European

France becomes the first European country to ban networks for children under 15 years of age. September will be the litmus test

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For years, opening an account on a social network has been as simple as writing an email, choosing a password and declaring a date of birth. In France, this routine is scheduled to change on September 1 for those under 15 years of age. The ban has already passed Parliamentbut turning it into something that works will require answering much more difficult questions: how to verify the age of users, what information they will be asked to prove it, and what will happen with services that do not only serve to publish photos or videos. That’s where the real test begins. An overwhelming majority. The decision was supported this Tuesday by the two French chambers: 243 senators voted in favor and only 2 againstwhile the National Assembly approved the text by 279 votes to 81. Emmanuel Macron, one of its main promoters, celebrated that France has become the first European country to approve a ban of this scope. The deployment is divided into two periods: new accounts will be banned from September 1 and the restriction will apply to existing ones from January 2027. Of course, the calendar may still be conditioned by the Constitutional Council. A ban without a closed list. The text does not list the affected platforms one by one, but refers to the European definitions of “online platform” and “online social networking service.” TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat appear as the clearest cases, but the border becomes less evident in YouTube, WhatsApp, Reddit or Roblox, where social functions coexist with other uses. As explained by representative Laure Millerin some cases the control will only reach certain tools. Digital encyclopedias and educational or scientific directories are expressly excluded. Platforms will take over. The text does not provide for fines or other sanctions for minors or their parents. The responsibility will fall on the companies, which must verify the age of their users, prevent new registrations that violate the limit and close the affected accounts when the transitional period ends. The Minister of Digital Affairs, Anne Le Hénanff, maintains that The deadline is realistic because verification tools already exist and others continue to be developed. September will be the litmus test. The date leaves the platforms just a few weeks of summer to convert the legal obligation into controls that work from the beginning of the course. The difficulty lies not only in detecting minors, but also in verifying that the rest of the users exceed the limit without creating a process that is impossible to manage. During the debate, several parliamentarians questioned that a system of this complexity could be operational so quickly and warned of possible ways to avoid it, taking the case of Australia as an example. Privacy is also at stake. Checking whether a person has turned 15 should not necessarily require them to reveal their entire identity. One of the alternatives proposed by the sector consists in transferring the verification to the phone itself, instead of requesting documents separately in each application. The approach seeks to reduce the circulation of personal information between different services, although the sources do not detail how it would work or what data each actor would keep. France must prevent access by minors without turning the solution into a new source of sensitive data. Spain prepares its own ban. Pedro Sánchez announced on February 3, 2026 that his Government would promote the prohibition of access to social networks for those under 16 years of age and would require effective age verification systems. The Executive explained earlier this month that had presented amendments to incorporate the measure into the Organic Law Project for the protection of minors in digital environments. At the time of writing this article, the initiative is still in the Congressional Justice Commission, in the report phase. Approving the text was just the beginning. France has been the first European country to bring such a ban to parliamentary approval, after Australia led the way on a global scale. Spain is in a different phase and its proposal can still change during processing, but the underlying problem is shared: transforming a minimum age into an effective control that is proportionate to privacy. Images | Pixabay | Mohamed Jamil Latrach In Xataka | The EU has hit AliExpress with a record fine. And make it clear that the next one could be even bigger.

The Komsomolets nuclear submarine sank in European waters almost 40 years ago. The issue is what still frees the sea

