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Europe heatwave live: UK breaks temperature record for June as parts of France hit 40C – as it happened

UK broke the all-time June temperature weather, with today officially being the hottest June day since the 1967 heatwave. Surrey rang in the high first at 35.7C before Wiggonholt in West Sussex beat that 35.8C. The previous record high was 35.6C in Southampton. Scotland also recorded its hottest day of the year, with temperatures reaching a high of 29.4C at Dyce in Aberdeen on Tuesday. Temperatures at Fyvie Castle in Aberdeenshire hit a high of 29C on the same day and reached 28.7C at Aboyne in Aberdeenshire, Leuchars in Fife and Edinburgh. Mainland Spain also recorded its highest daily average temperatures in June since at least 1950, with temperatures surpassing 39C in Bilbao today. Temperatures are expected to drop in most of the country though, with only parts of the Basque country in the north still marked red. At least 94 million people in Europe were expected to experience temperatures above 35C today, most of them in France and Spain, AFP estimated. More than 350 million people were expected to experience temperatures above 30C. The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned that Europe’s heatwave is “putting people’s health are risk.” “The data are clear: temperatures across Europe are rising at roughly twice the global average rate, increasing the likelihood and severity of extreme heat in the future. We cannot afford further delay. Leaders must prioritise investment in climate-resilient health systems, while also accelerating #ClimateAction and mitigating the drivers of the climate crisis.”

Colombia’s leftwing candidate concedes election to Trump-endorsed millionaire

The defeated leftwing candidate in Colombia’s presidential runoff has conceded to the far-right, Trump-admiring millionaire lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella. Since Sunday night, the preliminary count had already pointed to a De la Espriella victory by a razor-thin margin of less than 1% of the vote. But his opponent, senator Iván Cepeda, and the current president Gustavo Petro had initially refused to recognise the result, saying they would instead wait for the official scrutiny process. After the official count showed a 99.997% match with the preliminary results, Cepeda called a press conference in the capital, Bogotá, and finally conceded. “At this stage of the count, I have decided to accept the result of the process, which indicates that Abelardo de la Espriella is the new president of the republic. I do so as an act of democratic responsibility. I do so to contribute to coexistence, peace and dialogue among Colombians,” he said. The leftwing candidate, who finished with 12.7m votes – just 250,000 fewer than De la Espriella’s 12.96m – said, however, that “accepting the electoral result does not mean renouncing the truth or remaining silent in the face of facts that we consider serious and that marked this presidential campaign”. In a reference to Donald Trump’s posts in which he endorsed De la Espriella while describing Cepeda as a “radical left marxist”, the senator said: “We denounced the open and improper foreign interference in Colombia’s internal affairs. In particular, the interventions carried out by the government of the United States and especially those of President Donald Trump in favour of Abelardo de la Espriella’s candidacy.” On Tuesday night, in a 4,500-word social media post, Petro announced that he would begin the transition process with the president-elect. Petro wrote that he felt as though he were handing Simón Bolívar’s sword – the relic that belonged to the military leader of South American independence from Spain and is kept at Colombia’s presidential palace – “to a viceroy”, a reference to Trump’s backing of De la Espriella. The president-elect has announced that Colombia would join the “Shield of the Americas”, the Trump-backed initiative bringing together far-right governments across the region, which now overwhelmingly dominate Latin America. Once De la Espriella takes office on 7 August, only four countries in the region will be governed by the left. “Colombia will NO longer be governed by an administration that is complacent towards narco-terrorism. We will combat it as it should be fought,” wrote De La Espriella, who has pledged to resume a full-scale military offensive to defeat the country’s decades-long armed conflict.

