‘Any threat against member state is threat against the EU’, says commissioner in response to Trump comments – Europe live

… and on that note, it’s a wrap for today!

For all the latest updates from Iran and the region, follow our Middle East blog here:

And here is our summary of the day in Europe:

• In a punchy response to Trump’s threats, Sánchez said Spain “will not be complicit in something that is bad for the world … simply out of fear of reprisals from someone” (9:40, 9:54, 13:20).

• France’s president Emmanuel Macron has expressed his solidarity with Spain criticising “recent threats of economic coercion” against Madrid, his spokesperson said (13:33).

• EU’s internal market commissioner Stéphane Séjourné said “any threat against a member state is a threat against the EU,” as the bloc rallied behind Spain after last night’s trade threats from US president Donald Trump, seemingly unhappy about Madrid’s refusal to back its attack on Iran (13:57, 14:07).

• Madrid also expressed its disapproval of German chancellor Friedrich Merz’s comments at the White House last night, in which he appeared to side with Trump and failed to defend Spain from his criticism (10:38).

• Several European countries continue their evacuation and repatriation flights from the Middle East using a mix of available commercial and military flights (11:01, 11:07, 17:05).

Separately, the European Commission unveiled plans to boost the competitiveness of the EU’s manufacturing sector during its drive to decarbonise and avoid reliance on cheap Chinese imports by setting local content requirements (15:10), with rules that have an opening that could also benefit non-EU countries, such as the UK (15:29).

If you have any tips, comments or suggestions, email me at jakub.krupa@theguardian.com.

I am also on Bluesky at @jakubkrupa.bsky.social and on X at @jakubkrupa.

Back to evacuation flights, Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk is the latest EU leader to announce that Poland would use its military planes to help evacuate Polish citizens from the Middle East.

“The appropriate request in this matter has already been submitted to the president,” he said on X after facing growing domestic pressure and criticism over repatriation efforts.

The neighbouring Czech Republic continues its flights from the region, including a mix of military and commercial flights. Slovakia also welcomed first citizens back yesterday, as it continues its operations to pull up to 5,000 Slovaks out of the region, including using military flights.

Meanwhile, some of the first French citizens arriving back talked about complex routes they took to get out of the region, including a taxi trip from Dubai to Muscat in neighbouring Oman.

In Ireland, final preparations are under way as the first flight from Dubai is expected in Dublin this evening, carrying some 400 people.

And Italy’s defence minister Guido Crosetto continues to face questions about his trip to Dubai after he embarrassingly got stranded there in the first hours of the war.

EU lawmakers have decided not to resume work on legislative proposals related to the EU-US trade deal, Jörgen Warborn, a member of the centre-right European People’s Party grouping in the EU assembly said.

In a post on X, he revealed “the US files have been postponed,” criticising “anti-Trump” narrative.

He said:

“Regrettably, the U.S. files have been postponed. The EPP has made every effort to provide solutions to address potential new tariffs that would breach the Turnberry deal, while still respecting our side of the agreement. To show that the EU is a reliable trade partner.

However, other groups did not agree. It is a shame that an anti-Trump narrative is being pushed more strongly than a pro-European one, risking a transatlantic trade war. Citizens need clarity and predictability. Today, S&D, Renew the Greens and the Left deprived them of that.”

The process of implementing the deal agreed last summer was put on hold after US president Donald Trump issued a series of tariff threats against the bloc amid his continuing interest in taking over Greenland, which remains a semiautonomous Danish territory.

in Akrotiri, Cyprus

All his life, like his parents before him, Giorgos Konstantinos has learned to live next to RAF Akrotiri on Cyprus.

He has dealt with the roar of planes, the comings and going of military vehicles and the war games. But never has Konstantinos, the village’s vice-mayor, witnessed anything quite like the events of the past two days.

“We live here, we’ve got used to all the exercises, we’ve got used to all the planes, but what we never imagined is this,” the retired lawyer said on Tuesday, standing in front of the main gate to the facility. “Who would have thought of a drone flying through our skies, exploding on the other side of that fence and forcing all of us to leave?”

