The Chancellor of Germany, Friedrich Merz, has proposed granting Ukraine the status of an “associate member” of the European Union (EU) as an intermediate step towards membership, since full membership will take time, according to a letter he wrote to community leaders in Brussels that Reuters and AFP agencies accessed this Thursday. This would allow Ukrainian leaders to participate in EU summits and ministerial meetings, although without voting rights.

The European Commission has listened to the requests of countries such as Spain and, especially, Italy, and is inclined to give greater budgetary leeway to Member States to address the consequences of Iran’s energy crisis. The Community Executive is considering allowing countries to allocate 0.3% of GDP to energy-related expenses outside the EU budgetary framework, something it will detail this Wednesday in the fiscal package it had planned to present.

Donald Trump has choked on the war he himself started against Iran three months ago. The calculations he made have turned out to be completely wrong and now, like GPS, he is ‘recalculating the route’.