Closing summary
… and on that note, it’s a wrap from me, Jakub Krupa.
Here are the three things to take away from today’s Europe Live blog:
US president Donald Trump announced his plans to end the war in Ukraine, after a lengthy phone call with Russian president Vladimir Putin in which the pair agreed to start the talks “immediately,” and invited each other to their countries (18:18). His comments prompted European leaders to call for Ukrainian interests to be protected (18:43, 19:00, 19:04), while Ukraine’s president Zelenskyy said diplomatically that “no one wants peace more than Ukraine” (19:09). The development comes just hours after US defence secretary Pete Hegseth told European leaders that the US was no longer “primarily focused” on European security, he said returning to pre-2014 Ukraine borders was “unrealistic,” and ruled out a NATO membership for Kyiv (15:07).
EU trade ministers spoke today about their plans for a united response to US administration’s proposal to impose tariffs on steel and aluminium imports on 12 March. Irish deputy prime minister and foreign minister Simon Harris said that “it was encouraging to hear about the engagement with the US that has started and to know that further meetings are planned,” as he described “a window of opportunity” to resolve the problem before the tariffs kick in (19:40 and 19:43).
Talks to form Austria’s first coalition government led by the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) collapsed on Wednesday after negotiations with the conservative People’s Party (OVP) had already ground to a halt, with each side blaming the other. The ball is now in the president van den Bellen’s court. Most likely either a centrist attempt to form a government will be revived or the Alpine republic will head towards a snap election with polls suggesting the FPÖ’s lead over other parties would grow (15:53).
And that’s all from me, Jakub Krupa, for today. See you again tomorrow.
If you have any tips, comments or suggestions, email me at [email protected].
I am also on Bluesky at @jakubkrupa.bsky.social and on X at @jakubkrupa.
I will be wrapping up this Europe Live blog very shortly, but if you want to follow further developments in the US and the latest from Donald Trump’s White House, you can do so on our US live blog here:
I will pick up more European reactions tomorrow, when Nato defence ministers also meeting in Brussels, so we will have plenty to go through.
