Archive: https://archive.is/2025.04.04-171532/https://www.ft.com/content/ca3c53ab-c6ad-4c83-8425-69e9a937b34a

At a meeting of ambassadors on Thursday, France, Germany, Spain and Belgium said the EU should be prepared to use its “trade bazooka”, the anti-coercion instrument, for the first time ever to achieve this, said two EU diplomats. 

But a move using the instrument could be blocked by a weighted minority of member states. Given Italy’s size, it would be the decisive member of the No camp, which also includes Romania, Greece and Hungary, the diplomats said.

Archive: https://ghostarchive.org/archive/sFbGB

A flood of discounted Chinese imports is set to compound the economic dangers to Europe from Donald Trump’s tariffs, analysts warn, prompting Brussels to prepare measures to protect itself from a wave of cheap goods from Asia.

The direct impact of the US president’s 20 per cent levy on EU products has sparked fears about the outlook for the bloc’s embattled manufacturers, who are already reeling from US levies on cars and steel. But the severity of Trump’s tariffs on economies such as China and Vietnam means Brussels is now on alert for an influx of Asian products like electrical goods and machine appliances being diverted into its own markets. The Commission is preparing fresh emergency tariffs to respond, officials said, adding that they have stepped up surveillance of import flows.

“The immediate trade shock to Asia will probably reverberate back to Europe,” said Deutsche Bank’s chief Germany economist Robin Winkler. Chinese manufacturers will try to sell more of their products in Europe and elsewhere as they face “a formidable tariff wall in the US”.

One country that did not feature on Donald Trump's list of tariffs on US trade partners was Russia.

US outlet Axios quoted White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt as saying this was because existing US sanctions on Russia "preclude any meaningful trade" and noting that Cuba, Belarus and North Korea were also not included.

However, nations with even less trade with the US - such as Syria, which exported $11m of products last year according to UN data quoted by Trading Economics - were on the list.

Archive: https://archive.is/2025.04.03-114113/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-03/tiktok-faces-fine-over-500-million-for-eu-data-sent-to-china

TikTok owner ByteDance Ltd. is set to be hit by a privacy fine of more than €500 million ($553 million) for illegally shipping European users’ data to China, adding to the growing global backlash over the video-sharing app. 

Ireland’s data protection commission, the company’s main regulator in Europe, will issue the penalty against TikTok before the end of the month, according to people familiar with the matter. 

The move comes after a lengthy investigation found the Chinese business fell foul of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation in sending the information to China to be accessed by engineers, added the people, who spoke under condition of anonymity. 

The penalty is likely to be the third highest ever dished out by the Irish watchdog following earlier fines of €746 million against Amazon.com Inc. and €1.2 billion against Facebook owner Meta Platforms Inc., the people added. The exact size of TikTok’s fine and the timing of the decision isn’t final and could still change, they said.

TikTok couldn’t immediately be reached for comment. The Irish data protection commission declined to comment. Under the GDPR, national agencies where foreign firms have their EU bases take the lead in policing the rules. The decision can be appealed by TikTok to the Irish courts.

Archive: https://archive.is/2025.04.04-150426/https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/germany-funds-eutelsat-internet-ukraine-musk-tensions-rise-2025-04-04/

PARIS, April 4 (Reuters) - Berlin has been paying for Ukraine's access to a satellite-internet network operated by France's Eutelsat (ETL.PA), opens new tab, as Europe seeks alternatives to Elon Musk’s Starlink.

Eutelsat’s chief executive Eva Berneke told Reuters the company has provided its high-speed satellite internet service to Ukraine for about a year via a German distributor.

Speaking at the company's headquarters in Paris on Thursday, she said it was funded by the German government, but declined to comment on the cost.

Bernese said there were fewer than a thousand terminals connecting users in Ukraine to Eutelsat’s network, which is a small fraction of the roughly 50,000 Starlink terminals Ukraine says it has, but she said she expected the figure would rise.

"Now we're looking to get between 5,000 and 10,000 there relatively fast," she said, adding it could be "within weeks".

Revelations about a Russian scheme to issue fake ship insurance papers are reverberating across the globe as flag states withdraw approval for Norwegian shell company. Meanwhile, the company seemingly continues to issue new and invalid insurance policies to Russia’s shadow fleet.

