Closing summary
… and on that note, it’s a wrap from me, Jakub Krupa.
Here are the three things to take away from today’s Europe Live blog:
Former Swedish prime minister and opposition leader Magdalena Andersson has told the Guardian that the country’s gun laws should be changed after the mass shooting in Örebro, in which 11 people died, including the attacker (16:03). Earlier today, Swedish authorities confirmed that there are people of “multiple nationalities” among the victims (11:14) as they continue their investigations into the attack, the perpetrator, and his motive (11:11).
Greek authorities have introduced a state of emergency on the island of Santorini as tremors continue to hit the area. The measure is of administrative importance and should help coordinate civil protection response, but adds to fears about further earthquakes.
If you want to watch a live stream of Santorini shared on the local government’s website, you can do it here.
If you click on it, you can rewind the stream to enjoy a nice and peaceful sunset there in full. You will share it with the one person I have seen on that stream for the last three hours. Just saying.
New poll published just over two weeks before the German federal election on 23 February has shown that voters are increasingly concerned about the polarisation in the country and the political parties’ ability to form a coalition government after the vote amid growing divisions on immigration and the “firewall” against the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (16:31).
And that’s all from me, Jakub Krupa, for today.
See you again tomorrow.
If you have any tips, comments or suggestions, email me at jakub.krupa@theguardian.com.
I am also on Bluesky at @jakubkrupa.bsky.social and on X at @jakubkrupa.
Updated
State of emergency declared on Greek island of Santorini as tremors continue
in Athens
Greek civil protection authorities have declared a state of emergency on Santorini to meet the urgent needs “and consequences that have arisen since the seismic activity began.”
The emergency measures, declared by the island’s town hall, come hours after seismologists recorded a 5.2 magnitude earthquake – the most powerful tremor to be felt on Santorini since the first of an estimated 7,700 temblors were registered last week.
The measures, which are expected to see the army take a more active role in crisis management, will be in effect until Monday, 3 March when the Orthodox nation marks the beginning of Lent.
“It’s what we need to deal with this situation and we requested that it be enforced,” said Santorini’s mayor Nikos Zorzos.
With experts speaking of a geological phenomenon that could last weeks, fatigued locals continued to leave the island with ever more likening the exodus to “an unofficial mass evacuation.”
Over 12,000 people have fled by boat and plane since the barrage of tremors intensified at the weekend with few tourists now believed to be on the outpost. By Thursday Santorini’s main hilltop settlement – the biggest draw on an island that attracted 3.5 million tourists last year – resembled a ghost town, its shops shuttered, its narrow streets tapered off by police fearing ever more rock slides.
Government officials said prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis would also be visiting the island on Friday in what was described as “a show of solidarity.” Others said the move also underscored just how serious the situation now is.
Late Thursday trucks could be seen disembarking from ferries loaded with generators. In a further sign of emergency services being relocated to the island, it was announced that social workers and psychologists would also be dispatched to Santorini.
Experts are divided as to whether last night’s 5.2 earthquake is a precursor to a much more powerful tremor – one that could trigger a tsunami – or a sign that the seismic buildup is on the wane.
Baltics count down hours until disconnecting Russian power grid
Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are set to disconnect from the Russian power grid over the weekend.
A giant digital clock in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, is counting down the hours until the states join the western European power grid.
“We are now removing Russia’s ability to use the electricity system as a tool of geopolitical blackmail,” Lithuania’s energy minister Žygimantas Vaičiūnas told AFP.
Latvia will physically cut a power line to Russia on Saturday and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen is to attend a ceremony with Baltic leaders in Vilnius on Sunday.
After the Baltic states disconnect from the Russian power grid at 7am GMT on Saturday, the three countries will operate in so-called “isolated mode” for about 24 hours to test their frequency, or power levels.
But some fear potential attempts to disrupt the switch, cyber-attacks or disinformation campaigns over the weekend.
Latvian president Edgars Rinkēvičs said yesterday that authorities could not rule out some kind of provocation, but were “on high alert” to respond to any incidents.
“Clearly there are risks, we understand that very well. But the risks are identified and there is a contingency plan in case these risks materialise,” prime minister Evika Siliņa added, quoted by the country’s public broadcaster, the LSM.
AFP notes that Poland’s power grid operator PSE said it will use helicopters and drones to patrol the connection with Lithuania.