German swimming lake criticised for ban on non-German speakers

An open air swimming lake in the eastern German city of Halle which has refused entry to bathers who don’t speak German has been told it must lift the ban or face possible legal action. The Heidesee lake, a lake in a flooded former open-cast mine, recently introduced a check at the entrance to filter out visitors whose German was deemed not good enough to follow safety instructions. Mathias Nobel, the lido’s manager, said he had taken the controversial step after a spate of cases in which visitors had ignored safety rules and lifeguards’ loudspeaker announcements. “I’m responsible for the bathing here. If anything happened, everyone would point the finger at me. You can’t reverse death,” Nobel told local media. The decision has led to anger and condemnation from critics who accused the venue of dressing up “a blanket entry barrier for entire population groups” as a safety precaution. A spokesperson for the national anti-discrimination agency, which has been consulted on the row and could take legal action, said: “Imagine how much of a fuss there would be if German-speaking travellers in Mallorca had to prove their knowledge of Spanish or Catalan, or Arabic on the Red Sea, before they could go swimming?” Authorities in Halle have demanded that Nobel drops the ban, saying it lacks proportionality. “The operator has to take into account the necessity of guaranteeing public access to the lido,” a city spokesperson said in a statement. “The public character [of the lido] cannot be undermined by the implementation of house rules which amount to a blanket entry barrier for entire population groups.” The authorities added: “Any action that might be perceived as xenophobic could damage the city’s reputation.” Germany’s life-saving association, the DLRG, said in a statement it firmly distanced itself from the Heidebad ban. In Germany, as in the US and other western countries, swimming pools have become unlikely focal points for racial tensions and rows about immigration, stirred up by the far right. Halle is in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, which has an election in September. The far-right anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which is leading the polls with about 42%, has seized on the row. “Our public swimming pools, once safe havens of recreation, are increasingly becoming genuine danger zones under the misguided policies of the established parties,” the party wrote in a Facebook post. “When private operators are forced to implement their own language controls to ensure the safety of swimmers, the state’s loss of control has definitively reached the heart of our society.” It uploaded a poster to social media with the slogan: “Those who don’t understand German, stay out.” The party has often used images of swimming pools in its posters and campaign literature, most famously in a colouring book for children that contained racist and xenophobic stereotypes. It included one image of women in full-body veils swimming in a pool while men with knives and pistols linger in the background. Nobel, a trained lifeguard, denied the measure being racist or xenophobic, saying it was particularly important that swimmers understood “the German bathing rules” at his pool because the lake was deeper than a conventional swimming pool and had a steeply sloping shoreline. The city authorities have called on him to find “milder ways” to deal with the communication issues, such as using pictograms that are universally understood or displaying safety messages in other languages.

