Dear reader,
It “will be difficult if we pass on the problems to the other partners“, Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said yesterday, her guest Olaf Scholz at her side. This may be true, but that is exactly how European asylum policy has worked so far. The Mediterranean countries prefer to wave new arrivals northward, Germany, Austria and others insist that Italy and Greece are responsible, and naysayers like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán leave their mark as hardliners at the expense of others.
Bridging such differences is extremely painful, even for the EU, which is well-versed in balancing interests. Nevertheless, the interior ministers managed to do so on Thursday evening. The German government also finally agreed to the compromise brokered by the Swedish Council presidency – to the chagrin of some Greens. After many years of bitter dispute, this is a historic achievement, even if negotiations with the European Parliament are still pending.
Measured in terms of what is politically feasible, the agreement is a success. Measured against the real challenge of high migration numbers, this cannot yet be said. Will the Mediterranean countries consistently implement the new border procedures for low-potential asylum seekers, without illegal pushbacks? How solidary will the other EU partners be? Can the EU negotiate effective readmission agreements with its neighboring countries, while opening legal routes to Europe?
All these questions remain open even after the agreement in Luxembourg. For the decisions to become reality, much more of the goodwill demonstrated by Meloni and Scholz yesterday is needed.
Feature
Rocky start at new ethics body
Uniform ethical standards are to apply in the EU institutions in the future. A new ethics committee will be responsible for drawing up the common rules. However, enforcement will remain the responsibility of the individual authorities; sanctions are not planned. This is provided for in a draft presented by the EU Commission in Brussels on Thursday. Sharp criticism came from the European Parliament and several NGOs specializing in transparency. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had not done her homework, they said.
Von der Leyen announced the ethics body after her election in 2019, but then put it on the back burner. The Covid pandemic was to blame, but so was resistance within the EU, said Commission Vice-President Vera Jourova, who presented the proposal.
It was a matter of restoring the trust shaken after the “Qatargate” – the corruption scandal in the European Parliament revealed at the end of 2022, Jourova said. The scandal had shown that there were still gaps in the EU’s rules and regulations. These need to be closed.
Nine institutions to work together
To this end, nine EU institutions – in addition to the Commission, these are the Parliament, the European Council, the Council, the Court of Justice of the EU, the European Central Bank, the Court of Auditors, the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions – are initially to work together. They are each to send a representative to the new ethics body. A first meeting is scheduled for July 3 in Brussels. The roundtable will then discuss common ethics rules and standards with a view to harmonizing and, if possible, gradually raising them.
They want to talk about accepting gifts, payment for trips abroad and meetings with lobbyists, Jourova said. Other topics include side jobs and new lucrative activities after leaving an EU authority. Former German EU Commissioner Günther Oettinger had repeatedly hit the headlines for this.
However, sanctions are not planned. Oettinger is therefore likely to remain unchallenged, just like the former head of the Court of Auditors, Klaus-Heiner Lehne, who was involved in an expenses scandal. The new body will not deal with individual investigations, the Commission emphasizes.
Body cannot enforce rules itself
Nor is it supposed to be concerned with enforcing the rules – that is left to the respective institutions. The point is to develop a “common ethical culture“, Jourova explained. The standards developed together should then be incorporated into the internal rules of the respective authority. In this way, they would also become legally binding and could be enforced.
However, this remains rather vague in the text of the EU Commission. “The parties commit to implement [the standards] in their internal rules on the conduct of their members”, it says in Article 7.7. When asked why she had not demanded more binding rules and rights of enforcement, Jourova replied: “I did my best”.
The draft had been the subject of long and fierce behind-the-scenes wrangling. Some institutions, such as the Central Bank, resisted common and binding standards. In contrast, there were calls in the European Parliament for a powerful ethics authority that would also have investigative and sanctioning powers.
This, in turn, was opposed by conservative MEPs in particular. They feared for the freedom of the parliamentary mandate – but also for possible repercussions on the Qatargate scandal. In response to the corruption scandal, Parliament has initiated its own reforms, but progress has been slow.
Will the proposal be tightened after all?
