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Israel continues to commit genocide by targeting children in Gaza, UN inquiry finds

Israel continues to commit genocide by deliberately targeting Palestinian children in Gaza, an ⁠independent UN inquiry has found. The report by the UN independent international commission of inquiry examined violations against Palestinian children since the start of the war in Gaza, and said about 30% of the people killed by Israeli forces have been children. A previous report by the commission in September found that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza and that Israeli officials, including the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, incited these acts. Netanyahu is separately wanted by the international criminal court (ICC) for war crimes. The Israeli mission in Geneva said Israel rejected the commission’s “libellous sham”. Israel has fought hard against allegations of genocide, while receiving critical diplomatic support from its allies, including the US and the UK. A significant body of research by legal and rights experts has concluded that Israel is intent on destroying Palestinians, including analyses by UN investigators, rights bodies such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and genocide scholars worldwide. Genocide, which became a crime after the second world war and the Holocaust, is considered the most serious international crime. The convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide defines it as “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”. The UN commission said in its report, released on Tuesday, that Palestinian children were deliberately targeted and killed during the ‌war, including after a ceasefire came into effect ‌in October 2025. It said this was a key element in establishing genocidal intent by Israeli authorities and security forces to destroy the Palestinian group, in whole or in part, ‌in Gaza. “The evidence shows that Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by the Israeli security forces,” said Srinivasan Muralidhar, the commission’s chair, in a statement accompanying the report. Israeli forces continued to use high-payload munitions and weapons with widespread effects in densely populated residential areas, despite mounting child casualties, the commission said. “This indicates that ‌such attacks, which killed children in such high numbers, were intentional,” it said. It added that it believed children were targeted collectively because the Israeli security forces considered the civilian population as a whole to be associated with Hamas and other armed groups. Muralidhar said that by targeting children, Israel was undermining the capacity of the Palestinian people to exist and to determine their future. Conditions Israel imposed on Gaza, including widespread attacks, repeated displacement, and starvation caused by its blockade of aid, food and medicine, severely harmed children’s health and development, resulting in preventable deaths and trauma, the report said. The inquiry also found that attacks ⁠on healthcare and reproductive facilities affected newborns’ survival and the reported increase in miscarriages, and that nearly all children in Gaza were reported to be in need of psychological support. Israel’s rebuttal accused Hamas of systematically diverting humanitarian aid and fuel for hospitals. Hamas has rejected such accusations, while Israel has been accused of blocking aid and fuel from reaching Gaza. The report focused not only on Gaza but also the occupied West Bank, which Israel continues to control despite the international court of justice declaring its occupation unlawful. In the ‌West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the commission found a sharp increase in violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinian children, and documented evidence of torture, including sexual and gender-based violence, during mass arrests and detention. It said Palestinian children, especially boys, were subjected to systemic mistreatment in detention, including forced stripping, beatings and food deprivation. The commission concluded that the treatment constituted the crimes against humanity of torture and other inhumane acts causing great suffering or serious injury. Reuters contributed to this report

