BERLIN (AP) — Germany summoned Russia’s ambassador Friday following accusations of sabotage, cyberattacks and election interference, an official said.
The German government has also accused Moscow of perpetrating disinformation campaigns.
“The goal of these Russian cyber and disinformation attacks is clear: It is to divide society, stir up mistrust, provoke rejection, and weaken confidence in democratic institutions,” German foreign ministry spokesperson Martin Giese said.
“This targeted manipulation of information is one of a wide range of activities by Russia aimed at undermining confidence in democratic institutions and processes in Germany,” he said during a government news conference.
German officials have previously accused Russia of hybrid warfare attacks to destabilize Europe. Moscow didn’t immediately return a request for comment Friday.
Giese said that the shadowy Russian military intelligence agency known as GRU was behind a 2024 cyberattack against German air traffic control. The foreign ministry says GRU, which has been sanctioned in other countries, was responsible for the attack that was allegedly perpetrated by hacker collective APT28, also known as Fancy Bear.
APT28 and GRU have also been linked to global cyber intrusions, including in the 2016 U.S. election, where they were accused of aiding U.S. President Donald Trump by leaking Democratic Party emails.
Giese also said investigators believe GRU also attempted to destabilize and influence Germany’s last federal election, held in February, through a campaign called “Storm 1516.”
“Our services’ analysis shows that the campaign spreads artificially generated, pseudo-investigative research, deepfake image sequences, pseudo-journalistic websites, and fabricated witness statements on various platforms,” he said.
Russia will face a series of countermeasures for its hybrid warfare, Giese said.
“The German government condemns the repeated and unacceptable attacks by state-controlled Russian actors in the strongest possible terms,” he said. “We will continue to strengthen our support for Ukraine and our deterrence and defense.”
The summons occurred Friday as the European Union indefinitely froze Russia’s assets in Europe to ensure that Hungary and Slovakia, both with Moscow-friendly governments, can’t prevent the billions of euros from being used to support Ukraine.
Using a special procedure meant for economic emergencies, the EU blocked the assets until Russia gives up its war on Ukraine and compensates its neighbor for the heavy damage that it has inflicted for almost four years.
It’s a key step that will allow EU leaders to work out at a summit next week how to use the tens of billions of euros in Russian Central Bank assets to underwrite a huge loan to help Ukraine meet its financial and military needs over the next two years.
WASHINGTON, Dec 10 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump expressed concern on Wednesday that Ukraine had not had an election in a long time, putting additional pressure on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
((Reporting by Steve Holland and Jeff Mason; Editing by Leslie Adler))
OSLO, Dec 11 (Reuters) – After more than a year mostly spent in hiding and in defiance of a decade-long travel ban, Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado arrived in Norway on Thursday, hours after a ceremony to award her the Nobel Peace Prize.
The head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee confirmed Machado had arrived.
Machado, 58, has been banned by the government of President Nicolas Maduro from leaving Venezuela since 2014, and an acceptance speech was delivered on Wednesday in her absence by her daughter.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the prize to Machado for her fight against what it called a dictatorship.
(Reporting by Gwladys Fouche in Oslo, editing by Terje Solsvik)
Earlier this year, Armin Papperger opened a new factory that will allow his company to produce more of an essential caliber of artillery shell than the entire U.S. defense industry combined.
Wooden huts are glittering with golden fairylights as groups of friends gather in woolly hats, warming their hands on mugs of mulled wine.
Signs written in German are dotted about – Glühwein (mulled wine), Bratwurst (grilled sausage), Kinderpunsch (non-alcoholic punch).
This isn’t Germany – it’s Birmingham’s Frankfurt Christmas Market. Organisers say it’s “the largest authentic German Christmas market” outside the country and Austria.
Christmas markets are thought to have originated in Germany in the 14th Century, and its markets have long been admired since. But how close are the ones in the UK to that supposed traditional, real thing?
BBC News visited some to find out – and perhaps provide some inspiration for your next festive visit.
A taste of Germany… in Birmingham?
On a cold Thursday afternoon in Birmingham, we have just met Nina Adler and Till Rampe, 27-year-old German students studying for PhDs in the UK’s “second city”.