Archive: https://archive.is/2025.04.06-143722/https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/le-pen-evokes-spirit-martin-luther-king-jr-supporters-rally-paris-2025-04-06/

(…) A Paris court convicted Le Pen and two dozen National Rally (RN) party members of embezzling EU funds last week and imposed a sentence that will prevent her from standing in France's 2027 presidential election unless she can get the ruling overturned within 18 months.

"We will follow Martin Luther King as an example," Le Pen said in a video appearance for Italian Matteo Salvini's anti-immigration Lega party, which was holding a meeting in Florence.

"Our fight will be a peaceful fight, a democratic fight. We will follow Martin Luther King, who defended civil rights, as an example."

Le Pen supporters waved French flags and chanted "we will win" as they gathered in central Paris on Sunday afternoon for a peaceful protest, which could give an indication of how much popular backing there is for her accusations that prosecutors in the case sought her "political death".

(…)

An opinion poll by Elabe on Saturday showed Le Pen was still favourite to win the first round of the presidential vote with between 32% and 36% support, ahead of former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, who was polled at between 20.5% and 24%.

But attacks by Le Pen and her allies over the "tyranny of judges" have not gained traction, even among some of her supporters, particularly after the lead judge in her case was put under police protection following death threats. (…)

Swimming pools, playgrounds and amusement parks: Finland's underground facilities, which can double as bomb shelters, have emerged as an inspiring approach as Europe ramps up preparedness after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. 

Finland shares a 1,340-kilometre (830-mile) border with Russia. Its network of civil defence shelters is an integral part of its preparedness strategy, which harks back to just before World War II.

Archive: https://archive.is/2025.04.05-080053/https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/sex-toys-exploding-cosmetics-anatomy-hybrid-war-west-2025-04-05/

WARSAW, April 5 (Reuters) - Fake cosmetics, massage pillows and sex toys. Crude homemade explosives. A Russian known as Warrior. A code word: Mary.

These are among the key elements of a suspected Russian-run sabotage plot that led to three parcels being detonatedat courier depots in Britain, Germany and Poland last summer, a person with knowledge of the Polish investigation told Reuters.

The pillows, packed into the parcels with the cosmetics and sex toys, contained hidden homemade incendiary devices made of a cocktail of chemicals including highly reactive magnesium, according to the person familiar with the case who provided the most granular account yet of the alleged plot.

The chemicals were ignited by pre-timed detonators adapted from cheap Chinese electronic gadgets used to track items like lost keys, with the effect enhanced by the tubes of what looked like cosmetics but in fact contained a gel made of flammable compounds including nitromethane, according to the source.

"The proceedings in this case concern criminal activities inspired by Russia's GRU," this person said, referring to Moscow's foreign military intelligence agency.

Reuters is reporting the details of the investigation for the first time, drawing on the account provided by the source close to the Polish case as well as interviews with more than a dozen European security officials. The findings provide a rare insight into how sabotage campaigns play out on the ground.

The statement came as Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is visiting the country, despite an international arrest warrant against him over the war in Gaza. 

Hungary said, on Thursday, April 4, that it would begin the procedure of withdrawing from the International Criminal Court (ICC), just before Prime Minister Viktor Orban was to receive his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, the subject of an ICC arrest warrant. "Hungary will withdraw from the International Criminal Court," Gergely Gulyas, Prime Minister Viktor Orban's chief of staff, wrote in a brief statement. "The government will initiate the withdrawal procedure on Thursday, in accordance with the constitutional and international legal framework." The ICC is the world's only permanent global tribunal for war crimes and genocide.

Archive: https://archive.is/2025.04.03-110721/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-03/germany-and-france-push-for-a-more-aggressive-tariff-response

The latest US measures come after Trump announced a 25% import tariff on steel and aluminum as well as on cars and some auto parts. The EU announced a set of countermeasures of up to €26 billion ($28.1 billion) in response to the metals duties, which are expected to enter into force in mid-April. Trump has said he’ll announce other sectoral duties on products including lumber, pharmaceutical goods and semiconductors.