Rubio insists strait of Hormuz will be toll-free as he arrives for Gulf meeting

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has said no country, including Iran, would be allowed to charge tolls for shipping in the strait of Hormuz as he sought to reassure US allies in the Gulf that Washington would take a firm line in peace negotiations with Tehran. Rubio is to meet Gulf allies on Tuesday and Wednesday in an attempt to reassure them that the US remains committed to their security and the 60-day ceasefire deal struck with Iran last week will not embolden Tehran. Arriving in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, Rubio said the US would provide for freedom of navigation through the strait of Hormuz and that no country would be allowed to charge a toll there, which Iran has said it has a right to do. “It’s an international waterway,” Rubio said. “No country is allowed to charge tolls or fees on an international waterway. That’s existing international law. That’s the way it is in international waterways all over the world, and that’s the way we expect it’ll be here.” That was just one of a number of potential fault lines in the shaky new US ceasefire deal, as concerns have grown that the release of Iran’s frozen assets would be reinvested into its military. And while Donald Trump claimed on Monday that Iran had agreed to allow international inspectors back into the country to monitor its nuclear programme, Iran directly denied that an agreement had been struck. Rubio also nodded to the potential spoiler role that Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon could play in the agreement, saying that Iranian proxies must also respect the ceasefire but that the issue would be addressed “at the appropriate time in these negotiations”. The US last week signed a ceasefire agreement with Iran that established a 60-day period of toll-free passage through the strait, after which Iran and Oman would discuss the “future administration and maritime services in the strait of Hormuz, in discussions with other Persian Gulf littoral states, in line with applicable international law and the sovereign rights of coastal states of the strait of Hormuz”. Observers took that to mean that Iran was not directly precluded from charging fees or services for transport through the strait of Hormuz. Rubio, however, indicated that he believed Iran would accept the terms of toll-free passage through the waterway. “I don’t think we have anybody to convince around here in that regard,” he said on Monday. “I think all the countries in this region would agree with us.” The Gulf is divided over the deal. While Qatar has played a central role in mediating the agreement, some countries – notably the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain – are fearful it hands Iran substantial sums that may be ploughed into its military. The mood among Gulf states remains one of anger with Iran. The US allies want absolute clarity that tolls will not be charged in the strait of Hormuz, and also want any final agreement to also address limits on Iran’s ballistic missiles programme. Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said on Tuesday that Iran’s ballistic missiles programme would “never” be part of a future agreement. “If we did not have our missiles, which are for our self-defence, Israel and America would have ploughed through Iran the way they did Gaza,” he said. Donald Trump said in a post to his Truth Social platform on Tuesday that the unfrozen assets would be under US control and used to buy food and medical supplies from the US. In his first trip to the region since the US and Israel started the war on 28 February, Rubio will visit the UAE, Kuwait and Bahrain, the state department said. He is also likely to meet officials from the Gulf Cooperation Council regional body. All three countries, which house large US military bases, have been hit by Iranian missiles, but the US has declined to detail the scale of the impacts. Severe penalties have been imposed on those using social media to reveal the damage. Trump last week disclosed that the UAE played an active part in mounting counterattacks against Iran, and the Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmail Baghaei, said Iran believed the UAE, Kuwait and Jordan all helped the US attack Iran. “We will definitely not abandon this issue. We will both document and demand,” Baghaei said. “The US military presence in the region has shown what consequences and harm it has brought to the region and its countries. We hope that the countries of the region have learned from the experience of the past few months and years.” The long-term Iranian aim is to persuade the Gulf states to eject the US from the region. In what is still a fluid debate inside Iran and the Gulf, some Iranian voices are calling for a rapprochement with the region, perhaps by forming an alliance with a powerful new grouping of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Egypt. The Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, flew to Pakistan on Tuesday in his first overseas visit since the war ended. There have also been signs that the UAE – the Gulf state with the closest economic ties with Iran – is also looking to defuse the crisis in relations with Iran. In the short term, Iran is expecting roughly $6bn (£4.54bn) of its assets locked in Qatar due to US sanctions to be unfrozen, with another $6bn to be given by Doha as a repayable loan. Over the next two months Iran can also expect to receive at least $8bn of income since the US Treasury’s decision on Monday to issue a sanctions waiver on Iranian oil exports. The treasury’s waiver document details that the payments can be made in dollars. Some internal Iranian estimates claim the income from unhindered oil sales – principally to China – could rise to more than $30bn over a year. Iran has long been evading US sanctions by covertly trading with China but at heavily discounted prices. The shipping monitors Kepler said 36 ships passed through the strait of Hormuz on Monday, the highest traffic volume since 1 March. Iran’s chief negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, has said he was working with Oman on a long-term agreement to manage the strait. Ghalibaf met the Sultan of Oman on Monday in Muscat. Tehran and Washington had clashed on Monday over whether – as Trump and the US vice-president, JD Vance, have claimed – unfrozen Iranian assets could only be used to buy US agricultural produce such as soya beans. Iran’s central bank governor, Abdolnaser Hemmati, said the memorandum of understanding did not obligate Iran to spend unfrozen assets on US goods, and purchase decisions would be made on the basis of quality and price. Iran also disputed claims that Rafael Grossi, the director general of the UN nuclear inspectorate, had been given an Iranian green light to prepare to return to Iran to inspect the damaged nuclear sites. Iran also said further work was needed on the establishment of a mechanism to monitor the proposed Lebanon ceasefire. The MOU states that the US, Iran and “their allies in the current war” declare the “immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon” – a formulation that clearly gives the impression of trying to bind Israel to an end to operations against Hezbollah. This could complicate the US-backed Israel-Lebanon ceasefire reached in early June, which stated that any cessation of hostilities must be agreed directly between Israel and Lebanon, and not through a separate track.