A decade after the Brexit vote, Europe has moved on even if Britain hasn’t

The morning of 24 June 2016, the day after Britain voted to leave the EU, dawned grey and overcast in Brussels, after a stormy night. As the Guardian’s correspondent in the city, after a few hours’ sleep, I hurried to a breakfast briefing with Conservative MEPs at a smart hotel in the EU quarter. Large trays of eggs, sausages and beans were barely touched, as MEPs fielded questions they couldn’t answer: What happens now? When would the UK leave? Would David Cameron resign? A few hours later he did. In the EU institutions officials broke down in tears. A few top British EU civil servants prepared to resign. Anti-EU populists were jubilant. European leaders feared a domino effect of withdrawals. Sadness, shock and anger swirled on that humid day. The then-president of the European parliament, Martin Schulz, told me that EU lawyers were studying whether it was possible to speed up the triggering of article 50, the then-obscure and untested EU exit clause. Then European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker declared he would like to get Brexit negotiations started “immediately”. The idea of hurrying Britain out the door was soon dropped, but those statements reflected the febrile mood. After the initial shock, the EU rallied. Meeting without the UK for the first time on 29 June 2016, the 27 member states set out their red lines: no negotiations without notification of article 50, no cherrypicking and no splitting the four freedoms: free movement of goods, services, capital – and people. It was a playbook that stood the test of time. The dominos never fell. After three prime ministers, two elections and a long-running parliamentary crisis, the UK finalised its divorce and left. The EU carried on in the face of fundamental challenges: a global pandemic, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the return of Donald Trump, energy price shocks and fierce economic competition from China. Since the Brexit vote, the EU has embarked on common borrowing, along with joint purchases of weapons, gas and vaccines – decisions that would have been almost certainly more difficult with a British prime minister at the table. During its 47 years inside the European project, the UK was often a sceptical voice on deeper EU integration, negotiating opt outs or seeking to block decisions perceived as too federalist. A decade later Britain is heading for its seventh prime minister in 10 years, while its relationship with the EU remains contested. For the EU, by contrast, Brexit is a historical episode viewed with detachment. Jonathan Faull, the former head of the European Commission’s UK taskforce, said the EU has got used to Brexit. Faull, who resigned from the Commission after a 38-year career following the 2016 vote, said: “The final deal that was done is very much to the EU’s advantage. I think Frost and co negotiated badly,” he said referring to Lord Frost, the UK’s erstwhile chief negotiator on the post-Brexit agreement. “The trade and cooperation agreement leaves the EU pretty satisfied in economic terms. The status quo suits them. On the continent, there’s no great desire to reset relations with the UK. They seem to be broadly OK.” *** From Brexit to Breturn? In the UK, Britain’s relationship with the EU remains disputed. A poll published this week found that 60% of those aged 18-28 would support rejoining the EU. Britain’s most-likely next prime minister, Andy Burnham, has said he sees a “long-term case” for rejoining, but would not be advocating for it immediately. The former president of the European Council, Charles Michel, told the Guardian this month he expected the EU would react with “a positive spirit” if the UK ever requested to rejoin. Michel, Belgium’s prime minister at the time of the referendum, stressed this was solely a question for UK politics “if and when there is the readiness for a serious domestic debate”. Meanwhile, Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, has said he dreams of “Breturn”, while Spain’s leader Pedro Sánchez told the New Statesman earlier this year “we miss the UK within the EU”. Two-thirds of EU citizens would also support Britain rejoining the bloc: a poll for the European Council on Foreign Relations found 66% of respondents across 15 countries either “strongly supported” or “tended to support” UK membership. Support for rejoin ranged from lows of 56% in Bulgaria and 59% in France and Italy to highs in the Netherlands and Denmark. In reality, rejoin is not on the table. Georg Riekeles, who worked for the EU chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, thinks rejoining is a long-term prospect that ultimately depends on a British consensus. “The strategic, economic and geopolitical logic all point in one direction but rejoining is not a mood, it is a national choice requiring realism, discipline and trust. The EU would need to see a durable national consensus that the UK has really changed its mind.” Riekeles, now an associate director at the European Policy Centre, said Starmer’s departure “raises the question of stability” in the UK system. “What the EU will be looking for, I think, is a UK that has a stable and durable national consensus. Nobody wants to be on a rollercoaster ride.” To receive the complete version of This Is Europe in your inbox every Wednesday, please subscribe here.

‘It’s defiance’: why some Bosniaks are reviving historic flag as they cheer on World Cup squad

