Brussels warms to efforts to organise summit with Trump

Good morning. Pope Francis has died aged 88, sparking an outpouring of grief from international leaders and mourning among the many world’s 1.4bn Catholics. The primary non-European pontiff in centuries, Francis leaves a legacy as a “compassionate reformist”. Right here’s our explainer of the method to decide on his successor, and a listing of the most prominent runners and riders to fill the function.

At present, we report on discussions relating to a potential EU summit with Donald Trump, and requires Europe to step up funding for Ukraine’s healthcare sector.

Talks about talks

EU officers are pinning their hopes on the overtures of Italian premier Giorgia Meloni to win them an EU-US summit with Donald Trump, write Alice Hancock and Andy Bounds.

Context: The Italian premier was in Washington last week to satisfy the US president. The nice and cozy assembly, throughout which Trump described Meloni as “an excellent individual”, yielded few concrete outcomes past speaking up the potential for a commerce deal between the US and EU.

“There’ll be a commerce deal, 100%,” Trump mentioned. “However it will likely be a good deal.”

The query of what the US considers truthful looms giant over frantic efforts by EU officers to work out a potential commerce cope with the White Home, after Trump introduced a 90-day reprieve on 20 per cent “reciprocal” tariffs slapped on the bloc this month.

Trump has beforehand mentioned he believed the EU was based to “screw” with the US, and that the bloc “rips us off” in commerce issues.

Brussels-based officers hope that Meloni might have nudged Trump, who has traditionally most well-liked coping with particular person member states reasonably than the entire EU, in direction of agreeing to a summit with EU leaders.

“Italian counterparts shared info with us on the assembly between Meloni and President Trump,” mentioned one EU official, including that this included a possible Trump go to and the thought of an EU-US summit.

They mentioned that Meloni had earlier mentioned the summit risk with António Costa, who as president of the European Council is in command of convening such conferences, and that Costa considered such an concept “positively”.

Officers within the European Fee had equally heat phrases concerning the plan.

Individually, Trump mentioned final evening he would attend Pope Francis’s funeral in Rome later this week — an occasion the place he’s prone to meet a lot of EU leaders.

Regardless of the fee holding sole competence for negotiating the bloc’s commerce affairs, Trump has not spoken to fee president Ursula von der Leyen since his return to the White Home.

The EU and the US have the world’s largest buying and selling and funding partnership, with a fifth of EU items exports offered to the US.

US presidents usually lump collectively a number of European conferences throughout one go to to the continent. Trump is scheduled to journey to the Netherlands for the Nato leaders’ summit in June — simply earlier than the tariff reprieve ends on July 8.

Von der Leyen instructed the FT this month {that a} good time to satisfy Trump can be “when we’ve deal”.

Chart du jour: Chokehold

Medical machine makers have raised the alarm over a potential supply chain crunch due to the disruption from the US-China commerce stand-off. 

Band-aid

EU lawmakers are calling on the bloc to step up assist for healthcare in Ukraine and fill gaps left by US funding cuts to the World Well being Group and support programmes, writes Alice Hancock.

Context: Ukraine has been the most important recipient of funds from the USAID programme since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. However Donald Trump’s administration has pulled again from its international aid programmes as a part of a drastic reshuffle of US authorities assets.

Over the weekend, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy mentioned Ukraine had been subject to fresh attacks from Russia, regardless of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ordering his military to droop fight operations as a part of an “Easter ceasefire”. Trump mentioned he hoped either side would come to a peace deal this week.

Liberal MEPs have penned a letter to the European Fee, urging it to reassess assist for Ukraine and “suggest a plan to compensate for the USAID and WHO monetary shortfall”.

“The withdrawal of this assist leaves Ukraine’s already strained healthcare system beneath huge strain — and it’s civilians who can pay the worth,” says the letter, seen by the FT.

Veronika Cifrová Ostrihoňová, a Slovak member of the European parliament’s public well being committee, who wrote the letter with the liberal Renew group’s chief Valérie Hayer, mentioned that Ukraine risked “one other wave of invisible however lasting penalties” akin to these of Covid-19.

“Ukraine wants roads, colleges and houses rebuilt — however simply as urgently, it wants a people-first strategy that features psychological well being restoration,” mentioned Cifrová Ostrihoňová.

What to look at at this time

1. IMF publishes world financial outlook.

2. EU competitors chief Teresa Ribera visits Mexico.

Now learn these

• Breaking it up: The EU has been investigating Google’s advert tech monopoly for greater than a 12 months. Now Europe should finish the job, argues Daron Acemoglu.

• Nonetheless susceptible: Huge dangers to international vitality provides stay, IEA warns forward of summit.

• Bertelsmann’s strikes: Europe’s largest media firm needs to revive an aborted merger between French broadcasters M6 and TF1.