Forty people drown in France; Met Office warns UK temperatures could reach 39C – as it happened

France has seen its hottest day since records began, according to the country’s weather agency, with temperatures reaching 44.3C in Pissos. Other areas also reached unprecedented highs, including 42.1C in Bordeaux, Météo-France said. The Eiffel Tower closed early on Tuesday due to the heatwave. The UK Met Office said temperatures could reach a maximum of 39C on Thursday, most likely for somewhere in London or the South East, with higher temperatures “possible”. Hundreds of schools across the south of England and Wales are expected to close or vary their hours this week, in an effort to combat the extreme heat and conditions labelled as dangerous by education unions. School leaders said they had warned parents about potential closures on Wednesday and Thursday, with many opting to end the day early to avoid the worst of the afternoon heat. 50 years after the summer heatwave of 1976, scientists in the UK’s Met Office have developed what they call a “plausible 2056 scenario,” which forecasts the impact of similar heat events on the future. Based on 2.5C of global heating, temperatures in England could hit 45C, while Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland would face 41C, 38C and 30C respectively. In that scenario, a prolonged heatwave could continue across a fortnight, including nine days in a row where temperatures would be above 40C. Nearly all of Spain was under a heat alert on Tuesday, with parts of the south and north of the country placed on the highest warning level. National weather agency AEMET issued red alerts – a warning for “extraordinary danger” – for areas around the southern city of Cordoba, the northern city of Bilbao and parts of the northern region of Cantabria. London is “cooking”, according to the head of the United Nations. The UN secretary general, António Guterres, referenced Charles Dickens’ novel A Tale of Two Cities in a major address at London Climate Action Week as the capital swelters in a severe heatwave. Speaking at the event on Tuesday, Guterres said: “Crisis brings clarity and here in London – the city of Dickens – it is clear that our world is facing a ‘tale of two crises’.”

Canadian police warn of possible copycat attacks after deadly shootout in Montreal