The Commission will now seek an inter-institutional agreement, Jourova said. This is expected to take three months. After that, six months of consultations on standards are planned. In total, it will take about nine months for the new body to be ready to work.
However, delays are already looming – because the proposal has met with massive criticism and may need to be improved. “The proposal is a toothless tiger”, said Green MEP Daniel Freund. He said it was “inadequate, underfunded and uninspired”. The Qatargate scandal showed that self-regulation does not work, he said.
Transparency International expressed similar views. The proposal means “business as usual” and does not move the EU forward, said TI expert Nicholas Aiossa. “If the EU is serious about fighting corruption within its own ranks, it must ensure that an independent oversight body has the power and the means to investigate and punish members who have misbehaved“.
In contrast, MEP Sven Simon (CDU) warns against politicization. “One can only warn strongly against a disciplinary chamber for MEPs based on the Polish model“. The proposal of the Commission is appropriate. However, it remains the case that abuses such as cataracts would not have been prevented by an ethics authority.
Majority of member states fail to meet recycling targets
The EU has so far set recycling targets in three directives: the Waste Framework Directive, the Packaging Directive and the Landfill Directive. According to these, by 2025, 55 percent of municipal waste and 65 percent of packaging waste should be prepared for reuse or recycling. Material-specific targets are also prescribed for the various packaging materials.
According to the early warning report published yesterday, which the Commission always publishes together with the European Environment Agency (EEA) three years before the target years, nine of the 27 member states, including Germany, have almost or already reached both targets. 18 member states, on the other hand, are in danger of not meeting the targets. Eight states are in danger of missing the target for municipal waste, and ten countries could even fail to meet both quotas.
Plastic packaging is the most difficult packaging waste stream to recycle, the report states. Nineteen member states are expected to miss the 50 percent recycling target by 2025. “Many member states need to significantly increase their efforts and better monitor the effectiveness of policies to address the risk areas identified in this assessment”, the Environment Agency writes in its analysis.
‘Old packaging directive contributes little to recycling’
“Very problematic” is what Mattia Pellegrini, the responsible head of unit at DG ENVI in the Commission, says. During a discussion on the planned packaging regulation, he said yesterday in Brussels, “This shows that the old directive hardly contributes to recycling and has no real impact on the market”. In November 2022, the Commission presented its draft for a revision of the directive. This provides for a conversion into a regulation and accordingly more binding rules for the member states.
For the first time, the EU also wants to regulate waste prevention and reuse through the legislative reform – a major challenge, said Pellegrini at the Reuse Conference hosted by Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH). That the plans are therefore intended to play reuse and recycling off against each other, as portrayed in the press and lobby campaigns, is simply wrong: “We want both”, Pellegrini stressed. It depends on the specific case whether reusable or recyclable packaging is better suited.
Delara Burkhardt, the S&D’s shadow rapporteur, expressed clear concern about the single-use lobby’s campaign, which is financed with huge budgets, and sharply criticized their methods: they are “really problematic and cross lines”. The single-use lobby submits studies that mostly do not stand up to scientific scrutiny and are rather “unbalanced lobby papers with a few numbers and statistics”, Burkhardt criticized.
Sharp criticism of methods of the disposable lobby
In addition, she says, there is a lot of fake news and half-truths about what is supposedly in the Commission’s proposal in terms of reuse, leading to panicked reactions – such as the recent discussion about the alleged threat of destruction of German beer bottles and beer crates. Burkhardt, meanwhile, spends more time demystifying those arguments than actually working on the proposal. “They are flooding the European Parliament and the European arena with this and casting doubts on the ecological sense of the Commission’s proposals“, the MEP raged.
In her view, however, the strategy seems to be working, because after the Commission also watered down the targets, which were much more ambitious in an earlier draft, many amendments have already been tabled in Parliament to delete or water down the ban on single-use packaging and the provisions on reuse, for example. Rapporteur Frédérique Ries (Renew) also wants to delete the reusable targets for the take-away sector.