In a moment, he said, the dangers of living next to a British base, when conflict was raging not so very far away, had suddenly become very real. In the early hours of Monday, sirens had begun to sound after the unmanned one-way attack drone crashed into RAF Akrotiri’s runway.

The next day, the village of low-level villas and houses was all but deserted; police cars parked in front of its church, its streets eerily empty, its school under lock and key – testament to a government-ordered evacuation overseen by civil defence forces.

“There are over 1,000 of us in our community, but today not more than 30 have remained,” said Konstantinos. “They’ve all gone, either to hotels, the nearby monastery or relatives in Limassol. People don’t feel safe when there’s so much uncertainty. Even the British can’t answer the question everyone here is asking: why, when there are so many air defence systems on that base, was the drone not detected earlier?”

It is a question more and more Cypriots are asking.

The UK and Japan can be included in the EU’s Made in Europe proposals aimed at loosening the grip of China’s supplies in key industries.

The decision to base the rules on location of factories rather than nationality could be seen as a victory for the UK’s business secretary Peter Kyle who was in Brussels last week to try and persuade the European Commission that the EU needed to work together with its neighbours.

Under the proposed scheme companies investing more than €100m would have to show that 50% of their employees were Europe, 51% of the capital was European and 1% of turnover in R&D.

Rules like these tend to keep accountants and lawyers in business and have echoes of pre-Brexit company shape-shifting when some British based airlines like Easyjet, for example, were forced to register bases in the EU in order to continue flying in the EU.

But it is more likely to be a victory for Germany and Ireland.

Ireland, which is desperate to protect its foreign investment appeal particularly with US multinationals, and Germany which replies heavily on global supply chains opposed a scheme that was based solely on nationality of owners.

The European Commission unveiled plans to boost the competitiveness of the EU’s manufacturing sector during its drive to decarbonise and avoid reliance on cheap Chinese imports by setting local content requirements, Reuters reported.

The intensely debated Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA) will set low-carbon and ’Made in EU’ requirements for public procurement of, or subsidies for, making aluminium, cement and steel, and technologies including wind turbines, electrolysers or electric vehicles.

“If we do nothing, then it’s quite clear that very soon, 100% of clean tech technology will be produced in China…It’s quite possible that our cement, steel industries will be offshored completely in the next few years,” commissioner Stéphane Séjourné told a news conference.

Reuters noted that proponents point out that rivals such as the United States, China, Brazil and India already have rules on local content in place and that similar requirements could help fill the EU’s massive investment gap.

The EU law aims to use the huge financial firepower of its member countries’ public procurement worth more than 2tn euros or 14% of EU economic output to shore up struggling domestic industries and push into newer growing sectors.

The EU executive has drawn up lists of partners, including Britain, Canada and the US, with which it has free trade agreements or which are parties to the World Trade Organization’s Government Procurement Agreement. China is not one of the countries.

The European Parliament and EU governments will negotiate the final text, meaning further changes are likely.

in Brussels

Séjourné’s comments serve as a not-so-gentle reminder for Trump that the European Commission is responsible for handling trade policy for its 27 member states.

Earlier on Wednesday a Commission spokesperson said it stood ready “to act if necessary to safeguard EU interests”.

However, Séjourné did not respond to a question as to whether Friedrich Merz ought to have stood up for Spain in front of Trump.

EU internal market commissioner Stéphane Séjourné is the latest high-profile name to express solidarity with Madrid over Trump’s threats to “cut off all dealings with Spain” last night (8:55) over its criticism of the Iran war.

At the end of a press briefing in Brussels, the French politician said in Spanish (he grew up in Spain and Argentina):

“Any threat against member state is by definition threat against the EU. This is a competence of the EU trade.

I want to be very clear here, from this point of view, the EU’s competency on trade is actually dealt with by the Commission.

