Bloomberg -  William Horobin and Alexander Weber/ French and Spanish Growth Beats Forecasts in Boost for Euro Area

• France and Spain each delivered stronger-than-anticipated growth in the second quarter, suggesting their economies are showing resilience in the face of high interest rates. 

• French gross domestic product rose 0.3% in the three months through June. The Spanish economy grew 0.8%. Both of those outcomes match the result in the first quarter and exceed the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg. 

• The GDP readings for the euro area’s second and fourth-largest economies provide some reassurance in advance of data for the entire region later on Tuesday that are expected to show growth slowed slightly, with weaker momentum in Italy and Germany.  

• The overall outcome for the region is forecast by economists to have held steady in July at 2.5%, still noticeably above the ECB’s 2% goal. 
   

Politico – Aitor Hernández Morales / EU diplomats, skeptical on Maduro’s election victory, to meet Tuesday

• European diplomats will on Tuesday discuss President Nicolás Maduro’s self-proclaimed victory in Venezuela’s presidential election as leaders around the world decline to recognize his reelection. 

• Against a backdrop of widespread skepticism around the veracity of Maduro’s party’s claim to have won 51 percent of votes, and calls by many for a transparent counting of the ballots, the European Council’s Working Party on Latin America and the Caribbean will meet at 10 a.m. Brussels time. 

• With Venezuela’s opposition accusing Maduro’s regime of attempting to steal the election, national leaders in Europe largely avoided commenting on the disputed vote, and instead tasked their foreign ministers with delivering official reactions. 

• European leaders were not alone in expressing doubts over Maduro’s reelection. U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken similarly called for a “fair and transparent” vote tally, and within the region Chilean president Gabriel Boric said the victory was “difficult to believe.” He added that his country could not recognize “any result that is not verifiable.”
   

South China Morning Post -  Sylvie Zhuang and Lawrence Chung / Mainland China and Taiwan reach deal to resolve crisis over fishing crew deaths near Quemoy  

• Mainland China and Taiwan have reached a deal over the deaths of two mainland fishermen in February, agreeing to compensate the victims’ families and repatriate the bodies of the two men. 

• The agreement broke a political stalemate and ended months of finger-pointing between the two sides, which had not officially met to resolve the incident since March.

• The men drowned after their boat capsized during a chase by the Taiwanese coastguard in waters off the Taiwanese defence outpost of Quemoy, also known as Kinmen, on February 14. 

• The incident added fuel to the flames of cross-strait relations, with the Taiwanese coastguard accusing the men of trespassing in restricted waters and mainland officials accusing the island’s authorities of “rough dispersal of the fishing boat”. 
   

The Guardian - Ajit Niranjan / Renewables overtake fossil fuels to provide 30% of EU electricity

•  Wind turbines and solar panels have overtaken fossil fuels to generate 30% of the European Union’s electricity in the first half of the year, a report has found.

• Power generation from burning coal, oil and gas fell 17% in the first six months of 2024 compared with the same period the year before, according to climate thinktank Ember. It found the continued shift away from polluting fuels has led to a one-third drop in the sector’s emissions since the first half of 2022.

• Europe is among the biggest historical polluters that have contributed the planet-heating gas that has made extreme weather more violent, but it also has some of the most ambitious targets to clean up its economy. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, European leaders have sped up their shift to renewables with stronger rhetoric and looser permitting rules. 

• But while solar power has boomed, the wind industry has struggled with high inflation on top of continued opposition from politicians and the public. The EU installed a record 16.2GW of new wind power capacity in 2023, according to the lobby group Wind Power Europe, but this was about half of what was needed that year to meet its climate targets for the end of the decade.
   

Our opinion reads for today:  

• Financial Times - Chris Miller / The global chip war could turn into a cloud war
• Foreign Affairs - Daniel Byman / Can Anyone Govern Gaza?