Europe

In the wake of the insolvency of air taxi developer Lilium, German battery cell developer CustomCells has now also filed for insolvency. Lilium was CustomCells' largest customer and failed to pay some large invoices.

Tesla sales fell 59.45% to 863 vehicles last month.

Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechia, Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Greece, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Slovakia, and Finland want greater flexibility to boost their own defense capacity, according to a Council statement.

Astrazeneca's boss has warned Europe is falling behind as it steps up investment in the United States.

Pascal Soriot said innovation in pharmaceuticals ‘has mostly been funded by the US’ as he doubled down on plans to grow the business in America – which already accounts for 40 per cent of revenues.

Three weeks ago, Wauquiez caused a stir by proposing that individuals under a deportation order deemed dangerous should be sent to the French archipelago of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, off the coast of Canada. He also recently said that France had become “the most violent country in Europe.”

Retailleau, for his part, has toughened France’s immigration policies since taking the interior minister job in September. He stated that a “multicultural society" carries the risk of also becoming "a multiracist society."

The hard-right eurosceptic leads opinion polls before the first round of voting in the EU and NATO member state, five months after the original vote was cancelled because of alleged Russian interference. Moscow has denied the allegations.

Simion, 38, opposes military aid to neighbouring Ukraine, is critical of the EU's leadership and has supported U.S. President Donald Trump's Make America Great Again movement. A conservative Christian, he supported a failed 2018 referendum intended to prevent same-sex couples from being able to marry.

Found in the article How will European consumers react to US tariffs? where they detail sentiment of Europeans towards US products:

Share your thoughts:

SURVEY

Take our survey by 31 May and shape the future of The ECB Blog!

The article reports on sentiment of European toward US products

Overall, around 44% of respondents expressed a willingness to shift their spending away from US products, irrespective of the tariff rate and primarily due to a preference to switch away

A little ironic that the ECB uses a link to a US tech giant in such an article.

Upside is that the form has a final section "Is there any other feedback you would like to give us?" Maybe we should suggest they use Nextcloud or an opensource solution for their surveys.

Microsoft is responding to mounting "geopolitical and trade volatility" between the US administration and governments in Europe by pledging privacy safeguards for customers worried about using American hyperscalers, and vowing to fight the US government in court to protect Euro customers' data if needed.

Under Trump 2.0, some Europeans fear that storing their data in the bit barns of Microsoft, Google and AWS is no longer safe, a concern voiced to The Register in late February by Bert Hubert, a part time technical advisor to the Dutch Electoral Council.

The company also has plans to set up a facility in Turkey in the near future, and is considering a third factory in Europe, the report suggests.

Now it appears that Chery, China’s fourth-largest carmaker, which sold 2,603,916 vehicles in 2024 through its nine brands and joint ventures including with Jaguar Land Rover, is close to finalizing a deal to take over the two plants as it prepares to expand into European markets.

If it comes to an agreement to purchase the two German plants, it intends to manufacture models for its brand-new Lepas brand that was launched only a few weeks ago, on April 2, and sells modified versions of Chery‘s Tiggo range that will be available in global markets. European-made models will include two compact and one midsize SUVs with combustion, plug-in hybrid or all-electric powertrains.

Chery is no stranger to building cars in Europe in an effort to avoid the hefty taxes imposed on Chinese EVs by the EU as, since 2024, it has been assembling cars at a former Nissan factory in Barcelona, Spain in partnership with local firm Ebro.

Kneecap were set to perform at the Hurricane Festival in June, one of Germany's largest festivals and its sister event, the Southside Festival. The festivals issued a statement last week saying: "Kneecap will not be performing at Hurricane and Southside Festival this year," without providing further context. At the same time, the ticket provider for the events also stated that the events have been cancelled.

Following their performance at the US Coachella Music Festival in April, where Kneecap displayed "f*** Israel, free Palestine" on the stage, the band has received a surge of backlash, including calls to revoke their work visas to the US, championed by TV personality Sharon Osborne.

The US booking agency Independent Artist Group (IAG), which sponsored Kneecap's US work visas, announced the band is no longer their client. The band were set to tour in the US in October, with most of the shows being sold out.

Paywall? https://archive.is/tTp48

Archived version

In 2028--or three years after the United States does something similar--Europe will abolish the exemption from customs duty on parcels worth less than €150 entering European territory.

[Now] several voices in Brussels are calling for the implementation of this measure to be speeded up, without waiting until 2028 or 2030. Some suggest dissociating the end of the €150 allowance from the rest of the major customs reform to apply it earlier.

[...]

On Tuesday, without waiting for Europe, France announced a “rapid introduction, at the European level, of a management fee mechanism on each small parcel entering Europe” to fund controls, according to public accounts minister Amélie de Montchalin, referring to “a few euros” per parcel.

Among the online sales platforms, Shein and Temu have established themselves in just a few years as e-commerce heavyweights in France and Europe, where they have 75m users. Shein, originally Chinese but now based in Singapore, specialises in ultra-trendy, low-cost fashion, while Temu (launched by the Pinduoduo group) sells a wide range of products, from textiles to toys to high-tech gadgets, at low prices. Between them, and alongside Amazon, Shein and Temu account for around a quarter of online fashion sales in France.

[...]

Traditionally, residents of the United States have enjoyed a very high exemption threshold: any import worth less than $800 could enter the country without customs duties or complex procedures, under the so-called “de minimis” rule. This system greatly benefited Chinese e-tailers [...] Now, this loophole is being closed. On 2 April 2025, US president Donald Trump signed an executive order abolishing the duty-free allowance for parcels originating in China and Hong Kong.

