How are the European partners reacting to the urgent call from Berlin not to leave Germany on its own in supporting Ukraine with weapons? The informal meeting of EU defense ministers today in the Egmont Palace in Brussels could be an opportunity for an initial interim assessment. At around €7 billion, Germany is providing more than half of what the other EU states are planning for the current year, criticized Olaf Scholz at the beginning of the week. The Federal Chancellor is also likely to think about the fact that the Europeans will have to shoulder a completely different burden if Donald Trump makes a comeback.
Against the backdrop of the appeal from Berlin, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell has now also launched a survey in the capitals. The first results could be available today at the meeting of defense ministers or, at the latest, at the special EU summit on Thursday. The known figures are modest, especially for the large member states France, Spain and Italy. So, there is still plenty of room for improvement. It is quite possible that, spurred on by the appeal from Berlin, one or two defense ministers will enter Brussels with new commitments, where this week’s focus is on long-term support for Ukraine with war equipment.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umjerov are also expected at today’s informal meeting to report on the rather bleak situation on the front. Also on the agenda is the future European Defense Industrial Strategy (Edis), which Borrell is due to present soon. The ministers will also be informed about the preparation status for the new EU naval mission Aspis in the Red Sea. If everything goes according to plan, a Bundeswehr frigate will also help to protect commercial shipping in the strategically important passage from attacks by the Houthi rebels from the end of February at the latest.
Have a good start to the day,
Your Stephan Israel
Feature
AfD chooses a special path among Europe’s right-wing parties
The AfD is now taking a special path among the far-right parties in the EU. While Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders and Giorgia Meloni have at least moderated their rhetoric, Weidel and her fellow party members are adopting an increasingly radical tone. At the European Party Conference last August, federal spokesperson Weidel explicitly rejected calls for Germany to leave the EU, the so-called “Dexit,” – “because it does not correspond to our program.”
‘AfD continues its fundamental opposition’
Le Pen, Wilders and the Austrian FPÖ are careful not to scare off potential voters and coalition partners because they want to securetheir options for power, says Manuel Müller, Senior Research Fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. “The AfD, on the other hand, is continuing its fundamental opposition and is moving even further to the right.”
After her unsuccessful presidential candidacy in 2017, Le Pen dropped her call for a “Frexit”: Election analyses showed that the turbulence threatened by an exit had scared off many voters – the UK provided the illustrative material after the Brexit referendum. In the 2022 presidential election, Le Pen therefore only spoke of wanting to “profoundly change the EU to create a European alliance of nations.”
Meloni continued Draghi’s course
In Italy, right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of the Fratelli d’Italia largely continued the foreign and European policy course of her predecessor Mario Draghi. In Vincenzo Celeste, she sent a permanent representative to Brussels who had served as a high-ranking official in the foreign ministry under her predecessors. Meloni is now valued in Brussels and Berlin as a well-prepared and constructive discussion partner.
The AfD, on the other hand, does not seem willing to moderate itself to become more compatible with centrist politicians. “This may be due to the convictions of the leadership, or also to the fairly stable firewall of other parties in Germany,” says expert Müller. CDU leader Friedrich Merz, for example, was harshly criticized from within his own ranks last summer when he did not rule out working with AfD politicians at a local level. In Italy, Finland and Sweden, on the other hand, center-right parties form the government with far-right partners.
Tensions in the ID Group
The strategic differences are causing tensions between the AfD and other far-right parties. However, Müller does not expect the differences to be big enough to break up the joint ID (Identity and Democracy) group in the European Parliament. According to the latest projections, it could win around 100 seats in the European elections in June, making it the third strongest force.
However, according to Müller, it is conceivable that other ID members will follow the path of the Finns Party: its MEPs joined the Group of European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) after participating in the government in Helsinki. The ECR is easier for the European People’s Party to accept as a partner and therefore offers greater opportunities for influence in the European Parliament.
What the AfD demands
The ID parties, on the other hand, are hardly compatible with Manfred Weber’s EPP group. They do not meet Weber’s three conditions for cooperation – pro-Europe, pro-Ukraine, pro-rule of law.
In its European election manifesto, the AfD describes the EU as “an undemocratic construct incapable of reform.” It wants to abolish the EU Commission and European Parliament and instead proclaim a “federation of European nations,” linked by a single market. The program conceals the fact that the modern exchange of goods also requires a multitude of rules that would be difficult to negotiate under the postulated principle of unanimity.
The AfD is also calling for “the immediate lifting of economic sanctions against Russia,” which the EU had imposed due to the war against Ukraine. Instead, “undisturbed trade with Russia” should be restored, as should the damaged Nord Stream gas pipelines.
The AfD completely rejects the Green Deal as an “eco-socialist project”: “The claim of a threat from man-made climate change is not based on scientific evidence,” it writes.
Electoral success despite extreme positions
Despite such extreme positions, the party could perform even better in the European elections than in the current polls, warns Timo Lochocki, Senior Fellow at Stiftung Mercator: “The other parties are finding it more difficult to mobilize their supporters in such a mid-term election.” Whether the current mass protests against the AfD will change this is – more than five months before the election – not foreseeable.
Lochocki considers the newly founded Sahra Wagenknecht alliance to be the “biggest threat to the AfD since it was founded” regarding its program. However, its success in the elections will depend heavily on whether it succeeds in being as omnipresent in the public eye as the AfD, according to the expert.
One of the biggest successes at COP28 – the decision to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030 – is being jeopardized by the slow expansion of power grids. Now, Francesco La Camera, Director-General of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), warns in an interview with Table.Media: “Without addressing the urgent infrastructure needs, the world will not be able to accelerate the energy transition to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees.” La Camera adds: “Globally, investments in the power grid have lagged behind those in renewable energies.” They must be “increased significantly.”
The International Energy Agency (IEA) backs this warning with concrete numbers: The goal of tripling renewables could be missed by around 20 percent worldwide. “Insufficient investment in the grid infrastructure” is preventing a faster expansion of renewables, according to the IEA. This, in turn, means that fossil fuels would have to remain on the grid for longer and emissions would be higher than necessary.
Kristian Ruby is Secretary General of Eurelectric, an association representing 3,500 European companies from the electricity generation, distribution, and supply sectors. He calls for an “ambitious investment and expansion plan for the grids” in Europe. Over the last five years, the EU has set “extremely ambitious targets for the expansion of renewables.” The “pace of expansion of the power grids” must now be “significantly increased,” Ruby told Table.Media. Otherwise, the power grid will become a “bottleneck for the energy transition.”
Preparing grids for renewables
La Camera urges countries to “prepare for the large amounts of renewable energy that will be connected to the grid in the coming decades.” Grid investments should be made “three to five years ahead of investments in renewables.” Stable and developed power grids form the basic building block for the energy transition and a decarbonized economy:
EVs, heat pumps, the production of hydrogen and decarbonized steel production will rapidly drive up electricity demand. According to the EU Commission, electricity consumption in the EU will increase by around 60 percent by 2030. This demand can hardly be met without a corresponding grid expansion.
Renewable energies are often not generated where demand is high – unlike in the traditional fossil fuel-based electricity system. More grid capacity is required to transport the electricity to consumers.
Many consumers become electricity producers themselves thanks to rooftop solar systems. When electricity production is high, the grid must be able to absorb this new electricity generation.