“The EU is the largest single market in the world,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in Berlin Thursday. “We therefore have every opportunity to react in a united and decisive manner and to show that we have our own instruments for action — and they will be used.”

Bloomberg reported earlier that France and other countries have called on the commission to consider deploying the bloc’s anti-coercion instrument — the EU’s most powerful trade tool, designed to strike back against nations that use trade and economic measures coercively. 

The so-called ACI has never been deployed before and could lead to restrictions on trade and services as well as certain intellectual property rights, foreign direct investment and access to public procurement.

Concern is mounting in the EU since US counterparts haven’t shown interest in a negotiated solution, according to another official. The anti-coercion instrument is on the table of options, but is considered a tool of last resort, given the likely outsize impact it would cause.

Archive: https://archive.is/2025.04.03-065959/https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/brewing-transatlantic-tech-war%23

There is an even greater threat to U.S. tech companies that has gotten far less attention. In sharp contrast to today’s United States, the European Union has a strong commitment to the rule of law, obliging politicians to comply with judge’s rulings. The Trump administration’s scofflaw tendencies and tech companies’ increasing hostility toward European values may lead to the collapse of the EU-U.S. arrangements on which tech companies such as Alphabet, Meta, and Microsoft depend.

Schmidt worried a decade ago that an EU-U.S. data dispute might collapse the Internet. Snowden showed how U.S. intelligence agencies had illicitly accessed European social media and Internet search data, breaching European privacy rules. That dispute was patched over by an ungainly agreement, negotiated between the European Commission and the U.S. government. The EU agreed to allow data flows, as long as the United States committed to protecting the privacy rights of EU citizens and offered some means of redress if they were violated by U.S. surveillance agencies. The keystone of the arrangement was a 2016 U.S. commitment that Washington’s surveillance agencies would respect European privacy rights through a process overseen by an obscure U.S. body, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.

This arrangement made nobody happy but provided legal and political cover for flows of data across the Atlantic. Meta continued to operate Facebook in Europe, and companies such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft were able to host Europeans’ personal data on their cloud-computing platforms. For those companies, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Google alone makes over $100 billion in sales in Europe.

Archive: https://archive.is/2025.04.03-040408/https://www.ft.com/content/ce158965-33b5-4bcc-9582-ade89a5c57db

Nato could play a key role assisting a proposed European military mission to guarantee a peace deal in Ukraine under plans being sketched out by a coalition of Kyiv’s western allies.

Nato’s command and control structures would be used in a deployment of a so-called reassurance force in Ukraine, under one proposal being debated in talks led by France and the UK, five officials briefed on the plans told the Financial Times. Under the proposal, the force would also tap the alliance’s shared intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities.

The proposal was one of multiple options under discussion and could be altered before any final agreement, the officials said.

October 17, 2024. An angry businesswoman sends an email to Spanish Customs. Her name is Vilma Janet Águila, and she is the owner of Abadix Fruits, a company based in Alicante supposedly specializing in importing fruit from South America. “How can it be that on average containers spend 2-4 weeks at the port after arrival. We’re talking about perishable fruit (NOT NAILS OR SCREWS). When the fruit gets to our clients, over ripe, they don’t pay us what was agreed upon, because the quality doesn’t correspond to what was negotiated,” she writes in the email, in which she goes out of her way to appear indignant and announces that she is giving up on collecting the cargo of container TCLU1210545, which had arrived in Algeciras a few days earlier: “WE CAN’T TAKE THIS SITUATION ANYMORE!” she complains in capital letters in the text, co-signed by her partner, José Miguel Berenguer.

Archive: https://archive.is/2025.04.06-061130/https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-04-06/trump-tariffs-online-safety-for-uk-kids-can-t-be-a-bargaining-chip

Will Keir Starmer’s government sell out the safety of UK teens in a deal to mitigate Donald Trump’s tariff apocalypse?

That’s the question parents’ groups are asking as the UK, along with every other country, searches for ways to persuade Washington to dial down its new aggressive tariff regime and avert a full-scale trade war.

