What Trump’s Victory Means for Europe & Eurasia

Lilia Topouzova, Assistant Professor, Institute of Communication, Culture, Information, and Technology

Trump’s victory will have significant implications for Europe and in terms of security, trade, and political alliances. A Trump presidency might lead to decreased US commitment to collective defense, which could embolden adversaries like Russia and create uncertainty among European allies. Additionally, his skepticism toward multilateral agreements and institutions could disrupt ongoing E.U.-US collaborations on climate and security.

Trump’s conciliatory stance toward Vladimir Putin might lead to a softening of sanctions against Russia, potentially undermining European efforts to contain Moscow's influence. This could embolden authoritarian regimes across the region while weakening the position of pro-democracy movements especially in Easter Europe. Trump has previously expressed skepticism about US military aid to Ukraine, raising concerns that his return to office could result in a significant reduction of American support. This would weaken Ukraine’s ability to defend itself against Russian aggression and could pressure Kyiv into negotiating from a position of vulnerability. Such a shift in US policy could also undermine NATO’s unity and strain European countries to fill the gap in military and economic assistance, potentially slowing Ukraine’s war efforts. If sanctions were eased or diplomatic pressure on Moscow reduced, it could further destabilize the region and weaken Ukraine’s position on the global stage.

Tommaso Pavone, Assistant Professor, Political Science

For months European policymakers have been psychologically preparing for Donald Trump’s re-election, but they have done little in practical terms to insure against an even more unhinged Trump presidency. As nightmares become reality, how will this impact the EU? Some commentators are striking an optimistic tone, suggesting that EU policymakers will seize on the need to respond to Trump to rekindle European integration. This is probably true, but the real question is: what kind of European integration are we going to get, and how desirable will it be? One concern is that EU member states and the EU’s executive – the European Commission – will interpret “needing to respond to Trump’s re-election” by acting within the political agenda set by Trump and his European allies, like Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni: defense and security, migration, deregulation of the economy, and an abandonment of the EU’s “Green New Deal” and rule of law agendas.

The increased focus on security and defense is probably a good thing: Article 5 of NATO and its principle of “an attack on one is an attack on all” will be a dead letter once Trump is inaugurated the 47th President of the US, since he’s openly and consistently said that he will not defend EU countries from Russian aggression. You’d think Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggressive war against Ukraine would have already pushed more EU member states to take security and defense seriously, but key EU countries – like Germany – have dragged their feet under the safety blanket provided by the Biden Administration. Trump’s inauguration will likely provide a sufficient jolt to change this state of affairs. This change will likely be less of a paradigm shift and more of an acceleration of trends already underway: significant increases in defense spending and EU-level coordination of arms transfers to Ukraine. As much as French President Emmanuel Macron has pushed for building a true European Defense Community with a supranational army, there is significant intergovernmental disagreement on this point, so it’s easier and faster for European governments to simply boost defense spending at the national level. Regardless, European countries will be forced to truly take charge of their own security for the first time since the end of WWII.

The impact in other sectors – the environment, migration, economic regulation, and the rule of law – leaves me much more worried. Trump’s election – combined with the European elections this past summer, which produced the most right-wing European Parliament in history – will probably reinforce member state governments and Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s resolve to rekindle support for European integration by demonstrating that the EU can speak to the concerns of voters who have gravitated to the far-right. This means favoring economic growth (by relaxing the enforcement of competition and state aid rules, as well as the regulation of big tech) at the expense of environmental and consumer protection, doubling-down on border security via Frontex – the EU’s scandal-ridden border patrol force – and the externalization of migration management via pacts with third countries like Egypt, Tunisia, and Turkey, and turning away from the promotion and protection of values deemed divisive and contested – like international humanitarian law (in managing migration) and the rule of law (in dealing with rogue member states like Hungary). Should this happen, I would not be surprised if, in response, a new Euroscepticism begins to brew within the social democratic and green parties of Europe that have hitherto been stalwart supporters of European integration.

Andres Kasekamp, Professor and Elmar Tampõld Chair of Estonian Studies, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

Europe viewed Trump’s first term as an aberration and was lulled into complacency with the return to normalcy under Biden. Now Europeans are waking up to not being able to rely on the US. The Transatlantic partnership which has underpinned European security and prosperity since World War Two is about to undergo a stress test.

Trump’s approach to relationships is purely transactional and he does not understand that alliances and the rules-based international order benefit the US. Trump believes that Europeans have been taking advantage of the US economically. Europe with be hit with EU tariffs and will need to invest heavily in its own defence. EU attempts to regulate US tech giants will lead to confrontation, especially with Elon Musk now at Trump’s side.

If the US ends assistance to Ukraine, then Europeans will need to worry about their own defence. The blow to NATO’s credibility may tempt Putin to test the US commitment. Trump’s inclination to make a deal with Putin in order to focus on China will put Europeans in a bind. The silver lining to the damage to the Transatlantic relationship is that Europeans will be forced to get their own house in order. However, the emboldening of illiberal leaders, starting with Hungary’s Viktor Orban, and populist radical right parties will make it harder to achieve.

Filiz Kahraman, Assistant Professor, Political Science

Trump’s approach to foreign policy is defined by transactional relationships and a disregard for the rule of law. While he may not directly engage with popular movements abroad, his cultivation of personal ties with authoritarian leaders and his promotion of far-right movements and anti-immigrant rhetoric within the US inspires similar developments transnationally. A second term is likely to continue these trends, with serious implications for human rights and democratic resilience in Europe and beyond.
 
