Euroscope / July 2025

Right at the start of the Grand Départ holiday exodus, a funny nickname for the peak summer travel season, a two-day strike by French air-traffic controllers has brought Europe’s skies to a near-standstill. Led by France's two largest aerial traffic control (ATC) unions, both point to chronic understaffing, outdated radar and communications equipment, a proposed compulsory clock-in system, and what they describe as a toxic management culture at the France’s civil aviation authority (DGAC). Following talks that failed to break the deadlock, the DGAC asked airlines to cut 25 percent of flights in and out of Paris on Friday 4th, while airlines elsewhere in the country were ordered to slash schedules by 30–50 percent. Yet, with around 1,500 flights expected to be canceled over two days, passengers face long delays, reroutings and, in many cases, outright cancellations. Described as an intolerable strike by Airlines for Europe (A4E), the continent’s main carrier association, this scale of disruption has reignited calls for a pan-European solution: harmonized staffing standards, joint investment in modern ATC technology, and cross-border contingency plans to prevent a single nation’s industrial action from paralyzing the wider Single Aviation Market.

Iran-aligned Houthi forces struck twice at the heart of the vital Red Sea maritime corridor, underscoring the limitations of the EU’s fledgling naval escort mission, Operation Aspides. On 6 July, the bulk carrier Magic Seas, managed by a Greek firm, was hit by an anti-ship missile about 100 nautical miles south of Yemen, damaging its hull but allowing the crew to make an emergency diversion to Djibouti. Four days later, the vessel Eternity C, also under Greek management, came under fire and subsequently capsized; two sailors were killed, six rescued and fifteen remain missing. Aspides, formally launched in March 2025 to defend commercial traffic from Houthi attacks, boasts just a handful of surface combatants and support vessels spread over some 3,000 nautical miles of sea, from the Suez Canal approaches to the Horn of Africa. On the nights of the attacks, the mission had only one frigate on station, leaving large gaps that the Houthis exploited. EU officials admit that sustaining continuous coverage with the current force level, fewer than ten warships on rotation, is untenable given the corridor’s size and the increasing sophistication of Houthi drones and missiles. As the EU weighs its next steps, the twin strikes have exposed a stark choice: either accept recurring disruptions and spiraling insurance costs, or significantly upscale the naval shield protecting Europe’s trade lifeline. And given that the Red Sea route carries roughly 12 percent of global trade by volume, including 20 percent of EU–Asia container traffic, any sustained disruption risks reverberating through European supply chains. As a consequence of that, shipping insurers have already raised war-risk premiums by up to 300 percent. While Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis publicly urged Brussels to bolster Aspides with additional frigates, tanker escorts and maritime patrol aircraft, at the European Parliament, MEPs called for a swift expansion of the mission’s mandate to allow pre-emptive strikes on Houthi launch sites, while several Member States are exploring national contributions of helicopters and mine-countermeasure vessels.

At President Trump’s Turnberry golf resort, a last-minute framework accord to stave off a looming trans-Atlantic tariff battle was struck. Under the deal, Washington agreed to cap a threatened blanket 15 percent tariff on most EU exports, half the 30 percent rate initially hung-over European goods, as long as Brussels delivers up to €600 billion in new EU‐based investments over the remainder of Trump’s term. In return, the Union pledged to double its purchases of American energy, targeting $750 billion in imports through 2028, and to work with U.S. authorities on eliminating or reducing non-tariff barriers across industrial and agricultural sectors, from sanitary certificates for pork and dairy to digital-trade impediments. However, almost immediately, the White House’s published “fact sheet” diverged sharply from the Commission’s narrative. Washington asserted that pharmaceuticals would face the new 15 percent rate from 1 August, while Brussels insists drugs will remain exempt until the U.S. Section 232 probe concludes. Then, the U.S. claimed the EU had “agreed to purchase significant amounts of U.S. military equipment,” a pledge flatly denied by Commission spokespeople. On steel and aluminium, the Americans said duties would stay at 50 percent, while the Commission countered that a quota mechanism would grant lower rates up to agreed volumes, with the punitive tariff only kicking in once the cap is exceeded. This trade has been quite criticized in Europe. For instance, French Prime Minister François Bayrou condemned the deal as “a dark day when an alliance of free peoples…resigns itself to submission,” while Hungary’s Viktor Orbán quipped that President Trump had “eaten von der Leyen for breakfast.” So, as both sides now rush to reconcile these conflicting accounts, businesses on both sides of the Atlantic remain wary that the temporary truce could unravel, leaving the broader strategic partnership once again hanging in the balance.

A boat bound for Europe capsized in the early hours of Saturday about two nautical miles off the coast of Tobruk, eastern Libya. The incident left at least 18 people dead and some 50 still unaccounted for. Of the roughly 80 men, women and children packed aboard, only ten survivors have so far been rescued by Libyan fishermen and brought to shore for medical treatment. Witnesses say the overcrowded vessel, launched from a beach near the city, went down without warning in calm seas, a stark reminder of the ever-present dangers on the Central Mediterranean route. Yet, this is not an isolated incident. Just six weeks ago, on 12 June, two separate shipwrecks off Tripoli claimed the lives of at least 60 people, including women and children, with only five survivors recovered after one vessel went down and another was reported missing entirely. These tragedies come as the European Union begins rolling out its new Pact on Migration and Asylum, adopted in late 2024 to overhaul the bloc’s response to irregular arrivals. The Pact includes measures to boost search-and-rescue coordination under the EU Civil Protection Mechanism, introduce mandatory disembarkation procedures, and establish a solidarity mechanism for equitable distribution of asylum-seekers among Member States. Yet NGOs caution that without sufficient sea-rescue assets and safe-and-legal pathways, such policy shifts may do little to stem the death toll. As EU ministers prepare to activate the Pact’s first joint operations later this month, the sinking off Tobruk underscores the urgent need for both stronger maritime rescue capacity and more effective cooperation with North African transit countries.

July's extreme weather tested Europe’s emergency services and underscoring the growing impacts of climate change. On 1 July, torrential rains swept through the Gschnitz valley in Austria’s Tyrol region, triggering flash floods and debris flows that engulfed homes and mountain huts in mud and boulders. The Austrian Armed Forces deployed a Black Hawk helicopter to evacuate around 100 villagers and three isolated hut teams stranded in high-altitude pastures. Local authorities declared a state of emergency as rivers burst their banks, cutting road links to Gschnitz and nearby settlements. Initial damage assessments put dozens of homes out of service and agriculture fields under layers of silt, with reconstruction costs expected to run into the tens of millions of euros. Then, by July 8, in Southern Europe, an intense heat dome caused important wildfires, which consumed some 214,000 hectares across the EU, more than twice the seasonal average, and forced large-scale evacuations in Greece and Turkey. Emergency crews from across the continent rallied to help. Czech firefighters and Italian water-bomber aircraft joined Greek brigades battling blazes on the mainland and on islands such as Kythera. There, deputy mayor Giorgos Komninos described the scene as “biblical,” with “everything, from houses and beehives to centuries-old olive trees, reduced to cinders.” Two forest-commando teams, 67 firefighters, scores of volunteers, 22 fire-trucks, three helicopters and two planes combated the flames, rescuing 139 people, including holiday-makers trapped on a beach, under orders from the coast guard. These twin crises highlight the dual threats facing Europe: too much water in some regions, too little in others, both driven by the same warming climate. National and EU authorities are now reviewing disaster-resilience plans and considering stepped-up funding for both flood defenses and wildfire prevention ahead of what scientists warn will be an even more volatile season next year.