France Pushes E6 Savings Union, Lecornu Demands Drug Crime Crackdown

France's biggest move of the day played out in Berlin, where Finance Minister Roland Lescure joined his counterparts from Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Poland -- the self-styled "E6" -- to agree the outline of a "Savings and Investment Union" intended to turn the EU into a capital market that can rival Wall Street and the City of London. The plan would upgrade the European Securities and Markets Authority into a single bloc-wide supervisor and channel some of the €11 trillion that EU households keep in cash into the economy. Having formed a splinter group, the six now need at least nine more governments to push the reforms through the Council and will present their compromise to all EU finance ministers at the Ecofin meeting in Luxembourg on June 12; smaller financial centres including Ireland and Luxembourg, and Ecofin chair Cyprus, are already wary of a "two-speed Europe."

At home, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu chaired the first meeting of a new interministerial committee on organised crime and made clear he was not satisfied. He told ministers their proposals were "technical and insufficient" and demanded "a change of scale" in the response to drug trafficking, with his office saying organised crime had "changed in nature and dimension." Twelve ministers sat around the table -- among them Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez, Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin, Education Minister Édouard Geffray and Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot, alongside government spokeswoman Maud Bregeon. Lecornu said Matignon would take direct ownership of the file rather than leaving it to the interior and justice ministries alone, named Geffray a "front-line" stakeholder, and promised a fresh committee "with a different method" soon. The push follows a run of drug-related killings this year and the growing involvement of minors as both victims and perpetrators, a shift officials described as the "globalisation, digitisation, rejuvenation and disinhibition" of organised crime.

France also weighed in on the day's biggest European-security story. After a Russian drone crashed into an apartment block in Galați, Romania, Paris summoned the Russian ambassador, with Barrot condemning an "irresponsible act" against "a country of the European Union and a NATO country"; the foreign ministry said the strike showed Russia's war "poses a threat to the security of Europe and NATO as a whole," and France reiterated it would "remain in Kyiv" after Russian calls for civilians to leave the Ukrainian capital.