Welcome to Wider Europe, RFE/RL's newsletter focusing on the key issues concerning the European Union, NATO, and other institutions and their relationships with the Western Balkans and Europe's Eastern neighborhoods.
I'm RFE/RL Europe Editor Rikard Jozwiak, and this week I'm drilling down on two issues: The EU finally targeting Russian fertilizers and Pete Hegseth's first meeting at NATO.
Briefing #1: Hegseth's First NATO Visit
What You Need To Know: NATO defense ministers are gathering in Brussels on February 13 for their first meeting of the year. All eyes at this one-day gathering will be on new U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. After recently surviving the U.S. Senate confirmation vote, with Vice President J. D. Vance casting the decisive ballot in his favor, the 31 NATO member states are now keen to hear Hegseth's views on a number of things -- notably the war in Ukraine, defense spending, and the U.S. commitment to NATO.
Hegseth's visit comes during a week when several U.S. government officials come to Europe for the first time in their tenure and against the backdrop of considerable trans-Atlantic tensions. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is set to be in Paris on February 12 to meet his British, French, German, Italian, Polish, Spanish, and Ukrainian counterparts before heading to the Munich Security Conference, which brings together world leaders, defense officials, and foreign policy wonks.
Vance and the U.S. special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, Keith Kellogg, are also due to appear at the February 14-16 conference, but Hegseth is the only one who will appear in a formal, ministerial setting.
Deep Background: So what is Hegseth expected to say in Brussels? A Defense Department readout after his first phone call with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte on January 28 stated that they had "shared commitment to building a stronger, more lethal NATO Alliance. Both leaders stressed the importance of raising Allied defense spending and expanding defense industrial base capacity on both sides of the Atlantic."
A NATO source with knowledge of the conversation told me that the call went "better than expected." Before taking his new role, Hegseth had said Washington's NATO allies were "outdated, outgunned, invaded, and impotent" and claimed the military organization wasn't "an alliance" but rather "a defense arrangement for Europe, paid for and underwritten by the United States." NATO members in Europe will be interested to know if Hegseth is committed to NATO's mutual defense clause, Article 5, after U.S. President Donald Trump previously cast doubt on the United States' willingness to defend nations that don't spend enough on defense.
Drilling Down
European defense spending will definitely come up at the ministerial. NATO officials I have spoken to believe Hegseth will most likely deliver a punchy message. Trump has previously mentioned that defense spending may need to go up as high as 5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).
Only Poland comes close to this 5 percent, although Estonia and Lithuania have signaled they will raise spending to this level as well.
Everyone I have spoken to at NATO agrees the current level of 2 percent is too little and expects that the new target, to be agreed at the NATO summit in the Hague in June, will end up at around 3 to 3.5 percent.
What about the presence of U.S. troops in Europe? Few believe Hegseth will touch upon this in his first ministerial meeting, but there will certainly be talks on this later in the spring. Roughly 100,000 U.S. military personnel are stationed on the continent, mainly in Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom.
At NATO headquarters in Brussels, there has been speculation for a while that U.S. troops could be moved eastward, notably from Germany, or that a large chunk of them will be completely redeployed away from Europe.
Then, of course, there is the delicate question of Greenland, a Danish territory that Trump has expressed an interest in. So far, there's no indication the issue will come up at the ministerial meeting, but there may well be talks on the sidelines.
So far, NATO's line has been to note that the entire alliance needs to strengthen its presence in the High North, which is the Arctic region and the northernmost parts of Europe and North America, avoiding the delicate issue of one NATO ally expressing interest in another alliance member's territory. And while Denmark has talked about the issue both with Washington and its European allies, Copenhagen is seemingly reluctant to officially put it on the EU and NATO agenda.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov will also be present in Brussels, as one of the two sessions of the ministerial meeting will be a NATO-Ukraine Council. Umerov will essentially give an update about the state of the war, but much of the talk on the sidelines will likely focus on the increased chatter in the media and among diplomats that some sort of peace talks with Moscow could start soon.
For a while, I've been hearing from NATO officials that a peace deal is still quite far off. As one NATO ambassador told me: "There are no indications from the Russian side that they are willing to agree on any concessions at the moment. They want to be at the table with the Americans, sure, but they are not going in to strike a deal now when they feel they are winning."
Briefing #2: Will Brussels Finally Hit Russian Fertilizers?
