BERLIN — U.S. President Donald Trump is using the leverage of American military strength to weaken the European Union, said center-right European People’s Party (EPP) leader Manfred Weber.

“For the first time, we have a president who, as we saw this summer, is weakening Europe’s economic power by playing the military card,” Weber said on German public television Wednesday night, referring to earlier talks on a trade deal between the EU and the U.S. “Trump clearly used this method to divide Europe and weaken [European Commission President] Ursula von der Leyen’s position in the talks.”

Weber suggested Europe is too militarily dependent on the U.S. — and too weak on its own — to push back against the demands of the Trump administration and, at the same time, confront the threat posed by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“We are naked in a world of storms, because we have not prepared ourselves for today’s world,” the EPP leader said. “We were in a weak position during the trade deal … because half of Europe — the Balkans, Poland, Romania — are simply really afraid of Putin. And the only thing that can protect them at the moment is American military power.”

Europeans, Weber added, are now facing the hard reality of being “unable to defend ourselves against the drones that are coming.”

Moscow has been accused of violating NATO airspace on several occasions in recent weeks, including in Poland and Estonia, in what constitutes a new phase of escalating tensions between the West and Russia. Major Danish airports were briefly closed early Thursday morning due to what authorities said were drones.

On trade, Weber said he would have liked to see the EU and its chief negotiators show more self-confidence in talks with Trump over the summer, including by not backing down on the bloc’s digital tax for U.S. tech giants. But, he added, this was unrealistic due to the bloc’s military dependence on the U.S.

Weber called on the leaders of the EU’s 27 member countries to strengthen the bloc and show more visionary leadership.

“If we had a [Helmut] Kohl and a [François] Mitterrand today who created the euro back then, they would be paving the way for a European army,” he said. “That kind of leadership, that kind of visionary approach, is lacking at the moment.”

Today, he went on, this is the job of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron.

“It must be said that all of our top politicians are so caught up in national politics, so under pressure … that unfortunately, we do not have a generation of leaders in office right now who are capable of taking the big steps that are needed,” he added.