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Almost 1,700 meters under the Norwegian Sea lies something more than a sunken submarine. Inside the Komsomolets they continue the nuclear reactor that powered the ship and two torpedoes armed with nuclear warheadslocked in a wreck subjected to salt water, pressure and corrosion for decades. They did not get there because of a secret mission or a failed test, but after an accident that turned one of the great naval feats of the Soviet Union into a problem that we are still trying to understand. The history of the Komsomolets did not end when the hull hit bottom. The reactor releases radionuclides in sporadic episodes, a behavior that current studies have been able to observe and measure with much more precision than in the 1990s. These emissions have not caused a broad impact on the marine ecosystem so far, but the question remains open. Before becoming a flotsamas the remains of a sunken ship are called, the Komsomolets had been one of the most ambitious bets of Soviet naval engineering. It entered service in 1983 with a sturdy titanium helmet and the ability to operate at more than 1,000 meters depth, an exceptional level for a military submarine of its time. According to the BBC’s historical reconstructionNATO hoped that this model would inaugurate a new class of attack submarines, but the Soviet Union never built a second unit. The Soviet submarine that ended up becoming a problem at 1,700 meters deep On April 7, 1989, a fire started in one of her compartments while she was sailing in the Norwegian Sea. The crew managed to bring the ship to the surface, but the fire continued to spread and disabled several systems. About five hours later, the submarine sank. Five sailors tried to escape in a capsule that surfaced, but only one managed to abandon it before it filled with water. In total, 42 of the 69 crew members died. What remained on board may lead us to imagine a nuclear explosion, but current assessments they do not identify a spontaneous detonation as the relevant risk. Such an explosion demands that they work arming and initiation mechanisms with a very specific synchronization. The documented concern is that corrosion will end up allowing radioactive material to escape from the reactor or, in the future, from weapons. The containment intervention chosen years later did not consist of refloating the submarine, but rather isolating its most sensitive areas. In 1994, a Russian expedition used submersibles manned to seal the six torpedo tubes and some holes in the bow section with titanium plates. The objective was to reduce the circulation of water through the compartment where the warheads remained and limit an eventual release of plutonium. It was not a complete closure of the hull, but a containment measure that was still apparently intact when the wreck was inspected in 2019. Decades later, the return to the Komsomolets had a different objective: to observe and measure, not to reseal it. In 2019, a scientific expedition sent to the submarine Ægir 6000a remotely operated vehicle equipped with cameras, manipulator arms and sampling instruments. The robot traveled through different areas of the hull and collected water, sediment and organisms near the reactor and torpedo compartment. Thus it was possible to study the state of the wreck without exposing a human crew to those conditions. The results published this year in PNAS They concluded that the assemblies containing the nuclear fuel are damaged and that seawater has reached the reactor material. The analyzes link this deterioration with intermittent emissions of radionuclides, although researchers are still trying to determine the exact mechanisms that cause them. The highest concentrations appeared next to a ventilation shaft and a nearby grate, but the material dilutes quickly and there is little evidence of accumulation in the surroundings of the wreck. No evidence of military-grade plutonium from the warheads was found in the bow area either. Reaching the Komsomolets is not impossible: the submersibles of the 1990s and subsequent expeditions already demonstrated that work can be done at that depth. The difficulty is determining what action would provide a real improvement and what risks would be involved in intervening on a damaged nuclear structure. As explained by the Norwegian nuclear safety authority to the BBC, there are currently no plans for a new containment operation. The answer is still to go back, measure and monitor how a submarine that has been under the sea for almost four decades changes. Images | Norwegian Marine Research Institute In Xataka | The Norwegian colony that has taken over a town in Alicante and even has its own constitution: L’Alfas del Pi

Internxt is one of the best European alternatives to Google Drive

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There is life beyond Google Drive. It is the cloud service that many different users use because almost all of us use Google services daily. But, if you are looking for a European alternative, there are very interesting options to choose from. Especially if your priority is privacywhich is just what our TikTok colleagues are saying: we mean Internxt. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links A European cloud that includes VPN and antivirus We have already told you on another occasion about this European cloud service of Spanish origin. Internxt, as our colleagues explain, is a cloud service that focuses on offering maximum privacy for the data that is uploaded to its servers. The reason for this is that they use what is known as zero knowledge encryption. What does this mean? This means that the data you upload to the cloud (whether files, photos, videos, etc.) They are encrypted before being uploaded and not once they arrive in the cloud. This prevents anyone from intercepting the data along the way, making it a more secure process. In fact, not even Internxt itself can access this data. In addition to this, Internxt is an open source cloud service. That means anyone in the world can audit your code to look, for example, if there is some kind of backdoor to extract our data. This, which is great news from a transparency point of view, is not something that all cloud services offer. And how much does it cost? Internxt has three different subscriptions which we can pay in two ways: annually or a single payment to have the service for life. Using the code ‘XATAKA’, we can get any of these plans with a 90% discount, which is a real treat. The most economical of its plans, called Essential, includes 1 TB of storage and has a price of 0.99 euros per month or 190 euros if we choose the modality for life. The good news is that, in addition to cloud storage, we will have encrypted VPN and antivirus, so, if we have contracted these services separately, we can unsubscribe from them. Some of the links in this article are affiliated and may provide a benefit to Xataka. In case of non-availability, offers may vary. Images | Internxt In Xataka | Google Drive alternatives: the best cloud storage services for your files In Xataka | Best VPNs 2026: guide with the 17 best services to protect your online privacy