If you threaten one particular country… well, that’s we’ve seen that about Greenland. I think we saw that there was a lot of unity.”

in Madrid

Perhaps predictably, Sánchez’s stance on the Iran strikes has not gone down well with Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the leader of Spain’s opposition conservative party, the People’s party (PP).

Feijóo said the prime minister’s speech earlier today risks alienating some of Spain’s most important allies, adding that the relationship with the US “must be preserved”.

He added that “foreign policy must be above partisan interests” and that Spain “must stand with its allies, because if we don’t, we will be left without an operational framework”.

He has also accused Sánchez of trying to use foreign policy to attract far-left voters, adding: “That runs totally contrary to a serious and solid international policy.”

in Madrid

French president Emmanuel Macron contacted Spain’s Pedro Sánchez on Wednesday to express France’s “European solidarity” in the face of recent threats from US President Donald Trump, according to a report from the Spanish Efe news agency.

“The president just spoke with prime minister Sánchez to express France’s European solidarity in response to the recent threats of economic coercion launched yesterday against Spain,” sources at the Élysée Palace told Efe.

Macron’s contact was also reported by the French media.

Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez has risked the ire of the unpredictable Donald Trump with his firm stances that Spain is “not going to be complicit in something that is bad for the world”.

Trump’s threat to halt trade with Spain has prompted the EU to remind the US president that the deal they signed last year on tariffs still stands as a matter of good faith. If it is breach the bloc will react, it said on Wednesday, hinting at retaliatory powers at its disposal (10:11).

It would be impossible for Trump to halt trade with any single country such is the global nature of supply chains.

But he does have, in his own words, a series of “powerful and obnoxious” tariff options that are outside the scope of the supreme court ruling 10 days ago which struck out his reciprocal tariffs.

He has constantly threatened, for example, sectoral tariffs on pharmaceuticals made in the EU and sold in the US, something that keeps Irish leaders awake at night.

Although Spain’s pharma sector is not as high profile politically as Ireland’s, it is also vulnerable.

In 2024 Spain exported $1.15bn pharmaceutical products in 2024 including medicines, sera and other blood products.

Trump could also attack a country’s legislative canon if he felt it was prejudicing American companies such as tech sector, something we know he feels strongly about.

He is now invoking section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act to impose a global 10% tariff on foreign imports but pharma tariffs would be available to him under a different law, section 232 of the 1962 Trade Expansion Act.

He is currently threatening eight sectors under Section 232.

But he also has three other laws he can draw on:

In another feisty comment coming out from Madrid this morning, Spain’s budget minister María Jesús Montero said Spain “will not be vassals” to another country, as she responded to US president Donald Trump’s threats to cut trade with Madrid over its stance against Washington’s attacks on Iran.

in Madrid

If you are only catching up on this morning’s events, Spain’s Pedro Sánchez has responded to Donald Trump’s extraordinary threat to cut off all trade with Spain over his government’s refusal to facilitate the US’s ongoing attacks against Iran, comparing the growing conflict in the Middle East to playing “Russian roulette with the destiny of millions”.

Sánchez, who has been one of the most vociferous European critics of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, said his government’s position on the widening instability could be summed up in three words: “No to war.”

In a section of the speech that appeared to directly address Trump’s threats to end all trade with Spain, the prime minister said his country would “not be complicit in something that is bad for the world – and that is also contrary to our values ​​and interests – simply out of fear of reprisals from someone”.

In his address on Wednesday, Sánchez called on the US, Israel and Iran to stop their war before it was too late, saying: “You can’t respond to one illegality with another because that’s how humanity’s great disasters begin.”

He added:

“You can’t play Russian roulette with the destiny of millions … Nobody knows for sure what will happen now. Even the objectives of those who launched the first attack are unclear. But we must be prepared, as the proponents say, for the possibility that this will be a long war, with numerous casualties and, therefore, with serious economic consequences on a global scale.”

And this morning we are getting a line that Macron is calling another meeting of the French defence council later tonight to discuss the worsening situation in the Middle East, as reported by Le Figaro and BFMTV.

in Paris

Meanwhile, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, said in a televised address to the nation that he has ordered the French aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, its air assets and its frigate escort to set sail for the Mediterranean.

