US president Donald Trump will not be a knockout “meteor” to Ireland’s economy despite its heavy reliance on US multinationals, the head of the country’s business trade organisation has said.

While the US president told world leaders gathered at Davos last week that “Europe treats us very, very unfairly” there is a heightened sense of nervousness in Ireland that this could translate to an attempt to repatriate jobs and taxes from the 950 US companies there.

One of the sectors viewed as particularly vulnerable to Trump is the pharmaceutical industry, with big players such as Pfizer manufacturing drugs in Ireland and exporting them back to the US while booking profits in Ireland.

Danny McCoy, the chief executive of the Irish Business and Employers Confederation, said the near panic in some circles was unwarranted.

“People are saying that what Trump is proposing means we are going to lose our business model. I just don’t believe that at all. I do not share the idea that one thing is going to knock out the economy like a meteor,” McCoy added.

Lisa O’Carroll has this report from Dublin.

The Italian data protection authority has started inquiries into the use of personal data by the AI chatbot of Chinese startup DeepSeek, amid concerns over “the potential high risk for the data of millions of people in Italy.”

The Garante has asked the company for more information on “what is the legal basis of the processing (of the data), and whether it is stored on servers located in China,” as well as details on how the model was trained.

The Italian watchdog has a history of getting involved with emerging technology at an early stage.

In 2013, it temporarily blocked ChatGPT over privacy concerns, becoming the first Western country to take such action, and in December it fined OpenAI 15 million euros over its use of personal data, AFP notes.

French budget talks were on the verge of collapse on Wednesday, a day after Socialist party officials suspended their participation in protest over remarks about immigration by prime minister François Bayrou, Reuters reports.

In a television interview on Monday, Bayrou referred to “a feeling of invasion” by immigrants.

“We suspended our negotiations because the words from the prime minister were not dignified,” Philippe Brun, a Socialist lawmaker involved in the budget talks, said in an interview with Sud Radio on Wednesday.

He said he hoped the talks would resume.

Without the support of the Socialists, Bayrou may not have enough support to advance his budget and take steps to trim the deficit as called for by EU officials, Reuters notes.

And here is your daily update on the latest in Ukraine.

Russian president calls Ukrainian counterpart ‘illegitimate’; Zelenskyy says government will try to replace suspended US aid.

Here is what we know on 1,071 day of the war.

Greenlanders are overwhelmingly against the idea of coming under the US control, despite increasingly assertive rhetoric from US president Donald Trump that he would want to “get” the island.

A new poll, published by Danish newspaper Berlingske and Greenland’s Sermitsiaq, said that 85% were against, with just 6% in favour. 9% had no preference.

The survey comes just a day after Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen met with German chancellor Olaf Scholz, French president Emmanuel Macron and Nato secretary general Mark Rutte to rally the support for her government’s position on Greenland.

Quoted by TV2, Frederiksen reacted to the poll by insisting that it is up to Greenlanders to decide their future, but that she was happy to see what she saw as high support for further “close cooperation” with Denmark.

Earlier this month, an amateur poll conducted by two students, and now debunked by Danish media as disinformation, got some traction after it suggested the opposite result. Berlingske has an investigation into how it spread, saying it got some help from the Russian media.

Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić hinted at the possibility of a snap election in April after the resignation of his prime minister, Miloš Vučević, on Tuesday.

Vučević’s resignation came after months of nationwide protests, which began after 15 people were killed when part of the canopy roof came crashing down on 1 November, a disaster blamed on rampant corruption.

Speaking to the press last night, president Vučić said his party would take 10 days to decide whether to form a new government or hold a snap parliamentary election, which he said could come as early as April.

Vučic’s Serbian Progressive party won a comfortable victory in parliamentary elections in December 2023, but government critics said the vote was fraudulent, while international observers found “instances of serious irregularities, including vote-buying and ballot-box stuffing.

The president also dismissed the protesting students’s proposals for an interim government, made up of experts and university professors.

His response is likely to fail to placate the public anger, with Lazar Stojaković of the Faculty for Organisational Science at Belgrade University capturing the students’ frustrations in a social media post:

“Those who have been fuelling tensions for the past 13 years are now trying to defuse tensions. It is not going to work … See you in the streets again.”

Morning opening: The German firewall is crumbling

Jakub Krupa

Friedrich Merz, favourite to become the next German chancellor, will bring proposals to radically change asylum and immigration laws before parliament today, even if they end up being passed with the support of Alternative für Deutschland.

As our Berlin correspondent, Kate Connolly, explains, Merz has been accused of shifting his position on the country’s “firewall” against the far-right party with the proposed law change, which would aim to dramatically increase the number of deportations.

The proposals include effectively closing German land borders to irregular migration and allowing the federal police to request arrest warrants for people who do not have the legal right to remain in Germany. Critics say the proposals could break European law.

The policy shift follows an attack in Aschaffenburg last week in which a two-year-old child and a 41-year-old man were stabbed to death by an asylum seeker from Afghanistan who had been scheduled for deportation. Chancellor Scholz will speak about the attack today, too.

On Tuesday night, the German Catholic and Protestant churches warned against Merz’s plan, saying in a letter seen by Reuters that “the timing and the tone of the debate appear deeply strange to us,” and worrying that the move could “defame all migrants living in Germany, stir up prejudices, and does not contribute to solving the real issues.”

The joint letter warned against dropping the firewall against the far-right, saying: “We fear that German democracy will suffer massive damage if this political promise is abandoned.”

Separately, over the weekend, tens of thousands of Germans took to the streets to demonstrate against the far-right and to denounce Merz’s plans.

However, less than four weeks before the elections on 23 February, their calls are likely to fall on deaf ears as toughening the language on migration is seen as necessary to secure the best possible result at the polls.

On Monday, Merz said: “There are 40,000 asylum applicants who need to be deported. A local politician told me this weekend that there are ticking timebombs walking around our towns and communities.”

His senior ally, Thorsten Frei, told reporters: “We are at a point where we have to depart from tactical considerations. We have to do things that have to be done.”

All of this is to come as part of what was supposed to be a sombre and reflective sitting of the German parliament, opening at midday with a ceremony to mark the Holocaust Memorial Day. Given the many warnings from survivors about the rise of the far-right movements in Europe, it feels wrong and weirdly apt at the same time.

I will bring you the latest on this throughout the day.

We will also take a look at the latest in Serbia, Italy, Ireland, Ukraine, and, of course, Denmark and Greenland. Much more to come during the day, no doubt.

It’s Wednesday, 29 January 2025, and this is Europe live. It’s Jakub Krupa here.

Good morning.