ANDREW LIMBONG, HOST:
European leaders are reacting strongly to Vice President JD Vance's address to the Munich Security Conference yesterday. Vance lectured his European colleagues about allowing far-right and populist political parties more space in Europe's political sphere. NPR's Central Europe correspondent Rob Schmitz joins us from Munich to talk about this and other news that surfaced today at the conference. Hey, Rob.
ROB SCHMITZ, BYLINE: Hey, Andrew.
LIMBONG: So Vance's speech yesterday received a very cool reception by European leaders. Not a lot of big applause breaks, right? What are you hearing there in Munich?
SCHMITZ: Well, I'm hearing across-the-board outrage from European delegations. This morning, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz began his address to the conference by calling out Vance. He said, the day before Vance delivered his speech, Vance had visited the Dachau concentration camp where tens of thousands of people were killed in World War II. And Vance used the phrase never again when he spoke about the atrocities of the Holocaust. Scholz used that phrase to lecture back at JD Vance, delivering a history lesson to the Vice President, pointing out that Germany has learned to say never again to political parties like Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany Party, known as the AFD, whose members sometimes trivialize the atrocities of the Nazis in World War II and whose members also try to chip away at democracy much like Hitler did during his rise to power. Here's what he said.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
OLAF SCHOLZ: (Speaking German).
SCHMITZ: And Andrew, he's saying here, "and this is the reason why we will not accept it when people who look at Germany from the outside come and intervene in our democracy and in our elections by supporting such a party." Scholz went on to say, "allies and friends don't act like this, and we resolutely reject this."
LIMBONG: Those are some pretty strong words from the German Chancellor. One thing missing from Vance's speech was any mention of the Trump administration's plans to end Russia's war in Ukraine. Did the U.S. delegation make any progress on this in Munich?
SCHMITZ: Not really, no. I mean, President Trump's special envoy for Russia and Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, was in a session today. He was asked who would be at the negotiating table, and he answered Russia, Ukraine and the United States, not Europe. You can imagine how that went over here in the heart of Europe. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke as well this morning, and he said that although he had met with Vice President Vance, there was a ways to go when it comes to negotiating an end to the war. Zelenskyy also brought up Vance's speech to make a key point to the European leaders assembled here. Here's what he said.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY: Yesterday here in Munich, the U.S. Vice President made it clear. Decades, he said, decades of the old relationship between Europe and America are ending. From now on, things will be different, and Europe needs to adjust to that. Ladies and gentlemen, I believe in Europe, and I'm sure you believe, too. And I urge you to act for your own sake.
(APPLAUSE)
LIMBONG: Act for your own sake - when he asks European leaders to do that, what does he mean?
SCHMITZ: Well, I think he means to - you know, you need to start taking care of yourself. He essentially said that we can no longer count on America to help defend Europe. And he added that according to Ukrainian intelligence, Russian President Vladimir Putin is planning to move Russian troops to Belarus this coming summer. He warned that this could be the start of an eventual attack on bordering EU member states, and that is why he's calling on the European Union to establish its own military.
LIMBONG: Well, what do EU members think of that idea, of, like, a pan-European military force?
SCHMITZ: Right, you know, it's not a new idea. It's been floated as a solution to EU members' dismally low investments into their own militaries, but most military experts here don't think it's very realistic and that it would take too long to form. But someone who presented an alternative idea was European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Yesterday in her address, she proposed a plan to ease the bloc's strict fiscal rules so that members are able to spend considerably more on their militaries. Now, EU members typically have to maintain debt-to-GDP ratios below 60%, and they're not allowed to maintain deficits above 3%. But Von der Leyen says the EU will ease these rules up so that Europe can build its military capacity very quickly, and this is considered an emergency in the same way that the pandemic was, and this should free up billions of dollars worth of funds to bring Europe up to speed militarily.
LIMBONG: That was NPR's Rob Schmitz, joining us from the Munich Security Conference. Thanks, Rob.
SCHMITZ: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