Grid expansion lags behind the expansion of wind and solar
However, grid expansion is not keeping pace with the expansion of renewables. In the recent past, the reserves of the power grid have been used to connect renewables to the grid, Leonhard Birnbaum, President of the industry association Eurelectric and CEO of Eon, told Reuters. But “In more and more regions of Europe, we’ve just used up the reserves,” said Birnbaum.
If grid expansion is too slow, solar and wind power plants feed less electricity into the grid or cannot be connected to the grid at all: According to the International Energy Agency, solar and wind power plants will have to be curtailed more frequently “in many countries as grid expansion cannot keep pace.” The costs for this have increased by several billion euros in recent years.
Renewable energy developers in many countries, including Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, complain that it is taking too long for their wind and solar plants to be connected to the grid. In Spain and Italy, 150 gigawatts of new capacity still await connection to the grid. In Greece and Hungary, grid operators have stopped accepting requests to connect large-scale plants to the grid.
According to Kadri Simson, EU Commissioner for Energy, it can take up to ten years for approvals to be granted for the reinforcement of local grids – another reason why the energy transition could come to a standstill. According to the IEA, “almost 1,500 GW of wind and solar PV projects in advanced stages of development in the grid queue.”
More than 40 percent of Europe’s distribution grid is over 40 years old. This means that the individual components have often already exceeded their average lifespan or are about to. Such an old grid is not designed to cope with new renewable capacities.
Problems: investments, planning, supply chains
The reasons for the slow expansion are manifold. La Camera insists on “accelerated approval procedures to ensure timely investment in modern electricity grids.” Ruby from Eurelectric considers this acceleration to be a “central point” for grid expansion.
The EU Commission states that long-term planning needs to be improved. The challenge: It can take less than a year to complete renewable energy plants, while grid expansion projects take seven to ten years.
There is a lack of investment: The EU reports that €584 billion would have to be invested in the expansion and renewal of Europe’s grids by 2030 – with just over two-thirds going into distribution grids. While global investment in renewables has almost doubled since 2010, “global investment in grids has barely changed,” the IEA criticizes. Expansion of the grid connections between EU member states is also taking too long. The reason: “Cost overruns, inflation, and rising interest rates,” as EU Commissioner Simson emphasizes.
Threats of even greater bottlenecks
There are also supply chain and skills shortages: the IEA warns that there are supply problems with some components for the expansion of the electricity grids – for example, high-voltage transformers, high-performance chips or certain types of steel. In some cases, it takes several years to procure the components, according to the Commission. The problem could even be worsened by rising global demand – “potentially exacerbated by a shortage of experienced manufacturing personnel,” says the IEA.
The EU Commission has therefore included electricity grids as a strategic sector in its Net-Zero Industry Act, which is due to be adopted in spring 2024, and has approved a Grid Action Plan. Kristian Ruby from Eurelectric warns: “The industrial capacities in Europe for the production of components for the expansion of the grids urgently need to be expanded. Currently, the capacities are not designed for the pace of the energy transition.”
Climate & Environment
Climate policy
COP28
Fossile Brennstoffe
Renewable energies
News
AI Act: Germany agrees to compromise after all
Federal Digital Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) gave up his opposition to the compromise from the trilogue on the AI Act. The Federal Government was thus able to agree on a joint position. It will vote yes in the Committee of Permanent Representatives (Coreper) on Friday. This was announced by the lead ministries for economic affairs (BMWK) and justice (BMJ) on Tuesday.
It is therefore highly likely that the AI Act will be adopted by the Council, as many countries will follow Germany’s vote. France, which was even more critical of the AI Act than Germany, also wanted to determine its position in the course of Tuesday. France alone cannot prevent the law in this form. This requires a qualified majority, for which France is unlikely to find enough supporters. The Belgian Council Presidency has once again submitted a revised text of 272 pages for the meeting.
Habeck and Buschmann welcome the agreement
“With the German approval of the AI Regulation we are committed to legal certainty and trustworthy AI made in Europe,” said Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens). It is now a matter of low-bureaucracy and innovation-friendly implementation. Justice Minister Marco Buschmann pointed out that artificial intelligence is the key technology for Europe’s competitiveness.
Buschmann called the first Europe-wide regulation of AI-supported biometric remote identification an “important success for the protection of fundamental rights.” However, not everyone in his party sees it that way. The FDP MEP Svenja Hahn does not want to vote in favor of the AI Act for this reason. The Green MEP Sergey Lagodinsky commented on the approval of the AI Act on X: “I am pleased that all those involved have concluded that this regulation is not perfect, but necessary.”
Wissing calls the compromise acceptable
Volker Wissing, whose ministry could only advise on this legal act, had long resisted the compromise. On Tuesday, he called it “acceptable.” He announced: “When implementing the AI Act, we will use the maximum leeway, to avoid double regulation and to develop Europe into an important AI location that can assert itself in global competition.”
The digital association Bitkom expressed its relief that the impasse over the AI Act has now come to an end. This could improve the “urgently needed legal certainty for what is probably the most important technology of the future”. “However, the decisive factor here is how the requirements of the AI Act are interpreted and applied at both European and national levels,” said BitkomPresident Ralf Wintergerst. In addition to a risk assessment, the opportunities of artificial intelligence must always be weighed up.
What happens next: The vote in Coreper will take place on February 2. Then, the relevant committees in Parliament will vote. Following approval, the text goes to legal-linguistic review and translation. The vote in plenary is expected to take place in April. vis
EU-US TTC: talks, but no decisions
At the fifth meeting of the EU-US Trade and Technology Council (TTC) in Washington, representatives from both sides discussed progress and future priorities in the areas of trade and technology. The focus was on intensifying bilateral trade and investment, cooperation on economic security and new technologies as well as the promotion of common interests in the digital sector. This was announced by the Commission on Tuesday evening.
Executive Vice Presidents Margrethe Vestager and Valdis Dombrovskis and Commissioner ThierryBreton traveled to Washington for the fifth TTC. There they met with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo and Trade Representative KatherineTai, among others. There was no final declaration this time, as the main purpose of the meeting was to prepare for the sixth and final TTC in this cycle, which is due to take place in Belgium in the spring.
Mechanical engineering and automotive industry want more progress
According to the Commission, both sides paid particular attention in their talks to facilitating trade in goods and technologies that are important for the green transformation, as well as to closer cooperation on conformityassessment. The latter is an important topic for the German plant and mechanical engineering sector. “The differences in conformity assessment procedures between the EU and the USA cause greatly extended delivery times and additional costs,” explained Ulrich Ackermann, Head of VDMA Foreign Trade. “That’s why we urgently need an agreement on the mutual recognition of conformity assessments for machinery and electrotechnical machinery products.”
Important points in the discussions also included progress on digital trade instruments to reduce bureaucracy and strengthen approaches to investment screening, export controls and dual-use innovation. The participants also welcomed the international guiding principles for artificial intelligence and the code of conduct for AI developers within the framework of the G7. They emphasized the importance of cooperation in international AI governance.