Police in Canada are warning of possible copycat attacks after three people died in a shootout in Montreal and the assailant’s lengthy manifesto, which called for “a new bloodletting”, was posted online by a far-right outlet. The document contains many of the hallmark grievances of the “involuntary celibacy” – or “incel” – movement in addition racist and misogynistic conspiracy theories. Fear gripped Quebec’s largest city on Monday after a man dressed in military camouflage and carrying a long gun was spotted moving around the Côte-des-Neige neighborhood. Shooting broke out and when police arrived, nearly 30 shots were heard. The shootout killed one officer and the gunman. Video from witnesses appears to show the police accidentally killing a civilian during the firefight. Another injured officer suffered critical injuries but is expected to survive. Investigators from Quebec’s police watchdog, the bureau des enquêtes indépendantes (BEI) areinvestigating the deaths. After the shooting, Canada’s federal police sent a bulletin to police agencies across the country warning the gunman’s manifesto is “allegedly encouraging citizens to shoot police officers”. The alert called on police to “exercise extreme caution and remain highly vigilant”. The 104-page document, which was later posted in full by Rebel News, does not specifically mention targeting police, but blames feminism, liberalism and capitalism to explain the “situation of terrible loneliness, isolation, and social degradation” he believes men currently face. The document also lists what the shooter claims are “valid potential class A targets”, including large investment banks, powerful politicians, “influential Zionists”, corporate executives in private healthcare, companies involved in environmental destruction, plastic surgeons and cryptocurrency speculators. The manifesto also mentions targeting “the headquarters of international pornography companies”. It ends with the words: “Be unflinching, go forth, and KILL THEM ALL!” Montreal police identified the slain officer as Mohamed Lamine Benredouane, 34, who had been with the force since 2021. The civilian, Michel Mizrahi, was identified as an Israeli citizen by Israel’s consulate in Montreal. Footage from witnesses, viewed by the Guardian, showed an officer appearing to accidentally shoot Mizrahi. Quebec’s domestic security minister, Ian Lafrenière, said “there have been some rumors, there has been some information stating that the civilian was shot by a police officer. This is not the kind of information that we can share at this moment,” adding the watchdog was investigating. The fatal shooting marks the third time a Canadian police officer has been killed while on duty this month. Two Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers were also shot and wounded Monday in the province of Saskatchewan during a property dispute. In recent years, Canada has witnessed a string of attacks apparently inspired by extreme misogyinst incel ideology. In 2018, the driver of a van killed 10 and injured more than a dozen others in Toronto. The perpetrator of a 2020 machete attack at a Toronto spa in which one woman was killed and another seriously injured was also motivated by the ideology and the case marked the first incel-related incident in Canada to be deemed an act of terrorism by the courts. The country is also still grappling with the fallout of the 1989 attack on Montreal’s Polytechnique engineering school, where a young man walked into building with a semiautomatic rifle, killing 14 women and injuring 14 others (including four men). He then killed himself. Christine Fréchette, Quebec’s premier, told reporters she was “deeply shocked and saddened” by Monday’s attack and ordered the Quebec flag to fly at half mast. Mark Carney, Canada’s prime minister, said that he was “horrified” when he learned of the shooting. “My thoughts are with the victims, their loved ones, the first responders, and the entire community of Côte‑des‑Neiges,” he said in a statement posted to social media. The city’s mayor, Soraya Martinez Ferrada, said she extended her “deepest condolences to the family, friends, and colleagues of the police officer who died in the line of duty”.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy to skip postwar conference amid tensions with Poland

