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Trump tells Starmer handing Chagos Islands to Mauritius is a ‘big mistake’

Donald Trump has urged Keir Starmer not to hand the Chagos Islands over to Mauritius, warning he was “making a big mistake”. Under the deal agreed last year, Britain would cede control over the British Indian Ocean Territory but lease the largest island, Diego Garcia, for 99 years to continue operating a joint US-UK military base there. Earlier this month, Trump said the plan to hand the Chagos Islands back was the “best” deal Starmer could make, watering down his previous criticism. On Tuesday, the state department gave its official backing to the deal. However, in a post on his Truth Social platform on Wednesday, the US president wrote: “Our relationship with the United Kingdom is a strong and powerful one, and it has been for many years, but prime minister Starmer is losing control of this important island by claims of entities never known of before. In our opinion, they are fictitious in nature.” Trump added that if Iran did not make a peace deal with the US, “it may be necessary for the United States to use Diego Garcia”, as well as RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, to “eradicate a potential attack by a highly unstable and dangerous regime – an attack that would potentially be made on the United Kingdom, as well as other friendly countries”. “Prime minister Starmer should not lose control, for any reason, of Diego Garcia, by entering a tenuous, at best, 100-year lease,” the US president continued. “This land should not be taken away from the UK and, if it is allowed to be, it will be a blight on our great ally. We will always be ready, willing and able to fight for the UK, but they have to remain strong in the face of wokeism, and other problems put before them.” Last month, the US president had described ceding sovereignty as an “act of great stupidity”. His latest statement comes only a day after the US Department of State said it “supports the decision of the United Kingdom to proceed with its agreement with Mauritius concerning the Chagos archipelago”. When asked about Trump’s latest social media post on Wednesday evening, his press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters: “The post should be taken as the policy of the Trump administration. It’s coming straight from the horse’s mouth.” The shadow foreign secretary, Priti Patel, said that Trump had “once again publicly rebuked Keir Starmer and his government over their ill-judged, unnecessary and expensive Chagos surrender. This is an utter humiliation for Starmer.” The Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey, said Trump’s “flip-flopping” on the issue showed why Starmer’s approach was “doomed to fail”. “Britain can’t rely on the US while Trump is in the White House,” he said. “It’s time to strengthen our ties with allies we can depend on, starting with our neighbours in Europe.” A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “The deal to secure the joint UK-US military base on Diego Garcia military is crucial to the security of the UK and our key allies, and to keeping the British people safe. “The agreement we have reached is the only way to guarantee the long-term future of this vital military base.” On Wednesday, British authorities issued removal orders against four Chagossians who landed this week on a remote atoll in the Chagos Archipelago in an attempt to complicate British plans to transfer the territory. The four landed on Monday on Île du Coin, part of the Peros Banhos atoll, with more expected to join them in what would be a permanent settlement. The removal orders seen by Reuters, addressed to them individually, were issued by a British Indian Ocean Territory immigration official and stated they are unlawfully present in the territory and will be removed. It warned that breaching the order by returning would be a criminal offence punishable with up to three years’ imprisonment and a fine of £3,000 ($4,060). The UK’s deal is opposed by some Chagossians, who accuse Mauritius of decades of neglect. Mauritius has denied the accusations. Up to 2,000 Chagossians were forcibly removed from the archipelago in the 1960s and 1970s and resettled mainly in Mauritius and Britain, with many wanting the right to return to their homeland. The UN committee on the elimination of racial discrimination has urged Britain and Mauritius not to ratify the 2025 agreement, saying it risks perpetuating historical rights violations. On the protest, a spokesperson for the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said on Tuesday: “The UK government recognises the importance of the islands to the Chagossian community and is working with Mauritius to resume a programme of heritage visits to the Chagos archipelago. This kind of illegal, unsafe stunt is not the way to achieve that. “The vessel does not pose any security risk to Diego Garcia.”

