French prime minister says US-EU trade deal is a 'dark day' for Europe

The French prime minister, François Bayrou, said the European Union had capitulated to Donald Trump's threats of ever-increasing tariffs, as he labelled the framework deal struck in Scotland on Sunday as a "dark day" for the EU.

- Lisa O'Carroll

"It is a dark day when an alliance of free peoples, brought together to affirm their common values and to defend their common interests, resigns itself to submission," Bayrou wrote on X yesterday.

The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, and the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, welcomed the deal as averting a more damaging outcome. The European trade commissioner, Maroš Šefčovič, described the deal as a "breakthrough" in the face of a potential ruinous trade war between the world's two biggest economies.

The deal will impose 15% tariffs on almost all European exports to the US including cars, about triple the 4.8% tariff now in force, but avoid the threat of punitive 30% import duties being imposed after Trump's 1 August deadline for a deal.

The high-level French criticism, and Emmanuel Macron's silence since the deal was signed between Trump and the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, show potential divisions as Brussels seeks to get approval for the deal from member states.

Merz said the deal, clinched in a ballroom at Trump's golf resort at Turnberry, avoided "needless escalation in transatlantic trade relations" and averted a potentially damaging trade war. He conceded that Germany would face "substantial damage" from the tariffs but that "we couldn't expect to achieve any more".