Deutsche Umwelthilfe, together with other civil society organizations, is taking a stand against this, calling in an open letter to the EU Parliament and Council for the introduction of well-designed reuse systems. “To tackle the current crisis around packaging waste, its production and consumption must be prevented as much as possible by using efficient reusable systems and moving away from single-use packaging”, they say.
Germany: Municipalities may introduce single-use tax
According to the Commission’s early warning report, Germany will also achieve the material-specific recycling targets for paper, ferrous metals, aluminum, glass, plastics and wood in 2025. One more reason for the German government to lobby the Council for a strong packaging law. At yesterday’s event, German Environment Minister Steffi Lemke (Greens) said she was committed to ensuring that member states retained scope for even more ambitious measures. This would be particularly important with regard to the planned reusable targets, as Germany’s reusable quotas and targets are already significantly higher than the targets in the Commission’s draft.
Meanwhile, at the municipal level in Germany, it is also becoming apparent that things can be done faster: The lawsuit filed by fast food chain McDonald’s against the city of Tübingen’s tax on disposable packaging recently failed in the second instance at the Federal Administrative Court. Tübingen had introduced a local tax on disposable packaging for take-away food at the beginning of 2022, after which the majority of restaurants and cafés began offering reusable containers. Following the ruling, other municipalities may soon follow suit and promote reusable systems through financial incentives.
- Consumer protection
- Recycling
News
Agreement: asylum procedures to be tightened
Asylum procedures in the EU are to be significantly tightened in view of the problems with illegal migration. At a meeting of interior ministers in Luxembourg on Thursday, a sufficiently large majority of member states voted in favor of comprehensive reform plans, according to the Swedish presidency. In particular, they provide for a significantly more rigid approach to migrants without prospects of staying.
In the future, people arriving from countries considered to be safe would be sent to strictly controlled reception facilities after crossing the border under conditions similar to those in detention centers. There, they would normally be examined within twelve weeks to determine whether the applicant has a chance of obtaining asylum. If not, they would be sent back immediately.
Green Party Minister for Foreign Affairs Annalena Baerbock defended Germany’s yes vote. “Anyone who thinks this compromise is unacceptable is accepting for the future that no one will be distributed. That families and children from Syria or from Afghanistan, who have fled war, torture and the most serious human rights violations, will be stuck at the external border forever and without prospects”. A no or abstention by Germany on the reform “would have meant more suffering, not less”, Baerbock continued.
Parliament wants to use right of co-determination for renegotiations
During the negotiations, the German government had strongly advocated that families with children be exempted from the so-called border procedures. However, in order to make the breakthrough possible, it ultimately had to accept that this might not be possible after all. At the meeting, however, Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser said that the German government would continue to work to ensure that all children’s rights remain granted.
It is also conceivable that the EU Parliament will still push through changes. It has a say in the reform and will negotiate the project with representatives of the EU member states in the coming months.
In addition to stricter asylum procedures, the plans adopted on Thursday also provide for more solidarity with the heavily burdened member states at the EU’s external borders. In the future, it would no longer be voluntary, but mandatory. Countries that do not want to take in refugees would be forced to make compensation payments. Countries like Hungary therefore voted against the plan.
The remaining negotiations with the EU Parliament should ideally be concluded before the end of the year. Then the laws could be passed before the European elections in June 2024. Should this not succeed, a change in the balance of political power could make new negotiations necessary. dpa/lei
Italy and Germany agree on closer cooperation
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni have agreed on closer cooperation between the two countries. The two EU governments intend to set this down in writing in an action plan before the end of 2023. Scholz praised the plan to build a new natural gas and hydrogen pipeline from Italy via Austria to Germany. Meloni also called for closer cooperation between the EU and North African countries.
The SPD politician’s visit to the right-wing conservative politician in Rome had been eagerly anticipated. “Italy is an important partner and reliable friend“, Scholz said after the talks. Meloni stressed that the economies of the two countries complemented each other and pointed to the German-Italian trade balance of more than €168 billion.
