Von der Leyen proposes setting up EU-led alternative to WTO

Good morning. Final evening as EU leaders mulled methods to react to Donald Trump’s commerce struggle, Ursula von der Leyen floated the concept of founding a rival to the World Commerce Group: my colleagues clarify her pondering. And our Budapest correspondent reviews on the plans by EU politicians to defy a ban on the Hungarian capital’s Satisfaction march tomorrow.

Have an ideal weekend.

Summit wrap

As Donald Trump takes a wrecking ball to the worldwide commerce system, the EU is proposing to arrange its personal dispute settlement physique in an effort to salvage free commerce, write Laura Dubois and Andy Bounds.

Context: EU leaders met in Brussels yesterday to debate how to answer US President Donald Trump’s tariffs, with a looming deadline on July 9. However additionally they touched upon different measures to protect the worldwide commerce system.

European Fee president von der Leyen proposed that Brussels staff up with the 11 different world economies of the CPTPP to type an establishment to interchange the WTO, which is struggling to include global tensions.

“Asian international locations need to have a structured co-operation with the EU, and the EU need the identical,” von der Leyen mentioned. “We are able to take into consideration this as a starting of a redesigning the WTO . . . to indicate to the world that free commerce with a lot of international locations is feasible on a rules-based basis.”

Von der Leyen declined to reply when requested if the US can be invited to affix.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz welcomed the proposal, and mentioned he had broached an identical concept with French President Emmanuel Macron and UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.

“The WTO doesn’t work anymore”, mentioned Merz. “Can’t we progressively set up one thing with our buying and selling companions world wide that institutionally replaces what we really already envisioned with the WTO, particularly a dispute settlement mechanism via an establishment just like the one the WTO was presupposed to be?”

The US has been blocking the WTO’s binding dispute decision system, though 29 members, together with the EU and China, have created a voluntary different.

In the course of the assembly, the fee additionally offered an overview of a possible commerce settlement despatched by the US. Most EU international locations are in favour of Brussels negotiating a quick deal, however there are divisions over what to do if the US insists on 10 per cent blanket tariffs.

“We’re getting ready for the likelihood that no passable settlement is inside attain,” von der Leyen mentioned. “All choices stay on the desk.”

EU leaders additionally agreed to roll over the bloc’s sanctions on Russia in July, however its latest sanctions bundle nonetheless hangs within the stability. Slovakia will block the bundle except it receives concessions from Brussels in its salvo in opposition to the final vestiges of Russian fuel, Prime Minister Robert Fico mentioned.

Chart du jour: Erdoğanomics

Turkey’s financial doldrums have drained President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s popular support, jeopardising his plans to stay in energy and his geopolitical aspirations for the nation.

On the march

The mayor of Budapest and dozens of EU politicians will defy Hungary’s ban of its capital’s yearly LGBT+ Satisfaction march tomorrow, writes Marton Dunai.

Context: Hungary handed a regulation earlier this yr enabling police to ban public gatherings deemed threatening to youngsters’s improvement. The authorities used these powers to ban the Satisfaction march in Budapest, regardless of criticism that the regulation was getting used to suppress the freedoms of speech and meeting.

Von der Leyen on Wednesday referred to as on Prime Minister Viktor Orbán “to permit the Budapest Satisfaction to go forward with out worry of any prison or administrative sanctions”.

However Orbán, arriving in Brussels yesterday, mentioned that “youngsters’s rights supersede all different liberties” and referred to as on the fee “to chorus from interfering within the regulation enforcement affairs of member states”.

Budapest mayor Gergely Karácsony has vowed to permit the march, and critics and allies alike are actually watching whether or not Orbán will really cease it.

Hungarian justice minister Bence Tuzson despatched a letter to embassies and the fee on Wednesday, telling them that “those that participate in an occasion prohibited by the authorities commit an infraction”.

Dozens of EU lawmakers will attend the march, together with the chiefs of the Liberal, Inexperienced and Socialist teams within the European parliament.

“Our presence at Budapest Satisfaction is an act of resistance, an obligation of solidarity,” mentioned Valérie Hayer, the chief of the liberal Renew group.

EU equality commissioner Hadja Lahbib can even be in Budapest and meet Karácsony and civil society teams, although it’s unclear if she is going to attend the march. “In view of the fluidity of the state of affairs, she is going to assess her presence on the Satisfaction on the bottom,” a spokesperson mentioned.

What to observe immediately

1. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz hosts his Austrian counterpart Christian Stocker in Berlin.

2. European parliament president Roberta Metsola meets Italian President Sergio Mattarella in Rome.

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