标签： Europe

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia — Slovakia’s governing coalition, led by populist Prime Minister Robert Fico, is gearing up for a high-stakes parliamentary confidence vote this Thursday, a process set in motion after the nation’s public debt breached the constitutional fiscal threshold.

The vote mandate comes from a Wednesday ruling by Slovakia’s Constitutional Court, the country’s highest legal authority, which ordered the government to schedule the confidence ballot without delay. Prime Minister Fico has publicly stated he accepts the court’s decision and has formally moved forward with scheduling the vote.

Fico’s current coalition holds a solid majority of 79 out of 150 total seats in the National Council, Slovakia’s unicameral parliament, making a victory for the sitting government the most likely outcome. To streamline proceedings, coalition lawmakers have capped the total debate time for the vote at 12 and a half hours. Fico added that the administration had originally planned to pair the confidence vote with a separate vote on the 2026 national state budget scheduled for later this year, before the court’s ruling altered those plans.

The legal challenge that led to the court ruling originated from an opposition complaint filed last November. The complaint came after Eurostat, the European Union’s official statistics agency, announced that Slovakia’s national debt had hit 59.7% of the country’s gross domestic product that month. Updated data from the Slovak Statistics Office puts the current debt level at 61.4% of GDP — far above the 50% constitutional threshold that requires a confidence vote, though still lower than the European Union’s average national debt level.

Like most European nations, Slovakia ramped up public spending over the past several years to buffer its economy against overlapping global shocks: first the public health and economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, then the surge in global energy prices sparked by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

New economic data released earlier this week by the Slovak Supreme Audit Office added context to the growing debt crisis: the office reported that Slovakia’s economic growth slowed to just 0.8% in 2025, the weakest pace of expansion in three years. Government spending has consistently outpaced economic growth during this period, driving the steady rise in national debt.

Fico, who returned to the prime ministership in 2023 following parliamentary elections, has remained one of Slovakia’s most polarizing political figures. His well-documented pro-Russian policy stance and other controversial domestic proposals have drawn massive public protests across the country since he took office, adding additional political tension to this week’s confidence vote.

BRUSSELS – In a landmark address to a gathering of NATO defense ministers on Thursday, United States Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth delivered a clear directive to the alliance’s European members: the continent must take primary ownership of its own territorial defense, while pushing for a sweeping reorganization that would reshape NATO into a more uncompromising, combat-ready military bloc. Hegseth framed the proposed restructuring as a transition to what he calls “NATO 3.0” — a reimagined 32-nation alliance built from the ground up to credibly deter modern security threats across the European theater.

Hegseth’s comments come just weeks after the Trump administration notified NATO allies that it would no longer commit specific critical military assets, including warships and combat aircraft, to support an ally that comes under armed attack. The announcement has sent European allies and Canada scrambling to assess gaps in their collective defense capabilities and identify solutions to fill the resulting shortfalls.

“NATO 3.0 represents a post-Cold War reckoning: the alliance needs to return to its core identity as a genuine hard-line military alliance, equipped with tangible military capabilities capable of deterring aggression right here on the continent and leading the conventional defense of Europe,” Hegseth told reporters following the closed-door meeting.

As part of the new framework, Hegseth outlined that the United States will allocate $1.5 trillion to its own domestic defense budget by 2027, a move he says sends an unmistakeable global signal that Washington is expanding what he called the “arsenal of freedom.” “This arsenal first and foremost protects America and our core national interests, but it will also serve as a strategic backstop for NATO and our alliance partners,” he added.

Hegseth made clear that his message to European allies is non-negotiable: they must be willing to step up and take decisive, robust ownership of the defense of their own continent. The shift in U.S. defense posture dates back to a June 3 announcement, when Washington signaled it would pull back planned commitments of a full aircraft carrier strike group, aerial refueling aircraft, and dozens of frontline fighter jets for crisis response in Europe. In response, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander, an American officer, has already begun developing alternative contingency defense plans for the continent.

The Trump administration has justified the shift by arguing it needs greater flexibility to prepare for two concurrent major conflicts, prioritizing the reallocation of military resources to counter growing Chinese influence and potential aggression in the Indo-Pacific region.

Under NATO’s founding collective security framework, Article 5, all 32 member states agree that an armed attack on one member counts as an attack on the entire alliance. While the treaty does not legally require all members to deploy military forces in response, the vast majority of allies would almost certainly contribute. In practice, the current shift means the U.S. — which maintains by far the largest and most capable military force within the alliance — is scaling back the scope of its automatic military support for a potential Article 5 activation. The administration has clarified it has no plans to withdraw U.S. nuclear weapons deployed in Europe, a core component of NATO’s long-standing nuclear deterrence strategy.