[...]

As a direct consequence, Chinese platforms are likely to redouble their efforts on the European market, where regulations are still considered to be more lenient. “There’s no doubt about it, there’s going to be an invasion from the Indo-Pacific region,” says Michel-Édouard Leclerc, head of the distribution group that shares his surname, anticipating a massive transfer of flows to Europe in the face of the closure of the American market. The European trade commissioner, Maros Sefcovic, spoke as early as February 2025 of the risk of a veritable “tsunami” of small parcels flooding the Old Continent if no measures were taken. In fact, the European Union has set up a surveillance task force to detect any suspicious explosion in imports of this type and is ready to activate trade safeguard clauses if necessary.

[...]

Product compliance in question

Alongside tax and customs measures, the authorities are keeping a close eye on the practices of Shein, Temu and their ilk in terms of product regulation and consumer safety. The European Commission has opened investigations into these two flagship Chinese e-commerce platforms. Shein is being investigated by Brussels on suspicion of allowing items to be sold that do not comply with European standards (whether in terms of product safety, intellectual property or regulatory compliance).

Temu, for its part, has been in the Commission's sights since last October for similar reasons, linked to placing potentially non-compliant products on the European market.

These investigations are part of the EU’s drive to make platforms accountable for the products they distribute, an issue reinforced by the entry into force of the Digital Services Act and other recent legislation on the surveillance of online markets. The results of these investigations are not yet known, but they demonstrate the increased vigilance of regulators with regard to these new players.

Archived

Nuria Zyden came to Ireland in 2009, became a naturalised Irish citizen and has three children who were born in the Republic.

A Uyghur, she grew up in Xinjiang, a majority Muslim province where locals are regarded with extreme suspicion by the Chinese Government.

“As a Uyghur person, growing up we were seen as politically disloyal and culturally disadvantaged,” Ms Zyden told Newstalk Breakfast.

“The State media frequently portrayed Uyghurs as extremists and discrimination in jobs and education left us with limited opportunities.

“After 9/11, the Chinese Government rebranded its repressions as a war on terror, using it as a pretext to expand mass surveillance.”

[...]

Determined to keep her culture alive and speak out against Beijing’s oppression of her people, she helped found the Irish Uyghur Culture Association in 2014.

Like many Uyghurs living outside of China, she soon found that her advocacy had not gone unnoticed by Chinese officials.

“My activism has become a target [with] phone calls from the Chinese Government and all different types of harassment,” she said.

Most disturbingly, she feels they are blackmailing her elderly mother.

“My gentle, 74-year-old mother told me to not come home,” Ms Zyden said.

[...]

“I don’t know what is really happening to her but I guess she has been questioned and probably she was in detention.

“I’m not really sure; she begged me, do not forget about the Chinese Communist Party raising us and wherever we go, we should appreciate [them].”

[...]

Archived

[...]

“Numerous signs of torture and ill-treatment were found on the victim’s body, including abrasions and hemorrhages on various parts of the body, a broken rib, neck injuries, and possible electric shock marks on the feet. However, due to the condition of the body, experts have not yet been able to establish the cause of death." Yuriy Belousov, the head of the War Crimes Unit at the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office, described the results of the forensic medical examination to us.

The body was missing some organs: the eyeballs, the brain, part of the larynx, and the hyoid bone was broken, said a source close to the investigation into Viktoriia Roshchyna’s death. It was launched by the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine in March 2025.

A forensic expert, who requested anonymity, suggested in a conversation with journalists that the removal of specific organs could be an attempt to conceal strangulation: “Removing the larynx during an autopsy is not standard practice. The larynx can be good evidence of strangulation. When a person is strangled, the hyoid bone is most often broken. In cases of strangulation, bleeding can be found in the whites of the eyes, and a lack of oxygen in the brain.”

[...]

A person is abducted [in by Russia occupied territories of Ukraine] by people without insignia, they do not identify themselves, do not present any documents, and do not explain anything to relatives. The person simply disappears. No one “knows” about them in the military commandant’s offices, the prosecutor’s office, the police, or the investigative committee. Sometimes, the local police even opens a “missing person” case.

It is unknown who exactly detained Viktoriia. Sevgil Musayeva recalls that in conversations with the journalist, she mentioned that she was trying to establish the identities of FSB officers involved in the abduction and torture of Ukrainians in Enerhodar.

[...]

“She arrived [in the detention center] already pumped full of some unknown medications,” says another former detainee who was held with Vika in the Taganrog pre-trial detention center. “At some point, she stopped eating. Her cellmates started telling the guards and the prison staff — that she’d stopped eating, that something needed to be done. They didn’t give a damn until her condition got seriously bad.”

[...]

But even in this state [of poor health], she maintained her courage. Yevgeny Markevich, a prisoner of war who was held in a cell next to Roshchyna’s in [the detention center of] Taganrog, heard her talking to the guards.

She told the prison guards right to their faces: “You are occupiers, you came to our country, you are killing our people... I will never cooperate with you!” She was probably saved by the fact that she was a woman. If I had said something like that, they would’ve killed me on the spot.

[...]

Ukrainian prisoners call Taganrog Detention Center No. 2 (SIZO-2), where Viktoriia ended up, hell on Earth. “Even the term ‘concentration camp’ would be too mild for SIZO-2,” said one of the prisoners.

[...]