Volodymyr Zelenskyy will skip a high-level conference on the postwar reconstruction of Ukraine amid a deepening rift with Poland over his naming of a military unit for one that killed tens of thousands of Poles during the second world war. Ukraine’s president had been expected to co-host the Ukraine Recovery Conference, which begins in the Polish coastal city of Gdańsk on Thursday, but the Ukrainian delegation will instead be led by the prime minister, Yulia Svyrydenko. The annual conference, which in previous years took place in Rome, Berlin and London, seeks to bring together partners and businesses that could help with rebuilding Ukraine after the war. Zelenskyy’s decision not to attend follows weeks of tensions with Poland over his decision last month to name a military unit after “the heroes of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army,” the UPA. The partisan formation is seen in Ukraine as a symbol of heroic resistance against the Soviet forces in the fight for Ukrainian independence. In Poland, however, the UPA is notorious for killing up to 100,000 Poles in the Volhynia region between 1943 and 45, in an attempt to ensure the territory did not become part of postwar Poland. The area has changed hands numerous times and now lies in Ukraine, after it suffered Soviet and then German Nazi occupation. In 2016, the Polish parliament unanimously adopted a motion calling the killings a “genocide committed by Ukrainian nationalists”. Polish underground forces went on to kill 10,000 Ukrainians in reprisals, historians say. The episode remains one of the most painful and unresolved issues in bilateral relations between the countries. Zelenskyy’s decision sparked anger in Poland and accusations of historical insensitivity, dampening hopes of a breakthrough after last year’s agreement on exhumations, in which Ukraine agreed to first steps that could ultimately allow Polish families to bury their massacred relatives. The conservative President Karol Nawrocki – a former head of Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance – said he was “outraged” by Zelenskyy’s decision to name the unit after UPA, suggesting Zelenskyy could be stripped of Poland’s highest civilian honour, the Order of the White Eagle, which was conferred on him in 2023. After weeks of frantic behind-the-scenes discussions between Warsaw and Kyiv, no compromise was found on the naming issue, with both sides trading blame for lack of progress. On Friday, Nawrocki confirmed he would be revoking the order from Zelenskyy. “Ultimately, the position of the Ukrainian side did not change. History should not be an obstacle to the future, but a good future can only be built on truth,” he said. “If anyone wants to be proud of the murderers of women and children, they cannot be surprised by the reaction,” Nawrocki’s chief foreign policy adviser, Marcin Przydacz, said. A poll for the Polish media showed that a majority of Poles supported the move. Over the weekend, Zelenskyy sent the award back by post and hit back at Nawrocki, alleging he sought to exploit rising anti-Ukrainian sentiments ahead of next year’s parliamentary election in Poland, drawing parallels with Hungary’s ousted prime minister, Viktor Orbán. “Our service members choose a ‌heroic name for their unit themselves, and as president and supreme commander-in-chief, I must support them,” he said. Zelenskyy also warned that the dispute would weaken Polish-Ukrainian relations at a time of rising tensions with Russia. “Without Ukraine, no one will be able to defend Poland. It is simply impossible,” he said. In a rare sign of unity across the political divide in Ukraine, his predecessors, Leonid Kuchma, Viktor Yushchenko and Petro Poroshenko, also sent their Polish honours back, as did several senior Ukrainian officials. Zelenskyy’s snub will be embarrassing for Poland’s pro-European prime minister, Donald Tusk, who will be the main host of the conference in his home town of Gdańsk and who has repeatedly urged both presidents to de-escalate. Tusk previously warned that an escalation between the two presidents would be “a strategic mistake that will cost both sides”. Speaking before the cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Tusk said he was “very well aware” of the anti-Ukrainian sentiment, which he said was sometimes “justified”, but accused politicians in both countries of “stoking tensions rather than building solidarity and accord between Ukraine and Poland”. “But keeping in mind the strategic security and interests of Poland … I will not lend a hand in any way to stoking these tensions,” he said. Poland has been one of Ukraine’s closest allies since the full-scale invasion in 2022, becoming home to more than a million Ukrainians who fled in the first months of the war. It also remains a strategic logistics hub for deliveries to Ukraine. Meanwhile, the EU warned on Tuesday that only Russia would benefit from worsening relations between the two neighbours, saying it hoped the conference – which will be attended by the commission president, Ursula von der Leyen – would still prove a success. “There’s only one happy observer in this type of situation, and that’s the aggressor in Ukraine, and so we shouldn’t be playing into their hands,” EU spokesperson Paula Pinho said.

