POLITICO — 2026-05-18
News from Brussels
The European Union’s challenge in its trade negotiations with Washington is no longer finding an agreement with Donald Trump. It’s finding one that can survive the EU itself.
Negotiators from the three EU institutions — the Parliament, Council and Commission — meet on Tuesday evening in Strasbourg, aiming to seal a deal on the transatlantic trade pact struck last summer at the U.S. president’s golf resort in Turnberry, Scotland.
The biggest outstanding hurdle is how far the EU should go toward “Trump-proofing” the deal, by tying the bloc’s pledge to remove tariffs on U.S. industrial and some agricultural goods to Washington’s commitment to cap tariffs on most EU exports at 15 percent.
“During the last days, a lot of discussion and reflection happened and I’m quite optimistic that we will find a solid compromise for good legislation which is Trump-proof and which reflects the European interest,” Bernd Lange, the lawmaker leading the Parliament’s negotiating team, told POLITICO on Monday.
A coalition of center-left and liberal lawmakers has repeatedly come together to delay approval of the deal — first following Trump’s threats in January to annex Greenland, a Danish territory, and then after the U.S. Supreme Court in February struck down most of his tariff agenda.
Lange, a German Social Democrat who chairs the Parliament’s trade committee, has led calls to add as many guardrails to the pact as possible.
The lawmakers are at odds with the European Commission and EU capitals, led by Berlin, which want to approve the deal quickly and with minimal conditions — wary of potential retaliation from Washington.
“It’s like an unhappy marriage. Sometimes you just gotta make it work,” said one EU diplomat familiar with the talks, summing up how a majority of EU capitals see the Turnberry accord.
The disagreements and delays within the EU have tested both Washington’s patience — and the resilience of the €1.7 trillion transatlantic trade relationship, which accounts for 30 percent of global cross-border commerce.
Trump this month threatened to impose a 25 percent levy on European cars should the EU fail to clinch a compromise on the legislation by July 4. Doubling down on the eve of the crunch talks, Trump’s envoy to the EU Andrew Puzder warned in an opinion piece for POLITICO that his president “has seen enough.”
“Trump has repeatedly demonstrated he prefers a deal to a dispute — and we have a deal. The EU still has time to choose cooperation over confrontation. Our sincere hope is it will,” the ambassador wrote.
A narrow path
The European Commission, which negotiates trade deals on behalf of the bloc’s 27 member countries, wants a compromise among the EU institutions that preserves the fragile détente with the Trump administration.
At the same time, the deal needs to secure enough support from the Socialists & Democrats, the liberals of Renew and the Greens in the European Parliament. Those groups want a “sunrise” clause that would delay implementation of the accord until Washington reduces duties on European steel and aluminum products to 15 percent from current levels of up to 50 percent.
They have also called for a so-called sunset clause under which the agreement would expire in March 2028 — 10 months before Trump is due to leave the White House.
The European People’s Party and other conservative groups in the legislature reluctantly agreed to the sunrise clause. But that was a step too far for EU member countries, which want to implement the deal without delay and warn that further uncertainty would put European exporters at risk.
In a bid to rally both sides, Brussels made a proposal in early May that seeks to soften the sunrise clause. Tuesday’s round is expected to zero in on this text.
Under the draft compromise, first reported by POLITICO, the Commission would be empowered to suspend the EU’s own tariff concessions should Washington not reduce its tariffs on European steel and aluminum products by the end of 2026, five officials and diplomats briefed on the proposal said.
“We need clear safeguards, suspension, and a sunset mechanism,” said Lange, the senior trade lawmaker.
Close vote
Should the proposal lean too much toward EU capitals, the text risks rejection in a plenary vote now expected to be held between June 15 and June 18.
“This is a package deal. We have always said that we needed safeguards,” said one S&D official, declining to say whether the group would vote in favor of the Commission’s proposal.
“That will all depend on how it all clicks together. What matters is the substance over timing.”
Negotiators are united in their desire to avoid a humiliating rejection in the plenary — aware that the window to land a compromise will soon close.
“In the end, we all share the same goal: to try and reach an agreement,” said the diplomat cited above, who was granted anonymity to discuss the closed-door talks.
Even if Trump’s tariff powers have suffered heavy political and legal blows, officials in Brussels still fear his administration could yet escalate after July, when the interim 10 percent global tariff he imposed following the February Supreme Court ruling is due to run out.
“I am happy that we are coming to the final act of the implementation of this deal and that we are going to respect our part of the deal,” Željana Zovko, the top EPP negotiator on the file, told POLITICO. “That will allow for better cooperation with the U.S. on other parts of our joint statement.”