lives in a dangerous world. The EU, as shown over the past couple of years, has a clear agenda, namely: climate, open borders and liberal approach to migration, gender issues as well as militarisation. Whoever contradicts the EU position on any of these is defamed as populist, anti-European or even “right-wing.” The elite knows what is good for the people – and the people should obey.
While many Europeans are becoming poorer, work is being done in Brussels to “rebuild” society — with no mandate, no debate, no consent. The will of the people is ignored. The current EU leadership is clearly not a democratic representation of the people. It is a technocratic aristocracy that legitimises, rewards and protects itself. In so doing, it dangerously overrides national policies that should be the prerogative of individual countries. Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán disclosed a while ago that his country is made to pay a fine of €1 million (one million euros) a day to Brussels until it complies with EU refugee laws because of its refusal to uphold the rights of asylum seekers, to let illegal migrants in.
Europeans had pursued economic suicide called “net zero” so vigorously as they felt so safe and so comfortable. They engaged in all this luxury obsession to the point where Germany destroyed its nuclear facilities, thereby making itself reliant on Russian gas. Angela Merkel began the implementation of phased destruction of nuclear power. Germany decommissioned its nuclear stations because they were past their shutdown date. Now, Germany has gone back to burning graphite coal while the Electrobahn from France was being built, which is supplied from a French nuclear station and the short fall is propped up by Russian gas. The result now is that the industrial sector in Germany is stressed. Germany’s auto industry is now plagued by higher cost of electricity and supply shortfalls. The European economy is imploding as the largest biggest economy is taking a hit.Â
Ioannis “Yanis” Varoufakis is a Greek economist, politician and former Minister of Finance of Greece. Since 2018, he has been Secretary-General of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025. According to Varoufakis, “Germany is deindustrialising and re-nationalising its policies. The single market is finished. Europe does not have the capacity to create [a] military-industrial complex. Europe is simply slipping into irrelevance. Probably unknown to Emmanuel Macron, president of France, he is pushing for militarism. “We have to fix the war in Ukraine. We have to help Ukrainians to resist and find sustainable peace,” Macron said recently. He was ardent in his belief in the EU’s top-down approach to leadership. “So,” he said, “what we have to do is to remain very calm, all of us. We have such an agenda with so many opportunities and so many challenges. So, let’s be focused.”
Macron’s optimism appears endless. Presiding over France, a country that is highly dependent on poor francophone former colonies in Africa for economic survival, Macron’s posturing is awkward as he said in Davos recently that “we have to fix prosperity in democracies.” He was obviously not referring to the EU type of democracy.Â
Rutger Bregman, a historian, pointed out that Europe is weak.” And despite its weakness, “it regulates industries it doesn’t build.” Artificial intelligence (AI) is an example. According to Bregman, the EU poses like a major regulator through its AI Act, even when there was hardly any AI company to speak of. “We’ve become a continent of handbags instead of hardware,” he said, citing Louis Vuitton, Dior, etc. Buttressing Europe’s reality and policy mismatch in Davos last week, Howard Lutnick, the US secretary of commerce, asked: “Why would Europe agree to be net zero in 2030 when they don’t make a battery?” Lutnick added that “if they go 2030, they are deciding to be subservient to China who makes the batteries.”
The EU is losing ground in agriculture, just as in manufacturing, especially the auto industry. The latest are electric vehicles, solar and windmills that will make the EU more vulnerable and dependent. At Davos, President Trump said Europe is becoming unrecognisable and weaker. This is obvious when considering energy security, manufacturing, trade, innovation and agriculture. The aspect of Trump’s speech that seems to be of greater importance was not economic, although the secondary economic effects are real. It was civilisational. Trump’s warning that parts of Europe are becoming unrecognisable was a description of something that millions of people can already see and feel. It was not a gradual change. Not diversity, but demographic transformation imposed from above without public consent, public debate or serious plan for social integration, the sort that the EU supranational democracy is good and adept at.
