European Council President Antonio Costa said on Monday that a new National Security Strategy put forward by the US Trump administration contains unacceptable threats to meddle in Europe's internal political affairs.

The strategy paper, published last week, criticized Europe for being over-regulated and at risk of "civilizational erasure" through immigration, while saying the US would be "cultivating resistance to Europe's current trajectory within European nations."

Though the new US strategy policy has met with some dismay in the EU, the Kremlin has praised the document, saying it aligns with much of its own worldview.

What did the EU say about the US National Security Strategy?

"What we cannot accept is the threat to interfere in European politics," Costa told a conference in Brussels. 

"The United States cannot replace European citizens in choosing which parties are good and which are bad," he said. 

Costa also criticized passages in the strategy paper that seemed to condemn recent attempts by the EU to bring US tech giants to account for the propagation of disinformation and hate speech online.

"The United States cannot replace Europe in what its vision is of freedom of expression," he said.

"There cannot be freedom of speech without freedom of information," he said. "There would be no freedom of speech if citizens' freedom of information is sacrificed to defend the techno oligarchs in the United States."

'Europe must be sovereign,' EU's Costa says

"This strategy continues to talk about Europe as an ally," Costa went on. "That's fine, but if we are allies, we must act as allies." 

 "The United States remains an important ally, the United States remains an important economic partner, but Europe must be sovereign," he added.

Costa also said it was a worrying sign that Moscow had welcomed Washington's change in strategy direction as being "largely consistent" with its own view of how the world should be.

The strategy's statements on ending the war in Ukraine, triggered by Russia's full-scale invasion, were also not conducive to producing the "just and durable" peace Europe is seeking, Costa said.

The approach outlined in the statement was "only for the end of confrontations and stable relations with Russia," he said.

As head of the European Council, Costa chairs summits of the bloc's 27 national leaders.

Edited by: Louis Oelofse