Both stressed the similarities between the two countries in migration policy. Differences over two boats detained by Italy to rescue shipwrecked migrants and refugees in the Mediterranean were not addressed, according to Meloni. Instead, both leaders urged the other 25 EU governments to agree to EU asylum reform, which was being negotiated among EU ministers on the day of the visit. Meloni also plans to travel to Tunisia with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, she announced Thursday. The North African state is currently the departure point for many boats carrying migrants trying to reach the EU via the Mediterranean.
The Stability Pact is where the common ground ends
There was also unanimity on the issue of Ukraine: The country must be supported in its defense against the Russian attack for as long as this is necessary. Words like peace and invasion simply do not go together, Meloni stressed, alluding to calls for peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.
Differences emerged, however, in other areas of EU policy. Meloni renewed the call for a new Stability and Growth Pact, while Scholz had previously rather slowed down in the debate. Italy also rejects the extension of majority decisions among the 27 EU states in areas such as foreign and tax policy, which Scholz has vehemently called for. rtr
Renaturation: Commission accommodates critics
The European Commission has offered to scale back some of the objectives of its flagship Renaturation Directive in order to reach agreement on the proposed legislation. The proposal was last blocked by some parliamentarians, led by the EPP group.
In a document sent to EU countries and lawmakers and obtained by Table.Media, Brussels proposed removing specific targets for countries to increase green space in cities and allowing countries to use more non-agricultural land to meet the goal of reviving dried-up peatlands.
The Renaturation Act is on the brink of a vote in the European Parliament. EPP MEPs argue that the law would harm farmers and take land out of agricultural use.
The commission document states that some of the targets rejected by the EPP – such as the goal of locating trees, ponds and other biodiversity features on 10 percent of farmland – are not binding and that economic activities such as agriculture can continue to take place in areas where nature is enhanced. tm/rtr
- Agricultural Policy
- Climate & Environment
- Environmental policy
- EVP
- Renaturation
Chip IPCEI: Commission clears the way for billions in aid
Around two and a half years after the project was launched, the EU Commission approved billions in aid for the chip industry. The new IPCEI Microelectronics and Communication Technologies comprises 68 projects, which the 14 member states involved may fund with up to €8.1 billion. The companies are to invest an additional €13.7 billion as part of the project.
Major chip manufacturers such as Infineon, Bosch, ST Microelectronics and Globalfoundries are receiving funding, as are basic material suppliers such as Wacker Chemie and customers such as Airbus and Renault. Germany alone is providing around half of the funding.
No money for companies with owners in China
Of the initial 32 German projects, however, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action removed one from the list: a plant of the Dutch company Nexperia, which has Chinese owners. Behind the decision was apparently the concern that know-how could flow to China.
The companies involved had been waiting with growing impatience for approval from the EU Commission. It had taken one and a half years from the notification of the projects to the decision – “that’s too long to keep up with international competition”, said Oliver Blank, head of Global Affairs at ZVEI. Among other things, many process steps could take place in parallel.
Globalfoundries spokesman Jens Drews commented that the company was pleased with “the long-awaited approval under state aid law”. This is an important administrative milestone and the company can now concentrate on its actual task of delivering innovations. Among other things, the company intends to develop new trusted functionalities (NTF) for its chips at its Dresden site.
‘These are very complex projects’
Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager appealed for understanding for the lengthy review: “These are very complex projects,” she said. However, the code of good practices published in mid-May could help to make the procedures easier for the companies.
Not all of the planned large-scale chip projects are part of the second IPCEI Microelectronics. The German government is currently negotiating with the US company Intel to significantly increase the investment volume and funding for the semiconductor factory planned in Magdeburg. This would be based on the recently passed European Chips Act. Negotiations with the Taiwanese manufacturer TSMC on a foundry in Dresden are also underway within the framework of the simplified procedures of the Chips Act. tho
Traffic light coalition agrees on national security strategy
Many European partners have been eagerly awaiting it – now, after almost a year and a half of work and a long back and forth between the coalition partners in Berlin, the national security strategy has been finalized. At the same time, the coalition decided to classify it as secret in order to avoid getting into public partial debates again at least until the official adoption in the cabinet next Wednesday. This happened to the traffic light coalition around the turn of the year, when drafts of individual parts became public.
