The meeting took shape in a few hours, expanding the themes on the table and gradually collecting greater importance for the relationships between the two banks of the Atlantic. In the luxurious Golf Club of Turnberry Donald Trump and Ursula von der Leyen they will not only talk about rates and trade. They will take stock of some of the most delicate international dossiers.
Themes on which, from Gaza to Ukraine, Europe and America often and willingly do not see it in the same way. But it is on the duties that the bilateral in Scotland, the first since Trump is in the White House, is called to record a definitive step for the agreement.
The premises satisfy the most optimistic. The final outcome remains a still unsolved rebus. The president of the commission started for Scotland in the evening. Little or nothing filters from its mission. The official meeting with Trump, according to the latest updates, is scheduled for Sunday after lunch but nothing prohibits that the two are seen in the previous hours.
The scarcity of news feeds rumors from the cinematographic outlines, such as those according to which the bilateral will be preceded by a golf match on the land overlooking the summer of the Clyde river. Of course, Von der Leyen will be reached by the EU Commissioner to the Maros Sefcovic trade, which has built the difficult negotiating network in recent months.
The handshake between the two leaders is expected, the final and formal signature to the agreement on the duties could be postponed to a later time. But, at that point, there will be no need for Trump and von der Leyen to put it.
The number 1 of the EU executive is not accustomed to imprudent moves. A rupture in Scottish sauce would have unpredictable consequences. Not surprisingly, the mere fact that she flew to Scotland presupposes that a pattern understood on the duties is already there. And, basically, it is considered acceptable by all European chancelleries. The number around which the agreement rotates is 15% but it is a percentage that can be declined in different ways.
For the automotive sector, for example, it represents good news compared to 27.5% inaugurated by the USA with the liberation day. For some agri -food products the number 15, moreover, would not bring over excessive upheavals being in fact already in force. But the question marks remain different. Will drugs enjoy exemptions? The agreement provides for an ‘large sum of European investments in the US’, in the wake of the ceiling between Washington and Tokyo?
And, above all, will Turnberry’s summit mark a change of pace in the so far Freddini relations between the EU and the America of Donald Trump? The American president has already made it clear that he will not only speak of duties. “I say two things to Europe. Stop the windmills. You are ruining your countries.”
And “on immigration, it is better that you dial you a regulation,” said Trump. For his part, Von der Leyen will remark the tracks of his strategy: support for Ukraine and a right and lasting peace, the need to pursue the solution of the two states in the Middle East, the opportunity to regulate the relations between the two main partners of the West according to the principle of free trade.
Then there is the defense factor: Von der Leyen will hardly fail to remind Trump the yes of the European members of NATO at 5% to be respected from here to 2035. The face to face between Von der Leyen and Trump will take place in a pleasant place but besieged by security measures. The arrival of The Donald sparked the protests of the Scottish. The progressive newspaper The National welcomed Trump calling him “the US prejudiced”.
Several hundred demonstrators gathered in the main cities under the flags of the collective ‘Stop Trump Coalition “https://gazzettadodelSud.it/articoli/economia/2025/07/27/trump- in-so-e-ua-lintesa-sui-da Z-AL-15-OGGI-THE-WAT-WON-DR-LEYEN-CIRIFFE-E-WRAG-SUL-TAVOL-CDC28595-82DC-46E4-ACF5-D08BAB5F4BAE/. “La Scotland Odia Trump “, was written on some banners. He, protected by police measures worth 1.4 million pounds, limited himself to playing golf with his son and with the US ambassador to London, Warren Stephens. The possible understanding on duties will curb uncertainty and fear but, hardly, he will change the idea that, many Europeans, have of Tycoon.