Vice President Mike Pence told a rattled Europe on Monday that President Trump fully supported crucial European institutions — despite the president’s perplexing comments and occasional insults — and said he supported the firing of the national security adviser.
“The president did ask me to come here to Brussels, to the home of the European Union, and deliver an additional message,” Mr. Pence said while standing next to Donald Tusk, president of the European Council and a former prime minister of Poland. “So today it’s my privilege, on behalf of President Trump, to express the strong commitment of the United States to continued cooperation and partnership with the European Union.”
Asked for his response to the resignation of the national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn — whom the administration blamed for misleading Mr. Pence about the extent of his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States — Mr. Pence looked uncomfortable but said he supported Mr. Trump’s decision to ask for Mr. Flynn’s resignation.
“Let me say, I’m very grateful for the close working relationship I have with the president of the United States,” Mr. Pence said, adding, “I was disappointed to learn that the facts that have been conveyed to me by General Flynn were inaccurate.”
The administration has not explained why Mr. Trump did not immediately tell Mr. Pence about Mr. Flynn’s conversations with the ambassador after the president learned about them from his top lawyer, and Mr. Pence did not shed light on that question on Monday.
Smiles and handshakes abounded before and after Mr. Pence delivered his reassuring words, but Europeans — taken aback by Mr. Trump’s occasional fulminations against European institutions that have long been the bedrock of American policy here — were still wary.
Last month, Mr. Trump called the European Union “basically a vehicle for Germany,” language that stunned leaders of the bloc, which has been struggling with economic malaise, migration and Britain’s intention to withdraw. Days later, Mr. Tusk, who represents the union’s 28 national leaders, described Mr. Trump’s bombastic and skeptical language as a potential threat to European unity alongside Russian aggression, Chinese assertiveness and Islamist terrorism.
And just moments before Mr. Pence held his final news conference of his first overseas trip here, Mr. Trump posted on Twitter: “The FAKE NEWS media is trying to say that large scale immigration in Sweden is working out just beautifully. NOT!” (Sweden is a member of the European Union, but not of NATO.)
On Monday, after meeting with Mr. Pence, Mr. Tusk said he felt reassured. In a detailed statement, he said he had asked Mr. Pence whether the Trump administration was committed to maintaining an international order based on rules and laws; whether Mr. Trump was committed to NATO and to “the closest possible trans-Atlantic cooperation”; and whether Europe could count “as always in the past, on the United States’ wholehearted and unequivocal, let me repeat, unequivocal support for the idea of a united Europe.”
“In reply to these three matters,” Mr. Tusk said, “I heard today from Vice President Pence three times ‘yes’! After such a positive declaration, both Europeans and Americans must simply practice what they preach.”
Mr. Tusk said he appreciated a story that Mr. Pence had shared during the weekend at the Munich Security Conference, a gathering of foreign policy experts, about visiting Europe for the first time, as a teenager.
“On Saturday in Munich,” Mr. Tusk said, “you mentioned that during your trip across Europe in 1977 with your older brother, you found yourselves at some point in West Berlin, marveling at what you saw, then crossing through Checkpoint Charlie only to see the ‘shadow of repression hanging over people.’”
“As you know,” Mr. Tusk continued, “I had been living under this shadow for over 30 years.”
In his statement, Mr. Tusk also recalled President Ronald Reagan’s fight against communism.
Mr. Trump’s presidency has upended Washington, where his rambling and grievance-filled news conferences, chaotic decision-making and thin staffing levels have left much of the capital uncertain how to manage the earthquake he has wrought. The aftershocks swept across Europe, leaving those who depend on the United States for security and vital economic ties uncertain about where they stand, particularly in the face of a resurgent Russia.
A cavalcade of surrogates for Mr. Trump — Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson and now Mr. Pence — have come to Europe in recent days to try to settle nerves here. Their speeches have helped.
But nobody is quite sure whether these surrogates truly speak for Mr. Trump or whether, even if they do, Mr. Trump might soon change his mind.
“Of course European Union officials are happy to have Pence here, and they are happy about what he said, but that’s not going to cancel out the deep and lingering doubt in many other European capitals about what the White House and President Trump actually want,” Guntram B. Wolff, director of Bruegel, a research organization in Brussels, said by telephone. “What Europe still has to do is to be prepared for the worst, and to try to work with partners around the world to support and defend multilateralism, and to do so without being antagonistic.”
Among the concerns shared by many European policy makers is the possibility that the Trump administration will impose protectionist tariffs as part of the president’s goal of bringing jobs back to the United States.
In brief remarks before his own meeting with Mr. Pence, Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, warned that the United States was more dependent on Europe than was commonly believed.
“The U.S. economy is depending more than some in the U.S. would think on the exchanges, the trade volumes, including Indiana, by the way, between the U.S. and the European Union,” Mr. Juncker said, referring to the state where Mr. Pence was governor before becoming vice president.
In his own remarks, NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said he had been reassured of the Trump administration’s commitment to NATO.
“I have heard exactly the same firm message from the president of the United States in two phone calls, from the vice president in meetings today and in Munich, and from Secretaries Mattis and Kelly,” said Mr. Stoltenberg, a former Norwegian prime minister, referring to Mr. Mattis and the secretary of Homeland Security, John F. Kelly, who were both in Munich over the weekend. “They have all conveyed the same message: that the United States is firmly committed to the trans-Atlantic partnership and have an unwavering support for the NATO alliance.”
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