China conquered the European cheap tire market. The EU has just put the brakes on it

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The European Commission has approved antidumping tariffs definitive rates on tires for passenger cars and light vans from China, which range between 4.3% and 45.3% depending on the manufacturer. The measure comes after an investigation opened in November last year and adds another blow to the growing trade tension between the EU and Chinawhich already affects multiple sectors, including (and one of the most famous), that of electric cars. What has happened? The European Commission maintains that Chinese tires were entering the community market at artificially low prices, a practice known as dumping, and assures that this has harmed the European industry in the sector, which employs more than 80,000 people in 14 EU countries, according to has explained the institution itself. In detail. Tariffs are not the same for all manufacturers. Shandong Yongsheng Rubber Group, a producer focused on more economical tires, receives the highest tariff45.3%. Another 64 companies (including Chinese factories of brands such as Pirelli, Goodyear, Continental or Sumitomo) will have to pay 24.4%. The most striking case is perhaps that of the South Korean company Hankook, which manufactures in China but has escaped with a tariff of only 4.3%, since its researchers concluded that its tires are sold at much higher prices than those of its Chinese competitors and that their impact on the European market was less. Why does it matter? The European market for tires of this type moved more than 18,000 million euros in 2024, with a consumption of about 330 million units, according to data of the European Commission. Of them, almost 93 million came from China, which represents a market share of 28%, a percentage that has been growing strongly from 18% in 2021, according to collect Carscoops. The Commission itself states that indicators such as sales, employment or profitability of European manufacturers showed “a clear negative trend” during the period analyzed. Between the lines. More than 90% of imported Chinese tires are concentrated in the cheapest segment of the market, the so-called “tier 3”, according to data of the Coalition Against Unfair Tire Imports, the association of European manufacturers that filed the initial complaint. This organization assures that the dumping margins detected ranged between 41% and 104%, and that Chinese prices were below European prices by between 30% and 65%. To calculate whether there was dumping, the Commission needed to compare Chinese prices with reliable “reference” prices. The problem is that, according to Brussels, prices within China do not serve as a reference because the State has too much influence over companies in the sector. Therefore, the Commission has decided to use Turkish prices as a proxy to make that comparison. This decision has not pleased the Chinese producers or the South Korean companies Kumho Tire and Hankook, which they argue that Türkiye is not a valid example either, since it imports steel from Russia. The Commission, however, has rejected this argument and has maintained its choice. What China says. The Chinese Chamber of Commerce before the EU has warned that tariffs could place an additional cost burden on the automotive sector. In a statement Quoted by the South China Morning Post newspaper, the organization points out that tariff differences between manufacturers “may have implications for the competitive position of companies operating in the same market”, including European and Asian companies with plants in China. What does it mean for the pocket? According to calculations According to the German media Automobilwoche, tariffs are applied to the import value of the tire, not its final sales price. In 2024, this average value was 30.30 euros per unit. With the 45.3% tariff, the extra cost would be around 13.70 euros; with that of 24.4%, about 7.40 euros. Adding VAT, the increase for the buyer could be between 9 and 16 euros per tire, before the stores apply their own margins. And everything indicates that the entry segment will be the one that will notice the impact the most. And now what. This measure does not close the chapter between the EU and China in this sector. And there is also a parallel investigation for possible illegal subsidies to Chinese manufacturers, also focused on tires, whose conclusions are expected in December of this year. Citi analysts, cited by SCMP, consider that tariffs can help stabilize the European tire sector and anticipate a positive reaction on the stock market for manufacturers such as Goodyear, Michelin, Continental and Pirelli. Cover image | François Genon and Robert Laursoo In Xataka | The camera that watches you while you drive is already mandatory in new cars. And no one guarantees what happens with that data.