Climber faces manslaughter charge after leaving girlfriend on Austria’s tallest peak

An Austrian mountaineer is to appear in court accused of gross negligent manslaughter after his girlfriend died of hypothermia when he left her close to the summit on a climb that went dramatically wrong. The 33-year-old woman, identified only as Kerstin G, froze to death on 19 January 2025, about 50 metres below the summit of the Großglockner, Austria’s tallest mountain, after an ascent of more than 17 hours with her boyfriend, Thomas P, 36. Prosecutors argue that Thomas P’s alleged poor judgment and willingness as the more experienced climber to take risks make him criminally liable for her death, in a case that could have implications for mountain sports and which has prompted debate in Austria and beyond. If found guilty, Thomas P could spend three years in prison. The couple had set out on the morning of 18 January but conditions deteriorated, leaving them struggling in darkness against a temperature that fell to almost -9C, a wind chill of -20C, and gusts of up to 45mph, the court in Innsbruck will hear when the trial opens on Thursday. Thomas P left Kerstin G at about 2am in a state of exhaustion and unprotected when he descended the mountain to fetch help. He denies manslaughter. His lawyer, Kurt Jelinek, called Kerstin G’s death “a tragic accident”. The senior public prosecutor Hansjörg Mayr and his team are citing the legal concept of the “tour guide acting as a courtesy” in the case, which designates the person with more experience and knowledge and the key decision-maker as having most responsibility. The prosecutors therefore accuse Thomas P of failing in his responsibility as the more experienced climber, listing nine major errors. These include forging ahead with the climb despite the fact Kirsten G had “never undertaken an Alpine tour of this length, difficulty and altitude and despite the challenging weather conditions”. The couple had started out two hours later than advised and had not been sufficiently equipped with emergency bivouac equipment, the prosecutors said. Neither had Thomas P advised Kerstin G that the snowboard boots she was wearing were inadequate for the terrain. Prosecutors also allege Thomas P was negligent in failing to turn back and question why, despite his partner’s exhaustion, he failed to make an emergency call before nightfall and did not send distress signals to a passing rescue helicopter. “Around 2am, the defendant left his girlfriend unprotected, exhausted, hypothermic, and disoriented approximately 50 metres below the summit cross of the Großglockner,” Mayr said. Jelinek disputes the prosecutor’s version, saying the couple had organised the tour together, and were “sufficiently experienced, adequately prepared and well-equipped”, with “relevant Alpine experience” and “in very good physical condition”. More than 7,000 people climb the 3,798-metre-high (12,461ft) Großglockner every year. About 200 deaths of mountaineers have been recorded there, but none has attracted as much attention as that of Kerstin G. Her mother, Gertraud G, who is due to give evidence, has said she does not hold Thomas P responsible for her daughter’s death and has spoken of a “witch-hunt” against him. In a recent interview with the German weekly Die Zeit, Gertraud G said she was upset at the way in which her daughter, who she said had discovered her passion for mountain climbing during the pandemic, had been depicted. “It makes me angry that Kerstin is being portrayed as a stupid little thing,” she said. “Kerstin was in top physical condition. And she had already mastered far more difficult climbing tours, both alone and with her boyfriend.”

Penelope Putz obituary

My wife, Penelope Putz, who has died aged 95, was a Quaker all her life and took inspiration from Quaker values. The passion she felt against injustice led her to become a committed activist. Penelope campaigned for peace, the environment, with the Conservation Society (one of the first British environment societies) and Extinction Rebellion (XR), and against her pension being invested in fossil fuels. She was bitterly opposed to the Iraq war and wrote often to Tony Blair to tell him so. She attended peace vigils and the regular silent vigils in Exeter to support Palestine and protest against the inhumane bombardment of Gaza. She was born in Wellington, Somerset. Her parents were Griselda (nee Bigland) and Lloyd Fox, both from Quaker families; Griselda contributed to the Guardian’s Country diary column for many years in the 1960s and 70s. Penelope attended the Mount school, York, and then went to St Hugh’s College, Oxford, in 1949 to study history; I met her there through mutual Quaker friends and caught her interest when she heard that my father worked for the Manchester Guardian. We married in 1952 and the following year moved to a small village in Devon, where Penelope set up and chaired a local branch of the Family Planning Association. She joined the National Association for the Welfare of Children in Hospital (NAWCH) after being shocked by our three-year-old daughter’s experience as a patient; she later campaigned nationally with the Conservation Society on green matters. In 1973 she became a social worker, mainly dealing with people with learning disabilities. Before retiring, Penelope qualified as a counsellor and when she finished full-time employment in 1995 she worked with Cruse, the bereavement support charity, for a number of years. Penelope loved to perform, acting in many amateur dramatic productions, writing sharp parody poems with a political message, which she shared with her friends. There were things she disliked deeply: muzak in restaurants, extremes of heat and cold, bigots and autocrats, magpies and pigeons, weeds, bought cut flowers and waste of any kind. Following a serious accident in 2024 while we were in the Greek islands, she persevered in order to return to her previous activities, using her buggy to get to demos and vigils. She is survived by me, our three children, Catherine, Rachel and Nick, and two grandchildren, Ruth and Bridget. A great-granddaughter, Alma, was born four days after Penelope’s death.