As we walk around the Christmas market, which snakes through streets close to Birmingham New Street railway station, they’re reminded of home.
They point to the wooden huts, food and drink, and the handicrafts as positive signs this is close to the traditional ideal. The chocolate-coated marshmallows at one stall impress Till, who is from a town near Frankfurt. “I could swear they are from my hometown,” he says.
But other aspects of Birmingham’s market are further removed from the German way – like the beer. “People are just connecting Germany with beer,” Nina, from Berlin, says. “In Germany usually you drink mulled wine. This is very typical.”
And as for the pop tunes blaring out of the speakers in Birmingham – like The Power of Love – you probably wouldn’t hear that at markets in Germany – rather it would be Christmas music and carols, she says.
Nina Adler and Till Rampe were impressed by what they saw in Birmingham [BBC]
Also visiting the market with us is Katharina Karcher, an academic at the University of Birmingham. Her verdict? It’s “super authentic”.
Having been set up in 1997 and running annually since 2001, the Birmingham market is organised by Kurt Stroscher, who is also director of Frankfurt’s Christmas market.
He uses “only wooden stalls and atmospheric white lights that don’t blink”, with the stalls built in Germany and food and drink imported from there.
It’s mostly a thumbs-up for Birmingham’s Christmas market when it comes to authenticity, then – but how does it compare to one in Germany?
Birmingham’s market stretches through several streets [BBC]
Our visit to a Christmas market in Berlin
While many Christmas markets in the UK have been running for a couple of weeks now, in Germany they have only just opened, as is tradition, on 24 November.
Most German towns and cities have a Christmas market, with Dresden, Nuremberg and Cologne among the most famous.
These markets hold “huge symbolic meaning” to Germans, says Dr Karcher, who’s from near Frankfurt. Along with a religious undertone, “they are what get people through the dark time”, she explains.
Berlin Christmas market: A typical Christmas market includes large tents housing restaurants or bars and stalls selling a range of handmade gifts [BBC]
Some 800 miles away from Birmingham, the city of Berlin is home to more than 70 different, small Christmas markets. In Charlottenburg Palace in the west of the German capital, the market is bustling and filled with people of all ages when we visit on a Tuesday night.
The smell of roasted almonds, caramelised apples, chocolate-coated fruit, mulled wine and grilled sausages fills the air, as Christmas carols are performed live on a stage and children enjoy a small, sparkling Ferris wheel.
The 17th Century Baroque Charlottenburg Palace is illuminated in different colours, with falling snowflakes projected onto its facade and wooden stalls in front.
So what exactly makes a traditional German Christmas market?
The Christmas market we visited in Berlin used projections as well as fairy lights [BBC]
Typically, they may have (as this one in Berlin does):
Large tents housing entire restaurants or bars
Stalls selling a range of handmade gifts, including woolly hats, gloves, scarves, jewellery, handmade candles, wooden nutcrackers and other arts and crafts
Traditional German foods like Lebkuchen, the German version of gingerbread often seen in cookie form, many kinds of sausages including Bratwurst, cheeses, hearty dishes like Langos (a deep-fried Hungarian flatbread with different savoury or sweet toppings) or goulash, and Spätzle
Mulled wine for those who drink alcohol, not so much beer
A location in a square in the Altstadt, the old part of a town. And in cities – lots of different markets in different areas
To Magrita, 66, who is enjoying a mulled wine with her husband Dietmar, 69, German Christmas markets are characterised by their unique atmosphere: “The colourful lights and Christmas decorations make it so special.”
Dietmar explains how “Christmas markets are not the same as other markets labelled as ‘Winter Market’ or ‘Winter Wonderland,’ because of the fairytale-like feeling you only get at an authentic Christmas market”.
“I visited a Christmas market in Milan a few years ago, and it wasn’t the same, it was just a collection of different stores,” he adds.
At another table, Anna and Karolina, both 19, are catching up over some chocolate-covered strawberries. “Apart from the mulled wine and the food, the colourful lighting and the festive and cosy vibe are what make Christmas markets unique,” says Anna.
But in Karolina’s view, “the star… is definitely the food and drink. [It’s] what really makes a Christmas market authentic”.
