Author: staff

The debate comes at a critical time. This week, the EU unveiled its Clean Industrial Deal plan to save struggling heavy industries like steel, cement and paper, which face persistently high energy prices that they say hurts their ability to compete. The bloc’s firms currently pay twice as much for energy as do their U.S. rivals. According to Laura Page, an analyst at the Kpler commodities platform, the EU is exiting this winter with its gas supplies more depleted than in 2022 and 2023, following a cold snap and the loss of Russian pipeline gas via Ukraine last month. This…

Yet beneath all the gloss, critics in the crowds pointed to the city’s waning fashion influence, and were already looking ahead to attend their next destination — Paris.  Paris Fashion Week kicked off on Monday. The grand finale of the “big four” fashion capitals, it caps a month-long circuit from New York to London to Milan and, finally, Paris. For fashion enthusiasts, the hierarchy is clear. “London is more like personal and niche brands, and Paris is more international, bigger brands,” blogger Elizabeth, who only gave us her first name, told POLITICO on the sidelines of the runway. “Both have…

A White House official said Trump wants President Zelenskyy to commit to reaching a peace deal with Russia. President Donald Trump has directed a “pause” to US military assistance to Ukraine after a disastrous Oval Office meeting as Trump seeks to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to engage in peace talks with Russia.A White House official said Trump is focused on reaching a peace deal to end the more than three-year war sparked by Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine, and wants Zelenskyy “committed” to that goal. The official added that the US was “pausing and reviewing” its aid to “ensure…

PM François Bayrou opened the debate by denouncing what he called “a stunning scene marked by brutality, and a desire to humiliate,” referring to last week’s bitter spat between US President Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy. What strategy should France and the EU adopt concerning Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine? French MPs debated this question in the lower house of the parliament, the National Assembly, on Monday evening.This symbolic debate (with no vote at the end) came hours before news broke about the White House’s pause of military aid to Ukraine and as French President Emmanuel Macron has been pushing…

The White House has expressed support for a Europe-driven initiative aimed at ending the war in Ukraine, but has refrained from specifying what role the United States would play in the proposed plan. US President Donald Trump has once again taken aim at Zelenskyy, criticising the Ukrainian President’s reluctance to negotiate a peace deal with Russia.Speaking at a White House press conference, during which he announced a $100 billion (€95.3 billion) investment in the US by Taiwanese semiconductor giant TSMC, Trump stated that such a deal could be achieved quickly if Zelenskyy were willing. Trump also insinuated that the Ukrainian…

But the angry quarrel was a pre-planned ambush by the Americans, claimed Friedrich Merz, the leader of Germany’s conservatives and almost certainly the country’s next chancellor after his party won a majority in last month’s national election. “In my opinion, it was not a spontaneous reaction to what Zelenskyy was saying, but obviously a deliberate escalation in this meeting in the Oval Office,” Merz said, according to German media. “What we have just seen in Washington has a certain continuity with a number of events in the last few weeks, including the appearance of the American delegation in Munich at…

Macron said on Sunday there was “legitimate emotion” about the scene and “doubt” over U.S. support for Europe in the long term. But he also called for Trump and Zelenskyy to start talking again. “I think that beyond the anger, everyone needs to return to calm, respect and recognition, so that we can move forward concretely,” Macron said, and also stressed: “I want to make the Americans understand that disengaging from Ukraine is not in their interest.” The White House scene, which stunned the world, left many European leaders wondering whether the U.S. is still an ally. “There were two…

Des pays comme la Pologne et la Finlande, en particulier, veulent protéger leur défense contre les tentatives d’expansion de la Commission. John Thys/AFP via Getty Images Les tensions atteindront leur paroxysme lors de la réunion d’urgence des dirigeants européens le 6 mars, von der Leyen ayant annoncé qu’elle présenterait un “plan global pour réarmer l’Europe”. Un document provisoire, préparé par les gouvernements européens pour cette réunion, vu par POLITICO, exhorte la Commission à donner aux Etats une plus grande marge de manœuvre budgétaire “sans délai” et à proposer des “sources de financement supplémentaires” pour la défense “au niveau de l’UE”,…

The driver, a 40-year-old German from the neighboring state of Rhineland-Palatinate, was also injured in the incident and is being treated in hospital, Baden-Württemberg Interior Minister Thomas Strobl told the dpa news agency. The driver fled the scene after the incident but was captured by police and arrested after a short manhunt. No information has been released on whether the incident was premeditated. German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser canceled her plans for Cologne’s Rose Monday parade and will visit Mannheim instead. “Saving lives, caring for the injured and the initial investigation by the authorities in Mannheim are now our top…

BARCELONA — Brendan Carr, the new chair of the United States Federal Communications Commission, came out swinging at the European Union’s content moderation rules for his first major speech outside the U.S. “There’s a risk that [EU] regulatory regime imposes excessive rules with respect to free speech,” he told the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Monday. “The censorship that is potentially coming down the pipe from the [Digital Services Act] is something that is incompatible with … our free speech tradition.” Tensions between the EU and the U.S. have soared since President Donald Trump’s return to power, with his…