Zelenskyy says no agreement on key issues in peace talks as he accuses Russia of ‘dragging out negotiations’ – as it happened

Volodymyr Zelenskyy said there has been no agreement between Ukraine and Russia on the key issues at the US-mediated talks in Geneva. “We can see that some groundwork has been done, but for now the positions differ, because the negotiations were not easy,” the Ukrainian president told reporters after the talks had finished, according to the AFP news agency. The latest round of US-mediated peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in Geneva on Wednesday ended without a major breakthrough, as fighting continues in a war that will enter its fifth year next week. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said no agreement had been reached on the thorniest questions at the negotiations in Switzerland, accusing Moscow of “trying to drag out” the process. Ukraine has sanctioned the Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko for providing military support to Russia and enabling “the killing of Ukrainians”, Zelenskyy has announced. Lukashenko, one of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s closest allies, has allowed Moscow to use Belarusian territory as a launchpad for its invasion of Ukraine. Russia has demanded for evidence after five European countries accused Moscow of poisoning the outspoken Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny with a dart frog poison. The UK, France, Germany Sweden and the Netherlands said on Saturday that laboratory testing of samples from Navalny’s body had confirmed the presence of epibatidine, a toxin found in poison dart frogs in South America and not found naturally in Russia. Slovakia has threatened to cut emergency electricity supplies to Kyiv if it does not reopen a pipeline that brings Russian oil to Slovakia and Hungary. Slovakian prime minister Robert Fico, who is a close ally of Putin’s along with Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, declared a state of emergency over oil supplies. Four South African men who were lured into fighting alongside Russian forces in Ukraine landed at Johannesburg’s main airport on Wednesday, public broadcaster the South African Broadcasting Corporation reported. Police were waiting at OR Tambo International Airport, the SABC said. A police spokesperson declined comment, directing enquiries to the foreign affairs ministry. Ukraine’s sports minister has condemned the decision to allow six Russians and four Belarusians to compete under their nation’s flags at next month’s Winter Paralympics as “disappointing and outrageous” and said Ukraine officials will not attend the opening ceremony or other official events as a result. “The flags of Russia and Belarus have no place at international sporting events that stand for fairness, integrity, and respect,” said Matvii Bidnyi in response to the International Paralympic Committee’s decision on Monday. Russia and Cuba on Wednesday criticised the US energy blockade of the Caribbean island in a show of solidarity in Moscow, where Havana’s foreign minister was due to meet with president Vladimir Putin. Cuba’s top diplomat Bruno Rodriguez travelled to traditional ally Russia seeking help as his country reels from a severe fuel crisis – intensified by Washington’s de-facto oil blockade. Slovakia has threatened to cut emergency electricity supplies to Kyiv if it does not reopen a pipeline that brings Russian oil to Slovakia and Hungary. Slovakian prime minister Robert Fico, who is a close ally of Putin’s along with Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, declared a state of emergency over oil supplies. Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he was open to a social media ban for children. “If children today, at the age of 14, have up to five hours or more of screen time a day, if their entire socialisation takes place only through this medium, then we shouldn’t be surprised by personality deficits and problems in the social behaviour of young people,” he said in an interview with the podcast Machtwechsel. Heavy snow and rain across Romania left 200,000 homes without electricity on Wednesday, energy minister Bogdan Ivan said, with traffic blocked on motorways and national roads and dozens of trains delayed. Public transport in the capital, Bucharest, was struggling under 40 cm (16 inches) of snow, Reuters reported. Fallen trees halted road and rail traffic, schools closed in several towns and 10 ambulances in six counties were snowed in, the national emergency response agency said. France has launched wide-ranging investigations into human trafficking and financial fraud among contacts of the late convicted US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein following the release of a trove of files on his activities. Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau told France Info radio on Wednesday that the investigations will rely on publicly available material alongside complaints filed by child protection groups.