It remains to be seen whether the strategy will work this time. But internally, it is seen as an indicator of how trustingly the three partners will continue to act. The next goal of the traffic light coalition is to finalize the China strategy. steb
China: Armored vehicles for Russian military
According to reports, the Russian military received Chinese armored vehicles. The Polish-based Defense Blog reported that Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov has confirmed that the Russian military has received the first delivery of Chinese Tiger 4×4 armored vehicles. According to the report, Kadyrov had released footage showing “new vehicles purchased for Chechen units participating in the ‘Special Military Operation.’” This is the term Moscow uses for the war in Ukraine; it can therefore be assumed that Kadyrov is referring to this war.
The vehicles are manufactured by China’s Shaanxi Baoji Special Vehicles Manufacturing and look like raised armored jeeps. While these armored vehicles are not weapons, their application is clearly military. The EU could see the delivery as a further escalation. Brussels repeatedly warned China against supplying Russia with weapons and ammunition. The German government also urged China not to provide Russia with weapons.
The dispute has so far been over so-called dual-use goods, i.e., civilian goods used for weapons production. However, due to their different applications, they are not proof of arms deliveries. The EU is currently working on a sanctions package that focuses on circumventing the previous punitive measures. This could also affect Chinese companies. ari
Column
What’s cooking in Brussels? Green Deal as a political pawn
The parliamentarians of the ENVI Committee will vote on June 15 on the Nature Restoration Law as proposed by the Vice-President of the European Commission and Green Deal leader Frans Timmermans. And this vote is drawing all the attention of the Brussels bubble right now. Meanwhile, the negotiations resemble a political contest worthy of House of Cards in the European bubble’s version. In this case, it is a showdown between the EPP and the polyglot Frans Timmermans.
A majority with one vote
Indeed, the EPP withdrew from negotiations on the text, leaving Pascal Canfin (Renew), chairman of the ENVI Committee and a supporter of the European Commission’s proposed legislation, with the extremely delicate task of finding a majority for the text in his own group as well as among the Greens, the S&D and the Left. As it stands, he would only have a one-vote majority to get the proposal through, he said recently in Paris. Actually, this would be a good time to place the popcorn emoji right here.
And when you say that the Brussels Bubble is boiling, it looks like this: On the one hand, there are the supporters of the Commission’s proposal, who are coming together in a coalition to urge EU parliamentarians to support the proposal. We are talking, for example, about hunters or even companies – 1,400, which is no small number – which together account for five trillion dollars – which is definitely not a small sum in turn.
On the other hand, the EPP does not hesitate to publish accusations of pressure that the group allegedly faces from the Commission – and also denounces “hidden lobbying” by the Business and Biodiversity platform, which is housed in the Environment Directorate-General. It would contact members of Parliament and send out an information package. It looks like the Commission is funding its own lobby, which goes beyond the normal role of a commission, said Esther de Lange, EPP deputy group leader.
‘Turnaround in the ENVI Committee’
There is no doubt that environmental issues have become top political priorities, on par with budgetary or geopolitical issues. The political parties in Brussels have understood this, of course, and one year before the elections they are refining their strategies. In this respect, the EPP had a good nose. For it was able to score point victories on several occasions.
On May 23, the co-advisory AGRI Committee rejected the proposal for the Nature Restoration Regulation. The rejection was defended by French Anne Sander, EPP member and draftsperson, and passed with 30 votes in favor, 16 against and one abstention. The EPP received the votes of the two far-right groups ECR and ID, one deputy from La Gauche, and all Renew deputies, except for the abstention of Frenchman Jérémy Decerle. The votes against the rejection, mainly from S&D and the Greens, were not enough.
The next day, it was the Fisheries Committee’s turn to reject the regulation: 15 MEPs were in favor, mainly from the EPP, ID and ECR groups; 13 were against, from the S&D, Greens and La Gauche groups. The Renew group was split: Three were for rejection, one against, French Stéphanie Yon-Courtin. French Green MEP Caroline Roose, draftsman of the committee’s opinion, called the vote “shameful”.
