Good morning from Brussels. I’m Mared Gwyn.
It’s the final day of crunch G7 talks on the shores of Lake Geneva, where Euronews’s Angela Skujins and Maria Tadeo continue to report from the ground – and where leaders overnight coalesced around a rare joint stance on the war in Ukraine.
G7 unite on Ukraine: In the statement, published shortly after midnight, leaders said they “stand united in our unwavering support for Ukraine in defending its freedom, sovereignty, and territorial integrity”. The statement has been signed by the US President, Donald Trump.
Crucially, all leaders also committed to increasing “pressure on the Russian war economy" and to "strengthen our sanctions, including those on the oil and gas sectors.”
Europeans will no doubt consider the statement a major win, after both the US and the UK had been accused of watering down sanctions on Russian energy commodities in order to cushion the impact of the war in Iran.
Anticipation high over US-Iran MoU: Trump has also vowed to publicly disclose the 14-point Memorandum of Understanding with Iran, due to be signed Friday at Switzerland’s mountainside Burgenstock resort, according to reports.
That signature is expected to trigger 60 days of negotiations, according to a draft MoU seen by Euronews, which would focus on sanctions relief and the future of Tehran’s nuclear programme.
The Memorandum also includes a US commitment to a $300 billion fund designed to kick-start investment in Iran and finance reconstruction.
Meanwhile, on today’s G7 menu, AI: Leaders will be joined by tech executives from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and Mistral AI for a discussion on ensuring "a safe, rapid and effective deployment of artificial intelligence."
As my colleague Luca Bertuzzi explains in this must-read preview, as AI is fast becoming a strategic asset, fears of a potential American “kill switch” have rarely felt more real.
On Friday, Washington imposed export control measures blocking all access to Anthropic AI’s Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by any foreign national. Anthropic consequently had to "abruptly disable" access to both models to comply.
The restrictions, and the speed with which the company applied them, confirmed one of Europe's worst-kept fears: that the Americans could shut down access to their most powerful technology at a moment's notice.
Washington cited national security as its justification. Fable 5 and Mythos 5 are said to have unprecedented capabilities to identify and exploit cyber vulnerabilities, making them a formidable hacking tool.
But being abruptly cut off from the world's most advanced AI models left European and other Western allies flat-footed, delivering the ultimate reality check: access to American technology in the Trump era is no longer a given. | 
