EU flexing muscle on trade and climate change

Brussels

AT global summits, national leaders such as Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, or Angela Merkel typically get the bulk of the attention. During last week's Group of 20 meeting in Hamburg, a more faceless entity - the European Union - took the lead, especially on trade and climate change.

The EU, the only non-state participant among the world's most powerful economies, more often lets its members do the talking, preferring to simply coordinate positions and represent the interests of countries in the bloc that don't have a seat at the table. But with few other distractions and the US looking inward, the EU is flexing its muscle on the biggest issues of the day.

Trade and climate "were the two geopolitical dividing lines in the G-20", said Andre Sapir, a senior scholar at the Bruegel think tank in Brussels. "The Trump factor is giving Europe an opportunity to se…