The dispute over tariffs on aluminum and steel was not an issue at the TTC. Dombrovskis did, however, say that he had held bilateral talks with Tai on this issue. The German automotive industry is interested in this topic. There is untapped potential in the partnership between the EU and the USA, particularly in terms of mutual market access and regulatory cooperation, for example in the area of electromobility and future technologies, said VDA President Hildegard Müller. “We also need a final settlement of the dispute over tariffs on aluminum and steel, the conclusion of the agreement on critical raw materials and fair access to the support instruments of the Inflation Reduction Act for products of the European automotive industry.” vis
Handelspolitik
Margrethe Vestager
Thierry Breton
Trade policy
Solar manufacturers demand emergency measures from Brussels
Europe’s solar panel manufacturing industry has urged the European Union to step in with emergency measures to avoid local firms shutting down under price pressure from Chinese imports. “Over the next 4-8 weeks, major EU PV module producers and their European suppliers are poised to shut down manufacturing lines unless substantial emergency measures are promptly implemented,” states the letter from the industry association the European Solar Manufacturing Council (ESMC) to EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Without rapid help, the EU risked losing more than half of its operational solar photovoltaic module manufacturing capacity within weeks. The letter is available to Reuters.
The European solar industry has come under severe pressure since last summer due to a slump in prices, triggered primarily by a flood of cheap Chinese solar modules. These have partly piled up in European warehouses and thus depressed prices. China holds a 90 percent share of the global market for solar systems.
ESMC asked the EU to launch emergency measures, including a scheme to buy up excess inventories of EU solar modules to ease the oversupply and change state aid rules to boost government support for local solar producers. If those measures cannot be done rapidly, the EU should also consider “safeguard” measures that could include tariffs and quotas to counter a surge of imports, the letter said. This could also include tariffs and quotas. However, many solar manufacturers reject higher tariffs as damaging to the market. ck/rtr
Energiewende
Study: new car emissions higher than official EU test values
Despite stricter EU regulations, the gap between the carbon emissions stated by car manufacturers on the one hand and the values in real operation on the other is growing, according to the International Council on Climate Change (ICCT). According to the study, the difference between 2018 and 2022 has grown from eight to 14 percent. This is the result of a study by the research organization International Council on Clean Transportation, which Table.Media has obtained exclusively in advance.
The results call into question theeffectiveness of the EU’s carbon reduction measures. According to EU figures, the values should actually have fallen by around 7.3 percent between 2018 and 2022. The ICCT study now sheds a different light on this. Of the 7.3 percent reduction achieved on paper, only less than a third – 2.3 percent – would remain in real-life operation on the road. According to this, the EU’s efforts to reduce traffic-related carbon emissions would be undermined by the car manufacturers.
WLTP test procedure should reduce differences
To counteract this, the globally harmonized WLTP test procedure for passenger cars and light commercial vehicles was introduced in 2017 as a result of the diesel scandal, the ICCT had helped to uncover. This involves collecting data from real-world driving in order to better simulate real-world driving. These values should be more representative than those of the pure NEDC laboratory test cycle.
However, the ICCT now also considers the WLTP to be inadequate. “Our analysis shows that the difference between the official figures and the real carbon emissions will continue to grow even after the introduction of the WLTP,” says Jan Dornoff, senior scientist at the ICCT and co-author of the report. “If no countermeasures are taken here, the official carbon emission values will increasingly lose their significance for the actual emissions. As a result, the mandatory reductions in the official values will not be reflected in the real world.”
Court of Auditors also points out discrepancies
Just last week, the European Court of Auditors gave the EU’s carbon fleet regulation a poor report in its special report “Reducing CO₂ emissions from passenger cars“: By 2020, “the intended benefits of the regulation had largely lapsed.” There had been little or no reduction in carbon emissions from new vehicles.
This was mainly due to the fact that “manufacturers focused on reducing emissions measured in the laboratory rather than on reducing actual emissions.” It was not until 2017 that a switch was made to a test mode that better simulates real driving conditions. The Court of Auditors’ report was based on research in three member states, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.
ICCT: using data from real consumption
The ICCT experts have now analyzed official carbon emissions data from the European Environment Agency EEA as a measure of fuel consumption and compared it with real fuel consumption data from more than 160,000 cars. These are combustion and conventional hybrid vehicles whose owners have entered their consumption data on the spritmonitor.de website. Plug-in hybrids were analyzed separately in an earlier study.
The ICCT advocates using data from the OBFCM fuel consumption monitoring system to reduce the discrepancies between the laboratory values and the consumption values in actual driving. ICCT Europe Managing Director Peter Mock demands: “This would allow a correction mechanism to be set up to ensure that the official CO₂ emission values that manufacturers will have to meet in the coming years are updated in such a way that they also correspond to the originally intended and legally stipulated reduction targets in real terms.” löh
Klima & Umwelt
Agriculture: set-aside obligation to remain suspended
The regulations for a minimum proportion of fallow land on arable land are to remain suspended. This has been announced by the Commission. It is not yet clear what the proposal will look like. The text is due on Thursday. According to reports, it is not only the renewed suspension of the four percent set-aside obligation that is to come. Proposals on catch crops and legumes are also expected. The concrete implementation of the proposals could vary from member state to member state because their authorities have the legal upper hand. mgr
GAP
Security issues take center stage at EU-Indo-Pacific meeting
EU and Indo-Pacific representatives will meet in Brussels on Friday for the third EU-Indo-Pacific Forum. A smaller meeting exclusively with representatives of the Southeast Asian ASEAN countries will take place on Friday afternoon and will be chaired by EU Foreign Affairs Representative Josep Borrell and Philippine Foreign Minister Enrique Manalo.
Topics include security cooperation, economic and trade relations and the Global Gateway Initiative. Many of the Indo-Pacific participants have security concerns relating to China in particular. As in previous years, the People’s Republic is not on the invitation list. According to EU circles, a joint declaration after the meetings is being considered. There had been no such declaration in previous years. The sticking point at the time was that the ASEAN countries and the EU were unable to agree on the wording regarding the war of aggression against Ukraine and the situation in Taiwan.
It was not yet public on Tuesday who from the Indo-Pacific states will be taking part. The European External Action Service did not initially present a list of participating EU ministers either. The fact that only 14 of the 27 EU foreign ministers attended the EU-Indo-Pacific meeting in Stockholm last year was met with criticism.
On Thursday, the first-ever Pacific Day will take place, with lectures and panel discussions on the challenges and future prospects of cooperation between the EU and the Pacific island states. According to an EU official, around 70 delegations are expected to attend both events. Partnership projects are to be presented at the Pacific Day. ari
China
China
Geopolitics
Global Gateway
Indo-Pacific
Anja Hirschel is the top candidate of the Pirate Party
At its General Assembly in Luxembourg, the European Pirate Party officially nominated Marcel Kolaja from the Czech Republic and Anja Hirschel from Germany as top candidates for the European elections in June. Hirschel succeeds Patrick Breyer, who did not stand for re-election.
The European Pirate Party is a member of the Pirate Party International and has 18 members in 17 European countries. There are elected representatives at the national level in the Czech Republic, Luxembourg and Iceland and at the European level in Germany and the Czech Republic.
Anja Hirschel is an expert in data protection and digitalization
As the top candidate, she would like to offer a new perspective for the digital and networked future of the EU, said Hirschel. As a certified data protection officer, she can contribute her expertise in the areas of digitalization, data protection, copyright and environmental issues. She is looking forward to “promoting the Pirate Party’s vision for a European Union that embraces digital progress while protecting the rights and values of its citizens.”
Hirschel currently works full-time for an IT company where she is the employee representative. She is also a city councilor in Ulm for the Pirate Party, of which she was the top candidate in the 2021 federal election.
Kolaja competes again
Marcel Kolaja, who is already a Member and Quaestor of the European Parliament, has also been nominated as a top candidate. He was nominated by his party, which co-governs the Czech Republic, as a possible next Czech EU Commissioner.