Anna and Karolina were enjoying the Berlin market [BBC]
Other Christmas markets in the UK
Back in the UK, while Birmingham can boast about its markets authenticity, what of other locations in the UK?
Christmas markets have become a staple of many UK cities – Manchester, Leeds, Bath, Edinburgh and Newcastle among them. Smaller markets, typically in historic settings, are also proving popular on TikTok, sometimes incredibly so. Since 2023, Lincoln Christmas market has been closed because of overcrowding concerns.
When the BBC visited the market in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, earlier this week, we saw an open mic night, including a rendition of Neil Young’s Heart of Gold, and stalls selling the likes of pasta, Greek gyros and Yorkshire pudding wraps. There were also German foods and signs, though far fewer than Birmingham.
The Berlin market was bustling with people of all ages [BBC]
Visitors didn’t seem to mind though.
“I quite like that,” says Jamie Aycliffe, who was visiting the market with his wife and baby. “We’re doing our British version of the Bratwurst.”
But having been to Christmas markets across Europe himself, he felt the ones in the UK were “not as good” and “a bit more commercial”.
Others were visiting the Kingston Christmas market for the aesthetic.
“It’s fun,” drama student Amelia Shannon, 22, says. “I don’t have to go to Germany for it.”
Overall, though, this was not as true to the traditional thing as in Birmingham, and also much smaller in size. Some people told us they’d prefer it if UK-based Christmas markets like in Kingston’s sold more small gifts from independent businesses, like German markets do.
Amelia Shannon (second from left) came to Kingston Christmas market with her friends, all drama students [BBC]
Anne-Teresa Markovic, an academic originally from Nuremberg, says she was struck by the range of food and drink offerings being “more prominent” there than in Germany while visiting Christmas markets in Manchester and Leeds. She recalls seeing “festive patatas bravas” on the menu, which needless to say, aren’t particularly German.
Christmas markets in Germany are changing, though. There’s often now more international food – and Dr Karcher says depictions of the patron Saint Nikolaus are increasingly becoming more about Santa Claus.
Katharina Karcher has noticed Santa Claus becoming more prominent at German Christmas markets [BBC]
Security has been stepped up at markets since. Some markets have been cancelled because the costs of security are too high for organisers.
The Berlin Christmas market we visit is surrounded by a fence with large, concrete blocks placed along it, while a police car patrols one of the entrances.
Despite the heightened security measures, the atmosphere seems relaxed.
Anna and Karolina say they have never been to a Christmas market in the UK before, but would both welcome more Christmas markets outside of Germany.
“Christmas markets are not defined by their location,” explains Anna, “but by the festive atmosphere and the time of the year when they take place.”
Eight other 2025 Christmas markets in the UK you might like:
Wells, Somerset: Taking place in the cathedral city for for one day, Saturday 6 December, featuring more than 100 stalls
Canterbury, Kent: With 120 stalls, including in the grounds of its 11th-century cathedral, running until Christmas Eve
Haddon Hall, Derbyshire: Pre-booked tickets with parking at the country house have sold out, but non-parking tickets are available on the door for £9.50
Chester, Cheshire: Stalls line Tudor and mock-Tudor streets, running until Monday 22 December, including a stall operated by Chester Zoo
Hillsborough, County Down, Northern Ireland: Taking place on Friday 12 and Saturday 13 December, set against the 17th century Hillsborough Fort
Aberdeen Christmas Village, Scotland: Featuring an ice rink and lots of stalls, it’s running until 31 December
Portmeirion, North Wales: A scenic location in Gwynedd, running from Friday 5 to Sunday 7 December with a £10 entry fee
Winchester, Hampshire: The Christmas market surrounds the cathedral, open until Monday 22 December
Birmingham’s Christmas market seems to come close to authenticity [BBC]
BERLIN (AP) — Rare photographs of Ireland from 1963 show a world about to disappear, a country before it took its first steps toward modernity.
Black and white images captured by a young German photographer, Diether Endlicher — who later spent four decades covering the Olympics and major global events for The Associated Press — are being shown at the Irish embassy in Berlin, where Endlicher, now 85, was honored last weekend for his role in documenting moments of Irish life from another era.
