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The navigation system of a plane carrying Ursula von der Leyen was disrupted due to suspected Russian interference, the European Commission has said.

A spokesperson said the “GPS jamming” happened while the Commission president was about to arrive in southern Bulgaria on Sunday, but she still landed safely.

They added: “We have received information from the Bulgarian authorities that they suspect that this was due to blatant interference by Russia.”

The Financial Times, citing unnamed officials, reported that von der Leyen’s plane had to land at Plovdiv Airport with the pilots using paper maps.

The European Commission said “threats and intimidation are a regular component of Russia’s hostile actions” and that the incident would reinforce its commitment to “ramp up our defence capabilities and support for Ukraine”.

The EU will deploy additional satellites into low Earth orbit with the aim of bolstering its ability to detect GPS interference, the bloc’s Defence Commissioner Andrius Kubilius said following the incident.

The Bulgarian government confirmed that, during the flight, “the satellite signal transmitting information to the plane’s GPS navigation system was neutralised”.

The statement continued: “To ensure the flight’s safety, air control services immediately offered an alternative landing method using terrestrial navigation tools.”

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told the FT that its information was “incorrect”.

The Bulgarian Air Traffic Services Authority said there had been a “noticeable increase” in GPS incidents, including jamming, since February 2022 – when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Tens of thousands of incidents of jamming have been reported by airlines operating around the Baltic coast in the last few years. The three Baltic nations – Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia – are bookended by Russian territory.

In March 2024, an RAF plane carrying the UK’s then-Defence Secretary Grant Schapps reported a spoofing incident – in which legitimate signals are replaced with fake ones, indicating a false location.

The plane, which had been flying near the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, which sits between Poland and Lithuania, was able to continue its journey safely.

The issue has become so prevalent that the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and the International Air Transport Association (IATA) convened a special conference in 2024 to discuss spoofing incidents – warning they could “pose significant challenges to aviation safety”.

Moscow regularly denies accusations of interference or attacks on commercial aviation, and no proven link has yet been established between Russia and the rise in GPS jamming.

But European governments and experts regularly blame Russia, claiming such practices fit with an alleged Kremlin strategy to generally sow disorder and undermine European security.

While planes can rely on other forms of navigation than GPS, jamming it mid-flight can increase the risk of collisions – either with other planes or by causing the pilot to unintentionally fly into the ground, water or other obstacle.

Keir Giles, a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia Programme, told the BBC such interference had indeed become a “constant feature” of flying near Russia, disrupting time and positioning services that had “previously been taken for granted”.

“They have gone from isolated incidents to being normalised,” he said, adding that “no one has been willing or able” to convince Moscow to stop an expanding “campaign of interference”.

Von der Leyen was visiting Bulgaria as part of a tour of eastern EU states to discuss defence readiness.

A Commission spokesperson said she had “seen first hand the every day threats from Russia and its proxies” during the tour.

United States President Donald Trump is scheduled to hold crunch talks with European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen in Scotland after weeks of intense trade talks between the two sides as Brussels aims to ink a deal with Washington to avoid a transatlantic trade war.

Von der Leyen, the European Commission president, will meet with the US president at his Turnberry golf club in Scotland on Sunday. European ministers are hoping the meeting will result in a deal to avoid the 30 percent tariffs that Trump has threatened on EU goods.

According to people involved in the talks, European negotiators are aiming for tariffs to be set at 15 percent. Trump told reporters on Friday that the bloc “want[s] to make a deal very badly”.

On July 12, Trump threatened to impose the 30 percent tariffs if no agreement could be secured by his deadline, which expires on Friday. That would come on top of the 25 percent tariffs on cars and car parts and 50 percent levies on steel and aluminium already in place.

The EU, Washington’s biggest trading partner, has been a frequent target of Trump’s escalating trade rhetoric with the president accusing the bloc of “ripping off” the US.

In 2024, EU exports to the US totalled 532 billion euros ($603bn). Pharmaceuticals, car parts and industrial chemicals were among the largest exports, according to EU data.

Will the Trump-von der Leyen meeting achieve a breakthrough and end the uncertainty in transatlantic trade ties?

What are the main differences between the two sides?

The US president told reporters at Turnberry on Friday that there are “20 sticking points”.

When asked what they were, he said: “Well, I don’t want to tell you what the sticking points are.”

At the same time, he described von der Leyen as a “highly respected woman” and predicted their meeting on Sunday would be “good”, rating the chances of a deal as “50-50”.

