US President Donald Trump should respect Europe's democratic choices, EU Council President Antonio Costa said on Tuesday, after the American leader described the continent as "decaying" and "weak".
Mr Trump deepened his rift with Europe, criticising Washington's key allies over immigration and Ukraine.
European leaders have generally avoided criticising Mr Trump over his attacks against the continent, instead heaping praise in public for his attempts at brokering a Ukraine-Russian peace deal. Media leaks have however revealed their distrust behind closed doors.
Mr Costa spoke at a joint media conference in Dublin with Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin.
"We respect the choice of Americans, and they need to respect the democratic choices of our citizens," he said.
Both leaders rejected claims made by Mr Trump, in an interview with news website Politico, in which he said that immigration policies on the continent were a "disaster" but that leaders were too "politically correct" to "send ’em back to where they came from".
"Most European nations, they're, they're decaying," the US President said.
Asked if European countries would not remain US allies if they failed to embrace his migration policies, Mr Trump replied that "it depends".
"I think they're weak, but they also want to be so politically correct," he said.
He listed countries including Britain, France, Germany, Poland and Sweden as having been "destroyed" by migration, and launched a new attack on the "horrible, vicious, disgusting" Sadiq Khan, London's first Muslim mayor.
Mr Trump was speaking only days after his administration released a new national security strategy that lambasted Europe, a historic ally, and described it as facing "civilisational erasure".
Alleged censorship is another criticism often hurled at Europe by US officials, who resent the EU Commission recently fining social media platform X €120million for breach of transparency rules.
'Europe is strong'
Yet proof of Europe's strength lay in the fact that the US administration renegotiated trans-Atlantic trade relations this year over complaints that Europe exported more goods to the US than the other way around, Mr Martin said.
"It depends on how one defines strength, but Europe is on of the strongest continents in the world in terms of economic strength," Mr Martin said. "Europe is strong, not weak."
Europe is however adjusting to vulnerabilities brought by hybrid attacks conducted on its territory since Russia's 2022 attempted invasion of Ukraine, the Irish Prime Minister said.
Hybrid attacks include sabotage, cyber attacks and unidentified drone fly-overs over sensitive locations, including airports.
"I'm confident Europe has the capacity, has the economic scale, to respond to those challenges," Mr Martin said.
'Get on the ball'
There is fear that Mr Trump will pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to make large territorial concessions to Russia - a move that is viewed in Europe as a possible greenlight for Moscow to attack other European countries for territorial gain.
Moscow wants the entire Donbas region despite not occupying it fully.
Russia is "much bigger" and "much stronger", Mr Trump said in his Politico interview. He added that Mr Zelenskyy would "have to get on the ball and start... accepting things." He also reiterated calls for elections to be held in Ukraine, despite martial law prohibiting elections.
Speaking in Rome where he was visiting Pope Leo and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Mr Zelenskyy said he was "always ready for elections". He described his meeting with Ms Meloni, a strong Ukraine ally who also has good relations with Mr Trump, as "excellent".
Earlier in the day, the Ukrainian President said he would share a revised peace plan with the US. Mr Zelenskyy has been holding meetings with European leaders in Paris and London while his chief negotiator Rustem Umerov was in Miami to meet US counterparts ahead of their talks with Mr Putin.
In Dublin, Mr Costa reiterated Europe's position that Ukraine should be the sole decision-maker over its territories.
"Territory is clearly a choice of Ukraine, and we must respect that," he said.
European heads of state are also expected to deliver on a legal framework to make use of Russian frozen assets to support Ukraine financially at their next meeting in Brussels next week.
In the UK, Downing Street declined to say whether Keir Starmer agrees with Mr Trump's description of Europe as a group of "decaying" nations.
"You've seen the strong relationship between the Prime Minister and the President," a No 10 spokesman said.
The UK "welcomes the significant US efforts to bring about peace to Ukraine", he added.