The photos feature boatmen, fishermen, workmen, herders taking their animals to markets, women transporting milk by donkey cart, a funeral, devout worshippers praying to relics in stone-walled fields, ruined abbeys, dramatic landscapes, children looking at TVs through a shop window, an evocation of a time before modern conveniences arrived to convert all.
The pictures lay unseen and forgotten in Endlicher’s attic until recently, when he rediscovered them after deciding to go through his archive. He scanned the now 62-year-old negatives and contacted the embassy to see if there was any interest. There was.
Maeve Collins, the Irish ambassador to Germany, praised the photographs’ “beautiful detail” and historical importance.
“They bring a vivid expression to the lived experience of people on the west coast of Ireland in the early 1960s,” she said.
Photos are record of a road trip
Endlicher was 22 when he traveled with a friend from Germany to the west coast of Ireland in a tiny Fiat 500, a two-door bubble car known as the “Bambino” that was not designed for road trips. He carried a Leica M2 and three lenses to places where few had seen cameras before.
Once they got to Ireland’s west coast, they found a man transporting turf to Inishmaan, one of the Aran Islands in Galway Bay, in a large sailing vessel with no motor. They decided to go with him and Endlicher took photos as they went.
“I thought we’d never arrive there because the wind was not so strong. The boat traveled very slow,” Endlicher told the AP. “It was an interesting trip there and then when we landed on Inishmaan, that was a different world.”
He saw fishermen at work, and peasants threshing barley by beating stalks on stones. Their clothes were home-spun from tweed. Electricity hadn’t reached the island. Turf from the mainland was used for heating and cooking.
Many of the locals made clear they didn’t want their photos taken. The Aran Islands are still part of the Gaeltacht, the Irish-speaking area, and on Inishmaan at the time, most did not speak any English.
“Inishmaan was a different world, even from the mainland,” Endlicher said. “Europe was very different then and so the difference between Ireland and Europe, mainland European countries was not so big. The agriculture was about the same. Farmers worked with horses. The only thing that was different in Ireland was donkeys. There were many donkeys at the time.”
Return to work for the AP
Endlicher returned to Ireland in 1984 to cover U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s visit for the AP. He worked for the news agency from 1965 to 2007.
“I covered 29 Olympics altogether, Winter and Summer Olympics. I covered many Winter Olympics. As a Bavarian, I almost grew up on skis,” said Endlicher, who would ski the slopes before big races to find the best positions for photos.
He traveled to Israel for news assignments in the 1980s and 90s and did several stints in Gaza, where he saw the first intifada, a Palestinian uprising against Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
He remembers Israeli soldiers forcing him to hand over his film after he took photos of them beating a child who had been running with a Palestinian flag in Khan Younis, in Gaza.
“I had no chance, I had to give them the film,” he said.
Endlicher covered the changes unleashed by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the breakup of the Soviet Union, as well as uprisings in Georgia and Armenia.
“I remember in Moscow, there was this uprising when the communists tried to occupy the parliament, that was after (former Russian President Boris) Yeltsin, there were a lot of shootings in Moscow,” he said. “I was undercover, under a truck, and next to me was a TV cameraman in a telephone cell, and they shot at the telephone cell and he was wounded.”
Endlicher was also embedded with American troops during the Gulf War in 1991, and had been in Prague, Czechoslovakia for the Soviet invasion in 1968, when he relied on a taxi driver driving to and from Vienna, Austria to get his films out to be processed and transmitted.
“He must have had some deal with the border police or the Russian army,” he said.
Job presents dangers
Reflecting on the dangers he faced over a 42-year career with the AP — Endlicher also previously worked for German news agency DPA – he said he believes there is a necessity to take pictures, to bear witness.
“It’s necessary that some people are willing to take the risk. Like Anja Niedringhaus, she paid with her life,” he said of his former AP colleague who was killed in Afghanistan in 2014. “The thing is you have to be independent, I think. If you’re married and have kids, it’s a different story. If you are single and have no obligations … It’s also difficult to keep up friendships. I had also a time when the job was the most important thing to me. And I neglected some of my family life. It’s a conflict.”
