Good morning. It’s Mared Gwyn, bringing you today’s newsletter from Brussels.
My colleague Vincenzo Genovese is on the ground in Strasbourg, where Angela Merkel will be among 20 prominent European figures bestowed with an Order of Merit later this morning – despite the conflicting interpretations of her legacy, as Vincenzo and Stefan Grobe break down in this must-read.
Later tonight in Strasbourg (at 9pm local time), EU lawmakers and diplomats will convene for crunch negotiations on the EU-US trade deal, as the clock ticks before the Trump-imposed 4 July deadline. Overnight, Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen suggested the US’s designs on the Arctic territory remained unchanged after talks with US President Donald Trump’s envoy – an issue which has previously torpedoed the EU’s implementation of the embattled deal.
But we start this morning with the hostile economic order that Europe finds itself facing.
G7 finance ministers meet again today in Paris for a second day of talks amid economic tensions and volatility – with the deadlock between the US and Iran over the Strait of Hormuz persisting and sending major shockwaves through the global economy.
