J.D. Vance, former U.S. President Donald Trump’s newly-appointed running mate, has a lot to say about Europe.
As a champion of U.S. isolationism and staunch critic of aid to Ukraine, the nomination of the 39-year-old Ohio senator has sparked panic among diplomats across the Atlantic.
But what could a Vice President Vance mean for Europe? From “idiotic” Germany to the “Islamist” U.K., POLITICO digs into what the senator has said so far about the Old Continent.
On the EU
Vance has been sharply critical of Brussels over its decision to withhold funds from Hungary and Poland over democracy and rule of law concerns.
“You know, the EU has kept billions of dollars of promised aid away from Hungary, because of its views on Ukraine. It captured billions of dollars of promised aid from a previous government in Poland, because of the conservative Polish government’s views,” he said in an interview in February.
“That’s not a rules-based order. That’s Europe, from Brussels and Berlin, imposing liberal imperialistic views on the rest of the continent.”
On Hungary
Much like Trump, Vance has spoken highly of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and proposed taking a leaf out of his book on social policy.
“In Hungary under Orbán, they offer loans to newly married couples that are forgiven at some point later if those couples have actually stayed together and had kids. Why can’t we do that here? Why can’t we actually promote family formation?” he told a conservative thinktank in 2021.
Vance also called for the “de-woke-ification” of schools and cited Orbán as inspiration in an appearance on a right-wing podcast last September.
“What do you do at the Department of Education? Well, you do what Viktor Orbán has done in Hungary, which is basically say, ‘You’re not allowed to teach critical race theory anymore, you’re not allowed to teach critical gender theory anymore … You’re not allowed to do those things and get a dollar of federal money or a dollar of state money.’”
On Poland
Vance slammed Donald Tusk after the Polish prime minister criticized Republicans for blocking U.S. aid to Ukraine in February this year.
“The new leader of Poland is arresting political opponents and owes his country’s security to the generosity of mine,” Vance wrote in a post on social media. “He might consider showing some appreciation, or at least toning down his own authoritarian impulses.”
He called on the Biden administration to respond to the Tusk government’s state media reforms purging loyalists installed by the previous conservative government.
“I urge you to encourage Poland’s new government to reconsider any actions that could undermine it or the freedoms Polish and American citizens both hold dear,” he said in January.
Polish security concerns about Russian aggression were overblown, Vance said in an interview with CNN last December.
“The idea that [Putin] can march to Poland or Berlin is preposterous,” he said.
On Germany
Berlin’s military is a basket case and its energy policy is “idiotic,” according to Vance.
“Germany’s conduct in this war is disgraceful, and it’s insulting to our voters that too many Republicans go along with it. All of their promises have materialized into manure,” he raged on social media in March last year.
“Why do American taxpayers subsidize idiotic German energy policy and weak defense policy? A mystery.”
Vance attacked Germany’s defense capabilities once again in an essay for the Financial Times in February.
“Germany spends considerably more than France on defence each year, with little to show for it. The French army includes six highly capable combined-arms brigades … but the Bundeswehr can barely scrape together a single combat-ready brigade,” he said.
“Germany is the most important economy in Europe, but it relies on imported energy and borrowed military strength.”
Vance also commented on the far-right’s surging popularity in Germany in an interview in February, claiming the “AfD is doing well” because of “a rising resistance to mass migration.”
On the U.K.
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy counts Vance among his friends, but that didn’t stop the American senator from lashing the U.K. as an “Islamist country.”
“I have to beat up on the U.K., just one additional thing. I was talking with a friend recently and we were talking about, you know, one of the big dangers in the world, of course, is nuclear proliferation,” he said at a conservative conference last week.
“And I was talking about, you know, what is the first truly Islamist country that will get a nuclear weapon, and we were like, maybe it’s Iran, you know, maybe Pakistan already kind of counts, and then we sort of finally decided maybe it’s actually the U.K., since Labour just took over.”
On Italy
Even far-right Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni couldn’t escape Vance’s wrath.
“Meloni’s victory in Italy was very much a rejection of the immigration policies in Brussels. And yet, she’s been a complete catastrophe when it comes to actually reducing migration to Italy,” Vance said in an interview in February.
Csongor Körömi contributed reporting.