Belgian investigation into three Jewish men sparks diplomatic row with US

A diplomatic row is escalating between Belgium and the US, with Donald Trump’s ambassador refusing to apologise for accusing his host country of antisemitism and reportedly threatening to bar a socialist politician from travelling to the US. Bill White, a staunch ally of the president like many US ambassadors, on Monday demanded Belgium drop a “ridiculous” and “antisemitic” investigation into three Jewish men suspected of performing circumcisions without medical qualifications. In a social media post, White demanded Belgium’s “very rude” socialist health minister, Frank Vandenbroucke, stop the “unacceptable harassment” and “disgusting” treatment of the three men. He also called on Belgium to do “a much better job” on antisemitism. Circumcision is legal in Belgium but must be carried out under strict conditions by a medical professional. The investigation concerns three mohels, or ritual circumcisers, in Antwerp suspected of performing circumcisions without any medical training. White’s post drew an immediate rebuke from Belgium’s foreign minister, Maxime Prévot. “Any suggestion Belgium is antisemitic is false, offensive, and unacceptable,” Prévot said, accusing the ambassador of violating “fundamental diplomatic norms”. White responded that Belgium should change its law or label the investigation into “three beautiful religiously qualified and wonderful men” antisemitic. Accusations that he was interfering in Belgium’s judicial affairs were a “political distraction”, he said. After being summoned to the foreign ministry on Tuesday, White insisted there was “no need” for him to apologise. He had “explained our position and that of President Trump and of our country”, he said, and hoped Belgium could “legalise this process”. Belgian authorities said White had been reminded of the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations, adding: “Personal attacks on a member of the government and interference in Belgium’s internal affairs are contrary to these basic diplomatic rules.” The ministry said in its statement that while Belgium attached great importance to its relationship with the US, dialogue “must be based on respect for our institutions and our sovereignty”. It reaffirmed its condemnation of antisemitism and racism. The Belgian newspaper De Morgen reported on Wednesday that White had handed an official complaint to Belgium’s top diplomat at the meeting, demanding “immediate condemnation” of statements by Conner Rousseau, the leader of the Flemish socialist Vooruit party. Rousseau last month posted that the “gruesome” behaviour of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the US showed “history was repeating itself” and “we have not listened” to the calls of “never again” after the horrors of Nazi Germany. Rousseau said on Wednesday he was unrepentant. “I posted that on social media five weeks ago, and yesterday it suddenly turns out to be a problem,” he said. “I suspect [White’s] intervention regarding the circumcision did not go as he would have liked.” Rousseau, whom White reportedly threatened with a travel ban to the US, told the Flemish broadcaster VRT: “I can only say that we in Belgium have the right, and I also believe a political duty, to express our concerns about what’s happening in the US. “I respect the ambassador’s opinion, but I also ask for respect for ours.”

Rubio’s Munich speech was an offer of friendship – but on white, Christian, Maga terms