LONDON — While UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s name does not appear on Thursday’s special by-election ballot in the northwest English constituency of Makerfield, his political future hangs entirely on its outcome.

Around 75,000 eligible voters across Makerfield’s network of post-industrial towns and rural villages, located 200 miles northwest of London, are heading to the polls to fill a vacant parliamentary seat left open by the resignation of sitting Labour MP Josh Simons. The frontrunner in the race is Andy Burnham, the popular Greater Manchester Mayor, long-time Labour figure and bookmakers’ pick to be the UK’s next prime minister. Should Burnham secure victory against his main challenger from the right-wing, anti-immigration party Reform UK, political observers almost universally agree he will launch a challenge to Starmer’s leadership of the governing Labour Party — and his position as prime minister.

This is no ordinary by-election. Scores of international journalists have descended on the constituency over the course of the campaign, a reflection of the extraordinary national stakes tied to the result, which is expected to be announced early Friday. Burnham has already positioned himself as a candidate for change, telling voters: “If people put their trust in me, I will change politics.” The pledge is striking for a candidate who would, at least initially, be just one of 650 members of the House of Commons — but it resonates deeply with growing discontent inside the Labour Party over Starmer’s turbulent tenure.

Just months after Starmer led Labour to a landslide general election victory in July 2024, his approval ratings have collapsed dramatically. His administration has failed to deliver on key campaign pledges: promised economic growth remains elusive, overstretched public services have yet to see meaningful repair, and the cost of living crisis continues to squeeze household budgets across the UK. Repeated high-profile missteps have further eroded his standing, most notably the decision to appoint scandal-tarnished figure Peter Mandelson — a known associate of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — as UK ambassador to the United States.

A dismal showing for Labour in May 2025 local elections already triggered open calls for Starmer’s resignation from dozens of his own party’s lawmakers. Though Starmer has refused to step down, senior party figures have begun openly organizing to oust him. Earlier this year, popular senior Labour figure Wes Streeting resigned from his post as Health Secretary, declaring publicly that “where we need vision, we have a vacuum.” Streeting confirmed this week that he hopes Starmer will agree to resign voluntarily, but added that if he refuses, “there will need to be a contest, and I would be prepared to do that.”

Simons’ resignation was deliberately timed to clear a path for Burnham, a long-serving politician nicknamed the “King of the North” who has led Greater Manchester since 2017, to return to Parliament and position himself for a leadership challenge. Under the UK’s parliamentary system, governing parties can replace their leader and prime minister mid-term without holding a full national general election. Under Labour Party rules, any sitting MP can launch a leadership challenge if they secure the backing of 20% of the party’s parliamentary caucus — a threshold of 81 supporters that observers believe Burnham would easily meet if he wins Makerfield.

During his time in office leading Greater Manchester, Burnham has overseen widespread urban regeneration in the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, building a broad public following through a populist, region-focused brand of governance. He has pledged to bring his signature “Manchesterism” approach to national politics, arguing that the UK’s long-standing “London-centric politics” has failed regions outside the capital. “It’s not right, the way the country has been run,” he told supporters on the campaign trail last week.

For his part, Starmer has attempted to project calm, telling reporters on the sidelines of this week’s G7 summit in France that he has no intention of leaving 10 Downing Street. “I will fight if there’s a challenge,” he said. “We won a significant general election result in 2024, with a mandate to bring about change. I’m not going to walk away from that.” Starmer even attempted to neutralize the threat earlier this week, telling Sky News that he would be open to giving Burnham a senior Cabinet post if he won the by-election. But allies close to Burnham have made clear he has no interest in a junior role in Starmer’s government.

University of Manchester political science professor Rob Ford noted that a convincing Burnham win would create unstoppable pressure on Starmer to resign. “Starmer can say all that he likes that he wants to carry on,” Ford said. “But if the entire Cabinet turns around and says, ‘We’re not going to serve under you and we think you should go,’ then either he’ll go with dignity or go without dignity, but he’ll end up having to go quite quickly.”

While Burnham is the clear favorite, his victory is far from guaranteed. Makerfield has returned Labour MPs for more than a century, but Reform UK has made rapid inroads in post-industrial northern England in recent months, scoring major gains in May’s local elections. Reform’s candidate, local plumber Rob Kenyon, is centered his campaign on tapping into widespread voter anxiety over immigration — an issue that resonates with many local residents even though Makerfield has a relatively small immigrant population. Reform also faces a challenge from the far-right, even more hard-line anti-immigration party Restore, which could split the right-wing vote.