The EPP Group won a third political victory on May 25 in the dossier to revise the Industrial Emissions Directive. The Commission had proposed including livestock farms. The ENVI Committee did not reject this, but increased the thresholds to limit the number of agricultural installations affected (between 200 and 300 livestock units depending on the type of animal, compared to the initial proposed threshold of 150). It also excluded farms with extensive livestock production.
On this occasion, German Peter Liese (EPP) welcomed a “turnaround in the ENVI Committee” and reported that it had “for the first time“ “considerably weakened in all points” a Commission proposal.
Alliance of right-wingers and right-wing extremists
The leader of the EPP group, Manfred Weber, has recently tightened his position towards the Green Deal: In 2019 he had to support this political project wanted by Ursula von der Leyen, who, like him, comes from the CDU-CSU and was put at the head of the Commission by Angela Merkel. However, he no longer has this concern now that his party is no longer part of the coalition that governs in Berlin. With his rejection, Weber is siding with parties even further to the right. This is also in line with the political trend observed in several member states, where alliances between the right and the extreme right are becoming more frequent (Italy, Sweden and Finland).
So has the Green Deal become a political pawn? EPP Group Vice-President Esther de Lange answered this question with a firm “no” in the press room in Brussels. “The EPP has always supported the Green Deal”, she said. She said the EPP wanted to put the question of “quality before speed” before passing the ball back to the Green Group, which she said was blocking all “forward-looking” and “nature-friendly” technological advances. Claire Stam
Europe.Table Editorial Office
Dear reader,
It “will be difficult if we pass on the problems to the other partners“, Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said yesterday, her guest Olaf Scholz at her side. This may be true, but that is exactly how European asylum policy has worked so far. The Mediterranean countries prefer to wave new arrivals northward, Germany, Austria and others insist that Italy and Greece are responsible, and naysayers like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán leave their mark as hardliners at the expense of others.
Bridging such differences is extremely painful, even for the EU, which is well-versed in balancing interests. Nevertheless, the interior ministers managed to do so on Thursday evening. The German government also finally agreed to the compromise brokered by the Swedish Council presidency – to the chagrin of some Greens. After many years of bitter dispute, this is a historic achievement, even if negotiations with the European Parliament are still pending.
Measured in terms of what is politically feasible, the agreement is a success. Measured against the real challenge of high migration numbers, this cannot yet be said. Will the Mediterranean countries consistently implement the new border procedures for low-potential asylum seekers, without illegal pushbacks? How solidary will the other EU partners be? Can the EU negotiate effective readmission agreements with its neighboring countries, while opening legal routes to Europe?
All these questions remain open even after the agreement in Luxembourg. For the decisions to become reality, much more of the goodwill demonstrated by Meloni and Scholz yesterday is needed.
Feature
Rocky start at new ethics body
Uniform ethical standards are to apply in the EU institutions in the future. A new ethics committee will be responsible for drawing up the common rules. However, enforcement will remain the responsibility of the individual authorities; sanctions are not planned. This is provided for in a draft presented by the EU Commission in Brussels on Thursday. Sharp criticism came from the European Parliament and several NGOs specializing in transparency. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had not done her homework, they said.
Von der Leyen announced the ethics body after her election in 2019, but then put it on the back burner. The Covid pandemic was to blame, but so was resistance within the EU, said Commission Vice-President Vera Jourova, who presented the proposal.
It was a matter of restoring the trust shaken after the “Qatargate” – the corruption scandal in the European Parliament revealed at the end of 2022, Jourova said. The scandal had shown that there were still gaps in the EU’s rules and regulations. These need to be closed.
Nine institutions to work together
To this end, nine EU institutions – in addition to the Commission, these are the Parliament, the European Council, the Council, the Court of Justice of the EU, the European Central Bank, the Court of Auditors, the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions – are initially to work together. They are each to send a representative to the new ethics body. A first meeting is scheduled for July 3 in Brussels. The roundtable will then discuss common ethics rules and standards with a view to harmonizing and, if possible, gradually raising them.
