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European Commission seeks exemptions for EU products from US tariffs
The European Commission has submitted a list of EU products worth around €150 billion it seeks to exempt from the 15 percent tariffs imposed under the 2025 trade deal.
Exempting €150 billion worth of EU exports from US tariffs could significantly enhance trade relations, potentially stabilising a volatile economic environment between the two regions.
“The products listed are economically meaningful for the EU and face limited availability in the US,” stated EU trade official Matthias Jørgensen to MEPs on Tuesday.
EU pushes US to exempt €150 billion worth of EU goods from Turnberry deal

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The European Commission has given the US a list of EU products which it wants to see exempted from the 15 percent tariffs imposed under the trade deal signed by Brussels and Washington in 2025.
The list, seen by EU News, includes hundreds of products, such as Roquefort cheese, olive oil, wines, spirits and beer, pasta, medical devices, electrical equipment and machinery.
EU trade official Matthias Jørgensen told MEPs on Tuesday that the list covered around €150 billion worth of EU exports.
He also said that the products were either “economically meaningful” for the EU or had a “limited domestic availability in the US”.
In July 2025, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and US President Donald Trump clinched a deal in Turnberry, Scotland after weeks of trade disputes, under which the Europeans agreed to accept 15 percent US tariffs on EU exports while removing their own tariffs on US industrial goods.
Negotiations on exemptions from the duties were also announced in a joint statement by Brussels and Washington published in August 2025, but the US refused to open talks before the EU reduced its tariffs on US goods.
Since a deal was reached in May by EU legislators and that Brussels removed its duties on 1 July, the European Commission hopes to secure carve-outs from the 15 percent US tariffs.
The joint statement said that the US and the EU would “consider” applying the tariffs that existed before 2025 to products that are “important for their economies and value chains.” Those tariffs averaged around 3.3 percent.
Since 2025, EU countries have been lobbying the Commission – which negotiates on their behalf in trade matters – to secure carve-outs for their main exports to the US.
France, Italy and Spain have been pushing in particular for more favourable tariffs on wine.
The EU also hopes to start discussions on steel and aluminium, which are still subject to 50 percent US tariffs. Jørgensen said he expects talks on those products to be “challenging”.
“The US has made very clear that for national security reasons, this is an area where the it wants to maintain and protect US production,” he told EU lawmakers.
The commissioner also said that despite the Turnberry agreement, trade relations between the EU and the US would remain “at high risk of volatility”, pointing to Trump’s public threats to EU countries who impose a digital tax on US big tech companies.
‘Cheer up, you caught the bad guy,’ says killer Virginia McCullough as she is arrested for murdering her parents
A woman who murdered her parents “in cold blood” before hiding them in makeshift tombs for four years told officers to “cheer up, you caught the bad guy” as she was arrested in her home.
Virginia McCullough, 36, poisoned her father John McCullough, 70, with prescription medication and fatally stabbed her mother Lois McCullough, 71, shortly afterwards in 2019.
She ran up large debts on credit cards in her parents’ names and after their deaths, she continued to spend their pensions until she was finally caught in 2023.
In body-worn video footage released by police, a handcuffed – and eerily calm – McCullough told officers: “I did know that this would kind of come eventually.
“It’s proper that I serve my punishment.”
She said she had slipped something into her father’s drink then put his body under a bed on the ground floor, and put her mother’s body in an upstairs wardrobe.
McCullough, having been arrested on suspicion of double murder, told an officer: “Cheer up, at least you’ve caught the bad guy.”
She added: “I know I don’t seem 100% evil.”
At the police station, she told officers where a kitchen knife was, which she described as a “murder weapon”, and a hammer which she said “will still have blood on it”.
McCullough, of Pump Hill, Chelmsford, Essex, was sentenced to life imprisonment on Friday with a minimum term of 36 years at Chelmsford Crown Court, after she admitted to their murders between 17 and 20 June 2019 at an earlier hearing at the same court.
Chelmsford Crown Court heard how she hid their bodies in makeshift tombs at the family home in Great Baddow in Essex, then told persistent lies to cover her tracks.
The court heard she cancelled family arrangements and frequently told doctors and relatives her parents were unwell, on holiday or away on lengthy trips.
But concerns over Mr and Mrs McCullough’s welfare were raised in September 2023 by a GP at their registered practice, and Essex County Council’s safeguarding team referred these to police.
The GP had not seen the couple for some time and said Mr McCullough had failed to collect medication and attend scheduled appointments. It was found McCullough had frequently cancelled appointments, using a range of excuses to explain her father’s absence.
Police said a missing persons investigation was initially launched and McCullough lied to officers, claiming her parents were travelling and would be returning in October.
It became a murder investigation, and when officers forced entry to the house in Pump Hill on September 15 2023, McCullough confessed that her parents’ bodies were in the house and that she had killed them.
Nicola Rice, a specialist prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service, said: “McCullough callously and viciously killed both of her parents before concealing their bodies in makeshift tombs within their home address.
“She spent the next four years manipulating and lying to family members, medical staff, financial institutions, and the police, spending her parents’ money and accruing large debts in their name.”
She added: “This was a truly disturbing case, which has left behind it a trail of devastation, and I can only hope that the sentence passed today will help those who loved and cared for Lois and John begin to heal.”
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Defense alliance NATO chief Mark Rutte has met US President-elect Donald Trump to discuss global security issues, according to a NATO spokesperson.
The meeting took place in Palm Beach, Florida.
During his first term as US president, 2017-2020, Trump pushed for European NATO countries to spend more on defense and described the alliance’s cost-sharing as unfair to the US.
Rutte took over as NATO chief from Norwegian Jens Stoltenberg in November.
Before taking office in January, Trump has nominated Pete Hegseth for the post of defense secretary, which has raised eyebrows among many allies.
Hegseth, 44, has served as an infantry captain in Iraq and Afghanistan, but has no senior military or government officer experience.
Multiple missiles were fired in an airstrike towards a densely populated part of Lebanon’s capital early on Saturday.
The huge airstrike targeted Beirut’s Basta neighbourhood, and no prior warnings were given by the Israeli military. The largely residential area was struck last month.
At least one violent explosion was heard across the city, Reuters witnesses said, and plumes of smoke could be seen. Scenes of massive destruction at the site were shared online, including a massive crater in the ground.
“Beirut, the capital, woke up to a horrific massacre, as the Israeli enemy’s air force completely destroyed an eight-story residential building with five missiles on Al-Mamoun Street in Basta,” the state-run National News Agency reported.
The health ministry put the initial death toll at four, with 23 wounded. The number is expected to climb in the coming hours as search and rescue efforts continue.
It came after a long day of Israeli airstrikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs, which have been non-stop since last week.
The cross-border fighting between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group escalated into a full-blown war in mid-September.
Israel has bombed southern Lebanon, Beirut’s southern suburbs and the eastern Beqaa region, and has sent ground troops across the border. Hezbollah has continued to fire rockets deeper into Israel.
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