“The greatness of America,” wrote the 19th-century French diplomat, political philosopher and historian Alexis de Tocqueville, “lies not in her being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.” For a brief moment at the Munich Security Conference (MSC) last weekend, European leaders half-thought that their most heartfelt wish – the return of the old US, that believed in the EU ideal and backed a rules-based world order – had been granted. The previous year on this same stage, US vice-president JD Vance had delivered a gut punch: a brutal ideological assault accusing Europe of abandoning “fundamental values”, and questioning whether the US and EU still had a common agenda. This year, secretary of state Marco Rubio gave a speech so markedly different in tone that the sheer relief at hearing something other than abuse saw the audience – led by Germany’s defence and foreign ministers, plus 40-odd US officials – give him a standing ovation. Rubio played a soothing tune. The US and Europe “belong together”, he said: if Americans came across as direct and urgent, it was because they know European and US destinies were forever intertwined. The US would “always be a child of Europe”. Wolfgang Ischinger, the MSC president, exhaled “a sigh of relief”. Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, said she was “very much reassured”. Kaja Kallas, the EU’s chief diplomat, said the bloc could work with that kind of US. But it didn’t take long – about as long, in fact, as it took to reread Rubio’s speech – for European reactions to change. The US secretary of state, many realised, may have couched it in conciliatory terms, but his message was no different from Vance’s. Maga’s familiar blood-and-soil obsessions were all there: mass migration; civilisational erasure; the demise of Christian culture; unfettered trade; outsized welfare states; weak militaries; “a climate cult”; worthless international institutions. Lest there be any doubt, the White House summary was crystal clear, listing a further litany of Trumpian buzzwords: “sovereign nations”, “shared heritage”, “Christian foundations”, “outdated globalist structures” – and “defence of western civilisation”. In short, as Claudia Major of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs put it, this was “an offer of friendship – but on white, Christian, Maga terms”. The US, Rubio explained, wanted allies “who are proud of their culture and their heritage”. Friends who see themselves as “heirs to the same great and noble civilisation”, and are “able and willing to defend it”. It was a chilling line, noted Mujtaba Rahman of the Eurasia Group, that echoed word-for-word the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). As if to ram home Washington’s hostile stance, Rubio went on after the MSC to pay bilateral visits to, as Rahman put it, “the two most pro-Putin, anti-Brussels and Trump-loving leaders in the EU”: Robert Fico in Slovakia, and Viktor Orbán in Hungary. In Budapest on Monday, Rubio hinted at financial help and said Trump was “deeply committed to the success” of the illiberal Hungarian prime minister, the EU’s disruptor-in-chief, who faces a serious challenge to his power in April’s elections. That, too, was a massive “‘eff you’ to the EU,” one analyst told the Guardian’s global affairs correspondent, Andrew Roth, who said the visit was “guaranteed to reinforce fears that the US was seeking to promote chaos and disunity among its allies”. *** Battle for meaning of ‘western civilisation’ So Rubio’s speech was no olive branch – still less a US attempt to “repair its faults”. The historian Phillips O’Brien was succinct: Rubio had “called for the end of a tolerant, democratic Europe and its break-up into a disparate group of smaller, Trumpist states”. The speech “pronounced the death of the liberal, democratic system that has governed the European continent – and the US-led world – since 1945”, O’Brien said, and “a return to a world based on the primacy of national interests”, not values. Some leaders showed few illusions. The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said Maga’s culture war was not Europe’s. In the EU, “freedom of speech ends … when it is directed against human dignity and basic law,” he said. “We do not believe in tariffs and protectionism, but in free trade. We stand by climate agreements and the WHO.” The French president, Emmanuel Macron, told the audience that: “Europe has to become a geopolitical power. We have to accelerate, and deliver all the components of a geopolitical power: defence, technologies, and de-risking from all the big powers.” Kallas, despite her initial welcome for Rubio’s sweetening of the pill, went on to sharply criticise “fashionable” US “Euro-bashing”. Contrary to what some may say, she insisted, “woke, decadent Europe is not facing civilisational erasure”. There was even evidence of what the Guardian’s diplomatic editor, Patrick Wintour, called Europe’s newfound “steeliness”. Macron’s speech was rather overshadowed by Rubio’s, but referenced a hugely critical – and sensitive – topic. The French president spoke of a “convergence” between the French and German strategic defence positions and the possibility, within Europe, of “placing nuclear dissuasion within a wholistic approach to defence and security”. Merz, too, made a brief but deliberate reference to initial talks he had held with Macron on the subject, while the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, talked of “no British security without Europe, and no European security without Britain”. Whether, and how, France and the UK could make their nuclear deterrents available to Europe, reducing the need for the US nuclear umbrella, will be the subject of long and fraught discussions in the months ahead, but the topic has been broached. That, and other contentious issues – think European digital sovereignty – will strain transatlantic ties further. As ever, the EU’s member states will squabble: Germany this week told France it had to put its money where its mouth was on defence spending. But there are signs Europe is at least starting to push back. If Vance’s speech last year marked the moment “a transatlantic break-up started”, Wintour wrote, this MSC “was where the debate about the terms of the divorce settlement got under way”. For as Le Monde put it in a powerful editorial, if the US paints the EU as “a graveyard of ambition, identity and liberty”, the bloc “can in turn point to Washington’s climate denialism, abandonment of science, plutocratic drift and authoritarian tendencies”. It has become clear, the French paper of record said, that the term “western civilisation” no longer has “the same definition on either side of the Atlantic – and Europeans have absolutely no reason to relinquish their own”. Until next week. To receive the complete version of This Is Europe in your inbox every Wednesday, please subscribe here.

