Europe is juggling economic strain, shifting security risks and major legal shifts this week.
In London, Chancellor Rachel Reeves is wrestling with a £20 billion budget gap and tough choices ahead of the 2025 fiscal plan.
On the continent, Ukraine signals fresh openness to a US-backed peace deal while still bracing for continued Russian aggression.
The EU’s top court has strengthened LGBTQ rights with a landmark marriage-recognition ruling, and NATO airspace tensions are rising after Romania scrambled jets to intercept the deepest drone incursion yet.
A glance at the major developments in Europe today.
Reeves faces tough choices in 2025 budget
Chancellor Rachel Reeves has a pretty tough job on her hands as she puts together the UK’s 2025 budget.
After last year’s huge £40 billion tax hike, the biggest in decades, she’s under pressure to get the national debt falling by 2029–30.
The catch? She’s already ruled out raising income tax, VAT, or national insurance.
Even though the economy looks a bit healthier now, there’s still a big hole in the public finances, roughly £20 billion by current estimates.
That means she’s basically stuck choosing between raising other taxes, cutting spending, or loosening the government’s own fiscal rules.
A few ideas are already floating around, like introducing a tax on properties worth over £2 million and lowering the cap on cash ISAs.
None of it is particularly fun politically, but with borrowing costs rising, she needs to find money somewhere.
Zelenskyy signals openness to US-backed peace plan
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he’s ready to move forward with a US-backed peace plan for ending the war with Russia.
He’s been talking through some of the more sensitive points with President Donald Trump and Europe’s leaders, trying to find common ground.
Kyiv has slimmed down its original 28-point peace proposal to a smaller set of ideas that other countries might actually get behind. Zelenskiy made it clear that Ukraine doesn’t want to be seen as blocking progress toward peace.
He’s also urging European leaders to start planning for a reassurance force that could be deployed in Ukraine if needed.
And while he says Ukraine is committed to pushing for peace, he also stressed that support from partners can’t waver as long as Russia shows no real sign of ending the fight.
Overall, he sounded cautiously optimistic, but still very aware of the reality on the ground.
EU court mandates cross-border same-sex marriage recognition
The European Court of Justice has just made a big call: if a same-sex marriage is legally performed in one EU country, then every other EU member state has to recognise it, even if their own national laws don’t allow same-sex marriage.
This is especially significant for countries like Poland, where foreign same-sex marriages are currently not recognised.
The court said that refusing to do so breaks EU rules on freedom of movement and the right to family life.
To be clear, the ruling doesn’t force any country to legalise same-sex marriage at home. But it does mean they can’t discriminate against couples who are legally married elsewhere in the EU.
It’s a pretty major win for LGBTQ rights and a push toward more consistent family-law recognition across the whole bloc.
Romania scrambles jets for deep drone incursion
NATO had a tense day on Tuesday, after fighter jets were scrambled in response to what’s being called the deepest drone incursion into its airspace since the war in Ukraine began.
German Eurofighter Typhoons first picked up a drone crossing into Tulcea county near the Ukrainian border, but it eventually turned back.
Not long after, radar detected another drone slipping into Galati county and heading farther inland toward Vrancea.
This time, Romania sent up its own F-16s to intercept it. Authorities also warned people in the affected areas to take shelter, just in case.
This incident is now the 13th drone intrusion Romania has reported since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, a sign of how tense things have become along NATO’s eastern edge.
Romania technically has laws that would allow it to shoot down drones, but so far, it hasn’t pulled the trigger on that option.
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