Kolaja said that in the face of increasing populism and support for far-right parties, the Pirates offer an alternative, whose policies are based on facts, workable solutions and honesty. “That is why the voice of the Pirates must be clearly heard in the highest positions of European politics,” said Kolaja. vis
Europawahlen 2024
France to ramp up nuclear power
In a government statement, the new French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal has renewed his commitment to nuclear energy. Attal said that nuclear energy is “French pride.” France will continue to invest in nuclear energy and develop reactors, he announced to the National Assembly on Tuesday.
“We will continue to ramp up our nuclear network and invest heavily in programs this year,” said Attal. In addition, the Flamanville EPR reactor of the state-owned energy supplier EDF is to be put into operation. “We will continue the development of renewable energies as well as the development of nuclear energy in our country,” said Attal.
Commitment to Europe
At the end of his government statement, Attal made a commitment to Europe. Less Europe would also mean less power for France. He criticized Marine Le Pen’s right-wing nationalist Rassemblement National for their desire to covertly withdraw France from the EU.
Attal also held out the prospect of higher wages in his speech. Too high a proportion of the population only earns the minimum wage, said Attal. That had to change. He also appealed to the political opposition to work with the government given the lack of an absolute government majority in the lower house. dpa/rtr
Suspicion of espionage: European Parliament launches investigation into Ždanoka
The European Parliament has launched an investigation into Latvian MEP Tatjana Ždanoka over possible contacts with the Russian secret service FSB. Parliament President Roberta Metsola is taking the allegations made in a media report “very seriously,” the Parliament announced on Tuesday. The security authorities in Latvia have also initiated an investigation into the information that has become known about the 73-year-old.
Ždanoka has been a member of the European Parliament since 2004. Until 2022, she was a member of the Greens/EFA group as part of the EFA group. At that time, she was one of only 13 MEPs to vote against a resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As a result, the group expelled her. She has been non-attached ever since.
According to investigative research published on Monday by “The Insider” portal, among others, Ždanoka is said to have worked for the Russian domestic intelligence service FSB for around 20 years and to have been tasked with promoting a pro-Kremlin mood in the Baltic states. To this end, the politician was supervised by two different FSB agents from at least 2004 to 2017, according to the report, citing relevant correspondence in leaked emails.
Former group distances itself from her
Ždanoka rejected the allegations. According to the Latvian security police, Ždanoka’s status as an MEP and the associated legal immunity are an “essential aspect that contributed to her activities in support of Russia’s geopolitical interests.”
The Greens/EFA group said in a statement on Tuesday that Ždanoka had had “no part in shaping group policy on foreign policy issues, including policy on Russia” during her time in the group.
Even before the Russian attack on Ukraine, the Latvian MEP had attracted attention for her emphatically positive relationship with Russia. In 2014, for example, she traveled as an “international observer” to the independence referendum in Crimea, which was internationally classified as a sham referendum – at the expense of the European Parliament, as Latvian radio later revealed. dpa/lei
Possible price fixing: raids on tire manufacturers
The EU Commission raided Continental and other tire manufacturers in Europe on Tuesday on suspicion of a tire cartel. The EU Commission said on Tuesday that it was concerned about possible price fixing for new replacement tires for cars, vans, trucks and buses. “The Commission is concerned that price coordination took place amongst the inspected companies, including via public communication,” it said. The authority did not comment on the companies concerned.
A Conti spokesperson stated that investigations by the European antitrust authorities had been underway at the company’s premises since Tuesday. Pirelli announced that it was cooperating fully with the EU Commission. A spokesperson added that the Italian tire company had acted fairly. Michelin also confirmed the searches. A spokesperson emphasized the French company always complies with the competition rules that apply in the respective countries. rtr
Heads
Paulina Hennig-Kloska: Poland’s environment minister on a tricky mission
Paulina Hennig-Kloska, Poland’s new Minister of Climate and Environment, at her swearing-in ceremony in December 2023.
Paulina Hennig-Kloska was not even in office when she already felt the explosive power her new duties would bring. Hennig-Kloska, who has since been appointed Minister of Climate and the Environment, presented a legislative proposal with other MPs to facilitate the construction of new wind farms caused particular outrage by reducing the distance to residential buildings: According to the proposal, particularly quiet turbines can be built at a distance of 300 meters – 200 meters less than was promised during the election campaign.
The Law and Justice Party (PiS), which led the government until last year, accused Hennig-Kloska of promoting wind turbine industry lobby groups, particularly from Germany. Hennig-Kloska demanded an apology and threatened to sue a PiS MP for defamation. Some coalition politicians then doubted Hennig-Kloska’s suitability for the new office – but her party kept the 46-year-old. A little later, as a sworn-in minister, she admitted mistakes and changed some points. The revised wind farm lawis now due to be passed in March at the latest.
She is not an environmental activist
Hennig-Kloska is not an activist. The political scientist from Gniezno, west of Warsaw, first worked as a radio journalist, was head of department at a local bank and, with her husband Artur Kloska, ran the company Borg, which specializes in office furnishings.
In 2015, she joined the Nowoczesna party and was unexpectedly elected to the national parliament, the Sejm. Because Borg won a public contract to furnish schools, critics spoke of corruption. However, they could not provide any proof – and the voters did not believe them either. Instead, they re-elected the MP twice since then.
In the spring of 2021, Hennig-Kloska then switched to the Poland 2050 party, which is now part of Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing coalition, and became one of the most important politicians in the new party, which presents itself as conservative and down-to-earth. With the new party also came a new topic: She moved from the health portfolio to the energy and climate committee.
Energy transition as the foundation of competitiveness
“It was then that I realized that the energy transition is the foundation of a future competitive economy,” she says, “and the carbon footprint will destroy our economy if we don’t do something about it.” When it comes to economic policy, she is a liberal, advocating tax cuts and supporting the privatization of state-owned companies, with the exception of the energy and defense sectors.
In her new office, she will now have to get up to speed quickly and tackle many challenges, as the previous PiS government completely neglected environmental policy. Poland still covers 63 percent of its electricity needs with coal, and the phase-out of fossil fuels is not planned before 2049. Now the ministry is to promote investment in renewable energy sources, wind turbines, photovoltaics and biomass plants, but also nuclear energy. The thermal modernization of buildings must also be tackled urgently to achieve savings targets.
Hennig-Kloska attempts a balancing act
Hennig-Kloska also hopes that the European Union will help finance all this. The “Clean Air” program, for example, under which old incinerators are to be replaced, was recently frozen due to a lack of funding, although around 50,000 people die every year as a result of smog. Hennig-Kloska now wants to mobilize EU funding from the European Funds for Infrastructure, Climate, and Environment (FENIKS). Poland will also apply for project funding from the EU’s Fit for 55 package.
At the same time, Hennig-Kloska wants to maintain a balance, including within her own government. In mid-January, it was her Green deputy Urszula Zielińska who demanded a fast transformation and called for the EU to reduce its carbon emissions by 90 percent by 2040. Paulina Hennig-Kloska quickly brought Zielińskaback in line and explained that the statement was neither official nor coordinated with other departments.