Before each game in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s World Cup adventure, Sarajevo has blossomed with primary colours – and two distinct flags. One is the national flag dating to 1998: blue and yellow diagonal halves emblazoned with a slanting line of white stars. The other has golden lilies on a blue shield set against a white background, and has a far deeper history, steeped in centuries of complexity. Its striking resurgence as a national symbol, showcased during Bosnia’s first World Cup for 12 years, comes with its own powerful message. “It’s basically a big FU,” said Reuf Bajrović, a former energy, mines and industry minister who is now vice-president of the US-Europe Alliance, an Atlanticist advocacy group. “It’s in great part the mass rejection of the international community and its policies.” The lilies’ vivid comeback comes at a time of deepening uncertainty about Bosnia’s future. The country’s historical protector and closest ally, the US, has grown unreliable under the Trump administration, which has essentially switched sides and now appears to be supporting Serb separatists dedicated to Bosnia’s dismemberment. At the same time, Trump associates are scouting the region for lucrative business projects. In such tense circumstances, national colours take on a special significance. The blue-yellow state flag, under which the national team has been playing in North America, was imposed by the international community in the aftermath of the Bosnian war, after the country’s three primary ethnic groups and former warring parties – Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks – failed to agree on mutually acceptable colours. It has the deliberate blandness of a design chosen by committee, evoking little emotional attachment, but for nearly three decades it has been accepted by the predominantly Muslim Bosniaks, the country’s majority. (The term also encompasses secular and mixed-ethnicity citizens who embrace Bosnia as their primary identity.) A foreign-imposed flag was accepted because it was foreign intervention, led by the US, that ended the three-year slaughter of the Bosnian conflict, which killed 100,000 people. More than 80% of them were Bosniaks, many of them murdered in mass atrocities including the 1995 Srebrenica genocide. Also in the same spirit as the imposed flag, Bosniaks accepted the continued foreign stewardship of the country in the form of a high representative of the international community, sitting in Sarajevo with broad powers to intervene politically as he – and it has always been a he – saw fit. It was part of the price of peace, even though the 1995 Dayton peace deal enshrined the consequences of Serb ethnic cleansing by leaving half the country, the Republika Srpska, under Serb control. More than three decades have brought scant political progress. Republika Srpska still resists integration, and its extremist leader, Milorad Dodik, is an ally of Vladimir Putin who is blatantly unrepentant for the mass killings of the 90s. As a symbol of the attempt to forge Bosnia as an integrated state, the official flag represents both tenacious hope and deep disappointment. “People were prepared to put up with the new flag as a price of international acceptance, but nobody actually identified with it,” said Ivana Marić, a political analyst in Sarajevo. The lily flag resembles the fleur-de-lis of French Bourbon monarchy, but it has equally deep roots in Bosnia, based on an indigenous Bosnian flower and a medieval Bosnian kingdom. It was chosen as the flag of a reborn Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992, as a shared historical, non-sectarian symbol, but in the conflict that followed independence it also became associated with the resistance effort of the mainly Muslim Bosnian army against the country’s predatory neighbours. Its growing popularity among Bosniaks, particularly the young, reflects growing impatience with the status quo, and a desire to express an ethnic identity unconstrained by external forces. “The Bosniaks have been willing to go along with whatever was done in the name of the international community and in the name of peace in the last 30 years, but that has oftentimes not worked,” Bajrović said. “The international community has instead favoured nationalist Serbs and Croats.” Before Bosnia’s match against Switzerland, a senior Bosnian army officer was drinking coffee near one of the communal screens set up in Sarajevo for the World Cup. He reflected on the evolution of national symbols. He is a Bosniak, and was wounded defending Sarajevo during the war with a Bosnian lily patch on his uniform, but rose through the ranks of a modern western-integrated national army under the blue and yellow flag. His teenage daughter, however, insists on going to games draped in the lily flag. “For her, it is about pride in who we are as Bosniaks,” he said. “It is also defiance. If Serbs and Croats can display their ethnic symbols, why not us? This younger generation believes in the nation even more than we did.” The Bosnian football team is itself an exercise in the frustrations of nation-building. There are seven Croats in the squad, but despite this, the main Bosnian Croat nationalist party has suppressed celebration, or even recognition, of the squad in areas it controls. In some places, big screens for communal watch parties have been banned. The national team manager, Sergej Barbarez, comes from a family of Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks. But he managed to persuade only one Bosnian Serb to join the team in the face of strong nationalist pressure on young players to stay away. Dodik was officially ousted from office last year, but he continues to hold sway in the Republika Srpska. Despite the fact that his own nephew runs the Bosnian football federation as a result of interethnic job sharing arrangements, he has quashed any official Serb support for the national team. Aleksandar Trifunović, an independent journalist in Banja Luka, the biggest Serb city, said: “Here unfortunately, the national team and the World Cup are officially ignored. People do watch and follow the games, but there is no organised support or public fan gathering.” Beneath the rigid cartoon-like versions of ethnic identity presented by the nationalist parties, popular attitudes are more nuanced. Big crowds in Sarajevo have come out to cheer for Croatia, many in their Bosnian kit, seeing no contradiction. A few miles away, in East Sarajevo inside Republika Srpska, the streets are festooned with Serbian tricolours with not a Bosnian flag in sight. Near a municipal playground, there are stencilled images of Ratko Mladić, the Serb wartime army commander now serving a life term for genocide in a Dutch prison. But the young men whiling away time on cafe terraces said they would be watching Bosnia play and hoped they won. After all, one said, they are “domaći” (domestic). Similarly in the mainly Croat town of Kiseljak, 40km west of Sarajevo, the flag of the wartime ethno-statelet, Herzeg-Bosnia, is still flying 33 years after it sparked a short, bloody war-within-a-war between Bosniaks and Croats. A local bar, the Movie Café, was screening Croatia but not Bosnia games for fear of “provocations”, according to the bartender. But Stipo, a 40-year-old customer, said most people would cheer for the Bosnian team in the privacy of their own homes. “We are Croats, first and foremost, but we are Croats from Bosnia,” Stipo said. In a nearby hookah cafe, Anes Hadžić, a 28-year-old from Kiseljak’s Bosniak minority, said the World Cup did sometimes bring up obnoxious behaviour in the town, like a local bar flying the Swiss flag before last week’s Bosnia match. “That is why the lily is coming back. It’s a reaction,” said Hadžić. But he added: “Eighty per cent of the people here are fine. We work together and they will support Croatia and us, when we play. “It is the politicians who are happiest when we are divided, so they can sell our land and our water from under us. After all, why preach about something good when you can start a fire?”