France records hottest day ever as 40 people drown across country

France has registered its hottest day on record as 40 people across the country were confirmed to have drowned while swimming in unsupervised areas over the last few days. “There is a tragic scourge of drownings,” prime minister Sébastien Lecornu said on Tuesday. “The latest figures we’ve received are 40 deaths since 18 June. Most of the victims are young people.” Lecornu was preparing to chair a crisis meeting with ministers to address the ferocious early summer heatwave that has left parts of western France suffering temperatures of above 40C. “We’re experiencing an episode of exceptional intensity,” Lecornu said. “Every day and every night, local and national temperature records are being broken.” The national weather service, Météo-France, said that Tuesday had been the hottest day since measurements began in 1947. “The thermometer even climbed to 44.3C in Pissos (Landes),” it said on social media. “Many cities experienced unprecedented values, regardless of the month, including 42.1C in Bordeaux.” Météo-France said 54 departments had been placed under a red heatwave alert as “oppressive and exhausting” heat smothered about half of the country. It said overnight temperatures were also the hottest since 1947. The Eiffel Tower and the Louvre, two of the most visited tourist attractions in the world, said on Tuesday that the scorching temperatures had forced them to shorten their opening hours. The Eiffel Tower’s operator said it would “exceptionally close” on Tuesday at 4pm local time – more than eight hours earlier than normal – and will “very likely” do the same on Wednesday. The Louvre said it would close two hours earlier from Wednesday to Saturday. “Although parts of its historic building are naturally resilient, the museum remains vulnerable and is not sufficiently adapted to climate change,” the management of the world’s most visited museum said in a statement. “Heat buildup is greatest toward the end of the day and is further intensified by high visitor numbers.” Early on Tuesday, France’s national heat index, an average of the day and night-time highs measured at 30 weather stations across France, reached a record 29.8C (85.6F), Meteo-France said, citing provisional data. The previous record of 29.4C (84.9F) dated back to heatwaves of August 2003 and July 2019. Officials in the greater Paris region advised people to work from home as much as possible and avoid rail journeys. “The transport network comes under severe strain in periods of extreme heat … railways cannot withstand temperatures above 50 degrees,” the head of the Île-de-France region, Valérie Pécresse, told journalists. In southwestern France, staff at the Golfech nuclear plant switched off a reactor after discovering that cooling water drawn from a nearby river had warmed beyond the safe level of 28C, a spokesperson told AFP. The heat, which on Monday forced the closure of about 1,350 schools and was believed to be linked to the deaths of two young children in their family car, is forecast to continue until the end of the week. “Further record-breaking temperatures are expected, including some that could surpass all previous records, regardless of the time of year,” Météo-France said. The sweltering temperatures extending across swathes of Europe are caused by what Clair Barnes, a climate scientist at Imperial College London, described as a bulging mass of hot air. “It’s drawing warm air up from north Africa, from the Sahara, and that’s why we have this really intense heat,” Barnes told Reuters. “It’s very slow moving and it means there’s kind of no wind, no breeze for respite.” In England, some schools closed early on Tuesday as the UK braced for the heatwave to set new records. With temperatures expected to soar to 40C, the Met Office issued its second red heat warning. The UN secretary general, António Guterres, said in an address to a London Climate Action Week event on Tuesday: “London isn’t just calling. It’s cooking.” He urged the world to work towards limiting global warming. “A climate crisis is pushing us deeper towards higher temperatures and closer to catastrophic tipping points, and an energy crisis is exposing the folly of a world hooked on hydrocarbons,” he said. “On the surface, these crises may seem separate, but they share the same destructive origin: fossil fuels.” In Italy, the health minister declared a red heatwave alert in 15 cities including Milan and Rome, while the spike in air-conditioning use led to blackouts in Milan and Turin. In Parma, the hospital service said 1,068 people had accessed its emergency services over the past three days due to the high temperatures. In Germany, officials said swimming accidents had spiked over the weekend, leading to the deaths of five people. Nearly all of Spain was under a heat alert on Tuesday, with red alerts warning of “extraordinary danger” issued for areas around the southern city of Córdoba, the northern city of Bilbao and parts of the northern region of Cantabria. On Monday, 101 of the 828 weather stations across Spain recorded temperatures of 40C or higher. At about 30 stations, temperatures remained above 25C overnight into Tuesday, underlining the intensity of the heatwave. The situation was more severe in the south-eastern province of Almería, where temperatures had not dipped below 30C overnight for three consecutive nights. The barrage of heat dominated local headlines. “More than 72 hours above 30 degrees Celsius,” noted La Voz de Almería. In another article, the newspaper highlighted the consequences: “Almería doesn’t sleep: a hellish night of temperatures above 30C and highs exceeding 40C.”