How to use ChatGPT on WhatsApp now that it is available again in the European Union

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Let’s explain to you how to use ChatGPT in WhatsAppusing the artificial intelligence created by OpenAI. It is about the ChatGPT official, the real one, and not any other bot that uses its technology. After arriving on WhatsApp in 2025, it had been retired, but is now available again for European users. You don’t need to register to use ChatGPT on WhatsApp. The only thing necessary will be to know the phone number linked to the AI ​​and send it messages as if it were any other contact. How to use ChatGPT on WhatsApp The first thing you have to do is open WhatsApp and start a new chat. This will take you to a screen where you will see all your contacts, and at the top you have to write the phone number 1-800-242-8478. This will make ChatGPT appear as a suggestion, and you just have to click on its name to start a chat without having to add it to your contacts. You can also add ChatGPT number to contacts so that it is easier to find it later. There’s even a QR code you can scan to open the chat directly. And now, you just have to talk to ChatGPT as if it were another contact. You don’t need to register, it will only tell you at the beginning that by using it you will accept its terms and conditions. ChatGPT will answer all the questions you ask and give you the information you ask for. It will also help you review or create texts, translate texts or give you advice on whatever you ask. You can also simulate a conversation by talking to him as if he were a normal person, and whatever you ask of him. In addition to this, you can also use voice messages in ChatGPT for WhatsAppsending him your prompt by voice or forwarding other people’s messages so they can give you a summary. Additionally, you can also send you photos so that it recognizes the content or extracts texts from them. In Xataka Basics | How to Improve ChatGPT Responses: 9 Steps to Ensure Higher Quality and Better Sources

Meta, Google and Microsoft will be able to continue tracking your messages until 2028. Despite the fact that the majority of the European Parliament voted against

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The European Parliament has once again given the green light for companies like Meta, Google or Microsoft to voluntarily track private conversations of its users looking for child sexual abuse material. The striking thing is that the decision is going to go ahead despite the fact that more MEPs have voted against it than in favor. What has happened? The European Chamber voted this Thursday on the extension of the so-called “ePrivacy exception”, a temporary rule that allows (but does not require) messaging platforms to scan chats, emails and social networks to detect already identified child abuse content. Although more deputies voted against this extension than in favor, the absolute majority of 361 votes necessary to overturn it has not been reached, so the rule remains in place until April 2028. Without absolute majority. Since this is a second reading, it is not enough for the “no” to win. It is necessary for 361 of the 720 MEPs to expressly vote against to block the regulations. If that number is not reached, the proposal goes ahead by default, even if the votes in favor are fewer than the votes against. It’s just what has happened. In detail. The original text, approved in 2021, had expired on April 3 after the European Parliament refused to extend it by 311 votes to 228, with 92 abstentions, according to collect Brussels Signal. To revive the proposal, the European People’s Party (EPP) resorted to an unusual emergency procedure, also promoted by the President of Parliament, Roberta Metsola, and by national governments. This shortcut has allowed the text to be voted on again in the last session before the summer, precisely when many parliamentarians are no longer present during these dates, according to explains the German medium Heise. The rejection proposal was 47 votes short of the necessary absolute majority. Before that final vote, MEPs have managed to approve two amendments that expressly exclude services with end-to-end encryption, such as WhatsApp or Signal, from being traced, as confirm Euronews. These amendments passed with 369 and 362 votes respectively. Between the lines. A good part of the social democratic group, including German MEP Birgit Sippel (the rapporteur on the file), voted in favor of limiting the scope of the rule, according to Euronews. However, that same group had previously facilitated the approval of the emergency procedure that made the entire maneuver possible, something that Heise describelike a previous transfer that has ended up playing against its own intentions. The European Commission has also actively lobbied, as four commissioners sent a last-minute letter warning of a legal loophole if the mechanism was not extended, according to collect Heise. The vice president of the EPP, Tomas Tobé, has defended that summer could not be reached “without tools to protect minors.” The critical voices. Simeon de Brouwer, advisor to the digital rights organization European Digital Rights, countedWired that the standard opens the door for companies to review, if they so choose, any message, email or image that a user shares. On the other hand, activist and former MEP Patrick Breyer has described the result as a “farce” that damages democracy, and has pointed out in a statement collected by Brussels Signal that the real losers of this process are the minors themselves. Breyer points to the European Commission’s own figures, indicating that mass scanning of private chats has only accounted for 36% of abuse reports in 2024. The majority came from public posts and cloud storage services. On the other hand, the German Federal Criminal Police (BKA) warns that 48% of the alerts generated lack criminal relevance, and that 40% of the resulting investigations end up pointing to minors. Furthermore, according to they point From Brussels Signal, 99% of the reports that Meta sends under this mechanism correspond to material already known previously, which provides little value in the face of cases of active abuse. From Heise they mention also to cybersecurity researchers who have warned in open letters of the high error rates of automated scanning systems based on AI, which would put the privacy of users at risk without any connection with crimes. And now what. This vote only extends the current system, which is temporary and not mandatory, since companies can scan messages if they want, but they do not have to do so by law. The permanent and much stricter regulations (known as Chat Control 2.0and which would require a widespread scan) is still being negotiated separately and has not yet been approved. Meanwhile, companies like Meta, Google or Microsoft will be able to continue scanning messages, emails and photos of their users until 2028, with the only exception of end-to-end encrypted conversations, such as those on WhatsApp or Signal. Cover image | Wikipedia, Pexels In Xataka | The camera that watches you while you drive is already mandatory in new cars. And no one guarantees what happens with that data.

