By EMMA BURROWS, MATTHEW LEE and GEIR MOULSON, Associated Press
MUNICH (AP) — An annual gathering of top international security figures that last year set the tone for a growing rift between the United States and Europe opens Friday, bringing together many top European officials with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others.
The Munich Security Conference opens with a speech by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, one of 15 heads of state or government from European Union countries expected to attend.
The many other expected guests at the conference that runs until Sunday include Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. In keeping with the conference’s tradition, there will also be a large delegation of members of the U.S. Congress.
“Trans-Atlantic relations have been the backbone of this conference since it was founded in 1963 … and trans-Atlantic relations are currently in a significant crisis of confidence and credibility,” conference chairman Wolfgang Ischinger told reporters earlier this week. “So it is particularly welcome that the American side has such great interest in Munich.”
At last year’s conference, held a few weeks into U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term, Vice President JD Vance stunned European leaders by lecturing them about the state of democracy on the continent.
A series of statements and moves from the Trump administration targeting allies followed in the months after that, including Trump’s threat last month to impose new tariffs on several European countries in a bid to secure U.S. control of Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark. The president later dropped that threat.
With Rubio heading the U.S. delegation this year, European leaders can hope for a less contentious approach more focused on traditional global security concerns.
Rubio is expected to meet with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen on the sidelines of the conference, according to officials from both sides, one of many meetings going on in and around the hotel that hosts the event.
Rubio also met China’s Wang ahead of Trump’s planned visit to China in April. They shook hands in front of Chinese and U.S. flags before sitting down with their delegations, but neither of them spoke.
Before departing for Germany on Thursday, Rubio had some reassuring words as he described Europe as important for Americans.
“We’re very tightly linked together with Europe,” he told reporters. “Most people in this country can trace both, either their cultural or their personal heritage, back to Europe. So, we just have to talk about that.”
But Rubio made clear it wouldn’t be business as it used to be, saying: “We live in a new era in geopolitics, and it’s going to require all of us to reexamine what that looks like.”
Rubio arrived in Munich Friday and is due to address the conference on Saturday morning.
Since last year’s Munich conference, NATO allies have agreed under pressure from Trump to a large increase in their defense spending target.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said there has been a “shift in mindset,” with “Europe really stepping up, Europe taking more of a leadership role within NATO, Europe also taking more care of its own defense.”
Moulson reported from Berlin.
