Speaking at Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome, Meloni said Trump had made clear that the US intends to disengage from Europe and that Europeans must organise their own defence.

“Trump has said most emphatically that the US intends to disengage and Europeans must organise to defend themselves: hello Europe,” Meloni stated.

“For eighty years we outsourced our security to the US pretending it was free, but there was a price to pay and that price is called conditioning. Freedom has a price.”

Meloni’s comments come amid tensions between the EU and the Trump administration.

She called for a stronger European defence structure capable of engaging with global powers on equal terms.

“We have spoken in unsuspected times of the need to strengthen our defence and security capacity and claimed when no one else did the need to finally create a European NATO norm of equal strength and respect to the American one,” she added.

The term ‘Pax Americana’ (American Peace) describes the transatlantic order that emerged after 1945 and was institutionalized through NATO, with the US as Europe’s primary security guarantor and leading military power.

Speaking at the Christian Social Union (CSU) party convention in Munich, Merz urged Europeans to prepare for a “fundamental change in the transatlantic relationship.”

“The decades of the Pax Americana are largely over for us in Europe and for us in Germany as well. It no longer exists in the way we knew it,” he continued, adding, “Americans are now very, very firmly pursuing their own interests.”

The chancellor pointed to changes in tariff policy under US President Donald Trump, which led to a trade deal between Brussels and Washington that many criticized as disadvantageous for the EU.

Merz said shifting US priorities mean the EU must focus more on its own competitiveness and defense. He reiterated claims of the “Russian threat,” arguing that continued support for Ukraine and deeper European unity – which includes former EU member the UK – should remain central to foreign and security policy.

Relations between the US and EU have been strained since Trump’s return to office, with disputes over trade, defense spending, digital regulation, and the Ukraine conflict.

Merz’s remarks followed the release of Trump’s new National Security Strategy, which criticizes the EU’s political and cultural direction, embraces an ‘America First’ doctrine, calls for an end to NATO expansion, and urges “strategic stability” with Russia through a Ukraine ceasefire. The response in the EU was largely negative, with Merz calling the document’s statements on Europe “unacceptable.”

Russia has long dismissed claims that it is a threat to the EU as “nonsense” used to distract Europeans from domestic problems and justify inflated military budgets. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has warned that Germany under Merz is showing “clear signs of re-Nazification.”