Europe Today: Rubio urges Europe to wake up as EU trade chief begins key China trip

Good morning. It is Thursday the 8th of October. I'm Maeve McMahon and this is Europe Today. Your daily dose of European news and analysis live here on Euronews. Coming up, Mari Carmen, the 87-year-old woman who was evicted from her Madrid home and sparked the ongoing protests in Spain against the housing crisis, has passed away in a hospital in Madrid. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez had called for snap elections in November with the hope that this ongoing housing crisis could overshadow other challenges Spain faces. And France has banned the police use of stun grenades after a 15-year-old critically hurt his hand this week during school protests that have swept the country and even spread here into Belgium. While critics say police are using disproportionate force against teenagers, the government says dozens of schools have been set alight or vandalised. Brussels' airport is set for major disruption, with around 140 flights facing cancellation this Friday as ground-handling staff join a national strike. Unions are walking out in a stand-off against the government's reforms they say hit pensions, salaries and working conditions. Brexit is back just a few weeks into the job. The new UK Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, has launched the idea of a return to the European Union. We speak exclusively to the UK Minister for European Relations, Hamish Falconer, who finds himself in Strasbourg this week. But first to Beijing, where the EU Trade Commissioner, Maris Cekovic, has arrived for a crucial two-day visit seeking to rebalance EU-China relations, which have become rather lopsided in the past decade. To understand the high stakes of this trip that comes just days before the EU's October summit, we're joined by our political correspondent, Jorge Liberadero. Jorge, just remind us why the Commissioner for Trade is in China right now. Look Maeve, if I were to draw the history of EU-China relations, I would not draw a straight line. I would draw a circle, because that's what we've been running around for this past 10 years. Maris Cekovic now wants to break this circle, and what's inside of it? We know the dumping, state subsidies, market restrictions for technological transfer, supply chain dependencies, and currency manipulation. These are issues that have been unaddressed for years, and that now have resulted in a 1 billion euro deficit per day. 1 billion per day, I have to say that. Brussels considers the situation unsustainable, and it's a situation that actually threatens the survival of our industry and our prosperity, so something needs to change. This is why Maris Cekovic has engaged in these negotiations with China, and has imposed a deadline for this month to obtain the first tangible results. But now, he is in Beijing to find out if these results will appear. And that's the question. Will he bring back these tangible results? He could succeed, he could fail. What happens when he gets back? There's a sequence of events, right? So Maris Cekovic is now in Beijing. He's going to meet his Chinese counterpart, Wang Wentao. Then he's coming back to Brussels. He's going to meet his boss, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Then on Sunday, there's an extraordinary meeting of ambassadors. The Commission is going to brief them. Then ambassadors will brief their own capitals. And then next week, here in Brussels, EU leaders will meet, and they will have to decide if these results brought back by Cekovic are enough to continue the dialogue, or if it's time to take action. And you mentioned EU leaders, of course, meeting next week in Brussels. They've been becoming rather hawkish when it comes to China. We've seen a letter by Friedrich Merz, and also by Emmanuel Macron. Could we be on the brink of a trade war, Jorge? This letter, which I have here, by the way, is simply remarkable, I have to say, for at least two reasons. The first one is that one of the main factors that have held back the Commission's policy on China is Germany, particularly the German industry, who have been very afraid of retaliation from Beijing. Now, Berlin has concluded that the damage inflicted by China is greater than the commercial opportunities presented by China. And then the second reason is the fact that this letter proposes to create a new instrument that could immediately cut off China from the European market if the situation continues to be unsustainable, as it is now. So the very fact that this radical option is put on paper and is signed by the President of France and the Chancellor of Germany shows you the exasperation and the desperation that Europeans have reached. The stakes couldn't be higher. Couldn't be higher, exactly. We'll read all your reporting on yournews.com. Thank you so much for that. But now, moving on, students in France are bracing for another major day of protests after trade unions joined them in demonstrations that saw around 250,000 people from all across the country on Tuesday. For the latest, we can head over to Paris and bring in our correspondent, Estelle Nielsen-Julien, who's standing in front of a very rowdy school this morning. And we can see schoolgoers back on the streets today, just two days after that major demonstration. They're clearly still not satisfied, Estelle. Yes, so students and unions will be back on the streets today in Paris and across the country because they say the government is not listening to them. As you can see, I'm outside a secondary school in the fifth arrondissement of Paris and students got here very early. I've been in the streets since half six and I've seen students drag bins, barriers, many of them wearing face masks to cover their faces. And in terms of what the unions and teaching unions are calling for, they are urging the government to reverse some of its budget proposals, including things like pay freezes for public sector workers. And how has the government reacted? Have they made any concessions? Well, yesterday, the French prime minister addressed the nation and he made a point of saying that police officers and law enforcement officers had not been instructed to attack or have any acts of violence towards children. This