Russian threats against Baltics ‘unacceptable’ and danger to ‘our entire union’, EU’s von der Leyen says – Europe live

Over in France, French lawmakers narrowly approved President Emmanuel Macron’s former chief of staff to govern the central bank, with Emmanuel Moulin winning just enough votes to secure the job, AFP reported.

Macron critics say the centrist head of state is seeking to install allies in top positions to shield key government institutions before his five-year term ends next year.

Marine Le Pen’s far-right, anti-immigration party is gearing up for what it considers its strongest opportunity yet to take power in the 2027 presidential election.

Moulin, Macron’s choice for the position, had faced questions about his ability to act independently.

Lawmakers in the lower house voted overwhelmingly against him, but enough Senators backed his appointment for it to be approved.

An influential policymaker, Moulin, 57, has held a series of top posts in finance and the presidency, AFP noted.

He served as secretary general of the Élysée Palace for a year and was before that chief of staff to centrist Gabriel Attal during his brief stint as prime minister in 2024.

He served as director general of the French Treasury between 2020 and 2024, overseeing economic policy and public debt.

In other news, Germany must stop admiring China’s success in the EU or it will sleepwalk into the kind of deindustrialisation the US experienced 25 years ago, a leading Brussels thinktank has said.

With China’s surplus with Germany having doubled between 2024 and 2025 from $12bn (£9bn) to $25bn, creating a $94bn trade imbalance, the Centre for European Reform (CER) said Europe’s largest economy risked a repeat of what happened in the US in 2001 when a sudden surge in imports permanently hollowed out towns in the American midwest.

“China Shock 1.0” not only led to losses of up to 2.5m jobs but was also marked by a rise in suicides, divorce and drug use in US towns that lost industries to the Chinese, according to the CER report.

That fraying of the US social fabric, it said, was “an eerie warning shot for Germany’s car and machine-building cities like Wolfsburg and Stuttgart”, a reference to the homes of Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz, two brands emblematic of German engineering and design success.

“Germany remains hesitant, even as China has already eaten much of German industry’s lunch and is preparing to start on dinner,” said the CER.

Entitled “China Shock 2.0: the cost of Germany’s complacency”, the thinktank report concluded: “Berlin cannot keep admiring the problem,” adding that the risk for Berlin was acute, yet the German political leaders had “struggled to see the problem clearly”.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office says it is seeking clarification from Downing Street on the UK’s decision to lift sanctions on some Russian oil, amid accusations from the Conservatives that Keir Starmer is helping the Kremlin make money.

Ukraine’s president has not yet commented on the decision to issue a new licence for imports of diesel and jet fuel made from sanctioned Russian oil. The UK has also permitted the maritime transport of Russian liquefied natural gas.

Zelenskyy has previously urged western partners to maintain a tough sanctions regime against Russian oil exports, pointing out that Moscow uses cash from hydrocarbon sales to fund its war against Ukraine.

In recent months Kyiv has intensified long-range strikes against Russia’s oil infrastructure, hitting ports on the Baltic and Black Sea, as well as targets in the Urals, more than 1500kms from the frontline. Zelenskyy has dubbed these remote attacks “long-range sanctions”.

“There is currently very active communication between our diplomats and the Office [of the President] and the British side to clarify the details,” an aide to Zelenskyy said on Wednesday.

Lithuania’s foreign minister Kęstutis Budrys responded to von der Leyen’s statement, thanking her for support for the region.

“Thank you, @vonderleyen, for your strong message of solidarity. Europe’s security is indivisible. EU’s strength lies in its unity & our adversaries know that. Together we are strong and resilient.”

Just as the EU’s von der Leyen (13:05) and Poland’s Tusk (13:03) issue their stark warnings about the security situation in the region, the Trump administration is planning to tell Nato allies this week that it will shrink the pool of military capabilities that the US would have available to assist the alliance’s European nations in a major crisis, Reuters reported quoting three sources familiar with the matter said.

Under a framework known as the Nato Force Model, the alliance’s member countries identify a pool of available forces that could be activated during a conflict or any other major crisis, such as a military attack on a Nato member, Reuters said.

While the precise composition of those wartime forces is a closely guarded secret, the Pentagon has decided to significantly scale down its commitment, said the sources, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about the plans.