France confirms first Ebola case in doctor who had worked in DRC

The first case of Ebola has been confirmed in France, the country’s health ministry has said, in a doctor who had returned from a humanitarian mission to an area affected by the outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The patient was transferred to a specialist facility and was in a stable condition, the ministry said in a statement. “All precautionary measures, including the patient’s isolation, were taken upon his arrival in the country, with transfer to the hospital under secure conditions to prevent any risk of contamination.” Authorities are tracing the patient’s contacts, who will have to isolate at home for 21 days. The ministry said the risk to the general European public was very low. The outbreak is centred on Ituri province in north-eastern DRC, where authorities are battling to contain the spread of the virus. There had been 1,048 confirmed cases and 267 deaths as of 21 June, according to the DRC health ministry’s latest data, while 112 people have recovered. Neighbouring Uganda has recorded 20 cases and two deaths. The World Health Organization declared the outbreak on 15 May, and two days later declared a public health emergency of international concern. Experts believe the virus was circulating in the DRC undetected for weeks before, however, and that the scale of the outbreak there is likely to be much larger than the confirmed cases suggest. The humanitarian response has been complicated by aid cuts and conflict in North and South Kivu provinces, to the south of Ituri, where the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group operates and Ebola cases have also been detected. The outbreak had the largest number of confirmed cases within the first month of any Ebola outbreak, the WHO official Abdirahman Mahamud said on Tuesday. Mahamud said local resistance to the response in DRC, which had included hospitals and treatment centres being burned down, was waning. “More and more communities are aware of the risk of Ebola and are asking for tools to support and protect themselves,” he said. The current strain of the disease is the rare Bundibugyo virus, which has no vaccine or approved treatment. Modelling by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested the outbreak could be the biggest on record. The previous largest outbreak was in west Africa from 2014 to 2016, during which more than 28,000 people were infected and more than 11,000 died. It is the DRC’s 17th outbreak of Ebola, which was first detected in the central African country in 1976. Scientists believe it spreads to humans from infected African fruit bats, and is then passed between humans through direct contact with the blood or body fluids of an infected person or someone who has died of the disease. Initial symptoms include fever, exhaustion, muscle pain, headaches and a sore throat. These may progress to vomiting, diarrhoea, abdominal pain, a rash, and impaired kidney and liver function. A ‌US citizen who was treated for Ebola in Germany recovered and was discharged earlier this month having tested negative for the virus after 30 May. The US government wants to build an Ebola quarantine facility for its citizens in Kenya, which has never recorded any Ebola cases. The country’s health minister said on Tuesday that construction of the highly controversial facility would stop, however, after a high court order that authorities had initially disregarded. Reuters contributed to this report