After having avoided the worst of the great European heat wave, Spain has just launched the “Iberian oven”

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The countdown has begun. If we pay attention to the European weather forecast model, in Spain all the mechanisms have just been activated to find temperatures between 42 and 44 degrees in a good part of the center, west and south of the country. In recent years, rivers of ink have flowed about the idea of ​​the ‘Iberian oven’. Well, now we have it back. What exactly is the “Iberian oven”? Although we associate extreme heat with the eruptions of Saharan air masses, that is not usually the case. Not only because, no matter how hot the air arrives from Africa, it usually comes with suspended particles that block the maximums. But because we don’t need it: Spain has more than enough capacity to turn its own air into hell. And it happens a lot: usually when a mass of warm air (often combined with Saharan air) is blocked over the Peninsula. High pressures, clear skies, almost absolute stability… all of this causes the air to descend, compress and increase temperatures greatly. It is not uncommon for them to exceed 45 degrees in these situations. And is that going to affect us now? The forecast is quite clear: more than 40 degrees in the interior and west with anomalies of more than eight degrees above normal for this time of year. Between Sunday the 5th and Tuesday the 7th there will be peaks of up to 35 in the north. And none of that is going to be the most exasperating: the worst is going to be the nights that, in many places, are not going to drop below 25 degrees. Is it a “heat dome”? Well, the term ‘heat dome’ is a copy of the English “heat dome” and became fashionable after the 2021 pacific northwest episode. In addition to its ‘spectacularity’, it is usually used because it has no technical criteria behind it. Unlike heat waves, anything with a configuration slightly resembling a “heat dome” is a heat dome. Yes, yes, it will be; although it doesn’t help much that it is. Why should we care? Above all, because it is not an isolated event. Europe has not yet left the most severe heat wave on record. The dead are counted in the hundreds (orpossibly in the thousands). Continuing to chain extremely high temperatures is not good news. Image | Tropical Tidbits In Xataka | In 2014, French television imagined August 2050 as hell. This week’s heat wave has already overcome it

What is Eustella, prices and what you can do with the new European alternative to Claude, Gemini or ChatGPT but with agents

