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 outstanding runners and riders to fill the function.

Right this moment, 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 final week to satisfy the US president. The nice and cozy assembly, throughout which Trump described Meloni as “a great person”, yielded few concrete outcomes past speaking up the potential of a commerce deal between the US and EU.

“There’ll be a trade deal, 100%,” Trump mentioned. “But it will be a fair deal.”

The query of what the US considers honest 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 may need nudged Trump, who has traditionally most popular coping with particular person member states slightly than the entire EU, in direction of agreeing to a summit with EU leaders.

“Italian counterparts shared information with us on the meeting 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 chance 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 more likely to meet numerous 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 bought to the US.

US presidents sometimes 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 advised the FT this month {that a} good time to satisfy Trump can be “when we have a good deal”.

Chart du jour: Chokehold

Medical system makers have raised the alarm over a potential provide 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 help for healthcare in Ukraine and fill gaps left by US funding cuts to the World Well being Group and help programmes, writes Alice Hancock.

Context: Ukraine has been the largest 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 worldwide help programmes as a part of a drastic reshuffle of US authorities assets.

Over the weekend, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy mentioned Ukraine had been topic to recent assaults 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 each side would come to a peace deal this week.

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

“The withdrawal of this support leaves Ukraine’s already strained healthcare system under enormous pressure — and it is civilians who will pay the price,” 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 “another wave of invisible but lasting consequences” akin to these of Covid-19.

“Ukraine needs roads, schools and homes rebuilt — but just as urgently, it needs a people-first approach that includes mental health recovery,” 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 yr. Now Europe ought to end the job, argues Daron Acemoglu.

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

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