All parties in the governing coalition agree that Poland must become climate-neutral. However, thiswill take time. Poland did not join an alliance of eleven countries, including Germany, which also called for more ambitious EU climate targets. After all, Hennig-Kloska also has to take her coalition partner, the farmers’ party PSL, into consideration. Which declared that it does not want to overburden citizens with the transformation.Andrzej Rybak
How are the European partners reacting to the urgent call from Berlin not to leave Germany on its own in supporting Ukraine with weapons? The informal meeting of EU defense ministers today in the Egmont Palace in Brussels could be an opportunity for an initial interim assessment. At around €7 billion, Germany is providing more than half of what the other EU states are planning for the current year, criticized Olaf Scholz at the beginning of the week. The Federal Chancellor is also likely to think about the fact that the Europeans will have to shoulder a completely different burden if Donald Trump makes a comeback.
Against the backdrop of the appeal from Berlin, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell has now also launched a survey in the capitals. The first results could be available today at the meeting of defense ministers or, at the latest, at the special EU summit on Thursday. The known figures are modest, especially for the large member states France, Spain and Italy. So, there is still plenty of room for improvement. It is quite possible that, spurred on by the appeal from Berlin, one or two defense ministers will enter Brussels with new commitments, where this week’s focus is on long-term support for Ukraine with war equipment.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umjerov are also expected at today’s informal meeting to report on the rather bleak situation on the front. Also on the agenda is the future European Defense Industrial Strategy (Edis), which Borrell is due to present soon. The ministers will also be informed about the preparation status for the new EU naval mission Aspis in the Red Sea. If everything goes according to plan, a Bundeswehr frigate will also help to protect commercial shipping in the strategically important passage from attacks by the Houthi rebels from the end of February at the latest.
Have a good start to the day,
Your Stephan Israel
Feature
AfD chooses a special path among Europe’s right-wing parties
The AfD is now taking a special path among the far-right parties in the EU. While Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders and Giorgia Meloni have at least moderated their rhetoric, Weidel and her fellow party members are adopting an increasingly radical tone. At the European Party Conference last August, federal spokesperson Weidel explicitly rejected calls for Germany to leave the EU, the so-called “Dexit,” – “because it does not correspond to our program.”
‘AfD continues its fundamental opposition’
Le Pen, Wilders and the Austrian FPÖ are careful not to scare off potential voters and coalition partners because they want to securetheir options for power, says Manuel Müller, Senior Research Fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. “The AfD, on the other hand, is continuing its fundamental opposition and is moving even further to the right.”
After her unsuccessful presidential candidacy in 2017, Le Pen dropped her call for a “Frexit”: Election analyses showed that the turbulence threatened by an exit had scared off many voters – the UK provided the illustrative material after the Brexit referendum. In the 2022 presidential election, Le Pen therefore only spoke of wanting to “profoundly change the EU to create a European alliance of nations.”
Meloni continued Draghi’s course
In Italy, right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of the Fratelli d’Italia largely continued the foreign and European policy course of her predecessor Mario Draghi. In Vincenzo Celeste, she sent a permanent representative to Brussels who had served as a high-ranking official in the foreign ministry under her predecessors. Meloni is now valued in Brussels and Berlin as a well-prepared and constructive discussion partner.
The AfD, on the other hand, does not seem willing to moderate itself to become more compatible with centrist politicians. “This may be due to the convictions of the leadership, or also to the fairly stable firewall of other parties in Germany,” says expert Müller. CDU leader Friedrich Merz, for example, was harshly criticized from within his own ranks last summer when he did not rule out working with AfD politicians at a local level. In Italy, Finland and Sweden, on the other hand, center-right parties form the government with far-right partners.
Tensions in the ID Group
The strategic differences are causing tensions between the AfD and other far-right parties. However, Müller does not expect the differences to be big enough to break up the joint ID (Identity and Democracy) group in the European Parliament. According to the latest projections, it could win around 100 seats in the European elections in June, making it the third strongest force.
However, according to Müller, it is conceivable that other ID members will follow the path of the Finns Party: its MEPs joined the Group of European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) after participating in the government in Helsinki. The ECR is easier for the European People’s Party to accept as a partner and therefore offers greater opportunities for influence in the European Parliament.
What the AfD demands
The ID parties, on the other hand, are hardly compatible with Manfred Weber’s EPP group. They do not meet Weber’s three conditions for cooperation – pro-Europe, pro-Ukraine, pro-rule of law.
In its European election manifesto, the AfD describes the EU as “an undemocratic construct incapable of reform.” It wants to abolish the EU Commission and European Parliament and instead proclaim a “federation of European nations,” linked by a single market. The program conceals the fact that the modern exchange of goods also requires a multitude of rules that would be difficult to negotiate under the postulated principle of unanimity.
The AfD is also calling for “the immediate lifting of economic sanctions against Russia,” which the EU had imposed due to the war against Ukraine. Instead, “undisturbed trade with Russia” should be restored, as should the damaged Nord Stream gas pipelines.
The AfD completely rejects the Green Deal as an “eco-socialist project”: “The claim of a threat from man-made climate change is not based on scientific evidence,” it writes.
Electoral success despite extreme positions
Despite such extreme positions, the party could perform even better in the European elections than in the current polls, warns Timo Lochocki, Senior Fellow at Stiftung Mercator: “The other parties are finding it more difficult to mobilize their supporters in such a mid-term election.” Whether the current mass protests against the AfD will change this is – more than five months before the election – not foreseeable.
Lochocki considers the newly founded Sahra Wagenknecht alliance to be the “biggest threat to the AfD since it was founded” regarding its program. However, its success in the elections will depend heavily on whether it succeeds in being as omnipresent in the public eye as the AfD, according to the expert.
One of the biggest successes at COP28 – the decision to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030 – is being jeopardized by the slow expansion of power grids. Now, Francesco La Camera, Director-General of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), warns in an interview with Table.Media: “Without addressing the urgent infrastructure needs, the world will not be able to accelerate the energy transition to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees.” La Camera adds: “Globally, investments in the power grid have lagged behind those in renewable energies.” They must be “increased significantly.”
The International Energy Agency (IEA) backs this warning with concrete numbers: The goal of tripling renewables could be missed by around 20 percent worldwide. “Insufficient investment in the grid infrastructure” is preventing a faster expansion of renewables, according to the IEA. This, in turn, means that fossil fuels would have to remain on the grid for longer and emissions would be higher than necessary.
Kristian Ruby is Secretary General of Eurelectric, an association representing 3,500 European companies from the electricity generation, distribution, and supply sectors. He calls for an “ambitious investment and expansion plan for the grids” in Europe. Over the last five years, the EU has set “extremely ambitious targets for the expansion of renewables.” The “pace of expansion of the power grids” must now be “significantly increased,” Ruby told Table.Media. Otherwise, the power grid will become a “bottleneck for the energy transition.”
Preparing grids for renewables
La Camera urges countries to “prepare for the large amounts of renewable energy that will be connected to the grid in the coming decades.” Grid investments should be made “three to five years ahead of investments in renewables.” Stable and developed power grids form the basic building block for the energy transition and a decarbonized economy:
EVs, heat pumps, the production of hydrogen and decarbonized steel production will rapidly drive up electricity demand. According to the EU Commission, electricity consumption in the EU will increase by around 60 percent by 2030. This demand can hardly be met without a corresponding grid expansion.
Renewable energies are often not generated where demand is high – unlike in the traditional fossil fuel-based electricity system. More grid capacity is required to transport the electricity to consumers.
Many consumers become electricity producers themselves thanks to rooftop solar systems. When electricity production is high, the grid must be able to absorb this new electricity generation.