Zelenskyy accuses Russia of ‘trying to drag out’ process as Ukraine talks end without breakthrough

The latest round of US-mediated peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in Geneva on Wednesday ended without a major breakthrough, as fighting continues in a war that will enter its fifth year next week. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said no agreement had been reached on the thorniest questions at the negotiations in Switzerland, accusing Moscow of “trying to drag out” the process. “We can see that some groundwork has been done, but for now the positions differ, because the negotiations were not easy,” he told reporters after the talks. Zelenskyy said the status of Russian-occupied territories in eastern Ukraine and the future of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which remains under Moscow’s control, were among the most contentious unresolved issues. He added that discussions had taken place along military and political tracks, including how any potential ceasefire might be implemented, describing the military channel as “constructive”. “The military understand how to monitor a ceasefire and the end of the war if there is political will,” he said. The second day of talks ended after just two hours, signalling scant progress and underscoring how distant a deal still appears, despite Donald Trump’s promises to end the war on the first day of his presidency. Russia’s chief negotiator, Vladimir Medinsky, described the Geneva discussions as “difficult but businesslike” as he left the talks, adding that further rounds were planned. Known for his ultra-conservative stance and widely disliked in Ukraine, Medinsky said new talks would soon follow. The meetings were always likely to stall over the fate of Ukrainian-held territory in the east, which Moscow has demanded be fully ceded as a precondition for halting the fighting. Kyiv has rejected those terms, though Zelenskyy has said he is willing to consider alternative arrangements, including the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from parts of the east and the establishment of a demilitarised zone. Speaking to Axios on Tuesday, Zelenskyy stressed that the Ukrainian public would reject any peace deal requiring Kyiv to unilaterally withdraw from the Donbas. “Emotionally, people will never forgive this. Never. They will not forgive … me, they will not forgive [the US],” he said. Another unresolved issue is security guarantees, with Zelenskyy repeatedly stressing that any territorial compromise would come only after Ukraine secures firm commitments from its western allies, including Washington. But the Trump administration, eager for an international policy win to bolster the president’s standing at home, has been pushing Kyiv to first agree to territorial concessions, offering security guarantees only afterwards. Zelenskyy highlighted the time discrepancy earlier this week, writing on X: “Our American friends, they are preparing security guarantees. But they said – first this swap of territories, or something like that, and then security guarantees. I think – first, security guarantees. Second, we will not give up our territories because we are ready for compromise.” European leaders have said Vladimir Putin is unlikely to make meaningful compromises unless the situation on the battlefield or at home deteriorates to the point at which he is forced to. Ukraine may draw some encouragement from recent western intelligence assessments suggesting Russia is facing growing difficulties recruiting troops for the war. The Kremlin’s forces have made limited territorial gains this year, while Ukrainian troops have managed several localised counteroffensives in the southern Zaporizhzhia region. Moscow’s economy has also slowed to near-zero growth, though officials and analysts say the pressure is not sufficient at this stage to alter the Kremlin’s behaviour. The Russian political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya said: “As long as Putin is in power, Russia isn’t paralysed by widespread protests, and there is at least some money left in the budget for weapons, the war will continue.”

