WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is due to plead guilty on Wednesday (26 June) to violating US espionage law, in a deal that will end his imprisonment in Britain and allow him to return home to Australia, ending a 14-year legal odyssey.

Ahead of the EU leaders’ meeting on Thursday and Friday (27-28 June), German Chancellor Olaf Scholz insisted for the next European Commission to conclude more free trade agreements (FTA) with third countries – without consensus among EU member states if need be.

The forthcoming report by former Italian prime minister and former European central bank president, Mario Draghi, on the future of European competitiveness is a valuable opportunity to shape the EU policy agenda for the coming EU legislative term and beyond.

The leaders of Ireland's three governing parties agreed on Monday (24 June) to nominate Finance Minister Michael McGrath as the country's representative on the European Commission, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The European Union will downgrade high-level contacts with Georgia and consider freezing financial aid to the Georgian Dream-led government after it pushed through a controversial "foreign agent" law earlier this month.

German and Polish defence ministers, meeting for talks with their French counterpart on Monday (24 June), warned against the risks of a French government coalition with the far-right and stressed that support for Ukraine was "not open for debate".

Poland is open to join two Franco-German landmark defence projects that are supposed to yield a European-made fighter jet and battle tank, the country's defence minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz said on Monday (24 June). 

The European Council has adopted a recommendation on vaccine-preventable cancers that aims to slash deaths from cervical cancer.

EU countries slammed Russia for overfishing in the Baltic Sea, a region that has seen its fish stocks decline dramatically in recent years, during a meeting of the EU Agriculture and Fisheries Council (AGRIFISH) on Monday (24 June).

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz voiced hope on Monday (24 June) that EU and Chinese negotiators will reach a deal on electric vehicle (EV) tariffs before 4 July - the day European duties on Chinese carmakers are meant to come into effect.

Climate change is a manmade disaster caused by mankind as a whole. But history remembers disasters of dramatic proportions caused by a single man. We are currently paying the price of at least two such disasters.

Polish President Andrzej Duda voiced hope during a visit to Beijing on Monday (24 June) his country could boost its exports to China, just as the EU is set to begin talks with Bejing on tariffs it threatened to impose on Chinese electric vehicles (EVs).

Incumbent Renew Europe group President Valérie Hayer has a high chance of being reappointed on Tuesday (25 June), as the opposing ALDE party is failing to align its members behind their nominee. 

EU member states approved on Monday (24 June) a decision to use €1.4 billion in revenue from frozen Russian assets to send military support to Ukraine, after finding a legal way to circumvent a Hungarian veto.

A proposal to transit Azeri gas through Russia and subsequently to the EU raises significant strategic and security concerns, writes Sergiy Makogon.

EU leaders are set to call on the new European Commission to present in-depth policy reviews by mid-2025 to fulfil the bloc's long-term ambitions, according to draft summit conclusions seen by Euractiv.

Ahead of the legislative elections on 30 June and 7 July, French trade unions are divided over what strategy to adopt in the face of the rise of the far-right Rassemblement National (RN), while major employers seem wary of the promises made by the left and the right.     

The European Commission said Apple's App Store is in breach of the bloc's digital competition rules in preliminary findings announced through a Monday (24 June) press release.

The European green oil industry is concerned about massive and potentially fraudulent imports of biofuels from Asia. This fraud consists of importing so-called “used cooking oil biofuels” which are in fact biofuels made from virgin palm oil.

(Adds background, quotes from analysts)

By Joe Cash and Ryan Woo

BEIJING, June 24 (Reuters) - Beijing wants the European Union to scrap its preliminary tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles by July 4, China's state-controlled Global Times reported, after an agreement by both sides to hold new trade talks.

Provisional EU duties of up to 38.1% on imported Chinese-made EVs are set to kick in by July 4 while the bloc investigates what the EU claims are excessive and unfair subsidies to Chinese EV makers.

China has repeatedly called on the EU to cancel its tariffs, expressing a willingness to negotiate. Beijing does not want to be embroiled in another tariff war, still stung by U.S. tariffs on its goods imposed by the Trump administration, but says it would take all steps to protect Chinese firms should one happen.

Both sides agreed to restart tariff talks after a call between EU Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis and Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao on Saturday during a visit to China by Germany's economy minister, who said the doors for discussion are "open".

The best outcome of the talks is that the EU scraps its tariff decision before July 4, Global Times reported late on Sunday, citing observers.

The EU's increasingly protectionist moves will trigger countermeasures from China, and an escalation in trade frictions would only lead to "lose-lose" results for both sides, the newspaper said.

The tariffs are set to be finalised on Nov. 2 at the end of the EU anti-subsidy investigation.

The Chinese commerce ministry did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

TRADE WAR?

EU trade policy has turned increasingly protective over concerns that China's production-focused development model could see it flooded with cheap goods as Chinese firms look to step up exports amid weak domestic demand.

China has rejected accusations of unfair subsidies or that it has an overcapacity problem, saying the development of China's EV industry has been the result of advantages in technology, market and industry supply chains.

"When European Commission President Von der Leyen announced she would investigate China's new energy vehicles... I had an intuitive feeling it was not only an economic issue but also a geopolitical issue," said Zhang Yansheng, chief research fellow at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges.

"Personally, I think it is unfair to start a tariff war by only taking into consideration the capacity utilisation rate and insufficient demand," he added.

Trade relations between the 27-strong bloc and the world's No. 2 economy took an abrupt turn for the worse when the European Parliament voted in May 2021 to freeze ratification of what would have been a landmark investment treaty because of tit-for-tat sanctions over allegations of human rights abuses in China's Xinjiang region.

Beijing and Brussels came to blows again that year when China downgraded diplomatic ties with Lithuania and told multinationals to sever relations with the Baltic state after Vilnius invited democratically governed Taiwan, which China claims as part of its territory, to open a representative office in the capital.

ARMED AND READY

Although Beijing is calling for talks, it has also indicated that it has retaliatory measures ready if the commission does not back down, and that it considers Brussels

wholly responsible

for the escalating tensions.

The Global Times, which first reported that China was considering opening a tit-for-tat anti-dumping investigation into European pork imports - which the commerce ministry announced last week it would undertake - has also teed up an anti-subsidy investigation into European dairy goods and tariffs on large-engined petrol cars.

Chinese authorities have dropped hints about possible retaliatory measures through state media commentaries and interviews with industry figures.

"It seems probable that Beijing will raise tariffs up to 25% for Europe-made cars with 2.5 or above litre engines," said Jacob Gunter, lead analyst at MERICS, a Berlin-based China studies institute.

"Pork and dairy are already on the table for Beijing, and likely more agricultural products will be threatened," he added. "On the EU side, there are a variety of ongoing investigations using the new toolkit that Brussels has assembled, so we should expect some sort of measures targeting distortions on (Chinese) products ranging from medical devices to airport security scanners to steel pipes." (Reporting by Joe Cash and Ryan Woo. Editing by Gerry Doyle)