Grid expansion lags behind the expansion of wind and solar
However, grid expansion is not keeping pace with the expansion of renewables. In the recent past, the reserves of the power grid have been used to connect renewables to the grid, Leonhard Birnbaum, President of the industry association Eurelectric and CEO of Eon, told Reuters. But “In more and more regions of Europe, we’ve just used up the reserves,” said Birnbaum.
If grid expansion is too slow, solar and wind power plants feed less electricity into the grid or cannot be connected to the grid at all: According to the International Energy Agency, solar and wind power plants will have to be curtailed more frequently “in many countries as grid expansion cannot keep pace.” The costs for this have increased by several billion euros in recent years.
Renewable energy developers in many countries, including Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, complain that it is taking too long for their wind and solar plants to be connected to the grid. In Spain and Italy, 150 gigawatts of new capacity still await connection to the grid. In Greece and Hungary, grid operators have stopped accepting requests to connect large-scale plants to the grid.
According to Kadri Simson, EU Commissioner for Energy, it can take up to ten years for approvals to be granted for the reinforcement of local grids – another reason why the energy transition could come to a standstill. According to the IEA, “almost 1,500 GW of wind and solar PV projects in advanced stages of development in the grid queue.”
More than 40 percent of Europe’s distribution grid is over 40 years old. This means that the individual components have often already exceeded their average lifespan or are about to. Such an old grid is not designed to cope with new renewable capacities.
Problems: investments, planning, supply chains
The reasons for the slow expansion are manifold. La Camera insists on “accelerated approval procedures to ensure timely investment in modern electricity grids.” Ruby from Eurelectric considers this acceleration to be a “central point” for grid expansion.
The EU Commission states that long-term planning needs to be improved. The challenge: It can take less than a year to complete renewable energy plants, while grid expansion projects take seven to ten years.
There is a lack of investment: The EU reports that €584 billion would have to be invested in the expansion and renewal of Europe’s grids by 2030 – with just over two-thirds going into distribution grids. While global investment in renewables has almost doubled since 2010, “global investment in grids has barely changed,” the IEA criticizes. Expansion of the grid connections between EU member states is also taking too long. The reason: “Cost overruns, inflation, and rising interest rates,” as EU Commissioner Simson emphasizes.
Threats of even greater bottlenecks
There are also supply chain and skills shortages: the IEA warns that there are supply problems with some components for the expansion of the electricity grids – for example, high-voltage transformers, high-performance chips or certain types of steel. In some cases, it takes several years to procure the components, according to the Commission. The problem could even be worsened by rising global demand – “potentially exacerbated by a shortage of experienced manufacturing personnel,” says the IEA.
The EU Commission has therefore included electricity grids as a strategic sector in its Net-Zero Industry Act, which is due to be adopted in spring 2024, and has approved a Grid Action Plan. Kristian Ruby from Eurelectric warns: “The industrial capacities in Europe for the production of components for the expansion of the grids urgently need to be expanded. Currently, the capacities are not designed for the pace of the energy transition.”
Climate & Environment
Climate policy
COP28
Fossile Brennstoffe
Renewable energies
News
AI Act: Germany agrees to compromise after all
Federal Digital Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) gave up his opposition to the compromise from the trilogue on the AI Act. The Federal Government was thus able to agree on a joint position. It will vote yes in the Committee of Permanent Representatives (Coreper) on Friday. This was announced by the lead ministries for economic affairs (BMWK) and justice (BMJ) on Tuesday.
It is therefore highly likely that the AI Act will be adopted by the Council, as many countries will follow Germany’s vote. France, which was even more critical of the AI Act than Germany, also wanted to determine its position in the course of Tuesday. France alone cannot prevent the law in this form. This requires a qualified majority, for which France is unlikely to find enough supporters. The Belgian Council Presidency has once again submitted a revised text of 272 pages for the meeting.
Habeck and Buschmann welcome the agreement
“With the German approval of the AI Regulation we are committed to legal certainty and trustworthy AI made in Europe,” said Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens). It is now a matter of low-bureaucracy and innovation-friendly implementation. Justice Minister Marco Buschmann pointed out that artificial intelligence is the key technology for Europe’s competitiveness.
Buschmann called the first Europe-wide regulation of AI-supported biometric remote identification an “important success for the protection of fundamental rights.” However, not everyone in his party sees it that way. The FDP MEP Svenja Hahn does not want to vote in favor of the AI Act for this reason. The Green MEP Sergey Lagodinsky commented on the approval of the AI Act on X: “I am pleased that all those involved have concluded that this regulation is not perfect, but necessary.”
Wissing calls the compromise acceptable
Volker Wissing, whose ministry could only advise on this legal act, had long resisted the compromise. On Tuesday, he called it “acceptable.” He announced: “When implementing the AI Act, we will use the maximum leeway, to avoid double regulation and to develop Europe into an important AI location that can assert itself in global competition.”
The digital association Bitkom expressed its relief that the impasse over the AI Act has now come to an end. This could improve the “urgently needed legal certainty for what is probably the most important technology of the future”. “However, the decisive factor here is how the requirements of the AI Act are interpreted and applied at both European and national levels,” said BitkomPresident Ralf Wintergerst. In addition to a risk assessment, the opportunities of artificial intelligence must always be weighed up.
What happens next: The vote in Coreper will take place on February 2. Then, the relevant committees in Parliament will vote. Following approval, the text goes to legal-linguistic review and translation. The vote in plenary is expected to take place in April. vis
EU-US TTC: talks, but no decisions
At the fifth meeting of the EU-US Trade and Technology Council (TTC) in Washington, representatives from both sides discussed progress and future priorities in the areas of trade and technology. The focus was on intensifying bilateral trade and investment, cooperation on economic security and new technologies as well as the promotion of common interests in the digital sector. This was announced by the Commission on Tuesday evening.
Executive Vice Presidents Margrethe Vestager and Valdis Dombrovskis and Commissioner ThierryBreton traveled to Washington for the fifth TTC. There they met with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo and Trade Representative KatherineTai, among others. There was no final declaration this time, as the main purpose of the meeting was to prepare for the sixth and final TTC in this cycle, which is due to take place in Belgium in the spring.
Mechanical engineering and automotive industry want more progress
According to the Commission, both sides paid particular attention in their talks to facilitating trade in goods and technologies that are important for the green transformation, as well as to closer cooperation on conformityassessment. The latter is an important topic for the German plant and mechanical engineering sector. “The differences in conformity assessment procedures between the EU and the USA cause greatly extended delivery times and additional costs,” explained Ulrich Ackermann, Head of VDMA Foreign Trade. “That’s why we urgently need an agreement on the mutual recognition of conformity assessments for machinery and electrotechnical machinery products.”
Important points in the discussions also included progress on digital trade instruments to reduce bureaucracy and strengthen approaches to investment screening, export controls and dual-use innovation. The participants also welcomed the international guiding principles for artificial intelligence and the code of conduct for AI developers within the framework of the G7. They emphasized the importance of cooperation in international AI governance.