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Let’s tell you What is Eustella and how does it work? this European alternative to OpenClaw. It is an artificial intelligence assistant for Android and iOS, which is promoted with privacy as its flag by having all the data hosted on servers in the United States. We are going to start the article by explaining what this AI is and who is behind it. Then we will tell you all the things you can do with Eustellaand we will finish by telling you what the prices of their payment plans are. What is Eustella and who is behind it? Eustella is an artificial intelligence personal assistant created by a European company. Created in Europe for Europeans, says the Vienna-based company newsrooms.ai, which is responsible for this project. In essence, it is an AI assistant with agent capabilitiesso it offers several possibilities. This means that you can do two things with this AI. First of all, you can ask him any type of questions as you would with Claude, ChatGPT either Gemini. But secondly you can also ask him to perform tasks for you on your mobile device. Its big argument is that you maintain full control over your information, and that no profiles are built or AIs are trained with it. In addition to having been developed by an Austrian company, the data is hosted entirely in servers located in Europewhich are managed by the German company IONOS CLOUD. Of course, not even IONOS has access to user data, since the information is stored encrypted. Under the hood, we are going to find several artificial intelligence models. On the one hand we have European Mistral modelsbut also other open weight models such as Qwen 3.5/3.7 from Alibaba, Gemma 4 from Google, gpt-oss-120b from OpenAI and Flux from Black Forest Labs. Non-European models use them because they are open source and can be hosted in Europeno matter where they were trained. With this, Eustella does not depend on the closed APIs of the United States, and in fact explicitly avoids the use of proprietary APIs. In addition, developers intend to continue maintaining flexibility by integrating new open weight models as soon as they offer better results. How it works and what it can do You can use Eustella both in the browser and on the mobile. You can register and access the website eustella.com or access your app for Android. An iOS app will also be released soon. Therefore, even for its functions of AI agentusing it is as easy as installing an app. This AI seeks ease of use above all else. You will not have to install anything additional, you do not have to select or configure models or servers. You simply write and the bot will respond. As for its capabilities, the first thing is that Eustella works as an artificial intelligence chatbot. You can ask him any question and he will answer you by searching for information in the knowledge of his models or on the Internet. Furthermore, it also has deep investigation featuresadvanced search or answer specific questions about Eustella itself. Another of its functions is multimedia creation. Can generate images from scratch or modify existing ones. For that, it also has a vision mode, allowing you upload images to analyze them or extract text from them. It also has office functionsbeing able to create, read and edit Word, PowerPoint or Excel documents. It offers professional writing or even file analysis, being able to read and extract content from PDF files or other text documents. Eustella also allows you schedule remindersmanage notes and create projects to centralize queries on the same topic there. You can also manage your memories, or even create a companiona kind of virtual pet with its own personality to interact with and ask for things. Another of the great strengths is that you have several AI agents that you can use. Each of them perform specific automations, such as helping you plan a trip, having a morning news summary, finding music, conducting research, helping you learn, etc. EUstella also allows you to create your own agents, group chat and more. Additionally, it also has integrations in place, such as displaying real-time cryptocurrency prices with Bitpanda or a price comparator from Geizhals. In the coming months there will be new integrations focused on maps, travel, navigation, shopping, education and lifestyle. Price of Eustella subscriptions You can use Eustella for free, although You also have three payment plans. They are the following, and with the following characteristics: Comet (€5.99/month): Gives you more tokens and more Eustella usage. You can do more projects and advanced search, document creation, image generation and European data sovereignty features are added. Star (€17.99/month): Everything Comet offers but with usage limits 3 times higher. It also allows you to create more projects, more image generation and you can schedule agents at specific times. Cosmos (€89.99/month): Everything Star offers, but with 15 times the usage limit. You can also create more AI agents, have unlimited projects, and European priority for support. In Xataka Basics | Artificial intelligence on your PC: the best free tools to install AI models like DeepSeek, Llama, Mistral, Gemma and more

Spain had a master plan for the European fighter. The problem is that Germany just got a girlfriend with a lot of “money”

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In 1986, Spain, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom decided to join forces to build the Eurofighter Typhoon. It took almost two decades to turn it into realitybut that project left a key lesson: in Europe, fighters are not built with engineering alone, but with industrial and political balances that sometimes last longer than the technology itself. The collapse and plan B. It we count last week. He collapse of the Future Combat Air System has not only been the failure of a large European military program of 100,000 million euros, it has also been the moment in which Spain understood that he could not wait for France and Germany to resolve their industrial wars. For years, the FCAS It was sold as the large sixth-generation European fighter, but tensions between Airbus and Dassault Aviation they ended up blocking the distribution of work, leadership and technological architecture. When Berlin withdrew, Madrid lost more than just a partner: it lost the pillar that supported its own bet. FCAS concept The Spanish exit. Spain had been moving in silence for some time. With Indra gaining weight in defense and with growing conversations with Saab, the idea was clear: if FCAS sank, there was room to build an alternative axle with Germany and Sweden around satellite technologies such as sensors, combat cloud, accompanying drones and command systems. It was not yet a “new fighter” as such, but it was a survival platform industrial so as not to be tied to Paris. It was a lateral route to keep the Spanish option alive within the sixth European generation. Italy changes the board. And then Italy has appeared. Leonardo’s new management has made it clear that it would be delighted to open the door of the Global Combat Air Program to Germany. On paper, that is a logical invitation: Berlin brings money, industry and experience accumulated with the Eurofighter Typhoon. But strategically it is a bomb for Spain. Because the centerpiece of your plan B (Germany) could stop looking towards the Swedish axis and turn towards Rome, London and Tokyo. In a matter of weeks, the Spanish escape route could become a dead end. Germany is looking for a leading role. The German movement also has internal logic. Berlin does not want to be a secondary partner. He made it clear within the FCAS and he is repeating it now: if he enters another program, he wants a role proportional to your investment and its industrial weight. That sits poorly with France, where Dassault Aviation never wanted to let go control, but it fits much better with Italian flexibility. Furthermore, BAE Systems and the German branch of Airbus already they cooperated successfully on the Eurofighter. For Berlin, GCAP is starting to look less like an alternative and more like a logical continuation. The Spanish dilemma. And here is the big crack for Spain. If Germany joins GCAP, Madrid stays trapped between two worlds: a mortally wounded FCAS and an alternative plan that loses its most important partner before consolidating. Spain can try to continue punch to France, but that would mean accepting a (much) more subordinate role. You could also look for a direct approach to Italy or even Japan and the United Kingdom, but arriving late to an already structured program reduces a lot the negotiation margin. The risk is brutal: being left out of the table where the next great European air combat ecosystem is decided. Europe repeats its old problem. All this once again reveals the great industrial drama European: too many projects, too many egos and, above all, too much overlap. While the United States and China move forward with centralized programs, Europe continues to fragment its resources between rival blocs. In that sense, Spain believed it had found a safety net after the FCAS. The problem is that this network depended on Germany… and now Germany has a new dance couple. Image | Picryl In Xataka | Spain, France and Germany had joined together to illuminate the “European fighter” of the future: now that path is dead In Xataka | The European fighter has died, but Europe still has one last bullet to avoid the F-35: the alliance of Spain and Sweden