Endlicher’s son, Matthias, accompanied him to the embassy’s tribute on Saturday, and they were joined by his wife, Andrea, at the ambassador’s residence for dinner that evening.
“I’m very happy that they saw the value of these pictures,” he said.
BERLIN (Reuters) -Ukraine will need strong armed forces and security guarantees after any peace deal with Russia is agreed and Kyiv should not be forced to surrender territory, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Thursday.
Stressing that European as well as Ukrainian security interests were at stake, Merz said guarantees were being discussed with the U.S. and Ukraine.
“Ukraine needs strong armed forces, and if a peace agreement is reached … Ukraine will continue to need strong armed forces and reliable security guarantees from its partners,” said Merz at a press conference with his Estonian counterpart.
The most important guarantee, he said, was a well-equipped Ukrainian army.
“That is why we are also discussing the future target size of the Ukrainian army,” Merz said, adding it was too early to discuss any deployment of international troops.
European countries have insisted that the upper limit for Ukraine should be 800,000 soldiers rather than 600,000.
Merz also said Ukraine should not be forced to accept territorial concessions and that the front line must be the starting point for any negotiations.
(Reporting by Madeline Chambers and Andreas Rinke; editing by Matthias Williams and Ros Russell)
BISHKEK (Reuters) -President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that the outlines of a draft peace plan discussed by the United States and Ukraine could become the basis of future agreements to end the conflict in Ukraine but that if not then Russia would continue to fight.
“In general, we agree that this can be the basis for future agreements,” Putin said, adding that the variant of the plan discussed by the United States and Ukraine in Geneva had been passed to Russia.
Putin said that the United States was taking into account Russia’s position but that some things still need to be discussed. He said that if Europe wanted a pledge not to attack it, then Russia was willing to give such a pledge.
Russia, Putin said, was still being told it should cease the fighting.
“Ukrainian troops must withdraw from the territories they hold, and then the fighting will cease. If they don’t leave, then we shall achieve this by armed means. That’s it,” Putin said. Russian forces, he said, were advancing in Ukraine at a faster pace.
Putin said that he considered the Ukrainian leadership to be illegitimate and so it was legally impossible to sign a deal with Ukraine, so it was important to ensure any agreement was recognised by the international community – and that the international community recognised Russian gains in Ukraine.
Putin rejected the suggestion that U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff had shown himself to be biased towards Moscow in peace talks over Ukraine, describing it as nonsense.
(Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin Writing by Maxim Rodionov; editing by Guy Faulconbridge)
FRANKFURT (Reuters) -A Ukrainian man suspected of coordinating the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipeline in 2022 will be flown to Germany on Thursday after Italy’s top court approved his extradition last week, a spokesperson for Germany’s federal prosecutors said.
Described by both Moscow and the West as an act of sabotage, explosions in the Baltic Sea three years ago largely severed Russian gas transit to Europe, squeezing energy supplies on the continent, although Russia had already largely stopped deliveries.
Investigators spent years piecing together the mystery of who was behind them.
SUSPECT DENIES ROLE IN ATTACKS
The suspect, identified as Serhii K. under German privacy laws, denies any role in the attacks. His lawyer Nicola Canestrini has said he is confident that his client will be acquitted after a trial in Germany.
German prosecutors accuse him of belonging to a group of people who planted devices on the pipelines near the Danish island of Bornholm in the Baltic.
He faces charges of collusion to cause an explosion, anti-constitutional sabotage and destruction of important structures.
The suspect was detained on a European arrest warrant in the Italian town of Rimini in August but fought attempts to transfer him to Germany.
Last month, a court in Poland ruled against handing over another Ukrainian suspect wanted by Germany in connection with the explosions and ordered his immediate release from detention.
(Reporting by Tilman BlasshoferWriting by Madeline ChambersEditing by Ludwig Burger)
Beneath the waves off the Irish coast, the remains of a luxury liner rest on the ocean floor. The Lusitania was sunk by a German torpedo during World War I, killing nearly 1,200 people. But details surrounding the ship’s demise remain murky. Martha Teichner re-examines the deadly catastrophe.
BERLIN (Reuters) -Russian President Vladimir Putin must accept he has no option to leave the war in Ukraine successfully, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Wednesday.