comes amid intense scrutiny of police methods. And we've seen some shocking nation cases where children were hurt in instances of police brutality. But the government has also launched a mass online consultation this week, which has already gathered 40,000 signatures. And the prime minister said that the findings of this consultation would be used to inform any possible policy changes. And Estelle, how long could these protests go on for? I can't tell you exactly, but I was just speaking to some students a few minutes ago who told me they would be on the streets for as long as it takes. They told me they were here because they felt their school days were too long and that they wanted more time outside of school for their personal life. Experts I spoke to have told me that these kinds of social movements tend to dissipate in school holidays, and France has a half term coming up in the coming weeks. So that could be a factor which could make things slow down a little bit. OK, Estelle, Mr Julian, thank you so much for your live broadcast there from the capital of France, from Paris. But now we can head to Athens, where the Secretary of State from the US, Marco Rubio, has arrived for the sixth round of the US-Greece Strategic Dialogue, up for discussion security, defence and energy. And speaking just last night in Athens, Marco Rubio said Europe needs to, quote, wake up from its long slumber. For more, we can head over to Athens and bring in our correspondent, Faye de Clary. Good morning, Faye. So quite an America First speech last night with quite a dig at Europeans to spend more on defence. Tell us more. Good morning, Maeve. Marco Rubio is calling again on European countries to take on a greater responsibility for defending their own defence. And he singled out Greece as an example. Speaking yesterday alongside the Greek foreign minister, Giorgos Pagiarapetritis, he praised Greece because the country is about to spend 5 per cent of its GDP this year on defence, with 3.5 per cent solely on core defence. Speaking under the Parthenon in the afternoon, Rubio linked the war in Ukraine, the situation in the Middle East, the situation in the Red Sea and the Strait of Hormuz, with a greater need of Europe to start defending more the continent and spending more on defence. And he warned Europe, as you said, to wake from its long slumber and strengthen both its defence and industrial base. And Faye, the trip comes during quite a scandalous controversy, if you like, over the US ambassador to Greece. Tell us more about that. Yes, that was one of the highlights of the visit, I would say. An American colleague asked during the press conference, Marco Rubio, about the Wall Street Journal report concerning the American ambassador, Kimberly Guilfoyle. According to the Wall Street Journal, some weeks ago, in March, during a dinner with Greek and American officials, Kimberly Guilfoyle referred to the fall of Romania's government, saying allegedly that the United States had something implying better, that the United States had something to do with it and saying, allegedly again, that the United States can do that with all the governments, even in Greece. As you can understand, this caused quite a noise here in Athens and, of course, in Bucharest for some days, and some analysts even linked the timing of the visit to this situation. But Marco Rubio yesterday rejected all these allegations. He said that they were false, and he gave full support to the American ambassador in Greece, saying that she's doing her job great. OK, Faye de Clary, thank you so much for that live broadcast there from Athens this morning. And moving on now, Brexit is back on the political agenda after the UK Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, who's actually in Berlin today, said he would weigh a range of options for the future relationship with the European Union, including the possibility of rejoining. Intense talks on resettling the relationship between both sides continue ahead of a summit expected to take place here in Brussels next month. Euronews' Marit Gwynne spoke to the UK Minister for European Relations, that's Hamish Falconer, who's actually in Strasbourg this week, and she began by asking him if Andy Burnham's remarks had radically changed his mandate as the UK's chief negotiator with Brussels. My Prime Minister set out a very ambitious approach last week. He believes that the current relationship that we have is not good enough, and I totally share that. And that's what I've been discussing with colleagues today. I've seen my counterpart, the Commissioner here, as well as many colleagues in the European Parliament. I am ambitious, as is the Prime Minister, to go further and faster with the European Union. We are eternal neighbours, we have real shared interests, and we're looking at this relationship with a real range of determination and ambition. What does that mean then, Minister, for this UK-EU summit that we're expecting as soon as November? Do you expect to simply sign off on the deals negotiated by the previous government of Keir Starmer, or can we expect more? And can we expect Burnham to lay out a more long-term vision in November? So we haven't yet confirmed the date of the summit, but we hope to be able to do so soon. I want the most ambitious possible package, of course. We've been conducting negotiations on a range of issues, including food, electricity trading standards, youth mobility, but we want to go further and faster, as I said earlier, and so I'm not going to get too drawn into the detail of the negotiations. All I'll say is there's a real shared sense, both between me and my colleagues here, of a desire to bring Britain back closer to the European Union and be as ambitious as we possibly can. And in answer to your specific question, yes, I expect that my Prime Minister will set out in more detail some of the views that he talked about in our conference last week around the time of the summit. I appreciate you can't enter the details of these negotiations, but I want to ask you about Made in Europe, because I understand that for your government, the UK's inclusion in the Made in Europe industrial policy in order to avoid UK industries from being shut off the European market is a major priority. Do