Why off-duty cops in second jobs ‘kill and die more’ in recession-hit Argentina

When the gap between his salary and his family’s basic expenses began widening dramatically, Diego – like many other Argentinians – started working as a rideshare driver on top of his day job. He usually does a few hours at the end of his 12-hour shift; and more on his days off. It would be just another story from recession-ridden Argentina, but for the fact that Diego is a federal police officer. The chainsaw austerity measures of president Javier Milei have had a devastating impact on the daily lives of large parts of Argentina’s population. While the rate of overall economic activity is slowly increasing, purchasing power has been rapidly declining as increasing numbers of people take loans to cover the basics, including food. “You can make around 44,000 pesos (about £24) in an extra eight-hour shift in the police or you can make 42,000 pesos worth of trips in four hours. It’s just maths. It is very common to get in a rideshare and find out the driver also works in the police,” said Diego, who asked not to use his real name. A growing number of Argentinian police officers, including those who spoke to the Guardian, say they are taking on second jobs – often carrying with them their government-issued guns for protection. Human rights organisations say this shift has coincided with an increase in deaths caused by off-duty officers using their service weapons while working other jobs. According to data from the Centre for Legal and Social Studies (Cels), 75% of deaths caused by police officers using their issued firearms in 2025 occurred while the officers were off duty. About 13% of the total involved officers working as rideshare drivers at the time of the incident. This represents a marked increase from the past, with 16 cases recorded in 2025, up from two in 2020. In February, a 30-year-old police officer working as a rideshare driver shot two men who attempted to rob him in broad daylight while he was dropping off two passengers in La Matanza, in the greater Buenos Aires area, local media reported. A few months earlier, in December 2025, a federal police officer also working as a rideshare driver shot and killed a 15-year-old. The officer said the teenager attacked him while a group of other men circled the car, one of them allegedly carrying a gun. The driver said he identified himself as a police officer before pulling out his government-issued gun and shooting at the group. The bullet hit one of the men trying to open the car, who later died in hospital. In another case last February, an officer with the Buenos Aires police force, also moonlighting as a rideshare driver, died from his injuries after he was shot by a passenger who attempted to rob him with a gun. The assailant also died from a gunshot. Both Uber and DiDi, the Chinese rideshare company popular in Argentina, ban drivers from carrying firearms. While some police officers spoken to said they took alternative security precautions, such as avoiding areas considered more dangerous, the common practice of security forces is to carry their guns at all times. Victoria Darraidou, who coordinates a team working on security policies and police violence at the Cels human rights group, said the fact that police officers are allowed to carry their government-issued guns at all times, even when off duty, is highly problematic. “Police officers kill and die more when they are off duty. This is because they use their guns without planning, with no support, and in disproportionate ways, and this puts other people and themselves at risk,” she said. Milei expresses fervent support for the country’s security forces, although police complaints over pay and working conditions have increased over recent years. Many officers say their take-home income (including extra shifts) normally falls below the poverty line for a family of four, which the government has established at around $1,000 a month. “I have many colleagues who do Uber, DiDi and deliveries after work. Our salaries are just too low, which also forces us to take loans, and we then live from loan to loan. You pay off one loan and have to take our another just to get by, to buy the basics,” said a female police officer from the Buenos Aires province. Complaints over salaries and working conditions have led to a growing number of members of the security forces resigning. Tensions over low salaries and working conditions contrast with the Milei administration’s public discourse in support of the security forces. The president and other officials have publicly praised officers who have used force while off duty. One of the most high-profile cases in recent years was that of Luis Oscar Chocobar, a police officer who in 2021 was convicted of homicide aggravated by excessive use of force for shooting a 17-year-old allegedly involved in a robbery in the Buenos Aires La Boca neighbourhood in 2017. Chocobar received a two-year suspended sentence and a five-year ban on holding public office, although the conviction was annulled in 2024. Argentina’s then minister of security, Patricia Bullrich, (now a senator with Milei’s party, La Libertad Avanza) publicly defended Chocobar and went on to broaden the circumstances in which police officers are allowed to intervene and use force. This, according to Cels, is one of the factors that has contributed to a 40% increase in the number of deaths at the hands of police officers in the last two years. María del Carmen Verdú, lawyer and founder of Correpi, a human rights organisation that has documented cases of police violence in Argentina for more than three decades, says part of the solution lies in limiting the instances when police officers can carry their guns. “If police officers were not allowed to carry their government-issued guns while they are off duty, the number of ‘trigger happy’ deaths would be significantly reduced,” she said.

