BRUSSELS: Facing the possibility of a fundamental disengagement under US President Donald Trump, European Union leaders opened a day of emergency summit talks Thursday to beef up their own military defenses and make sure that Ukraine will still be properly protected by its allies.
Friedrich Merz, the likely next chancellor of Germany, was conferring with summit host Antonio Costa over breakfast on how to meet the challenge on a short deadline only days after he and his prospective coalition partner pushed plans to loosen the nation’s rules on running up debt to allow for higher defense spending.
At the same time, the 27-nation bloc was waking up to the news from French President Emmanuel Macron would confer with EU leaders the possibility of using France’s nuclear deterrent to protect the continent from Russian threats.
It all underscored the sea change that has happened in the two months since Trump took office and immediately started questioning the cornerstones of cooperation between the United States and Europe which had been the bedrock of Western security since World War II.
“Given these profound shifts in US policy, and the existential threat of another war on the continent, Europe, must manage its essential defense tasks,” the European Policy Center think tank said in a commentary.
The bloc of 27 will “take decisive steps forward,” Macron told the French nation Wednesday evening. “Member states will be able to increase their military spending” and “massive joint funding will be provided to buy and produce some of the most innovative munitions, tanks, weapons and equipment in Europe.”
Adding to the ebullient message he said that “Europe’s future does not have to be decided in Washington or Moscow.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wants to be up to the task and has proposed an 800 billion euro ($840 billion) plan that would allow EU member states to spend much more on defense despite their current budgetary woes and profit from loans to kickstart the process.
Part of any plan is also to protect the increasingly beleaguered position of Ukraine, and President Volodymyr Zelensky is set to take part in the talks.
Early this week, Trump ordered a pause to US military supplies to Ukraine as he sought to press Zelensky to engage in negotiations to end the war with Russia, bringing fresh urgency to the EU summit in Brussels.
“Europe faces a clear and present danger on a scale that none of us have seen in our adult lifetime. Some of our fundamental assumptions are being undermined to their very core,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen warned in a letter to the EU’s 27 leaders, who will consider ways to access more money for defense spending and ease restrictions on it.
But perhaps the biggest challenge for the EU on Thursday will be to take a united stance at a moment when it’s fractured, since much of what the bloc does requires unanimous support.
Even if the challenges are so daunting, Thursday’s summit is unlikely to produce immediate decisions on spending for Ukraine or its own defenses. Another EU summit where the real contours of decisions would be much clearer is set for March 20-21.

ALEXANDRIA, United States: A Daesh operative who allegedly helped carry out the 2021 suicide bombing outside Kabul airport during the chaotic US military withdrawal from Afghanistan appeared in a Virginia court Wednesday.
Mohammad Sharifullah has confessed to scouting out the route to the airport, where the suicide bomber later detonated his device among packed crowds trying to flee days after the Taliban seized control of Kabul, the Justice Department said.
The blast at the Abbey Gate killed at least 170 Afghans as well as 13 US troops who were securing the airport’s perimeter.
Sharifullah appeared in a court in Alexandria, near the US capital Washington, wearing light blue prison garb and a black face mask. He was officially appointed a public defender and provided with an interpreter.
He did not enter a plea. His next appearance will be in the same courthouse on Monday, and he will stay in custody until then, the judge said.
Sharifullah — who the US says also goes by the name Jafar and is a member of Daesh’s Khorasan branch in Afghanistan and Pakistan — was detained by Pakistani authorities and brought to the United States.
President Donald Trump triumphantly announced his arrest Tuesday in an address to Congress, calling him “the top terrorist responsible for that atrocity.”
Daesh militants gave Sharifullah a cellphone and a SIM card and told him to check the route to the airport, according to the Justice Department’s affidavit in the case.
When he gave it the all-clear, they told him to leave the area, it said.
“Later that same day, Sharifullah learned of the attack at HKIA [Hamid Karzai International Airport] described above and recognized the alleged bomber as an Daesh-K operative he had known while incarcerated,” the affidavit said, using an alternative acronym for the group.
Sharifullah is charged with “providing and conspiring to provide material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization resulting in death.”
Trump thanked Islamabad “for helping arrest this monster.”
“This evil Daesh-K terrorist orchestrated the brutal murder of 13 heroic Marines,” US Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement.
Sharifullah also admitted to involvement in several other attacks, the Justice Department said, including the March 2024 Moscow Crocus City Hall attack, in which he said “he had shared instructions on how to use AK-style rifles and other weapons to would-be attackers” by video.
The United States withdrew its last troops from Afghanistan in August 2021, ending a chaotic evacuation of tens of thousands of Afghans who had rushed to Kabul’s airport in the hope of boarding a flight out of the country.
Images of crowds storming the airport, climbing onto aircraft as they took off — and some clinging to a departing US military cargo plane as it rolled down the runway — aired on news bulletins around the world.
In 2023, the White House announced that a Daesh official involved in plotting the airport attack had been killed in an operation by Afghanistan’s new Taliban government.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif thanked Trump for acknowledging his country’s role in counter-terrorism efforts in Afghanistan, and promised to “continue to partner closely with the United States” in a post on X.
Pakistan’s strategic importance has waned since the US and NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan, which has seen violence rebound in the border regions.
Tensions between the neighboring countries have soared, with Islamabad accusing Kabul of failing to root out militants sheltering on Afghan soil who launch attacks on Pakistan.
The Taliban government denies the charges and in a statement said Sharifullah’s arrest “is proof” that Daesh hideouts are on Pakistani soil.
Daesh, which has claimed several recent attacks in Afghanistan, has staged a growing number of bloody international assaults, including killing more than 90 people in an Iranian bombing last year.
Michael Kugelman, South Asia Institute director at the Wilson Center, said on X that Pakistan was trying to “leverage US concerns about terror in Afghanistan and pitch a renewed security partnership.”