FirstFT: EU leaders back Ukraine’s bid for membership

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The leaders of France, Germany, Italy and Romania pledged yesterday to back Ukraine’s bid to apply for European Union membership after they travelled to Kyiv in a show of support in the face of Russia’s invasion.

“Europe is at your side and will stay there for as long as it takes,” Emmanuel Macron, the French president, told Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, at a news conference, condemning Moscow for “war, destruction and chaos” and the “barbarity” committed in the Kyiv suburb of Irpin.

The meeting came ahead of an EU summit next week in which conditions are expected to be imposed on Ukraine, including improving the rule of law and fighting corruption, as the bloc considers its membership application.

Macron also pledged to continue sending weapons to help Ukraine’s war effort and announced the addition of a further six Caesar howitzers on top of the 12 already offered. The EU leaders also called for Russia to end its blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports to allow the export of grain needed to ease a global food crisis.

• Go deeper: Vladimir Putin’s threat is existential for eastern Europeans. But in western European history, Russia is not the villain, writes Simon Kuper.

• In oil: The US is urging Europe to ease the impact of its ban on insuring Russian oil cargoes, arguing the measure could push global crude prices higher.

• Opinion: The assault on Ukraine is causing a sharp cultural break between Russia and the west that may last far into the future, writes Ivan Krastev.

For more of the latest news on how the war is impacting business and the economy, sign up to our Disrupted Times newsletter. Thanks for reading FirstFT Europe/Africa. Here is the rest of the day’s news — Jennifer

Five more stories in the news

1. US shares sink after UK and Switzerland raise rates Wall Street stocks sold off sharply yesterday after Switzerland and the UK joined a global rush to raise interest rates, stoking concerns that central banks’ attempts to tame inflation could push the world’s economies into a downturn. See how your country compares with others in our global inflation tracker.

More on inflation:

2. Elon Musk tells Twitter to ‘get healthy’ Addressing Twitter’s employees for the first time since launching his $44bn takeover bid, the billionaire Tesla chief warned the platform’s staffers its business needed to “get healthy” and undergo a “rationalisation of headcount and expenses”.

3. Crypto hedge fund Three Arrows fails to meet lender margin calls The prominent Singapore-based group did not meet demands to stump up extra funds after its digital currency bets turned sour, tipping the crypto hedge fund into a crisis that comes as a credit crunch grips the industry.

4. Europe’s Covid hospitalisations rise The continent is experiencing a surge in hospitalisations driven by sub-variants of the highly infectious Omicron strain, threatening to bring another global wave of the disease as immunity levels wane and pandemic restrictions are lifted.

Thanks to everyone who took part in yesterday’s poll. Fifty-seven per cent of respondents did not think their wellbeing was still being significantly affected by Covid-19, while 32 per cent of them did.

5. Donald Trump was told overturning election was illegal The former US president pressured his then vice-president Mike Pence to overturn the 2020 election despite having been told repeatedly that doing so would be illegal, a Congressional committee has heard.

The days ahead

Europe officials to issue recommendation on Ukraine The European Commission is expected to recommend that Ukraine be granted EU candidate status, a first step towards membership.

Economic data The UK publishes insolvency and retail sales figures for May, while the EU releases its Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices — a measure of consumer price inflation — for the same month. The US releases industrial production data and Canada publishes its monthly industrial product and raw materials price indices.

Russia’s investment conference The annual event in St Petersburg, which runs until tomorrow, was created by Vladimir Putin to lure global investment, but this year’s forum will look more like a morale-boosting exercise following the war. The president is due to speak alongside leaders of the Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics, which are Moscow-backed Ukrainian separatist enclaves.

Sunday elections Colombia will hold the second round of voting in its presidential election. In France, which is set to hold the second round in its parliamentary election, the contest has been dominated by three individuals. What does this mean for the country’s stability?

What else we’re reading

Macron ally’s election fight As one of Emmanuel Macron’s inner circle, Europe minister Clément Beaune was granted what appeared a winnable seat in the National Assembly: a constituency in central Paris. Instead, voters opted for a leftwing rival. Here’s what is at stake for the French president.

Men must step up at home to boost birth rates When we talk about how to address falling birth rates, the conversation usually centres on young women. But a more fruitful policy target may in fact be men. With career versus family no longer such a trade-off for women, “having it all” is only possible with increased paternal childcare, writes John Burn-Murdoch.

The conundrums facing EY The Big Four accounting firm is in the midst of an existential crisis, as it considers a break-up of its audit and advisory arms in its biggest shake-up in decades. But EY’s global leaders must first win the backing of the group’s member firms, spanning about 150 nations.

‘Don’t worry about AI sentience’ One Google engineer appeared to confuse fiction and fact by claiming that the company’s language generation model may be sentient. John Thornhill argues that the real concern was raised by researchers last year. They asked: is it acceptable that private corporations have exclusive control over such powerful tech tools?

The high price society pays for social media Ernest Hemingway once said: “What is moral is what you feel good after, and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.” So, Tim Harford writes, it is worth thinking about how often we feel bad after spending time on social media — and whether it causes depression and anxiety.

Fashion

Splashing out on luxury brands is fine, but cheap clothes can be fun. “Remember, snobbery loves to wear the costume of conscientiousness,” writes Rob Armstrong.