Germans bitterly divided on voting with AfD, worry about ability to form future coalition government - poll analysis
Earlier this week, I told you about new polls looking at potential changes in voting intentions in Germany (9:54 yesterday) as a result of the CDU/CSU’s hardline stance on immigration and its move to vote together with the far-right Alternative für Deutschland.
Today’s ARD-DeutschlandTREND by infratest dimap, published just moments ago, suggests the Union may have actually gained one percentage point, with 31% of Germans declaring they will vote for them on 23 February. The AfD is second, at 21 (+1%), leaving Olaf Scholz’s SPD well behind at 15% (no change).
But these are all changes within the margin of error, so let’s not draw any conclusions from it, at least for now.
But there is more interesting nuggets in the poll: the party’s seeming acceptance of using the AfD votes to pass the migration proposals is seen as deeply divisive, with 50% Germans against, and 43% in favour.
Crucially for CDU/CSU chancellor candidate, Friedrich Merz, 62% of those intending to vote for his party are supportive of the approach. But 28% feel uneasy with accepting the AfD votes, even if they support the proposals. 7% reject both the proposals and the idea of using AfD votes to pass it.
The poll also asked Germans how they think about a potential government coalition involving the far-right party. The result suggests that the firewall arrangement is still holding up: such suggestion was outright rejected by two-thirds of voters, with just 28% seeing it as an acceptable outcome.
Among the SPD and the Greens voters, the 97% and 99% are against any such coalition, but curiously among the Union voters it’s down to 77%, with 19% actually considering this an option.
When asked who would be the best chancellor, the respondents showed little excitement for any of the candidates, ARD noted, but ultimately pointed to Merz (33%), followed by the Greens candidate Robert Habeck (26%) and the current SPD chancellor Olaf Scholz (25%). The AfD’s Alice Weidel was the choice of 18% of voters.
But in a data point that tells us most about the growing polarisation, more than two-thirds of the public are worried or very worried about the parties’ ability to form a new coalition government on the back of tensions over migration, a jump of 10 percentage points compared to last month’s poll.
Expect lots of volatility in the final weeks of the campaign, but we will bring you the latest every step and you can always follow our poll tracker, too.
Updated
Former Swedish PM calls for changes to gun, social media laws after Örebro attack
Our Nordic correspondent Miranda Bryant spoke with Sweden’s former prime minister and the leader of the main opposition Social Democrats, Magdalena Andersson, about the mass shooting in Örebro.
Andersson told the Guardian that the school in Örebro was known for having a diverse student body.
“We have to wait until the police investigation is finished to know anything about motive and also when they can say who this person was,” she said. “But what is well known is that this is a school with students from many parts of the world.”
Without the fast reaction of police, witnesses told her when she visited Örebro on Wednesday, the death toll could have been considerably higher.
The election in 2022 of Sweden’s Moderates-led coalition government, which depends on the support of the far-right Sweden Democrats, has led to increased anti-immigrant policies in Sweden, contributing to racist rhetoric and social polarisation.
Andersson said:
As a Social Democrat I have spent the last two years arguing that we need to keep together in our society. We have nothing to win from more division or more polarisation in our society. When we have done best in our country is when we have been able to stick together, work together and take care of each other.
She called for immediate reconsideration of gun laws. “What we already know is that there are too many guns that are available in our society, so we have to do something about that.”
She also called for EU action to curb social media platforms that she said served up far too much violence to young people and children.
Not only in Sweden but all over the world, there is too much materials on social media platforms that are romanticising violence. And the way the algorithm works, too many of our children, young people and others meet violence every day when they open their telephone.
Comment: Serbia’s students are showing the world how to restore democratic hope
As protests in Serbia continue, Adriana Zaharijević, a philosopher at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory at the University of Belgrade wrote a comment for Guardian Europe on how she sees the importance of the movement behind them.
The students have managed to rock a government that had for years either bought off the dignity of people or gagged and belittled those who dared speak truth to power.
All of a sudden, no “leader” can be found to be bribed, maligned or otherwise discredited with some vague insinuation of being a foreign hireling.
Crucially, the students’ response to violence is unmistakably nonviolent, something that profoundly destabilises the entire value system developed in Serbia for more than a decade.
Finland wants to ban Russians from buying real estate
The Finnish government wants to ban foreign citizens from countries waging a war of aggression or presenting a threat to Finland from buying real estate in the country, under a draft bill presented today.
But the country’s defence minister, Antti Häkkänen, was very clear that it is Russians who are the primary target of the new legislation.