The dispute over tariffs on aluminum and steel was not an issue at the TTC. Dombrovskis did, however, say that he had held bilateral talks with Tai on this issue. The German automotive industry is interested in this topic. There is untapped potential in the partnership between the EU and the USA, particularly in terms of mutual market access and regulatory cooperation, for example in the area of electromobility and future technologies, said VDA President Hildegard Müller. “We also need a final settlement of the dispute over tariffs on aluminum and steel, the conclusion of the agreement on critical raw materials and fair access to the support instruments of the Inflation Reduction Act for products of the European automotive industry.” vis
Handelspolitik
Margrethe Vestager
Thierry Breton
Trade policy
Solar manufacturers demand emergency measures from Brussels
Europe’s solar panel manufacturing industry has urged the European Union to step in with emergency measures to avoid local firms shutting down under price pressure from Chinese imports. “Over the next 4-8 weeks, major EU PV module producers and their European suppliers are poised to shut down manufacturing lines unless substantial emergency measures are promptly implemented,” states the letter from the industry association the European Solar Manufacturing Council (ESMC) to EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Without rapid help, the EU risked losing more than half of its operational solar photovoltaic module manufacturing capacity within weeks. The letter is available to Reuters.
The European solar industry has come under severe pressure since last summer due to a slump in prices, triggered primarily by a flood of cheap Chinese solar modules. These have partly piled up in European warehouses and thus depressed prices. China holds a 90 percent share of the global market for solar systems.
ESMC asked the EU to launch emergency measures, including a scheme to buy up excess inventories of EU solar modules to ease the oversupply and change state aid rules to boost government support for local solar producers. If those measures cannot be done rapidly, the EU should also consider “safeguard” measures that could include tariffs and quotas to counter a surge of imports, the letter said. This could also include tariffs and quotas. However, many solar manufacturers reject higher tariffs as damaging to the market. ck/rtr
Energiewende
Study: new car emissions higher than official EU test values
Despite stricter EU regulations, the gap between the carbon emissions stated by car manufacturers on the one hand and the values in real operation on the other is growing, according to the International Council on Climate Change (ICCT). According to the study, the difference between 2018 and 2022 has grown from eight to 14 percent. This is the result of a study by the research organization International Council on Clean Transportation, which Table.Media has obtained exclusively in advance.
The results call into question theeffectiveness of the EU’s carbon reduction measures. According to EU figures, the values should actually have fallen by around 7.3 percent between 2018 and 2022. The ICCT study now sheds a different light on this. Of the 7.3 percent reduction achieved on paper, only less than a third – 2.3 percent – would remain in real-life operation on the road. According to this, the EU’s efforts to reduce traffic-related carbon emissions would be undermined by the car manufacturers.
WLTP test procedure should reduce differences
To counteract this, the globally harmonized WLTP test procedure for passenger cars and light commercial vehicles was introduced in 2017 as a result of the diesel scandal, the ICCT had helped to uncover. This involves collecting data from real-world driving in order to better simulate real-world driving. These values should be more representative than those of the pure NEDC laboratory test cycle.
However, the ICCT now also considers the WLTP to be inadequate. “Our analysis shows that the difference between the official figures and the real carbon emissions will continue to grow even after the introduction of the WLTP,” says Jan Dornoff, senior scientist at the ICCT and co-author of the report. “If no countermeasures are taken here, the official carbon emission values will increasingly lose their significance for the actual emissions. As a result, the mandatory reductions in the official values will not be reflected in the real world.”
Court of Auditors also points out discrepancies
Just last week, the European Court of Auditors gave the EU’s carbon fleet regulation a poor report in its special report “Reducing CO₂ emissions from passenger cars“: By 2020, “the intended benefits of the regulation had largely lapsed.” There had been little or no reduction in carbon emissions from new vehicles.
This was mainly due to the fact that “manufacturers focused on reducing emissions measured in the laboratory rather than on reducing actual emissions.” It was not until 2017 that a switch was made to a test mode that better simulates real driving conditions. The Court of Auditors’ report was based on research in three member states, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.
ICCT: using data from real consumption
The ICCT experts have now analyzed official carbon emissions data from the European Environment Agency EEA as a measure of fuel consumption and compared it with real fuel consumption data from more than 160,000 cars. These are combustion and conventional hybrid vehicles whose owners have entered their consumption data on the spritmonitor.de website. Plug-in hybrids were analyzed separately in an earlier study.
The ICCT advocates using data from the OBFCM fuel consumption monitoring system to reduce the discrepancies between the laboratory values and the consumption values in actual driving. ICCT Europe Managing Director Peter Mock demands: “This would allow a correction mechanism to be set up to ensure that the official CO₂ emission values that manufacturers will have to meet in the coming years are updated in such a way that they also correspond to the originally intended and legally stipulated reduction targets in real terms.” löh
Klima & Umwelt
Agriculture: set-aside obligation to remain suspended
The regulations for a minimum proportion of fallow land on arable land are to remain suspended. This has been announced by the Commission. It is not yet clear what the proposal will look like. The text is due on Thursday. According to reports, it is not only the renewed suspension of the four percent set-aside obligation that is to come. Proposals on catch crops and legumes are also expected. The concrete implementation of the proposals could vary from member state to member state because their authorities have the legal upper hand. mgr
GAP
Security issues take center stage at EU-Indo-Pacific meeting
EU and Indo-Pacific representatives will meet in Brussels on Friday for the third EU-Indo-Pacific Forum. A smaller meeting exclusively with representatives of the Southeast Asian ASEAN countries will take place on Friday afternoon and will be chaired by EU Foreign Affairs Representative Josep Borrell and Philippine Foreign Minister Enrique Manalo.
Topics include security cooperation, economic and trade relations and the Global Gateway Initiative. Many of the Indo-Pacific participants have security concerns relating to China in particular. As in previous years, the People’s Republic is not on the invitation list. According to EU circles, a joint declaration after the meetings is being considered. There had been no such declaration in previous years. The sticking point at the time was that the ASEAN countries and the EU were unable to agree on the wording regarding the war of aggression against Ukraine and the situation in Taiwan.
It was not yet public on Tuesday who from the Indo-Pacific states will be taking part. The European External Action Service did not initially present a list of participating EU ministers either. The fact that only 14 of the 27 EU foreign ministers attended the EU-Indo-Pacific meeting in Stockholm last year was met with criticism.
On Thursday, the first-ever Pacific Day will take place, with lectures and panel discussions on the challenges and future prospects of cooperation between the EU and the Pacific island states. According to an EU official, around 70 delegations are expected to attend both events. Partnership projects are to be presented at the Pacific Day. ari
China
China
Geopolitics
Global Gateway
Indo-Pacific
Anja Hirschel is the top candidate of the Pirate Party
At its General Assembly in Luxembourg, the European Pirate Party officially nominated Marcel Kolaja from the Czech Republic and Anja Hirschel from Germany as top candidates for the European elections in June. Hirschel succeeds Patrick Breyer, who did not stand for re-election.
The European Pirate Party is a member of the Pirate Party International and has 18 members in 17 European countries. There are elected representatives at the national level in the Czech Republic, Luxembourg and Iceland and at the European level in Germany and the Czech Republic.
Anja Hirschel is an expert in data protection and digitalization
As the top candidate, she would like to offer a new perspective for the digital and networked future of the EU, said Hirschel. As a certified data protection officer, she can contribute her expertise in the areas of digitalization, data protection, copyright and environmental issues. She is looking forward to “promoting the Pirate Party’s vision for a European Union that embraces digital progress while protecting the rights and values of its citizens.”
Hirschel currently works full-time for an IT company where she is the employee representative. She is also a city councilor in Ulm for the Pirate Party, of which she was the top candidate in the 2021 federal election.
Kolaja competes again
Marcel Kolaja, who is already a Member and Quaestor of the European Parliament, has also been nominated as a top candidate. He was nominated by his party, which co-governs the Czech Republic, as a possible next Czech EU Commissioner.