Romania in safety drive to improve EU’s deadliest roads

The first time Lucian Mîndruță crashed his car, he swerved to avoid a village dog and hit another vehicle. The second time, he missed a right-of-way sign and was struck by a car at a junction. The third time, ice sent him skidding off the road and into two trees. Crashes four to eight, he said, were bumper-scratches in traffic too minor to mention. That Mîndruță escaped those collisions with his life – and without having taken anyone else’s – is not a given in Romania. Home to the deadliest roads in the EU, its poor infrastructure, weak law enforcement and aggressive driving culture led to 78 people per million dying in traffic in 2024. Almost half of the 1,500 annual fatalities are vulnerable road users such as pedestrians and cyclists. “I was not careful enough, driving slowly enough, or really aware enough,” said Mîndruță, a journalist and radio host in Bucharest, whose last serious crash was 20 years ago. “I’ve learned the hard way.” Cars are the biggest killer of children and young adults worldwide but efforts to save lives have struggled to attract public or political attention. Even in Europe, where fatality rates are low by global standards, five times more people are killed in car crashes than murdered. The EU is on track to miss its target of halving road deaths by 2030. As public frustration with dangerous driving has mounted, the Romanian government has taken its first serious steps to make roads safer. Last year, it defined aggressive behaviour – such as tailgating and intimidating other drivers – in law and increased penalties for dangerous driving. A network of speed cameras is being introduced alongside a system to automatically detect traffic violations. “Things are moving,” said Alexandru Ciuncan, the president of the Coalition for Road Safety (RSC), a group campaigning for road safety in Romania. “Not with the speed that we want, but we’re glad that something is happening now.” There are signs of progress. The death rate on Romania’s roads fell slightly in 2024 to an average of four people a day, with a further nine people a day seriously injured. New police data shows the downward trend continued in 2025, with deaths falling by 13% and serious injuries by 4%. Yet structural change remains elusive. In October, the European Commission sent Romania a letter of notice to properly implement its road safety directive. Campaigners complain of a pervasive “selfish” driving culture and fear changing mindsets will take more than a decade. In May, the country held its first road safety awareness week. In the jam-packed, rush-hour traffic that fills the smoggy streets of Bucharest – the second-most polluted capital in the EU, according to the European Environment Agency – an aging car fleet often running on diesel fuel compounds the health risks from reckless driving. Traffic is responsible for 60% of the city’s air pollution, according to the Environmental Platform for Bucharest, and the prevalence of old imported cars, with dirty exhaust pipes and few safety features, increases the death toll from both smog and crashes. Raul Cazan, the president of 2Celsius, an environmental nonprofit, said imported “clunkers” often suffered from wear and tear, and lacked modern safety features such as electronic stability control and advanced airbags. “You’re not only importing pollution from the west,” he said. “You’re also importing danger.” Europe’s roads have grown safer over decades but progress has stalled in recent years, and the SUV boom threatens to reverse progress. The average bonnet height in new car sales in 2024 rose from 77cm (30in) in 2010 to 84cm (33in), with associated dangers for vulnerable road users. In Romania, a major manufacturer of parts for the German automobile industry, SUVs make up about half of the new cars registered, and dominate online listings for used cars. The influx will lead to a more modern vehicle fleet but the vehicles’ extra mass and their drivers’ reduced vision is likely to undermine the benefits. “All other things being equal, ever-bigger cars reduce safety for all other road users,” said James Nix from Transport & Environment, a Brussels-based nonprofit. “Increasing width is likely to bring more sideswipe crashes. Higher bonnets impair vision and increase injury severity in the overwhelming majority of collisions.” Analysis of police data by the RSC found speeding was the biggest cause of deaths in 2024 and “pedestrian indiscipline” – such as jaywalking – the main factor listed in serious injuries. In the countryside in particular, a lack of safe crossings and pavements contributes to rural areas having double the fatality rate of urban areas. Almost half of deaths happen on high-speed national roads that cut through communities. Mîndruță, an amateur cyclist who has lost friends to car crashes, said driving in other countries made him realise how rewarding it was to drive with care for his own safety and that of others. Being an individualist on the road was really not good for your health or your soul, he said, looking back at the collisions in which he was involved. “Killing somebody else would have been a nightmare.”