you see that a deal on that could be close? Look, I think it's worth saying at the outset that the industries that have lobbied me with the most enthusiasm are European industries, and there's such a clear sense that the European industrial base is shared. We're the second largest export market for the EU, we're the largest recipient of new EU vehicles, many of which are partially constructed in the UK. It would not be in either of our interests to see new barriers arising in our economic relations. It is so strongly in EU and UK interests that the existing strong arrangements that we have are sustained. And in terms of the concessions that you're willing to make in order to gain access and be included in that policy, you know, how far are you willing to go? So I think, as I said, I don't want to talk too much about the detail of the negotiations, but just in general, we've got very clear, legally binding arrangements which govern the way in which the UK and EU markets are so closely integrated. That's the TCA, that provides strong protections to both sides on rules of origin and all sorts of other things. It is the underpinning of a really important shared industrial base. If we were to fracture that industrial base, that would simply mean a weaker Europe, both in the UK and in the EU. So I don't think talking about sort of concessions is quite the right place to start. This is a shared European industrial base. We face shared common challenges, which I've been very pleased to discuss with so many of my counterparts here today. I think it is vital that we don't do things to make European industry weaker. And staying in Strasbourg, MEPs from the left wing of the European Parliament have come up with a new proposal. They want to slash their net salaries in half from €8,800 per month to €4,400. For more, we can head over to Strasbourg and speak to Mark Boettinger, Belgian MEP from the left and actually one of the authors of this proposal. Good morning, Mark. Thanks for joining us. Tell us more about your idea here. Well, the idea is very, I mean, as you know, that the salaries for members of the European Parliament, also members of the Commission are extremely generous. You know, they can go up to €13,000, €14,000 a month easily without even the additional allowances. And so the question here is, in a situation in which many people struggle to make it to the end of the month, perhaps it is time to say, listen, we're going to cut the salaries a little bit in order to bring them down to earth. And in order for MEPs to, you know, realise perhaps a little bit more what the regular European is going through. But I'm sure this proposal would face a lot of opposition there in the Parliament among MEPs. So what can you actually really change? Well, I think it's important to put that discussion out there. That's the first thing. Obviously, you know, people are shouting populism. But I think it's very important that when also for the outside, when people see that, you know, members of the European Parliament, the European Commission, they're very happy to discuss anything like they can discuss cutting the European social funds, the cohesion funds, the regional funds, whatsoever. All of this can be discussed. But when it's about themselves, when it is about, you know, their own privileges, their own salaries, then suddenly, oh, no, this cannot even be discussed. So I think it's good to put that out there, especially today, when we have this energy crisis, you know, many of us are afraid to go actually, you know, go up, get your fuel, do your groceries and whatever. So I think that would be a really important signal. And I've seen some critics say this is a populist stunt here. What would you say to them? Well, you know, I would say why haven't they, the only thing, the only thing they're stressed about is their own salary, their own privilege. For the rest, they're very happy to discuss anything, as I said. Secondly, I do believe that the way you live influences the way you vote and the kind of proposals you make. You know, if you yourself have no clue what it means to be scared to, you know, pay for fuel, to pay for groceries whatsoever, you know, this is going to have an impact on the priorities and on the proposals you're going to make in Parliament or at the level of the European Commission. You know, you're not going to consider the energy crisis terribly horrible if you don't feel it yourself a little bit at least, you know. So in this sense, I would say, you know, maybe it's time for you to get out of your bubble and realise what's going on outside. And if you want to lead by example, of course, why stop at the salaries? As you said, MEPs also get big allowances. Should they be looked at too? Oh, absolutely. I think there's a number of things we should be looking at. I mean, we've got different proposals as well. There's also the transitional allowance. So when MEPs leave Parliament, they get this transitional allowance. You know, we'd say, why don't you just integrate national unemployment schemes? Because there's a lot of pressure on unemployment schemes at national levels, also pushed by politicians. But then they themselves are exempt from those schemes. So I think there's a number of things that we can tackle also on the additional allowances. Why should that be just a fixed amount? Shouldn't that be linked to what you're actually spending? You know, all of these matters are on the table and need to be put on the table. And that's what we're doing right now, because we're saying it's time to burst this bubble a little bit. People are angry outside and they're angry at decisions that have been made in this Parliament and by this Commission. And in order to break away with that, to do away with that, sorry, I think this is a good first step. Well, people are certainly angry. Mark Potenga, we see protests from Madrid to Paris and of course, Brussels bracing itself tomorrow for a national strike. Thank you so much for your time this morning and for joining us on Europe Today. That does bring this Thursday's edition of Europe Today though to an end. Do reach out to us if you have any comments or remarks on any of the stories that we are covering here for you. 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