Javier Milei, president of Argentina, was in Davos for the 2026 WEF. He reiterated that, “in this place in 2024, I stated that the West was in danger as a result of having embraced increasing doses of socialism in its most hypocritical form which is wokeism. In turn in 2025, I explained the mental parasites sown by the left inhumanity. However, 2026 is the year in which I bring you good news. The world has begun to awaken. The best proof of this is what is happening in the Americas with the rebirth of the ideas of liberty. The Americas will be the beacon of light that will once again illuminate the entire West.
Trump looks like the arrowhead of that transformation. Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever said that now is the time for the European Union to wake up if they don’t want to “become slaves” of the US. Although De Wever predicted that, “maybe in five years we will say thank you, Mr. Trump, for waking us up just in time to build a much stronger Europe and a united Europe,” Trump’s intervention has been largely misconstrued by the EU aristocrats. Europe was shaken by shockwaves of Trump’s threats over Greenland and tariffs on EU allies. In a hastily called summit, EU leaders regrouped and pushed back, testing a new unity in a rapidly shifting global order.
Although, behind the scenes diplomacy has gone into overdrive, Europe tried something new. It pushed back. By threatening countertariffs and a powerful economic instrument — the trade bazooka. They did halt the signing of the trade deal that would have strongly favoured the US. Emmanuel Macron of France said “when Europe responds in a united manner, it can command respect.” He said also, pushing back against Trump’s tariffs, that “I mean it doesn’t make sense to have tariffs and be divided and even to threaten now with additional tariffs. The crazy thing is that we can be put in a situation to use anti-coercion mechanism for the very first time vis-a-vis the US if they put additional tariffs.”
Different shades of opinions emanated from the various EU leaders. On Greenland and Denmark, Mette Frederiksen, Danish Prime Minister, said “our red lines, that are also our democratic rules, cannot be discussed. Another example is Ursula von der Leyen, EU Commission President, who said there was a discussion on the clarity with which we know that we have to work more and more for an independent Europe. Reluctantly, some European leaders are accepting Trump’s policies. It is also clear that many EU countries will pivot back to the US. For instance, Antonio Costa, EU Council President pointed out that “we will continue to engage, to have a good relationship with the United States.” Although the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) seems endangered, the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, seems also determined to salvage it. “I very much hope that we will succeed in maintaining this alliance. I also know that we on the European side of NATO need to do more for our defence capability.”
Europe’s defence and foreign policy chief and former Estonian Prime Minister, Kaja Kallas, not too long ago outrageously declared Europe’s objective to be the breakup of Russia into multiple ethnic mini states. However, Mark Rutte, NATO secretary general, said his predecessor, “Jens Stoltenberg, designed the native defence planning process to, over time, make sure that Europe can take over more of these capabilities, of these core enablers from the US, to do more of the protection of the European continent. We are still having a strong conventional US presence in Europe, also going forward and, of course, the nuclear umbrella as our ultimate guarantor.” According to Rutte, “I am absolutely convinced that without Donald Trump, we would not have taken those decisions and they are crucial particularly for the European Union and the Canadian side of NATO to really grow up in the post-gulf war world.
Announcing a new national policy, Italy’s Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni visited the US and told President Trump, “I stand with you. Your agenda is my agenda. Your plan is my plan. I too want to make the West great again.” This will obviously cause division within Europe politically and in the economy, broadly. The European Union and the eurozone may break apart to such an extent that even the euro currency could be fractured. This could trouble France and, by extension, the African former colonies still under its control. The alliance that Europe is forming with China may hit the rocks as a result. China wants to sell its electric cars to Europe and pull Tesla aside. Here’s a catch. Europe doesn’t produce components of electric cars, particularly the lithium batteries
Some European countries may step back from supporting Ukraine in the war against Russia as the US may consider withdrawing further support for Ukraine. Expect many EU countries to individually pivot back to the US, either for military or economic purposes. One thing that stood out in Davos was that Trump has succeeded in waking the sleeping Europe. Whether it will relapse into somnolence is another thing entirely.
Dr. Olukayode Oyeleye, Business a.m.’s Editorial Advisor, who graduated in veterinary medicine from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, before establishing himself in science and public policy journalism and communication, also has a postgraduate diploma in public administration, and is a former special adviser to two former Nigerian ministers of agriculture. He specialises in development and policy issues in the areas of food, trade and competition, security, governance, environment and innovation, politics and emerging economies.