“We want this war to end as quickly as possible,” Merz said in the Bundestag lower house of parliament.
“But an agreement negotiated between great powers without the consent of Ukraine and without the consent of the Europeans will not be the basis for a genuine, sustainable peace in Ukraine,” he added.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Tuesday he was ready to advance a U.S.-backed framework for ending the war with Russia and discuss disputed points with U.S. President Donald Trump in talks he said should include European allies.
“Decisions about European matters can only be made by mutual consent,” Merz said. “Ukraine is not a pawn, but a sovereign actor for its own interests and values.”
The chancellor added that Germany would continue to support the Ukrainian people and would use frozen Russian assets for that purpose.
Germany will increase financial aid to Ukraine to 11.5 billion euros ($13.31 billion) in the 2026 budget, up from 8.5 billion euros previously planned.
(Reporting by Maria MartinezEditing by Madeline Chambers)
LONDON (Reuters) -Leaders of Britain, France and Germany, following their Coalition of the Willing meeting on Tuesday, expressed support for U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts to end the war in Ukraine, emphasising that any solution must fully involve Ukraine.
French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said they were “clear on the principle that borders must not be changed by force.”
“This remains one of the fundamental principles for preserving stability and peace in Europe and beyond,” the leaders said in a joint statement.
(Reporting by Catarina Demony; Editing by Leslie Adler)
By Michel Rose, Sabine Siebold, John Irish and Tim Hepher
PARIS/BERLIN (Reuters) -France and Germany are ratcheting up pressure on their industrial champions to rescue Europe’s next-generation fighter as the 100-billion-euro ($115 billion) project teeters on the brink of collapse, sources close to the matter said.
The Future Combat Air System (FCAS), floated more than eight years ago, has been mired in disputes between France’s Dassault Aviation and Airbus over workshare and prized technology.
Following talks last week between French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Berlin has drafted a “decision roadmap” as part of a mid-December deadline to strike a deal, sources told Reuters.
“The objective is that the CEOs of the participating industrial partners find and sign a written agreement on the core principles of cooperation for the next programme phase by mid-December,” the document reads, according to excerpts provided to Reuters.
A government source said the roadmap, which also tasks air force chiefs with a review of their respective requirements, was designed to reassert political control.
Airbus and Dassault declined to comment.
‘DECISION ROADMAP’ AIMS TO END INDUSTRIAL IMPASSE
At stake is the next phase of plans to deliver a fighter flanked by drones for France, Germany and Spain by 2040, mirroring a UK-Italian-Japanese initiative called GCAP.
Talks have stalled amid mistrust between Rafale manufacturer Dassault and Airbus, which represents both Germany and Spain in the project, known in France as SCAF.
Dassault insists on leading design and development of the core fighter, citing blurred lines of responsibility and its track record of building fighters from start to finish. It says Airbus is free to lead its own uncrewed areas of the project.
Airbus says this goes against agreements that each nation has an equal say.
The family-owned French fighter firm and partially state-owned jetliner giant have both sharpened their rhetoric, inviting the other to leave if they don’t like the agreed arrangements and pledging to go it alone if necessary.
German sources say Dassault wants 80% control, a figure Dassault denies. They accuse Dassault of limiting access to high-value work.
French sources want to retain parity with Airbus, which stood at 50% before Spain’s arrival. They suspect Berlin of wanting to blunt Dassault’s technological advantage.
“What seems to have happened was that a very close and strong political relationship between Paris and Berlin has weakened somewhat and the industrialists were let off the leash and are really having a go at each other,” Douglas Barrie, IISS senior fellow for military airspace, said in a recent interview.
Failure to break the deadlock risks exposing Europe’s inability to forge defence unity at a time when war has returned to the continent.
After weeks of political turmoil in Paris, the capitals are deepening efforts to avoid a damaging blow to Franco-German co-operation.
Still, doubts persist whether Macron, nearing the end of his term and weakened by political crises, can strong-arm Dassault into concessions. Cushioned by strong Rafale exports, Dassault is under less immediate pressure to act and may be playing for time before 2027 elections, some officials and executives said.
Dassault declined to comment.