Ford warned that a victory for Reform UK would be a catastrophic outcome for Labour, describing it as “Gotterdammerung, apocalypse, disaster, chaos.” Burnham, he noted, is far more popular and widely known than any other potential Labour leadership contender. “Andy Burnham is miles more popular than every other (leadership) candidate available. Miles better known, miles better liked,” Ford said. “If Reform take him out, then simultaneously you have a situation where the Reform threat looks much graver, and the best person available to combat the Reform threat has failed.”

In a landmark vote that marks the most substantial shift to abortion legislation in Ireland since the 2018 repeal of the 8th Amendment, Ireland’s lower parliament the Dáil has approved a bill to eliminate the controversial three-day mandatory waiting period between a general practitioner consultation and an early abortion. The vote on Sinn Féin’s private members’ bill passed by a clear margin of 86 votes in favour to 70 opposed, clearing its first major legislative hurdle before moving to the Oireachtas health committee for further line-by-line scrutiny.

Under current Irish law, anyone seeking an abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy is required to wait a full three days between their initial GP consultation and receiving the termination procedure, a restriction that supporters of the bill frame as an unnecessary, harmful barrier to care. Notably, both Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) and Tánaiste (Deputy Prime Minister) backed the bill, and government party Teachtaí Dála (TDs, members of the Dáil) were granted a free conscience vote on the socially divisive issue, according to Irish public broadcaster RTÉ.

Sinn Féin, the main opposition party which tabled the legislation, celebrated the outcome of the vote as a long-overdue win for reproductive rights. “This is an important step forward for women’s healthcare and one of the most significant changes since we voted to repeal the 8th amendment,” Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said following the vote. Speaking earlier in the week, Sinn Féin TD Donna McGettigan framed the bill as a fundamental question of autonomy, saying it centered on “trusting women” to make their own unpressured decisions about their pregnancies. McDonald added that women, reproductive health care providers, and campaigners had spent years calling for the removal of what she called an unnecessary barrier to safe, timely care.

The bill faced pushback from a cross-section of politicians who retained opposition to rolling back existing restrictions. Children’s Minister Norma Foley was among the high-profile government figures who voted against the legislation, arguing ahead of the vote that the three-day waiting period was a core component of the abortion framework put before and approved by Irish voters in the 2018 8th Amendment referendum. Aontú party leader Peadar Tóibín claimed there is no broad public demand for the rule change, while Fine Gael TD Peter Roche said his vote against was shaped by accounts of many women who changed their minds about terminating their pregnancy during the three-day waiting window.

As debate moves to the next legislative stage, the Irish Labour Party has called on the government to go beyond eliminating the waiting period, and fully implement all recommendations from a 2022 abortion law review conducted by senior barrister Marie O’Shea. O’Shea’s independent review proposed additional reforms, including dropping the threat of criminal penalties for health care providers who deviate from the formal provisions of abortion law, and removing the 28-day mortality rule that restricts late-term abortions for lethal fetal abnormalities to cases where the fetus is expected to die within 28 days of birth. Currently, abortions for lethal fetal conditions are only permitted if two doctors confirm the fetus will die either before or within 28 days of delivery. The bill now advances to committee review, where it will undergo further amendment and debate before a final vote in the Oireachtas.

EVIAN-LES-BAINS, France – U.S. President Donald Trump has long been known for his skepticism of large-scale international leader summits, even cutting his 2023 G7 appearance short to return to Washington early just one year prior. But at this year’s gathering held in the scenic French Alpine resort of Evian-les-Bains, Trump emerged with a far more enthusiastic posture – buoyed by widespread backing from fellow G7 leaders for his newly struck tentative agreement with Iran to end ongoing hostilities.

The shift marked a stark reversal from just weeks earlier, when Trump had openly lambasted U.S. allies for refusing to join Washington and Tel Aviv in launching bombing campaigns against Iran to force the rollback of its nuclear program. Now, standing before reporters at the close of the three-day summit, Trump struck a unifying tone. “We found a great deal of unity here at the G7,” he told the press corps, adding that he had received nothing but positive feedback from other leaders, who share Washington’s goal of lowering volatile global oil prices in the aftermath of the Iran conflict. “This meeting could not have come at a better time.”

Beyond the Iran deal, the summit delivered a series of notable shifts and outcomes across key global issues, from the ongoing war in Ukraine to economic tensions with China, and even the format of the summit itself. Here are the major takeaways from Trump’s trip to France:

### A Clear Blame-Shifting Strategy for the Iran Deal
True to his long-documented pattern of claiming credit for successes while deflecting responsibility for setbacks, Trump has positioned Vice President JD Vance as the party on the hook if the Iran agreement fails. Vance, who took a leading role in negotiating the deal, has spearheaded a cross-country media push to promote the agreement while Trump attended the G7, and is set to represent the United States at a formal ceremonial signing in Switzerland scheduled for Friday.