Turkey provides a vivid example of how Trump’s presidency could empower autocratic leaders and erode democratic norms. His previous interactions with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan demonstrate a troubling willingness to bypass legal institutions for personal or political gain. In 2017, following direct lobbying from Erdoğan, Trump removed a US attorney investigating Turkey’s state-owned Halkbank, implicated in a multi-billion scheme to evade US sanctions on Iran. Trump even pressured, albeit unsuccessfully, the Justice Department to drop the investigation entirely.
 
Turkey is also strategically located between two ongoing conflicts—Russia’s war in Ukraine to the north and Israel’s escalating war in the Middle East. While Trump’s return raises concerns about his commitment to Ukraine, US’s position on Israel is unlikely to shift significantly. Despite vague campaign promises to end US involvement in foreign wars, Trump is unlikely to reduce support for Israel’s mass atrocities against Palestinians or its expanding aggression in the region. As Israel’s attacks extend to Syria, Turkey will likely intensify its military operations against Kurdish forces in northern Syria and Iraq—forces that played a critical role in the fight against ISIS and the Assad regime. Given Trump’s willingness to pull US troops from Syria during his first term, Turkey’s actions will likely face little objection from his administration. The growing conflict, involving major regional powers and Russia will unfold under a US president whose engagement with the Middle East is primarily driven by his personal gains. While much remains uncertain, one thing is clear: the escalating violence will worsen the ongoing humanitarian crisis. Civilian displacement, infrastructure destruction, and targeted violence against minority groups are likely to increase—all while fueling anti-immigrant sentiments in Turkey and Europe.

Kenzie Burchell, Associate Professor, Media, Journalism & Digital Cultures

Disinformation is now the status quo. In 2025, European and Eurasian journalists, fact-checkers, lawmakers, and citizens alike will find that sources of malevolent, political disinformation will be increasingly de-centred from their local populist parties and neighbouring illiberal or authoritarian regimes. Validated by the American establishment, disinformation will be amplified across consolidating and expanding transnational networks of politicized media outlets and digital content producers. There will be a proliferation and export of Western, English-language templates for attacking fact-based reporting, transparency and accountability in governance, and movements towards environmental, gender, and racial justice.  Transnational and multilingual disinformation originating from local national media in addition to Russian and Chinese media outlets will find greater take-up among these networks. As current conflicts across Ukrainian and the Palestinian territories have shown, the assumed totality and veracity of international reporting easily succumbs to misinformation and political polarization in contexts where state and military curtailments of press freedom are enacted. This fundamental disordering of the international information landscape will translate into a wider currency of strategic state narratives among both sympathetic and disillusioned audiences globally.

In terms of the global digital economy and the desire for state sovereignty from what has been called platform and data colonialism, the EU faces different challenges from Central and Eastern European states and Eurasian states.  Against the existing backdrop of authoritarian Big Tech and in the emerging context of strident US market deregulation and trade/supply-chain protectionism, the EU will find itself isolated as a sole democratic national or supranational entity with the ability to responsibly curtail the excesses of the platform-, data-, and emerging AI industries. The loss of multi-centred regulatory leadership that spans hemispheres and includes Silicon Valley will come at the cost of citizen rights to privacy and political participation, trust in emerging and established democratic processes, and the ability of local national markets to gain a foothold in the platform and Ai economies worldwide.

In the case of the Central and Eastern European states and those throughout Central Asia that did not align with US sanctions against Russia, the impact of those sanctions is instructive for what 2025 will bring.  The competitive balkanization of the global economy between China with Russia and the increasingly belligerent US protectionism promised under Trump 2.0 will result in greater regional dependencies among technological supply chains, communication and data infrastructure, and digital services that crisscross entire national economies.  The governing techniques that have become synonymous with digital authoritarianism, citizen surveillance, and repression of the press and political opponents are all types of exports that follow these tools. Yet the sharing of these technologies is intertwined with neo-colonial designs of dominant regional military powers whose digital economies offer the only substantive and affordable alternatives to Silicon Valley, namely Russia and China, whose foreign economic support is accompanied by clear records of strategic interference in domestic political processes. 

Robert Austin, Professor and Associate Director, Centre for European and Eurasian Studies

There are a number of capitals in the Balkans that view Donald Trump’s return to the White House with optimism. The reasons for this are simple: Trump seemed to promise them an exit from the messy peace agreements that came out of the wars of Yugoslavia’s disintegration in the 1990s and the possibility of big investments from Trump-linked real-estate businesses. Helping Trump bring a new vision to the Balkans is Victor Orban’s Hungary, Trump’s most stalwart supporter in Europe who wrote that him and Trump had “big plans for the future”. Milorad Dodik, the leader of Republika Srbska, the Serb dominated entity in Bosnia, was even more effusive saying “Trump’s victory symbolizes a return to values we hold dear—family, freedom of choice, and the right to preserve one’s traditions.” Serbian president Alexsandar Vucic said Trump brought “hope to the world.”
 
Outside the obvious glee in Banja Luka, Belgrade and Budapest, what does it mean concretely? If Trump’s first term provides any indications, he will likely re-visit the land swap between Kosovo and Serbia as a means to achieve a final settlement there. This spells trouble not only for Kosovo but the whole region, as doubtless Trump will feel no attachment to the Dayton Peace agreement that keeps Bosnia (barely) together. Pursuing new peace deals in the Balkans certainly helps Trump’s son-in-law’s ambitions. He has already secured a hotel deal in downtown Belgrade and a resort in Albania.