Isar is the European aerospace company that has the money, the partners and even the rockets. The only thing missing is to launch them

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With its Spectrum rocket, the Isar Aerospace company apparently has everything to succeed. Money, public and private support, several available launch sites… However, it basically lacks being able to launch said rocket. He achieved it in March 2025, but it exploded just a minute later. He has tried again up to 4 times in 2026, but in any case the countdown has been paused due to some technical setback. The last of these attempts was this week, on Monday, June 15. The launch window will remain open until the 21st, but so far it has not been announced if there will be another attempt soon. The company has stated that every mistake is a lesson and that it is learning a lot from them, but the point is that it needs to take flight completely so that all those investors see a return benefit. Time passes and it is important to detect what technical problems are making takeoff so difficult. Five attempts. The explosion of 2025 It was due to the opening of a ventilation valve in mid-flight, which later caused the loss of attitude control of the rocket. Later, on January 21, it was a failure in a pressurization valve that prevented the launch. Then, on March 25, a dangerous increase in the temperature of liquid propane fuel was detected. To top it off, an unauthorized vessel entered the danger zone around the launch site. Logically, that was bad luck, but the problems continued. For example, in the April 9 attempt a possible leak was also located in a pressurized tank. Finally, this last attempt, that of June 15, it was not completed due to a failure in the fluid system. The problems have been of various kinds and it is important to solve them in time. ESA investment. Isar Aerospace is supported by ESAwhich has invested 205 million euros in it through the European Launcher Challenge program. In fact, in this last attempt the Spectrum rocket was loaded with 5 cubesats and an experiment from the European agency itself. Other investors. The company also has received 270 million euros of private investmentcoming from investors such as Island Green Capital, Molten Ventures, HV Capital or Lakestar. With all this, it is expected to reach a production level of more than 30 launchers a year. But of course, for that you have to take off with the first one. More launch locations. Currently, Isar Aerospace launches its rockets from the Andøya spaceport in northern Norway. However, it plans to build a new facility in Canada and has already signed a letter of intent with Maritime Launch Services to incorporate the Nova Scotia spaceport as a second operational site. He has even reached agreements to use the ramp of the old Diamant rocketin it French Guiana Spaceport. The fishermen do not support it. The German company has a lot of support, although it lacks that of the Norwegian fishermenthat they complain of the launch attempts that disrupt their work in Andøya. In fact, this place is also used as a military testing ground, so many complaints have also been issued about it. The money is already there, now the technology is missing. In short, this company has the money and, yes, the technology too, but it clearly fails. There is something that must be solved, because the fishermen’s problem is solved by changing the launch site, but the problem of not taking flight can end up with the loss of investors. Isar Aerospace engineers have a lot of work ahead of them. Image | Isar Aerospace In Xataka | An unknown company from Barcelona has become indispensable for ESA: its software controls the Ariane 6 rocket

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