Saddled with “only” the 10% baseline charge, Britain got off lighter than many, including its recent partners in the European Union, which must now cough up 20% levies on exports. But it’s still about to take a catastrophic hit — the UK economy is, of course, exposed to a general global downturn, and will feel the pinch of the additional US tariffs on its car and steel sectors. More concerning, Britain’s finances are in such a dire state that the Office for Budget Responsibility has warned the wafer thin headroom Chancellor Rachel Reeves set aside to avoid breaching her fiscal rules will be blown out of the water by Trump’s tariffs.

The new regulation will lower effective contributions for business owners who pay taxes under so-called “general rules” (zasady ogólne), a flat 19% rate, or a lump-sum tax on recorded revenue, provided that their income remains below a specified threshold.

Those who are taxed under general rules or the flat 19% rate will pay a contribution calculated at 9% of 75% of the minimum wage up to 1.5 times the average wage, which in September was 8,613.14 zloty (€2,025.08) per month. Higher earners will pay an additional 4.9% on income exceeding that threshold.

Business owners who pay a lump-sum tax on recorded revenue will pay a 3.5% surcharge on earnings above a threshold of three times the average wage. The changes will not affect salaried employees, who will continue to pay a health contribution of 9% on their income.

Archive: https://archive.is/2025.04.03-040358/https://www.ft.com/content/cba18cc8-448b-48cf-a8d6-88600375d0dc

Last November, Poland’s rightwing opposition lawmakers celebrated Donald Trump’s election win as if it was their own. They interrupted a parliamentary session to give Trump a standing ovation and chant his name. Some Polish MPs even sported red “Make America Great Again” caps.  

Like many other nationalist parties in central and eastern Europe, Poland’s Law and Justice party (PiS) shares a socially conservative and anti-immigration view of the world with Trump’s Maga movement. 

But five months on, Trump’s rapid rapprochement with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, and apparent disdain for many of America’s Nato allies, are causing consternation across a country where suspicion of Russia runs deep. The issue looms large over Poland’s presidential election, set to take place on May 18. 

“People knew Trump 2.0 could be more difficult than his first term, but I think that Trump’s rhetoric and what’s been happening so far have basically been pointing towards most nightmares coming true,” says Piotr Buras, head of the Warsaw office of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Yes, there are politicians here who are playing things down . . . but I think the shock is still very, very deep,” he adds.

Outrage is a precious political currency and France's far right has spent this week attempting, furiously and predictably, to capitalise on the perceived injustice of a court's decision to block its totemic leader, Marine Le Pen, from standing in the 2027 presidential election.

(…)

Nervous about the impact the judgement may have for the country's frail coalition government, the Prime Minister François Bayrou has admitted to feeling "troubled" by Le Pen's sentence and worried about a "shock" to public opinion.

But other centrist politicians have taken a firmer line, stressing the need for a clear gap between the justice system and politics.

The German chemicals industry on Wednesday, April 2, called for the EU to "keep a cool head" in response to US President Donald Trump's new tariffs, warning that "a spiral of escalation would only increase the damage."

"We regret the decision of the US government," the Association of the German Chemical Industry (VCI) said in a statement, calling on Brussels to maintain a "close dialogue" with America, the largest export market for the German chemical industry.

The VCI, which represents industry giants such as Bayer and BASF, said the EU must "remain flexible in its response" to the tariffs. "Our country must not become a pawn in an escalating trade war," the association said, adding that "the goal must be a mutually fair solution – for Europe and the US. The United States is and remains a central trading partner for Germany."

The United States is by far the most important export market for German chemical products outside the EU and absorbs almost a quarter of the country's pharmaceutical exports. The chemicals industry is the third-largest industrial sector in Germany. Along with the automotive industry, it is especially vulnerable to the effects of new US tariffs. Both those sectors have already struggled in recent years with increased competition from China as well as a hike in production costs.

Europol has shut down one of the largest dark web pedophile networks in the world, prompting dozens of arrests worldwide and threatening that more are to follow.

Launched in 2021, KidFlix allowed users to join for free to preview low-quality videos depicting child sex abuse materials (CSAM). To see higher-resolution videos, users had to earn credits by sending cryptocurrency payments, uploading CSAM, or "verifying video titles and descriptions and assigning categories to videos."