As FCAS faces pivotal decisions over its future, options are being prepared for a repeat of the schism that saw France quit Eurofighter in 1985, leaving Dassault and Airbus to compete.
Dassault has been a cornerstone of France’s defence since World War Two, building all generations of jets carrying its nuclear deterrent, and could most easily go alone.
German industry has threatened to tap Berlin’s growing defence budget to bankroll a rival project.
People familiar with the plans said these included a standalone stealth fighter. Other options included teaming with Sweden’s Saab, currently without a partner, or BAE Systems-led GCAP. Airbus has maintained regular CEO-level contacts on the issue with both camps, they said.
A minimalist compromise increasingly touted would narrow FCAS to a “combat cloud” of secure connectivity while letting Airbus and Dassault develop separate jets – a partial divorce allowing Paris and Berlin to save face and avoid a public split.
Each side continues to call the other’s bluff.
French planners doubt Germany can easily build a competitive stealth fighter or engine alone, nor fit into the swiftly advancing GCAP project.
Yet even though France has a track record of standalone developments, its budget crisis poses major funding hurdles.
Before Berlin’s latest push, one German source put the chances of a joint fighter at “less than 50%”. Both capitals are now racing to salvage the project. “We can’t afford to let this project fail,” a French government source said.
(Additional reporting by Florence Loeve and Giulia Segreti. Editing by Richard Lough and Mark Potter)
The German economy may be showing signs of a life after more than half a decade of stagnation.
Europe’s largest economy has suffered a series of recent blows, including a surge in energy costs after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, higher tariffs on its exports to the U.S and fierce competition from China in key sectors such as automobiles.
PARIS (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump’s peace plan goes in the right direction but there are aspects that need improvement to make it acceptable for Ukraine and Europe, French President Emmanuel Macron told RTL radio on Tuesday.
“It’s an initiative that goes in the right direction: peace. However, there are aspects of that plan that deserve to be discussed, negotiated, improved,” Macron said. “We want peace, but we don’t want a peace that would be a capitulation.”
He added that only the Ukrainians could decide what territorial concessions they are ready to make.
“What was put on the table gives us an idea of what would be acceptable for the Russians. Does that mean that it is what must be accepted by the Ukrainians and the Europeans? The answer is no,” Macron added.
Macron added Ukraine’s first line of defence in case of peace with Russia would be regenerating its own army, and there can be not limit on it. He also said frozen Russian assets are in Europe, and Europe alone can decide what to do with them.
Asked if he was ready to go to Washington to help negotiate a better deal, Macron said he had no current plan to do so.
(Reporting by Alessandro Parodi and Michel Rose;Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta)
BERLIN (Reuters) -Germany’s association of family-owned companies has lifted its ban on contacts with AfD lawmakers, signalling the far-right party’s growing acceptability in parts of the business community as it climbs in the polls.
Just two years ago, prominent business leaders warned that the rise of right-wing extremism threatened Germany’s reputation as a destination for foreign investment and skilled labour.
Such warnings long resonated in a country acutely sensitive about its Nazi past, where mainstream parties maintain a “firewall” against the 12-year-old nationalist Alternative for Germany and refuse to cooperate with it.
But those public warnings have faded as the AfD has surged to first place in many nationwide polls after finishing second in February’s federal election.
“Indignation alone has exhausted itself as a political strategy,” said Marie-Christine Ostermann, president of the association of family-run companies. “Now, only confronting the AfD’s content helps, beyond simple categorisations into ‘good’ and ‘evil’.”
Ostermann stressed that the association still rejects the AfD’s world view and opposes the party entering government, but said dialogue was necessary given its support among roughly a quarter of voters.
Her group is one of the first major German business organisations to openly call for more engagement with the AfD.
Others remain opposed. The BDI industry association told Reuters on Monday that it does not proactively seek dialogue with representatives of radical parties such as the AfD.
“The success of German industry is based on stable social and political conditions, which the AfD is attempting to shake with its populist positions,” it said.
(Reporting by Sarah Marsh and Christian Kraemer; editing by Mark Heinrich)
BERLIN (AP) — Traditional Christmas markets were opening across Germany on Monday, drawing revelers to their wooden stands with mulled wine, grilled sausages, potato pancakes or caramelized apples.
