Host: The US says it's studying a troop reduction in Germany — a move that would reshape European defence and put fresh pressure on British military planning. Hungary's new leader arrives in Brussels promising a fresh start. Experts say Europe needs to tax alcohol and junk food much harder to stop hundreds of thousands of liver-disease deaths — and the UK's own alcohol duty review is caught up in the same debate. And a Swedish court case shows what happens when a city hands school admissions to an algorithm. From London, this is Europa Daily. I'm [HOST].

Host: We begin with a threat that, if carried out, would force a fundamental rethink of European security — Britain's included. Donald Trump has announced that his administration is, in his words, 'studying and reviewing the possible reduction of troops in Germany, with a determination to be made over the next short period of time.' He made the announcement on his Truth Social platform.

Correspondent: What's striking here is how a disagreement over Iran diplomacy escalated into a concrete security threat aimed at the core of the transatlantic alliance. Chancellor Merz's comment — that the US was being 'humiliated' by Iran — was unusually direct for a German leader. Trump's response moved the confrontation into entirely different territory: not a war of words, but a stated review of military deployments. The language — 'studying and reviewing' with a determination in 'the next short period of time' — leaves deliberate ambiguity about whether this is leverage or genuine intent.

Host: Germany hosts roughly 35,000 US troops — the backbone of NATO's European deterrence. This is a row between Washington and Berlin, but any reduction in those forces would have consequences well beyond the two countries. British defence planning assumes that US forward-basing in Germany underpins the whole of NATO's eastern flank. If those numbers fall, the burden-sharing conversation that London is already having with Berlin and Paris becomes considerably more urgent. Poland, the Baltic states, and Romania depend on those troops as a rapid-reaction reserve. This isn't a bilateral spat — it's a question for every European defence ministry, Whitehall very much included.

Host: To Brussels now, where Hungary's incoming prime minister Péter Magyar has arrived for his first meetings with EU leaders since his Tisza party won a landslide election. And he came with a confident message: the frozen EU funds earmarked for Hungary will be paid out soon. That is a bold claim. Roughly thirty billion euros in EU money have been held back from Budapest under the bloc's rule-of-law conditionality mechanism — the sharpest test yet of whether that tool actually bites. Magyar's visit is an attempt to reset the relationship. He's meeting EU leaders for the first time as the incoming head of government, and his pitch is that a new political reality in Budapest should unlock the money. Whether Brussels agrees will set a precedent that matters well beyond Hungary — not least as negotiations over the EU's next long-term budget get under way, with net contributors like Germany and the Netherlands watching closely.

Host: Now to a report that puts a stark number on a continent-wide health crisis. Liver disease kills 284,000 people a year across Europe, and a new expert report says governments should impose much higher taxes on alcohol and unhealthy food to bring that number down. The report calls for tough action to combat what it describes as an 'escalating and unsustainable burden' of liver-related illness. Its central recommendation is blunt: taxes on alcohol and junk food should rise sharply enough that the revenue raised covers the full costs these products impose on health services, the criminal justice system, and social services. For anyone following the UK's own alcohol duty review — still very much live domestic politics — the report's recommendations map directly onto that debate. But there's a catch that makes this inherently a coordination problem: unilateral tax rises are undercut when consumers simply buy cheaper elsewhere. The Calais booze run is the obvious British example; Danes buying in Germany is another. Piecemeal national action, the report argues, isn't enough.

Host: Finally, a story from Sweden that should be required reading for any European city thinking about handing public decisions to a computer — and that includes plenty of councils in Britain. In 2020, the city of Gothenburg used an algorithm for the first time to allocate places in its schools. The idea was straightforward: working out geographical catchment areas and admissions is an administrative headache for any local authority. A machine could optimise distances, preferences, and capacity — neutral, streamlined, objective. That was the promise. The reality, according to Charlotta Kronblad, a researcher at the University of Gothenburg who has written about the case, was chaos. The system was designed to serve public efficiency, but the resulting allocations disrupted families and communities. Kronblad took the algorithm to court. She lost. Her account is a striking illustration of how unaccountable these systems can be. As she puts it, we like to imagine that injustice announces itself loudly — that when something goes wrong in a public system, alarms go off and someone takes responsibility. In Gothenburg, injustice arrived quietly, disguised as efficiency. The timing matters. The EU's AI Act, which classifies public-sector algorithms affecting education as 'high risk,' is now entering its enforcement phase. Britain is developing its own AI governance framework outside those rules — a divergent path that makes Sweden's experience a particularly pointed comparison. Municipal algorithms for school places, benefits, and housing are proliferating everywhere. What happened in Gothenburg could just as easily happen in Manchester or Birmingham next.

Host: That is Europa Daily for today. Troop numbers, frozen billions, liver disease, and an algorithm that beat a citizen in court — a full morning. We're back tomorrow. Until then, thanks for listening.

Sources

• The Guardian Europe: I took an algorithm to court in Sweden. The algorithm won | Charlotta Kronblad
• Sky News World: Trump threatens to withdraw troops from Germany
• The Guardian Europe: Trump threatens to reduce troop numbers in Germany amid growing row with Nato allies
• DW World: Trump threatens US troop cuts in Germany
• The Guardian Europe: Raise tax on alcohol and junk food to cut deaths from liver disease, experts say
• BBC Europe: Hungary's next PM says frozen EU funds will be paid out soon