President Donald Trump talks with German chancellor Friedrich Merz during the G7 Summit in Canada in 2025
President Donald Trump talks with German chancellor Friedrich Merz during the G7 Summit in Canada in 2025 (Source: Daniel Torok)

EU and the World

THIS WEEK: Angry Trump meets EU leaders at G7 summit, as Ukraine starts accession talks

By Andrew Rettman,

This week’s agenda — at a glance

  • G7 leaders meet Donald Trump in Évian amid growing tensions over Nato, Russia, and Iran
  • EU formally opens accession talks with Ukraine and Moldova
  • EU foreign ministers adopt new sanctions on Russia and discuss measures against Israel
  • MEPs vote on tariffs on US imports following new Trump trade penalties
  • EU ministers discuss enlargement, the next long-term EU budget, and the Article 7 procedure against Hungary
  • EU health ministers discuss Ebola, biotech rules, and diagnostic devices
  • MEPs vote on parliamentary immunity in six bribery-related cases
  • European Parliament debates children’s mental health, repression in Cuba, organised crime, and human rights abuses in Belarus

The burning question of US loyalty toward the West vis-à-vis Russia and a breakthrough on EU enlargement will dominate a week of summits in Belgium and France.

US president Donald Trump will attend a G7 meeting with the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, and top EU officials in the French spa town of Évian on Monday (15 June).

It will be Trump’s first face-to-face meeting with Western leaders since he threatened to rage-quit Nato over their refusal to join his war on Iran.

He has announced he will pull thousands of US troops, as well as fighter jets and warships, out of bases in Europe, whose presence was designed to deter Russian aggression.

His outgoing intelligence chief, Tulsi Gabbard, gave Russia a propaganda gift on 12 June by declassifying files on US “biolabs” in Ukraine, after Russia had claimed the US was producing biological weapons there.

Trump has also said Russian president Vladimir Putin should be re-invited to join what used to be the G8, and sent a delegation of CEOs to explore business opportunities with Russia to Putin’s St Petersburg economic forum on 3 June.

But for their part, EU states will pull in the opposite direction by formally starting enlargement talks with Ukraine (and Moldova) at an intergovernmental conference (IGC) in Brussels, also on Monday.

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President Donald Trump talks with German chancellor Friedrich Merz during the G7 Summit in Canada in 2025 (Source: Daniel Torok)

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Author Bio

Andrew Rettman Andrew Rettman is EUobserver’s foreign editor, writing about foreign and security issues since 2005. He is Polish, but grew up in the UK, and lives in Brussels. He has also written for The Guardian, The Times of London, and Intelligence Online.