In Berlin, the famous market at the city’s Gedächtniskirche church opened with service open to the public on Monday morning. Other openings included the Christmas markets at the Rotes Rathaus city hall, Gendarmenmarkt and Charlottenburg Palace.
Christmas markets are an annual tradition that Germans have cherished since the Middle Ages — and successfully exported to much of the Western world. Vendors sell not only snacks and drinks but also handmade candles, wool hats, gloves and shiny Christmas stars in all colors and shapes. Children enjoy rides on chain carousels, Ferris wheels and skating on ice rinks.
Security is an issue at all markets across the country.
In the western city of Cologne, the Christmas market in front of the city’s famous double-domed cathedral was packed with big crowds on Saturday.
“We sense a very good atmosphere here, so we feel that in these difficult times we are currently experiencing, we can give visitors a little moment of respite here,” said Birgit Grothues, the spokeswoman for the market. “We see many smiling faces under our illuminated tent.”
Nonetheless, she said that after last year’s attack in Magdeburg, the city created a special security plan for its markets in close cooperation with police. It includes an additional anti-terrorism barrier and private security, she said.
___
Associated Press writer Daniel Niemann in Cologne, Germany, contributed to this report.
BRUSSELS (Reuters) -A united and coordinated European Union position is key to ensuring a “good outcome” from talks on ending the war in Ukraine, European Council President Antonio Costa said on Monday after speaking to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
“Spoke with Zelenskiy ahead of this morning’s informal EU leaders’ meeting on Ukraine peace efforts, to get his assessment of the situation. A united and coordinated EU position is key in ensuring a good outcome of peace negotiations – for Ukraine and for Europe,” Costa wrote on X.
(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
Germany’s largest arms manufacturer, RheinmetallRHM -3.85%decrease; red down pointing triangle, expects its sales will be five times as much as they were last year by the end of the decade. A big factor underpinning its confidence—it is being flooded by job applications.
The company is now looking to draw from a pool of workers laid off by the car industry and other big employers to fill the roles needed for its expansion plans, its head of human resources operations said.
BEIJING (Reuters) -China’s Premier Li Qiang pitched closer collaboration to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in new energy, smart manufacturing, biomedicine and intelligent driving during a meeting on Sunday on the sidelines of the G20 summit, Xinhua reported.
Relations between the world’s second- and third-largest economies have improved significantly over the past month, after Chinese export curbs on chips and rare earths caused major disruptions for German firms and German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul to cancel a visit to Beijing last month due to China rejecting all but one of his meetings.
German Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil made the first official visit of Merz’s premiership last week, stabilising ties by meeting China’s top economic official Vice Premier He Lifeng, as U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs weigh on the two major exporters.
Merz is also expected to visit China soon.
Li said he “hoped Germany would maintain a rational and pragmatic policy toward China, eliminate interference and pressure, focus on shared interests, and consolidate the foundation for cooperation,” a state media readout released late on Sunday quoted China’s second-ranking official as saying.
For all the friction over Beijing’s support for Russia and its actions in the Indo-Pacific, and Berlin’s vocal criticism of China’s human rights record and state-subsidised industrial policy, the two countries remain bound by a vast and mutually advantageous commercial relationship.
“China is willing to work with Germany to seize future development opportunities … in emerging fields such as new energy, smart manufacturing, biomedicine, hydrogen energy technology, and intelligent driving, Li said in Johannesburg, South Africa, which is hosting the first G20 summit on the continent.
China bought $95 billion worth of German goods last year, around 12% of which were cars, Chinese data shows, putting it among the $19 trillion economy’s top 10 trading partners. Germany purchased $107 billion of Chinese goods, mostly chips and other electronic components.
But Berlin stands out for China as an investment partner, having injected $6.6 billion in fresh capital in 2024, according to data from the Mercator Institute for China Studies, accounting for 45% of all foreign direct investment into China from the European Union and the United Kingdom.
For Germany, China represents a practically irreplaceable auto market, and is responsible for almost a third of German automakers’ sales. German chemicals and pharmaceuticals firms also have a large presence in the country, although they are facing increasing pressure from domestic competitors.