What You Need To Know: The European Commission has finally decided to target Belarusian and Russian fertilizers. On January 28, the commission put forward a proposal to slap gradually increasing tariffs on the products over a period of three years in order to price them out of the EU market.
It is not, however, certain if the proposal will be adopted and in what form. This is not a normal sanctions proposal, which usually requires unanimity among the 27 EU member states. This time it's a trade regulation that needs the approval of both the European Parliament by a simple majority and the member states by a qualified majority (55 percent of the member states representing 65 percent of the total EU population).
On the one hand, it makes it easier to pass because no single country can block it. On the other hand, it can also complicate the situation as two institutions are now involved. And that increases the opportunities for Moscow and Minsk to lobby in order to water down the proposal -- especially through the bloc's powerful agricultural lobby.
Deep Background: The main reason Brussels has been so reluctant to target Russian and Belarusian fertilizers is European farmers. They form an extremely strong lobby in many EU member states, as well as in Brussels, and the last thing they want right now is increased costs, which this proposal could lead to.
An EU diplomat speaking on background because they weren't authorized to speak on the record admitted to me the proposal could have come sooner to stop it being used as a political battering ram in the June 2024 European Parliament elections.
Russian and Belarusian fertilizers are competitive because of the abundance of cheap gas, which is used to make fertilizers, in these countries. In 2023, EU imports of fertilizers amounted to 14 million tons, out of which nearly 4 million came from Russia -- the single largest exporter of fertilizers to the bloc to the tune of 1.28 billion euros ($1.32 billion). That's money that at least partly goes to finance the Kremlin's war in Ukraine.
Fertilizer trade with Belarus was worth some 30 million euros, even though EU officials admit they often are unsure where the fertilizers are made due to the close economic ties between Minsk and Moscow.
Drilling Down
The EU could in practice diversify away from Belarus and Russia. Egypt and Algeria could fill the gap, but they would most likely be tempted to hike prices by arguing a big player had left the market, thus increasing demand.
There is also capacity to fill the gap with production inside the bloc, which essentially is the purpose of the European Commission's sanctions proposal: boosting the bloc's domestic industry and ensuring tighter food security. France, the Netherlands, and Poland would be able to step up, but then gas prices in the bloc would need to be lowered.
The question now is if this proposal will fly and, if so, how much will it be amended. Diplomats from a few member states that I have spoken to have said some capitals will demand the European Commission produce an impact assessment to see if these measures don't hurt the EU more than they do Belarus and Russia. That could delay the process -- and it's a sign member states aren't particularly keen on the measures in the first place.
The measures, though, aren't that hard-hitting to begin with. Russian and Belarusian fertilizers already face a general tariff of 6.5 percent. The commission's proposal is suggesting an extra fee of 40 euros per ton from July 1. Next year, that fee would rise to 60 euros per ton and then to 80 euros per ton in 2027 before shooting up to 315 euros in 2028, which essentially would make it too expensive to import.
The phase-in means Russia and Belarus won't really feel any economic pain anytime soon. With the war potentially ending or at least being paused this year, there are even questions of whether these measure will even be introduced.
Then there is the possibility EU importers place lots of orders now when the price is still reasonable and hold off when the prices are higher, nullifying some of the effects.
There is also the issue of food scarcity in the rest of the world. The EU has been rattled by accusations from developing countries that a lack of food elsewhere has been caused by the bloc's sanctions on Russia since the full-scale war in Ukraine broke out in February 2022.
Brussels has been adamant so far that sanctions on Moscow and Minsk aren't the cause of food shortages. The commission's proposal makes clear transit via the EU will still be possible and the EU buying less from Russia will mean there will be more fertilizers on the market available for countries in the developing world to buy.
Looking Ahead
The European Parliament is meeting in Strasbourg this week and will commemorate the third anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion and, on February 16, the first anniversary of the death of Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny. On the last day of the plenary, February 14, the parliament is also expected to pass a nonbinding resolution questioning the legitimacy of Georgian President Mikheil Kavelashvili, whose presidency is disputed by the country's opposition.
That's all for this week. Feel free to reach out to me on any of these issues on X @RikardJozwiak, or on e-mail at jozwiakr@rferl.org.
The next issue will come on February 25 as I am traveling next week.
Until next time,
Rikard Jozwiak
If you enjoyed this briefing and don't want to miss the next edition subscribe here.