On the European side, it is understood that a growing number of EU countries are calling for Brussels to push ahead with an already prepared retaliatory tariffs package on 90 billion euros ($109bn) of US goods, including car parts and bourbon, if talks break down.

The two sides, which traded 1.6 trillion euros ($1.8 trillion) in goods and services  in 2023, have been negotiating since April 9 when Trump paused what he calls his “reciprocal” tariffs, which he placed on nearly all countries.

During that time, the US has been charging a flat 10 percent levy on all EU products as well as 25 percent on cars and 50 percent on steel and aluminium.

This month, EU Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic said: “We have to protect the EU economy, and we need to go for these rebalancing measures.”

Still, the bloc is understood to be rife with disagreement over  trade policies with the US. While Germany has urged a quick deal to safeguard its industries, other EU members, particularly France, have insisted EU negotiators must not cave in to an asymmetrical deal that favours the US.

On Saturday, von der Leyen spokesperson Paula Pinho said: “Intensive negotiations at technical and political [level] have been ongoing between the EU and US. Leaders will now take stock and consider the scope for a balanced outcome that provides stability and predictability for businesses and consumers on both sides of the Atlantic.”

What have the US and EU traded with each other?

In 2024, the US-EU goods trade reached nearly $1 trillion, making the EU the single largest trading partner of the US.

In total, the US bought $235.6bn more in goods than it sold to the 27 countries that make up the EU. On the other hand, the US earned a surplus on services trade with the EU.

The US mainly bought pharmaceutical products from the EU as well as mechanical appliances, cars and other nonrailway vehicles – totalling roughly $606bn.

The US exported fuel, pharmaceutical products, machinery and aircraft to the EU to the tune of $370bn.

Why have they struggled to ink a deal so far?

Like all the nations the US runs a trade deficit with, Trump has long accused the EU of swindling his country and is determined that Brussels adopt measures to lower its goods trade surplus with the US.

Washington has repeatedly raised concerns over Europe’s value-added tax as well as its regulations on food exports and IT services. Trump has argued that these controls act as nontariff trade barriers.

Indeed, Sefcovic recently told the Financial Times that he wants to reduce the US-EU trade deficit by buying more US gas, weapons and farm products.

And while European leaders want the lowest tariffs possible, they “also want to be respected as the partners that we are”, French President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday.

On July 14, meanwhile, Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen told reporters in Brussels that “we should prepare to be ready to use all the tools”.

He added: “If you want peace, you have to prepare for war.” Negotiators in Scotland are hoping it doesn’t come to that.

This month, Oxford Economics, an economic forecasting consultancy, estimated that a 30 percent tariff could push the EU “to the edge of recession”.

Countermeasures from the EU would also hit certain US industries hard. European tariffs could reduce US farmers’ and auto workers’ incomes, which are key Trump constituencies.

May 14 (UPI) — The European Court of Justice Wednesday ruled there was no plausible reason to block The New York Times from getting European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s texts with a Pfizer executive.

The commission blocked the texts from being released to the newspaper, claiming it did not hold them.

“The Commission decision refusing a journalist of The New York Times access to the text messages exchanged between President von der Leyen and the CEO of Pfizer is annulled,” the court ruling said.

The court said Matina Stevi, a journalist with The New York Times, requested access to all text messages between von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla between Jan. 1, 2021, and May 11, 2022.

The texts were secret messages before a multi-billion-dollar vaccine deal was reached between the European Union and Pfizer.

The commission rejected the request for the texts on the grounds that the commission did not hold the requested documents.

But the court ruling said Stevi and The New York Times “succeeded in rebutting the presumption of non-existence and of non-possession of the requested documents.”

The court added that the commission “has not given a plausible explanation to justify the non-possession of the requested documents.”

The court found the commission should have provided a more detailed explanation on why the documents were withheld.

The commission has the right to appeal the decision.

“The commission will now closely study the General Court’s decision and decide on next steps. To this effect, the Commission will adopt a new decision providing a more detailed explanation,” it said in a statement.

“Transparency has always been of paramount importance for the commission and President von der Leyen. We will continue to strictly abide by the solid legal framework in place to enforce our obligations.”

HEC Paris Business School law professor Alberto Alemanno said the court decision would enhance accountability for EU leaders.

“This judgment provides a fresh reminder that the EU is governed by the rule of law, with its leaders subject to the constant scrutiny of free media and of an independent court,” Alemanno said.

Dutch MEP Raquel Garcia Hermida-van der Walle called the court decision a “slam dunk for transparency.”

“People just want and are allowed to know how decisions are made, it is essential in a democracy. Even if it was done over a text message,” she said.