Michael Barnier said today that President Donald Trump wants to “destroy the EU”. During an interview with Chatham House a day before the 10-year anniversary of the Brexit vote, Barnier — who led the EU’s negotiating team with the UK following the referendum and briefly served as French prime minister in 2024 — said it was the first time in 60 years that “the American president wants to destroy the EU, for different reasons than the Russian president.” He added: “We face a very unusual situation, a historical situation, where the two main countries on our West and our East want to destroy the EU.”

During the discussion, Barnier lamented Britain’s decision to leave the EU, arguing: “We were stronger with the UK. We would have been stronger with the UK.” He claimed: “We are on both sides weaker because we are separated.” He also hit out at “nationalist” French politicians Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who he compared to Nigel Farage, saying they both want to “destroy the EU”.

Barnier’s comments reflect escalating tensions between European leaders and Trump. The US President has spent much of his second term in office heavily criticising Europe over tariffs, threatening to take control of Greenland, and now sparring with allies over the Iran war. In response to Friedrich Merz’s statement that the US was being “humiliated” by Iran, Trump said that the German Chancellor should focus instead on “fixing his broken Country”. In March, he threatened to “cut off all trade” with Spain following its refusal to allow US access to its military bases. Last week, Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni, once the American President’s closest ally among EU leaders, hit out at his “constant, unprovoked attacks on allies.”

Trump said last year that the EU was formed “in order to screw the US, that’s the purpose of it,” adding: “they’ve really taken advantage of us.” During his 2016 presidential campaign, he stated that the EU was formed in order to “beat the United States when it comes to making money”.

Barnier has previously criticised the US President’s “scandalous” remarks about leaders and argued that Trump, in humiliating his closest allies, was damaging long-standing ties. Last year, Barnier again drew comparisons between Trump and Vladimir Putin in an interview with Le Monde, saying that neither “like Europe”.

The former French prime minister stated today that amid such “global challenges”, European nations had to ask “how we can defend our values, our national interests facing this current world”. He went on: “Is it alone, or together? And my answer is definitely we need to be together. But in any case we cannot accept [the destruction] of the EU.”