After holding hands with Donald Trump, Prime Minister Theresa May arrived at a European Union summit in a former British colony with a special message from the U.S. president. She’ll relay that Trump promised to back NATO, the military alliance he has called “obsolete,” but the president wants everyone to meet their financial commitments. As the first foreign leader welcomed to the White House, May had Trump’s ear for an afternoon and will brief EU colleagues gathered in Malta on her impressions of a man many of them view with suspicion. But with Trump showing no qualms about defying America’s closest friends, confidence in the “special relationship” between Britain and the U.S. may be misplaced, in spite of efforts to paint the May-Trump rapport as a version of the 1980s power couple, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. “The EU is the most successful example of transitional democracy and he is trying to use the U.K. as a Trojan horse,” Gianni Pittella, the socialist leader in the European Parliament, told Sky News on Tuesday. May met with Trump on Jan. 27 and plans to brief her counterparts about her trip and ease any NATO concerns, her office said. Share Burden “She will say that it is only by investing properly in our defense that we can ensure we are properly equipped to face our shared challenges together,” her office said in a statement. She will “encourage other European leaders to deliver on their commitments to spend 2 percent of their GDP on defense, so that the burden is more fairly shared,” it said. While May will bring clarity on NATO, fears over Trump’s approach to the EU will be harder to calm after comments by Ted Malloch, who is tipped to be his envoy to the bloc. The EU “is an overly complex, fairly bloated bureaucratic organization,” Malloch told Bloomberg TV on Friday. “Its ambitions have basically overstepped its capabilities.” For May, the summit is about gaining Brexit leverage among European partners ahead of divorce talks due to start by March 31. Having an inside track with Trump could be an advantage—by helping political heavyweights such as Germany’s Angela Merkel understand him better. May scheduled one-on-one meetings with Merkel, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern. As Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel made his way to the meeting he was asked whether May’s relationship with Trump will be an asset. ‘Balancing Job’ “It’s too short now to make a conclusion, but I just can tell you that what happened in the last days are really the not the values that I’m fighting for in politics,” he told reporters. The challenge for May, as she tries to court a free trade agreement with the U.S. while pushing for a good deal from the EU, is not lost on the other leaders meeting in Valletta. Backing the wrong side could be her downfall, Maltese prime minister Joseph Muscat warned. “It is a balancing job the prime minister must make,” he told Sky News. “It is pretty clear she needs to choose her priorities well.” Part of the problem for May is that Trump is not only divisive but could also be an unreliable ally. May returned from Washington to an outpouring of fury over a U.S. travel ban that Trump had not given her a heads-up about. An anti-U.S. petition drew more than 1.8 million signatures, triggering a debate in Parliament. The U.K. premier stuck by Trump, insisting he should be honored with a state visit later this year even as members of her own Conservative Party said they were appalled by the travel restrictions placed on some predominantly Muslim countries. An opposition lawmaker called her “Theresa the Appeaser.” Traces of the British empire, when the U.K.’s geopolitical influence was at its peak, abound in the fortress island in the Mediterranean Sea. In the Maltese capital, May will be testing the waters with some overtures on security and a few tidbits on the man only she, for now, has met in person.