Kolaja said that in the face of increasing populism and support for far-right parties, the Pirates offer an alternative, whose policies are based on facts, workable solutions and honesty. “That is why the voice of the Pirates must be clearly heard in the highest positions of European politics,” said Kolaja. vis
Europawahlen 2024
France to ramp up nuclear power
In a government statement, the new French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal has renewed his commitment to nuclear energy. Attal said that nuclear energy is “French pride.” France will continue to invest in nuclear energy and develop reactors, he announced to the National Assembly on Tuesday.
“We will continue to ramp up our nuclear network and invest heavily in programs this year,” said Attal. In addition, the Flamanville EPR reactor of the state-owned energy supplier EDF is to be put into operation. “We will continue the development of renewable energies as well as the development of nuclear energy in our country,” said Attal.
Commitment to Europe
At the end of his government statement, Attal made a commitment to Europe. Less Europe would also mean less power for France. He criticized Marine Le Pen’s right-wing nationalist Rassemblement National for their desire to covertly withdraw France from the EU.
Attal also held out the prospect of higher wages in his speech. Too high a proportion of the population only earns the minimum wage, said Attal. That had to change. He also appealed to the political opposition to work with the government given the lack of an absolute government majority in the lower house. dpa/rtr
Suspicion of espionage: European Parliament launches investigation into Ždanoka
The European Parliament has launched an investigation into Latvian MEP Tatjana Ždanoka over possible contacts with the Russian secret service FSB. Parliament President Roberta Metsola is taking the allegations made in a media report “very seriously,” the Parliament announced on Tuesday. The security authorities in Latvia have also initiated an investigation into the information that has become known about the 73-year-old.
Ždanoka has been a member of the European Parliament since 2004. Until 2022, she was a member of the Greens/EFA group as part of the EFA group. At that time, she was one of only 13 MEPs to vote against a resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As a result, the group expelled her. She has been non-attached ever since.
According to investigative research published on Monday by “The Insider” portal, among others, Ždanoka is said to have worked for the Russian domestic intelligence service FSB for around 20 years and to have been tasked with promoting a pro-Kremlin mood in the Baltic states. To this end, the politician was supervised by two different FSB agents from at least 2004 to 2017, according to the report, citing relevant correspondence in leaked emails.
Former group distances itself from her
Ždanoka rejected the allegations. According to the Latvian security police, Ždanoka’s status as an MEP and the associated legal immunity are an “essential aspect that contributed to her activities in support of Russia’s geopolitical interests.”
The Greens/EFA group said in a statement on Tuesday that Ždanoka had had “no part in shaping group policy on foreign policy issues, including policy on Russia” during her time in the group.
Even before the Russian attack on Ukraine, the Latvian MEP had attracted attention for her emphatically positive relationship with Russia. In 2014, for example, she traveled as an “international observer” to the independence referendum in Crimea, which was internationally classified as a sham referendum – at the expense of the European Parliament, as Latvian radio later revealed. dpa/lei
Possible price fixing: raids on tire manufacturers
The EU Commission raided Continental and other tire manufacturers in Europe on Tuesday on suspicion of a tire cartel. The EU Commission said on Tuesday that it was concerned about possible price fixing for new replacement tires for cars, vans, trucks and buses. “The Commission is concerned that price coordination took place amongst the inspected companies, including via public communication,” it said. The authority did not comment on the companies concerned.
A Conti spokesperson stated that investigations by the European antitrust authorities had been underway at the company’s premises since Tuesday. Pirelli announced that it was cooperating fully with the EU Commission. A spokesperson added that the Italian tire company had acted fairly. Michelin also confirmed the searches. A spokesperson emphasized the French company always complies with the competition rules that apply in the respective countries. rtr
Heads
Paulina Hennig-Kloska: Poland’s environment minister on a tricky mission
Paulina Hennig-Kloska, Poland’s new Minister of Climate and Environment, at her swearing-in ceremony in December 2023.
Paulina Hennig-Kloska was not even in office when she already felt the explosive power her new duties would bring. Hennig-Kloska, who has since been appointed Minister of Climate and the Environment, presented a legislative proposal with other MPs to facilitate the construction of new wind farms caused particular outrage by reducing the distance to residential buildings: According to the proposal, particularly quiet turbines can be built at a distance of 300 meters – 200 meters less than was promised during the election campaign.
The Law and Justice Party (PiS), which led the government until last year, accused Hennig-Kloska of promoting wind turbine industry lobby groups, particularly from Germany. Hennig-Kloska demanded an apology and threatened to sue a PiS MP for defamation. Some coalition politicians then doubted Hennig-Kloska’s suitability for the new office – but her party kept the 46-year-old. A little later, as a sworn-in minister, she admitted mistakes and changed some points. The revised wind farm lawis now due to be passed in March at the latest.
She is not an environmental activist
Hennig-Kloska is not an activist. The political scientist from Gniezno, west of Warsaw, first worked as a radio journalist, was head of department at a local bank and, with her husband Artur Kloska, ran the company Borg, which specializes in office furnishings.
In 2015, she joined the Nowoczesna party and was unexpectedly elected to the national parliament, the Sejm. Because Borg won a public contract to furnish schools, critics spoke of corruption. However, they could not provide any proof – and the voters did not believe them either. Instead, they re-elected the MP twice since then.
In the spring of 2021, Hennig-Kloska then switched to the Poland 2050 party, which is now part of Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing coalition, and became one of the most important politicians in the new party, which presents itself as conservative and down-to-earth. With the new party also came a new topic: She moved from the health portfolio to the energy and climate committee.
Energy transition as the foundation of competitiveness
“It was then that I realized that the energy transition is the foundation of a future competitive economy,” she says, “and the carbon footprint will destroy our economy if we don’t do something about it.” When it comes to economic policy, she is a liberal, advocating tax cuts and supporting the privatization of state-owned companies, with the exception of the energy and defense sectors.
In her new office, she will now have to get up to speed quickly and tackle many challenges, as the previous PiS government completely neglected environmental policy. Poland still covers 63 percent of its electricity needs with coal, and the phase-out of fossil fuels is not planned before 2049. Now the ministry is to promote investment in renewable energy sources, wind turbines, photovoltaics and biomass plants, but also nuclear energy. The thermal modernization of buildings must also be tackled urgently to achieve savings targets.
Hennig-Kloska attempts a balancing act
Hennig-Kloska also hopes that the European Union will help finance all this. The “Clean Air” program, for example, under which old incinerators are to be replaced, was recently frozen due to a lack of funding, although around 50,000 people die every year as a result of smog. Hennig-Kloska now wants to mobilize EU funding from the European Funds for Infrastructure, Climate, and Environment (FENIKS). Poland will also apply for project funding from the EU’s Fit for 55 package.
At the same time, Hennig-Kloska wants to maintain a balance, including within her own government. In mid-January, it was her Green deputy Urszula Zielińska who demanded a fast transformation and called for the EU to reduce its carbon emissions by 90 percent by 2040. Paulina Hennig-Kloska quickly brought Zielińskaback in line and explained that the statement was neither official nor coordinated with other departments.
All parties in the governing coalition agree that Poland must become climate-neutral. However, thiswill take time. Poland did not join an alliance of eleven countries, including Germany, which also called for more ambitious EU climate targets. After all, Hennig-Kloska also has to take her coalition partner, the farmers’ party PSL, into consideration. Which declared that it does not want to overburden citizens with the transformation.Andrzej Rybak