In a televised address last night, he said France has defence agreements with Qatar, Kuwait and the UAE and must show solidarity, but he said any action by France was “strictly defensive”.

France must support its allies in the region and show it was a partner to be trusted, Macron said, adding that French anti-air systems and air radars had been deployed and would continue to be so.

France would also send defence systems to Cyprus and a frigate which was expected to arrive off the coast of Cyprus last night, the president said.

Other countries are also continuing their attempts to extract their citizens from the region, with Czech Republic flying both military and commercial flights, and Croatia also sending planes for their citizens in the region.

The Czech Republic is working with the Czech airline Smartwings, which has been flying out of safer airports in the region, primarily in Oman, since Monday.

It also use at least three military planes, including a military Casa which flew from Egypt.

Meanwhile, Croatia teamed up with its flag carrying carrier, Croatia Airlines, with four aircraft deployed to the region.

Two further planes were chartered to take out Croatians from Dubai.

Meanwhile, France, Ireland and the UK will see more of their citizens returning from the Middle East on Wednesday.

French foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot said two French flights would leave today.

“One will depart from the United Arab Emirates, another from Egypt to repatriate vulnerable ones from Israel,” Barrot told France 2 TV.

Around 400,000 French nationals are in the region, with some also using limited commercial options available to leave.

A first UK charter flight from Oman is expected to take off later tonight, prioritising the most vulnerable passengers.

Separately, Emirates Airways is operating seven flights from Dubai to the UK, Etihad has two Abu Dhabi departures while Virgin Atlantic will operate a flight from Dubai to London Heathrow.

Meanwhile, Ireland’s foreign affairs minister Helen McEntee has said the Irish government will charter flights to airlift around 2,000 citizens “actively” looking to leave the region.

She said the first flight would leave from Oman and carry the most “vulnerable” who require “assistance urgently”.

On Wednesday morning she said that a commercial flight run by Emirates would leave from Dubai for Dublin “later today”.

Dubai is not just a holiday destination in itself but also an international hub connection Europe with Asia and Australia.

in Madrid

Madrid has shared with Germany its “surprise” at remarks made by German chancellor Friedrich Merz, who appeared to support US president Donald Trump’s threats to cut trade with Spain (8:55), Spain’s foreign minister José Manuel Albares said.

“I conveyed our surprise at those words. When you share a currency, a common trade policy, and a common market with another country, you expect the same solidarity that Spain has shown, for example, with Denmark when there have been tariff threats driven by the desire to remove Denmark’s territorial integrity in Greenland. Or the solidarity that Spain expresses with the countries on the eastern flank,” Albares told TVE’s La Hora de la 1 programme.

He added: “Since we’ve been in government, we’ve had three chancellors: Merkel, Scholz, and now Merz. I can’t imagine Merkel or Scholz making statements like that; there was a different pro-European spirit back then.”

The EU has hit back at Donald Trump’s threats to halt all trade with Spain over its decision not to allow the US use its military bases for Iran bombing missions.

The EU said it expected the US president to “honour” its bloc-wide tariff deal concluded last year but hinted at the possibility of retaliatory measures if Trump did isolate Spain in a revenge move.

“The Commission will ensure that the interests of the European Union are fully protected. We stand in full solidarity with all Member States and all its citizens and, through our common trade policy, stand ready to act if necessary to safeguard EU interests,” said trade spokesperson Olof Gill.

He continued:

“Trade between the European Union and the United States is deeply integrated and mutually beneficial.

Safeguarding this relationship, particularly at a time of global disruption, is more important than ever and clearly in the interest of both sides.

The EU and the United States concluded a major trade deal last year. The European Commission expects the United States to fully honour the commitments undertaken in the joint statement of last August.

The EU is continuing to honour its part of that deal, allow many US goods into the bloc tariff free, even though the US supreme court ruled Trump’s 15% tariffs on EU goods were illegal.”