Europol seized the servers and found a total of 91,000 unique videos depicting child abuse, "many of which were previously unknown to law enforcement," the agency said in a press release.

The Slovak cabinet has approved a plan to shoot around a quarter of the country's brown bears, after a man was mauled to death while walking in a forest in Central Slovakia.

Prime Minister Robert Fico's populist-nationalist government announced after a cabinet meeting that 350 out of an estimated population of 1,300 brown bears would be culled, citing the danger to humans after a spate of attacks.

"We can't live in a country where people are afraid to go into the woods," the prime minister told reporters afterwards.

The recent publication of the 2024 results of the multinational Merck, which operates as Merck Sharp & Dohme (MSD) outside the United States, has revealed an unprecedented figure in the history of the pharmaceutical industry. Sales of the drug Keytruda, a monoclonal antibody indicated for several types of cancer, reached $29.5 billion after growing 18% last year. Never before has a drug reached such levels, shattering the record — once considered unattainable — of $19.95 billion set by Abbvie’s Humira in 2022. To put the figure into context, Keytruda has a turnover as high as the fashion giant Zara or the gross domestic product (GDP) of countries such as Senegal and Iceland.

“It’s a drug that has forced us to rethink how we fund some treatments in the public health system. The system wasn’t prepared for a therapy that could reach this magnitude,” says Sandra Flores, a member of the Spanish Society of Hospital Pharmacy (SEFH) and head of this service at Virgen del Rocío Hospital in Seville. One of the keys to the success of pembrolizumab — the name of the active ingredient in Keytruda — is its ability to act against various tumors. This has led the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to approve 30 indications for 15 types of cancer, 18 of which are currently funded by the public health system.

German A., a 43-year-old Russian engineer, is accused of secretly supplying sensitive technical information from ASML, NXP, and TSMC to Russia, allegedly to assist in building a 28nm-capable fab there, reports NRC. His illicit earnings were about €40,000, and he now faces 18 to 32 months in prison. Though German A. alone could not steal full designs for a semiconductor, a coordinated group could potentially assist semiconductor production in Russia.

Archive: https://archive.is/2025.04.02-174336/https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2025/04/02/how-us-tariffs-are-disrupting-europe-s-aluminum-industry_6739780_19.html

Global trade is like a five-cushion billiard game, with rebounds that are hard to predict. The 25% tariffs imposed by United States President Donald Trump since March 12 on aluminum are a textbook case.

The European Union does not export much aluminum to the US – about 2% to 4% of its annual production. The same is true for France: "Today, we do not export to the US at all, so we will not be directly affected," said Guillaume de Goÿs, president of Europe's largest foundry, Aluminium Dunkerque, to La Voix du Nord local newspaper in February. At first glance, the impact should be limited.

But to believe that would be a grave error, according to Gerhard Anger, head of Alu-met – a company with 150 employees specializing in recycled aluminum with two industrial sites, in Germany and Austria. "It's going to be a disaster for us. Our factories will lose money," he said. Rob van Gils, who leads Hammerer Aluminium Industries, a large company with eight plants in Germany and Central Europe that employs 2,000 people and also specializes in recycled aluminum, agreed: "If the European Union does not react, we will be forced to reduce production."

Archive: https://archive.is/2025.04.02-134322/https://www.ft.com/content/93d7168b-75a3-41e3-ba5a-4f378b93a709

The UK has circulated plans for European countries to establish a “supranational institution” that jointly purchases military equipment, stockpiles weapons and helps to finance large-scale rearmament across the continent. 

The informal paper, written by UK officials and seen by the Financial Times, presents the case for a multilateral fund for a “coalition of the willing” that would borrow on markets at favourable rates and support defence spending. 

Backed with equity and sovereign guarantees, the fund would both lend money for defence projects and actually acquire military assets, creating common “stockpiles” of equipment for participating nations.

Drawn up by UK Treasury officials, the so-called “non-paper” was circulated last week with key European capitals for discussion but stated that it does not represent the official policy of the British government. “We don’t comment on leaks,” said a UK government spokesperson. 

While not specifying the intended size of the fund, the paper says the measures could help to close a defence financing gap in Europe that is estimated to be “hundreds of billions of euros”.