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Merz strikes urgent tone in calling for more European independence from US

Stance of German alliance’s leader could herald closer ties with France but ‘debt brake’ poses obstacle to spending

Friedrich Merz marked his conservative alliance’s victory in Germany’s election by urging Europe to make itself more independent from the US – a project that will be music to the ears of Emmanuel Macron but may turn on whether Merz can build a Bundestag majority to lift the so-called debt brake that slows increases in defence spending.

One possibility for the CDU/CSU alliance leader, who is on course to become Germany’s next chancellor, is to claim that the country is in an emergency, to try to force the change through the Bundestag before its dissolution.

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© Photograph: Maja Hitij/Getty Images

© Photograph: Maja Hitij/Getty Images

Starmer to tell Trump that UK’s Chagos deal will avoid tensions with China

PM to claim if US rejects Mauritius’s claim to own the islands, Beijing will be drawn into the regional dispute

Keir Starmer is to urge Donald Trump to recognise that a US rejection of Mauritius’s legal claim to own the Chagos Islands, including the strategic US military base at Diego Garcia, may stoke tensions similar to those in the South China Sea.

Starmer is due to meet Trump next Friday mainly to discuss the future of Ukraine, but also a UK plan for Gaza’s reconstruction under international protection with no need for Palestinians to be required to quit the Gaza Strip. The paper is similar but not identical to proposals being discussed by Arab foreign ministers in Riyadh, which has a strong international component and would prevent Hamas ruling in Gaza.

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© Photograph: CPA Media Pte Ltd/PA

© Photograph: CPA Media Pte Ltd/PA

Trump is tearing up the transatlantic alliance. Can Starmer’s US visit change the weather?

As the US president turns on allies and embraces Russia, can the UK prime minister persuade Trump to listen to Europe’s concerns

In November 1940, Winston Churchill sent a telegram to Franklin Roosevelt expressing relief both at the US president’s re-election and the victory of his anti-appeasement policy. “Things are afoot which will be remembered as long as the English language is spoken in any quarter of the globe, and in expressing the comfort I feel that the people of the United States have once again cast these great burdens upon you, I must now avow my sure faith that the lights by which we steer will bring us safely to anchor,” he wrote.

As Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron prepare to meet a very different US president, things are once again afoot that will live long in the memory – but this time the lights seem to be going out on a ship adrift in a sea of chaos.

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© Photograph: Oli Scarffsaul Loeb/AFP/Getty

© Photograph: Oli Scarffsaul Loeb/AFP/Getty

French foreign minister makes rules-based order plea to global south over Ukraine

Jean-Noël Barrot tells G20 to prioritise those who support the law rather than power by force

European powers have made a plea at the G20 in South Africa to countries in the global south that they show unambivalent support for the international rules-based order, including the sovereignty of Ukraine.

Writing in the Guardian, the French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, said the real line of geopolitical division was not between north and south but between those who supported the international rules-based order and those who did not.

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© Photograph: Ludovic Marin/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Ludovic Marin/AFP/Getty Images

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