In a press release published by his ministry, he said:
“The objective of this bill is to restrict the possibilities of Russians to buy real estate in Finland.
Russia poses a persistent security threat in Europe, and real estate can be exploited to exert hostile influence. Such activities can target the Finnish economy, infrastructure, businesses and security of supply or Finland’s capacity to provide security for its population.
We made this bill because we want to restrict all possible risks to the security of people in Finland.”
The ministry noted that the ban would not apply to people holding on permanent residence permits, as they would be covered under other procedure.
It also said that it will intensify checks to spot any suspicious transactions and attempts to circumvent the ban.
Finland, which shares a 1,340-kilometre (830-mile) eastern border with Russia last year blocked several real estate acquisitions by private individuals and companies linked to Russia, citing threats to national security, AFP notes.
The bill is expected to be progressed later this spring.
Chinese-founded online fashion giant Shein faces EU scrutiny
The European Union told online fashion giant Shein to hand over information on risks linked to illegal products on its site, paving the way for a second probe into the Chinese-founded firm, AFP reports.
The European Commission announced the request a day after confirming it was investigating the low-cost e-commerce platform for not abiding by the bloc’s consumer protection rules.
My colleague Jennifer Rankin has this report on the original investigation:
Further overnight shootings in Brussels as police urged to act against drug gangs
Yesterday we reported on a shooting in Anderlecht, Brussels and the police’s hunt for two suspects on the city’s underground network.
Belgian newspaper Le Soir has reported today that there were two further fire arms incidents in the city, with another shooting in the same area of Clémenceau metro station at around 3:35am last night.
One person was shot in the leg. A spokesperson for the public prosecutor’s office told the paper that the person had initially life-threatening injuries, but later stabilised in hospital.
Unlike Wednesday’s incident, metro traffic was not disrupted, though one entrance to the station has been closed, Belga news agency said.
The investigation is looking at whether there is any link between the two shootings in the same area within 24 hours, but they are all believed to be linked to drug trafficking.
Our latest report on mass shooting in Örebro
Nordics correspondent
People of several nationalities were among the 11 killed at a school in Sweden’s worst mass shooting, police have said.
Anna Bergkvist, who is heading the police investigation, told Agence France-Presse that people of “multiple nationalities, different genders and different ages” were among those killed by a lone gunman at Campus Risbergska, an adult education centre, in the city of Örebro on Tuesday.
Here’s what we know:
Spanish police takes on gang selling nonexistent puppies
Spanish police investigating an online gang, which swindled prospective puppy-buyers out of more than €150,000 (£125,000) by duping them into paying for nonexistent dogs and fictitious vets’ bills, have arrested six people and frozen 14 bank accounts.
Officers from the Policía Nacional began looking into the gang – which was based in the Basque province of Biscay but operated across Spain – and discovered it was fraudulently advertising mobile phones as well as pets.
After analysing 72 bank accounts and poring over information gleaned from 25 phone lines, officers identified 100 victims of the fraud across Spain, and learned that they had been cheated out of more than €150,000.
Sam Jones is in Madrid and has this story.
Earthquakes continue in Santorini
The Greek daily Kathimerini reports this morning that tremors continue in Santorini and neighbouring islands, with the strongest earthquake yet, of 5.2 magnitude, reported late last night.
Earlier, a burst of eight earthquakes occurred within 20 minutes.
But experts who met with the country’s prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis insist that residents should remain calm, even if they are likely to continue to experience tremors a bit longer.
Not everyone is keen on the risk, though, as many people continued leaving the islands for the mainland.
Updated
EU needs to assert its values to avoid being crushed by oligarchies and autocracies, Italian president warns
Italian president Sergio Mattarella warned last night that Europe needs to step up its activities and assert its values or it risks being squeezed by “oligarchies and autocracies” of the new emerging world order.
Speaking to students at the University of Aix-Marseille, he warned about the aggressive nature of Russian invasion on Ukraine, and the return of protectionism.
He said that “economic crisis, protectionism, distrust among global players” alongside “a dark resurgence of nationalism” led to the rise of nazism, fascism, and the second world war.
He warned against appeasement of aggressors, pointing to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, pointedly saying it had not worked in 1938 as it failed to prevent the war.
And talking about the future of the European Union, he said the bloc faced the choice of asserting its values and becoming a global superpower, or risking a fall into irrelevance and “being crushed between oligarchies and autocracies.”