Merz backs plans to raise Germany’s retirement age to 70 in pension changes

Germany will gradually raise its retirement age to about 70 by the early 2090s under recommendations backed by the chancellor, Friedrich Merz, as a means of future-proofing the pension system for an ageing population. Presenting its findings on Tuesday, an expert commission set up to explore reforms to the pension system said retirement age should be linked to rising life expectancy and early retirement should be scrapped. “No citizen needs to worry,” said Merz, as he said the measures would prevent the collapse of the creaking pension system and strengthen the social contract between generations. Young people, he argued, would be given a “reason for optimism” by the measures, which would “lift a tremendous burden” from their shoulders. The commission of experts sat for long daily sessions from January until its 33-point plan was presented on Tuesday. Among its key recommendations are for the obligatory contributions made by workers and employers to be invested in the stock market in order to increase and safeguard the fund’s value for future generations. It also proposed expanding compulsory pension contributions to include civil servants and self-employed workers. The current pensionable age for anyone retiring in the early 2030s in Germany is 67, a figure set about two decades ago. The panel said this should be gradually increased in line with life expectancy, rising to about 70 by the early 2090s. Germany has one of the fastest-ageing populations in the world and, like many western countries, has faced a challenge over how to ensure the pension system has a future when ever fewer workers are financing the pensions of ever more, ever longer-living retirees. The government hopes to pass the reforms before the summer recess next month, although they must still be debated and voted on in parliament. “All elements of this reform package must now be implemented swiftly,” said Merz, insisting: “Failure is not an option.” The leader of the conservative Christian Democrats said his coalition was united in not wanting to get caught in the weeds of the wording, after some leftwing members of the government from his junior coalition partners, the Social Democrats, as well as trade unions, had questioned the fairness of some of the recommendations. Critics targeted the proposal to scrap the right of those who have worked for 45 years to retire at 63 without seeing any reduction to their pension, saying it would penalise those in physically demanding and lower-paid jobs, such as builders or carers. The experts pointed out this had often benefited men in well-paid positions who had a proven unbroken employment record. “We cannot afford to isolate or reject individual measures,” Merz said, adding that the reform commission had created a “comprehensive concept … that works as a whole”. Merz is under pressure to show that his government – in office for just over a year, but struggling in the polls and beset by internal wrangling – can deliver on its promises of sweeping economic and social reform in an effort to reinvigorate Germany’s flagging economy. Germany’s pension system is the oldest state-backed system of its kind in the world. It was introduced by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck in 1889 mainly for political tactics, as he hoped to undermine the rise of the socialist movement by luring workers away from trade unions and focusing their loyalty instead on the German empire. The original retirement age was set at 70 years old, an age which far fewer workers reached back then. Just over 200 years since the pension system’s introduction, it could be 70 once again for anyone born from 2021 onwards. According to latest statistics from 2024, about 23% of Germans – or 19 million – are 65 years or older, compared with just 15% in 1991. The average life expectancy for men is 78.5 years and 83.2 years for women. Critics said dependence on the capital market in the reforms was unwelcome and could lead to instability, especially at a time when the economy was doing poorly. Germans are in general often averse to investments, preferring to use saving accounts. Merz, a former investment banker, stressed the importance of a taking a long-term perspective. “The use of the capital market in the statutory pension scheme is perhaps the key factor in determining the long-term viability and stability ‌of our pension system,” he said.

UK could rejoin EU on ‘short’ timeline if it wanted, former Brexit negotiator says – as it happened

… and on that note, it’s a wrap for today! EU’s former chief Brexit negotiator said the UK could rejoin the bloc on a “short” timeline because it largely continued to be aligned with its regulation (14:08), ten years on from its decision to leave the union. His comments come on the tenth anniversary of the 2016 Brexit referendum and amid another government crisis in Britain, noted on the continent with bemusement and mockery (14:45). A polling guru said the economy, not immigration, could be the key factor in persuading former Leave voters to back a potential decision to rejoin the EU (13:06). Elsewhere, Forty people have drowned while swimming in unsupervised areas across France in recent days, the prime minister has said, as Europe battles record-breaking heatwave across the continent. Follow for live updates here: Meanwhile, Czech president Petr Pavel has filed a complaint against the Czech government and its decision to exclude him from the delegation for next month’s Nato summit in Ankara (10:24). EU defence commissioner Andrius Kubilius said the EU needs to ⁠integrate Ukraine in a future defence union, with first proposals on the European defence market expected next week (11:35). German chancellor Friedrich Merz pledged to push through a proposed reform of the country’s creaking pension system that would include raising the retirement age gradually in line with life expectancy, declaring that “failure is not an option.” (12:22). If you have any tips, comments or suggestions, email me at jakub.krupa@theguardian.com. I am also on Bluesky at @jakubkrupa.bsky.social and on X at @jakubkrupa.