When a reporter asked if Trump’s plan was to claim credit as a political “genius” if the deal succeeds, while pinning blame on his second-in-command if it collapses, Trump did not shy away from the framing. “I like that idea, sure,” he said. “This way, if it works out, I’m going to take the credit. If it doesn’t work out, I’m blaming JD. You better be careful, JD.”

### Unlikely Unity Emerges on Two Long-Divisive Issues: Iran and Ukraine
For months, G7 leaders have been deeply at odds with Trump over both Iran and Ukraine, with European leaders openly criticizing Trump’s decision to launch hostilities against Iran without any prior consultation with allies. But by the final day of the summit, the bloc had closed ranks: in an official joint statement, all seven leaders welcomed the tentative Iran deal and explicitly acknowledged that “the strong leadership of President Trump” was instrumental to reaching the agreement.

The gathering also delivered a breakthrough on Ukraine, another issue where Trump had long clashed with European allies. Trump has repeatedly claimed Ukraine holds “no cards” in its war against Russia and that Kyiv must make territorial concessions to Moscow to reach a negotiated end to the conflict. But after three days of closed-door talks, Trump agreed to join his fellow leaders in reaffirming “unwavering support for Ukraine.”

The joint statement called on all nations to ramp up deliveries of air defense systems, interceptors, and long-range military capabilities to Ukraine, and commended Kyiv for “its resilience and progress on the battlefield in recent months.” European leaders, who have become the largest providers of military and financial aid to Ukraine, said they made meaningful progress in convincing Trump that Ukraine is capable of holding its own against Russia – contradicting the hardline position Trump laid out to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in 2023. Macron also invited Zelenskyy to participate in portions of the summit to make his case directly to leaders.

### Contradictory Messages on China Undermine Bloc Unity
While G7 leaders presented a united front on Iran and Ukraine, cracks emerged on economic policy toward China. The bloc centered its discussion on what leaders describe as China’s practice of flooding global export markets with heavily subsidized goods, a trend they say has eroded manufacturing jobs across G7 economies.

French President Emmanuel Macron opened the discussion by arguing that Beijing’s trade practices are a core driver of global economic imbalance, pointing specifically to what he called China’s systemic industrial overcapacity, excessive state subsidies for manufacturing, and chronically weak domestic consumer demand. In their closing joint statement, G7 leaders affirmed shared concern: “We seek to deter and stand ready to take actions, where necessary in a coordinated manner, against economic coercion,” the statement read.

But Trump immediately undercut the bloc’s unified message with his own closing remarks, where he thanked both China and Russia – which has long aligned politically with Iran – for remaining neutral during the Iran conflict. Trump noted that Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin “could have made it much more difficult for us” if they had chosen to intervene on Iran’s side, and specifically thanked Xi for refusing to supply or sell weapons to Tehran. “I just want to thank them, because they made it a lot better,” Trump said.

### The Enduring Value of In-Person Diplomatic Dialogue
As with all G7 summits, the 202X gathering faced criticism for its significant carbon footprint from the travel of dozens of leaders and their large delegations, the massive security deployment that disrupted daily life for local residents, and widespread public protests against the bloc’s policy priorities. But the informal, dialogue-focused format that has defined G7 summits since their launch in 1975 proved its value at this year’s meeting, giving U.S. allies nearly three full days to engage directly with Trump and advance their policy priorities.

That engagement paid particular dividends on the Ukraine war, European officials said, after months of growing rifts between Washington and the bloc over Kyiv’s future.

### Macron Secures a Full Summit Stay: A Versailles Dinner Wins Out
Last year, Trump left the G7 summit in Canada early, before the official closing of the gathering. To avoid a repeat snub, Macron turned to a time-tested diplomatic tool: an invitation to a private dinner at the opulent Palace of Versailles, located just southwest of Paris. The gambit worked.

Trump, who has openly spoken of his appreciation for grand historic architecture and luxury properties, agreed to stay through the entire summit. The 18th-century royal palace carries deep symbolic weight for U.S.-French relations: it was at Versailles that King Louis XVI pledged French military support to Benjamin Franklin and the American revolutionary movement in 1778, a turning point in the U.S. war for independence. More recently, Macron hosted King Charles III and Queen Camilla at the palace in 2023 to mark the 400th anniversary of the palace’s construction, with a state dinner held in the iconic Hall of Mirrors, one of the most famous spaces in the palace’s 2,300-room complex. Macron described the 202X dinner for G7 leaders as a “convivial” occasion meant to celebrate the long-standing friendship between the United States and France.

Superville reported from Geneva. Associated Press writer Collin Binkley in Washington contributed to this report.