“Europe appears to be at a crossroads, divided as it is between smaller states and states that have not yet full understood that they, too, are small in this new global situation,” he said.
He pointedly quoted the famous 1979 speech by the first woman to be the European Parliament president, Simone Veil, in which she said: “The frontiers of totalitarianism have spread so far that the islands of freedom are surrounded by regimes in which force prevails. Our Europe is one such island.”
“We need new ideas, not the application of old models to the new interests of a few,” he said.
French parliament passes 2025 budget
The French parliament on Thursday finally adopted the state’s 2025 budget following a tumultuous months-long process that saw the previous government toppled and the current administration survive multiple no confidence votes, AFP reports.
The upper house Senate, dominated by the right and centre-right, approved the budget with 219 votes for and 107 against. Prime minister François Bayrou forced the legislation through the lower house National Assembly earlier this week without a vote but then defeated ensuing no confidence votes.
Let’s take a brief look at events elsewhere in Europe.
We will return to Sweden if we get any further important updates.
Two people remain in intensive care - local authorities
Representatives of local authorities are now speaking at a separate press conference in Örebro, talking about their response to the incident.
They are still in early stages of looking at their actions. There is no timeline for reopening the school where the shooting took place to students.
Separately, a medical update was published in the last half hour with details on the six people hospitalised after the attack. Two of them are still in intensive care in “serious, but stable” condition.
'Multiple nationalities' among victims - police
Anna Bergqvist, who is heading the investigation, told AFP news agency that there were “multiple nationalities, different genders and different ages” among those who died Tuesday at an adult education centre.
What do we know after Swedish police conference on Örebro - summary
Swedish police said the scene of mass shooting in Örebro resembled “inferno” when officers arrived on scene within five minutes from the first report, with heavy smoke and casualties.
There has been no change to the death toll, with 11 dead, including the attacker. No update was offered on the six people hospitalised after the attack.
Police believe they know the attacker’s ID, but are finalising the DNA checks and won’t name him before that’s completed.
The attacker was founded dead with three weapons next to him and a “large” amount of unused ammunition. A fourth gun registered in his name was seized from another location. ‘Nothing to suggest’ there was more attackers.
Investigators refuse to speculate about the attacker’s motives as they continue their investigation.
No change to death toll
Speaking to reporters, local police chief Lars Wirén confirms there has been no change to the death toll, with 11 dead, including the attacker.
Syrian citizens among victims, Syrian Embassy in Stockholm says
The Syrian embassy in Stockholm said in a post on Facebook that it wanted to “extend condolences to victims, including Syrian citizens.”
Public broadcaster SVT says it has confirmed with the Syrian ambassador that at least one victim was Syrian.
We have approached the Swedish police for comment, but after the press conference they pointedly declined to respond to any questions on the identity of victims, saying that ID verifications are still on-going.
Updated
Police declines to speculate about attacker's motive
Speaking to reporters after the press conference, Örebro police chief Lars Wirén reasserts that police “do not know the motivation [of the attacker] yet,” and seeks to “get an answer through the investigation.”
Pushed that they may have an early idea about the motive, he says: “We are not going to talk about it yet, because we are not sure.”
Focus on getting full picture for public and relatives of victims, prosecutor says
Lead prosecutor Elisabeth Anderson told SVT that the focus of the investigation is on establishing as much as possible about the circumstances of the attack to be able to present a detailed picture to the public and the relatives of victims.
The press conference ends with no questions.
But police investigators are now giving interviews to individual media.
Will bring you more news lines when we have it.
Police believe they know shooter's ID
Investigators think they know who the shooter was, but will wait with confirming this until all formal procedures, involving the Swedish Board of Forensic Medicine, are completed.
They suggest he had a previous link with the campus, but are still looking to confirm this and establish his motive.
There are no definite answers yet, but the picture is starting to be clearer as the investigation progresses, they say.
Örebro shooting scene resembled inferno, police say
We’re hearing from local police chief Lars Wirén, who presents a summary of the emergency services’ response to the shooting.
Police arrived on scene within five minutes entering into what was described as a scene resembling “inferno” with heavy smoke making their intervention more difficult.
The perpetrator was found dead, with a “large” amount of unused ammunition next to him.
He had three out of four weapons registered to his name next to him, investigator Anna Bergqvist says.
Police still believe the attacked acted alone.
Swedish police press conference on Örebro shooting starts
We will bring you the key news lines shortly.
Here is a live stream in Swedish:
Key event
We will be turning to Sweden next, where we’re expecting a police press conference with the latest updates on the Örebro attack to start in a few minutes.