‘Battle hardened’ Ukraine has role to play in defending Europe, says ex-Nato chief

The US’s attitude to the defence of Europe has changed permanently and a European coalition of the willing, including Ukraine, should be established to defend the continent, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a former Nato secretary general, has said. A coalition of the willing comprising 45 states is already in theory poised to act as a reassurance and training force inside Ukraine in the event of a peace settlement with Russia. Rasmussen, a former close adviser to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is proposing an adaptation of the concept so that an expanded version of the coalition provides security guarantees for continental Europe, not just Ukraine. Rasmussen sees the coalition as an insurance force in case Donald Trump suddenly removes US troops and European defence partners are not ready to fill the gap. At a seminar on Monday on European defence, he said: “I would propose a coalition of the willing in which a number of European countries come together that are capable and willing to do what is needed to defend the continent, including Ukraine. The force would be led by the two nuclear powers in Europe, France and the UK.” Rasmussen’s proposal came two days before a meeting of five leading European defence powers in Berlin on Wednesday, to draw up a common defence strategy in the run-up to a Nato summit in Ankara on 7 July. The summit will be focused on proving to Trump that his instruction for Europe to spend more on its own defence has been followed. The summit is preparing to agree a new target of €70bn (£60bn) extra spending for Ukraine over two years, with the sums contributing to the commitment made by individual countries to spend up to a minimum of 5% of GDP on defence by 2035. European defence officials partly back the target as a way of casting a spotlight on how support for Ukraine is so heavily concentrated on five or so states, predominantly Germany, the UK, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands. The US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, has announced a review of the US troop numbers in Europe, but so far at the military level there is confidence that the Trump administration drawdown will not be so sudden as to leave Europe’s security at risk. Rasmussen said Ukraine had to be an integrated part of a new European security architecture. “However this conflict ends, we still have an aggressive Russia and we need Ukraine as a bulwark against that aggressive Russia,” he said. “And Ukraine today is militarily the strongest nation in Europe. It’s battle tested, battle hardened. “Usually we look at Ukraine as a country that needs our help. That is still right, but more and more we should look at Ukraine as an asset, a country that can actually contribute to European security. And that’s why I think we should strengthen the European pillar within Nato based on a coalition of the willing, including Ukraine.” Rasmussen acknowledged that European leaders had detected a change in Trump’s attitude to the war in Ukraine at the G7 summit last week in Evian. However, he added: “I think we should stop just reacting to what we think Trump might say or do. Time has come now to make our own decisions without taking into account how Trump would react … It’s wishful thinking to believe that after Trump, the situation might return to business as usual. It won’t. The world has changed. The American attitude has changed.” The Iran-US conflict, in which Russia clearly showed support for Iran, may have stimulated new thinking about Russia in the White House, Rasmussen said. He said the task of the Nato summit in Ankara was to harness the potential for a new approach to drive home the message that neither Nato nor the US were going to abandon their support for Ukraine, leaving Vladimir Putin facing a deficit-laden economy with no option but to negotiate. He said he was encouraged by indications that Ukraine will be given licences to manufacture US-designed weapons inside Ukraine, including interceptor missiles and long-range missiles. Ukrainian defence leaders are also calling for the lifting of European bureaucratic constraints that prevent Ukraine’s fast and cheap defence industry integrating with Europe. Changing the defence ecosystem is seen as more important than helping individual defence firms. Rasmussen also cautioned against the EU moving prematurely to appoints its own negotiator with Russia, a topic that divided the last EU heads of state meeting. “Before even thinking about appointing someone to negotiate on behalf of Europe, we should ensure that he or she will negotiate from position of strength,” he said. Asked why Ukraine had made progress on the battlefield, Rasmussen said: “We spent too many months discussing the delivery of battle tanks, fighter jets, everything. But gradually we have stepped up. But first and foremost, the Ukrainians themselves have been very innovative in developing hi-tech military capabilities, mainly drones and other kinds of hi-tech military stuff.”