Donald Trump and his chief strategist, Steve Bannon, are determined to break up the European Union, and are working to stage exit referendums in Berlin and Paris, Guy Verhofstadt, the European parliament’s chief Brexit negotiator, has said.

He claimed Trump represented the third threat to the EU alongside Vladimir Putin and Islamic extremism, adding that the US president’s call to organise the continent of Europe around national identity risked playing with fire.



His dramatic remarks at the Chatham House thinktank in London on Monday underline how some Europeans believe Trump represents an existential threat to the EU project and to European values.

The former Belgian prime minister and leader of the European liberal group said disaster lay ahead if the continent followed Trump’s call to return to nationalism.

Saying the EU faced three threats, he identified the first as “radicalised political Islam that has mounted attacks on European soil”. The second was Putin, “who is trying to undermine the EU from inside with cyber-attacks and financing far-right political parties including [Geert] Wilders in the Netherlands and [Marine] Le Pen in France”.

He added: “My impression is we have a third front undermining the EU, and that is Donald Trump, who ... has spoken very favourably that other countries will want to break away from the EU, and that he hoped for a disintegration of the EU.”

He accused Bannon, who previously oversaw Breitbart news, of trying to foment anti-EU feeling in Europe. “He is sending people now to Paris and Berlin to prepare for similar referendums ... as Brexit,” he said.

After his speech he pointed to the growth of Breitbart websites in Europe.

Verhofstadt, who had just returned from the US, said: “I can tell you that every European I met there had drawn only one conclusion and that is the EU has fewer friends than ever in the US.”

He also claimed Trump’s populism was influenced by European populism. “It’s the opposite of what people think – it’s from here first and it went over the Atlantic,” Verhofstadt said.

He also warned that Trump’s allies did not understand the dangers posed to Europe by populism and national identities based on ethnicity rather than shared values.

“Thirty million people have died because of pogroms and ethnic cleansing in Europe,” he said.

“Putting your political thinking and future organisation of Europe on nationalist ideas is the most stupid thing you can do. It’s playing with fire, knowing what it has created in the past.”

Although he warned that a breakup of the EU would be a disaster, he said: “It would be ridiculous not to recognise that the EU is involved in multiple crises – security, migration, geopolitical weakness in our neighbourhood and poor economic results in the south of Europe.”

Putting your political thinking ... on nationalist ideas is the most stupid thing you can do

But he said the Brexit negotiations represented “a golden opportunity” for the EU to remake itself, saying there was a new generation of younger, pro-European politicians such as Emmanuel Macron who were willing to defend Europe from attacks by the populist right.

On the Brexit talks, he said the critical period was relatively short between Theresa May triggering article 50 and the need for the European parliament to craft a response ahead of the European parliamentary elections in 2019.



He also rejected suggestions that the exit part of the negotiations would have to be completed first and conducted independent of the discussion about the UK’s future relationship with the EU.