Italian migrant rescue group founder 'targeted with spyware'
The Italian founder of the NGO Mediterranea Saving Humans, who has been a vocal critic of Italy’s alleged complicity in abuses suffered by migrants in Libya, has revealed WhatsApp informed him his mobile phone was targeted by military-grade spyware made by the Israel-based company Paragon Solutions.
Luca Casarini, an activist whose organisation is estimated to have saved 2,000 people crossing the Mediterranean to Italy, is the most high profile person to come forward since WhatsApp announced last week that 90 journalists and other members of civil society had probably had their phones compromised by a government client using Paragon’s spyware.
Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Washington and Angela Giuffrida in Rome have this report.
UK prime minister expected to skip France's AI summit
And since we’re talking about France…
UK prime minister Keir Starmer has decided not to travel to Paris for next week’s international summit on artificial intelligence, despite the attendance of other world leaders including Emmanuel Macron, Narendra Modi and JD Vance.
Sources have told the Guardian that the prime minister will not attend the summit, the latest in a series of international AI conferences started by the former prime minister Rishi Sunak last year at Bletchley Park.
Officials say Starmer, who has been accused in the past of taking too many foreign trips, will be concentrating on his domestic agenda.
But by missing the Paris conference, Starmer risks upsetting the French president and the Indian prime minister, who are co-hosting, and missing out on a chance to speak to some of those closest to Donald Trump.
French PM Bayrou survives confidence vote over budget
As expected, the French prime minister, François Bayrou, has survived an initial confidence vote in parliament called for by the hard left, after the far-right National Rally (RN) and centre-left Socialists did not back the motion against him.
On Wednesday, 128 lawmakers voted in favour of the first motion of no confidence, well short of the 289 votes needed.
Kim Willsher is in Paris and has this report.
Swedish police press conference at 10am CET
We are expecting new updates from Örebro and Sweden today, with a press conference called for 10am (9am GMT). Notably, we will hear not only from the police but also from the public prosecutor’s office.
Overnight, Swedish media reported that more weapons had been found inside the school as part of the police investigation.
Media reports also named the suspect as Rickard Andersson, 35, a former student who lived locally, who had attended some maths classes at Risbergska some years ago and had been unemployed for a decade. Police did not confirm his identity but said the suspect had no known connection to criminal gangs. There was nothing, they said, to suggest he had acted on ideological grounds.
Let’s see if we hear more on this at the press conference. I will bring you the latest.
Morning opening: Merkel takes aim at Merz on migration, again
Former German chancellor Angela Merkel has repeated her criticism of the CDU/CSU leader and frontrunner in this month’s parliamentary election, Friedrich Merz, saying she could not remain silent about his attempt to overhaul immigration laws with the votes of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland.
Speaking at a Die Zeit event last night, she said that while she was determined not to get involved in “normal political debates,” she found the issue of migration and the firewall against the far-right “of fundamental importance.”
Repeating her previous attack lines (which we reported on Europe Live last week), she said Merz’s actions risked making post-election coalition discussions more complicated and unnecessarily annoying voters. “There is a degree of polarisation (and) turmoil,” she warned.
“A state of affairs must now be found again in which compromises are possible, because it does not look as if any political grouping will get an absolute majority,” she said.
Merkel also rejected any notion that her actions at the height of the migration crisis in the mid-2010s contributed to the rise of the AfD, saying that the party polled at 11% when she left office. “The fact that it is now at 20% is no longer my responsibility,” she said.
But she accepted that more work needs to be done on “persuading” those required to leave the country, and progress should be made on digitising immigration records to speed up decision processes and removals.
A YouGov poll published yesterday showed that some of Merkel’s comments seem to be resonate with the broader public: three-quarters of eligible voters said that the parties in the democratic spectrum “have moved further apart,” and four out of five worried about what this could mean for future coalition talks.
But they also want something to be done on immigration and asylum policy, which came top on the list of issues of importance, mentioned by 35% of voters – way ahead of the economy (16%), environment (7%), and defence and security (6%).
There are just over two weeks between now and the election on 23 February.
We are expecting a flurry of new polls over the next 48 hours that would give us a better idea of who, if anyone, benefited from last week’s migration showdown.
No pressure. It’s only Europe’s largest economy at stake.
It’s Thursday, 6 February 2025, and this is Europe live. It’s Jakub Krupa here.
Good morning.