Several details were unclear, such as how quickly the Pentagon plans to shift crisis-mode responsibilities on to European allies. The sources said, however, that the Pentagon plans to announce its intention to lessen its commitment at a Friday meeting of defence policy chiefs in Brussels.

Elsewhere in Brussels, the European Commission was asked about the US and UK decisions to relax strict sanctions on Russian crude oil as fuel prices rise.

The commission was pointedly asked if their decisions do not undermine the broader approach to put as much pressure on the Russian economy as possible.

The chief spokerperson, Paula Pinho, said:

“We will not comment on what other countries are doing on sanctions regarding Russia.

We remain committed to our sanctions on imports of Russian oil and gas, and we need to reiterate the call for Russians not to be benefiting from the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. It’s too ironic.”

Speaking shortly after, UK prime minister Keir Starmer said the country would cancel a planned rise in motor fuel tax, and insisted there “is not a question of lifting existing sanctions in any way” more broadly.

More on this on our UK blog with Andrew Sparrow:

And in the last few minutes, the European Commission’s president Ursula von der Leyen issued a strong statement along the similar lines.

In a post on X, she said:

“Russia’s public threats against our Baltic States are completely unacceptable.

Let there be no doubt: a threat against one Member State is a threat against our entire Union.

Russia and Belarus bear direct responsibility for drones endangering the lives and security of people on our Eastern flank.

Europe will respond with unity and strength. We will continue reinforcing the security of our Eastern flank with strong collective defence and preparedness at every level.”

Meanwhile, Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk issued a stark warning against a possible escalation in the conflict with Russia, warning that Moscow’s aggressive stance “may lead, in near future, to situations in which it will be necessary to react firmly.”

Tusk warned that Russia’s continuing aggression on Russia “means this threat to other borders is indeed real,” as he cautioned that the heightened tensions “may also affect our neighbours, especially the Baltic states, through no fault of their own.”

“Russia’s aggressive policy towards Ukraine and its neighbourhood may lead, and in near future, to situations in which it will be necessary to react firmly.”

He said he was convinced that “the whole of Nato, including our American allies, will take very seriously the threats and provocations that may arise, and are already arising at the moment, especially with regard to our Baltic neighbours.”

He said the situation was “serious.”

“We would like to avoid bad events, but I am not one of those who will close their eyes to reality and pretend that nothing is happening.

I do not want to scare anyone, there is no direct threat to Poland at this time, that is not what we are talking about, but the threat of provocations of various types is becoming a fact.”

Hungary’s Péter Magyar said he hoped to hold talks with Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in June as the two countries try to repair their bilateral relations after years of tensions caused by pro-Russian Hungarian administration of Viktor Orbán.

Earlier this week, the foreign ministers of both countries started formal talks about the rights of the ethnic Hungarian minority in Ukraine, which remain one of the stumbling blocks for Ukraine’s process of seeking the membership of the EU (Europe Live, Monday).

In sharp contrast with Orbán’s rhetoric, Magyar said that “Ukraine is a victim [of aggression] and has the right to defend itself by all possible means” to safeguards its territorial integrity.

He said the war should be ended as soon as possible, with a lasted peace guaranteed by the international community, pointedly saying that the guarantees needed would have to be stronger than those adopted in the Budapest memorandum of 1994.

He suggested that he could meet Zelenskyy in the city of Berehove in western Ukraine, in the Zakarpattia region, where many ethnic Hungarians live.

I have listened back to Donald Tusk and Péter Magyar’s press conference in Warsaw.

The pair talked a lot about the hopeful signal that the Hungarian election have sent around the world, with Tusk saying Magyar’s win pushed back on claims that liberal democracy was failing in Europe and could not defend itself from populism and authoritarian tendencies.

They also spoke about the importance of returning to closer cooperation in the Visegrad Four format with the Czech Republic and Slovakia after years of tensions and conflicts with Viktor Orbán.

Tusk and Magyar also spoke about closer energy cooperation which could help Hungary diversify from Russian energy sources, and on their planned reformist agenda in the EU, pushing the bloc to become more economically competitive.

But two main lines from the leaders came on other topics, so let me bring them next.