They want to talk about accepting gifts, payment for trips abroad and meetings with lobbyists, Jourova said. Other topics include side jobs and new lucrative activities after leaving an EU authority. Former German EU Commissioner Günther Oettinger had repeatedly hit the headlines for this.
However, sanctions are not planned. Oettinger is therefore likely to remain unchallenged, just like the former head of the Court of Auditors, Klaus-Heiner Lehne, who was involved in an expenses scandal. The new body will not deal with individual investigations, the Commission emphasizes.
Body cannot enforce rules itself
Nor is it supposed to be concerned with enforcing the rules – that is left to the respective institutions. The point is to develop a “common ethical culture“, Jourova explained. The standards developed together should then be incorporated into the internal rules of the respective authority. In this way, they would also become legally binding and could be enforced.
However, this remains rather vague in the text of the EU Commission. “The parties commit to implement [the standards] in their internal rules on the conduct of their members”, it says in Article 7.7. When asked why she had not demanded more binding rules and rights of enforcement, Jourova replied: “I did my best”.
The draft had been the subject of long and fierce behind-the-scenes wrangling. Some institutions, such as the Central Bank, resisted common and binding standards. In contrast, there were calls in the European Parliament for a powerful ethics authority that would also have investigative and sanctioning powers.
This, in turn, was opposed by conservative MEPs in particular. They feared for the freedom of the parliamentary mandate – but also for possible repercussions on the Qatargate scandal. In response to the corruption scandal, Parliament has initiated its own reforms, but progress has been slow.
Will the proposal be tightened after all?
The Commission will now seek an inter-institutional agreement, Jourova said. This is expected to take three months. After that, six months of consultations on standards are planned. In total, it will take about nine months for the new body to be ready to work.
However, delays are already looming – because the proposal has met with massive criticism and may need to be improved. “The proposal is a toothless tiger”, said Green MEP Daniel Freund. He said it was “inadequate, underfunded and uninspired”. The Qatargate scandal showed that self-regulation does not work, he said.
Transparency International expressed similar views. The proposal means “business as usual” and does not move the EU forward, said TI expert Nicholas Aiossa. “If the EU is serious about fighting corruption within its own ranks, it must ensure that an independent oversight body has the power and the means to investigate and punish members who have misbehaved“.
In contrast, MEP Sven Simon (CDU) warns against politicization. “One can only warn strongly against a disciplinary chamber for MEPs based on the Polish model“. The proposal of the Commission is appropriate. However, it remains the case that abuses such as cataracts would not have been prevented by an ethics authority.
Majority of member states fail to meet recycling targets
The EU has so far set recycling targets in three directives: the Waste Framework Directive, the Packaging Directive and the Landfill Directive. According to these, by 2025, 55 percent of municipal waste and 65 percent of packaging waste should be prepared for reuse or recycling. Material-specific targets are also prescribed for the various packaging materials.
According to the early warning report published yesterday, which the Commission always publishes together with the European Environment Agency (EEA) three years before the target years, nine of the 27 member states, including Germany, have almost or already reached both targets. 18 member states, on the other hand, are in danger of not meeting the targets. Eight states are in danger of missing the target for municipal waste, and ten countries could even fail to meet both quotas.
Plastic packaging is the most difficult packaging waste stream to recycle, the report states. Nineteen member states are expected to miss the 50 percent recycling target by 2025. “Many member states need to significantly increase their efforts and better monitor the effectiveness of policies to address the risk areas identified in this assessment”, the Environment Agency writes in its analysis.
‘Old packaging directive contributes little to recycling’
“Very problematic” is what Mattia Pellegrini, the responsible head of unit at DG ENVI in the Commission, says. During a discussion on the planned packaging regulation, he said yesterday in Brussels, “This shows that the old directive hardly contributes to recycling and has no real impact on the market”. In November 2022, the Commission presented its draft for a revision of the directive. This provides for a conversion into a regulation and accordingly more binding rules for the member states.
For the first time, the EU also wants to regulate waste prevention and reuse through the legislative reform – a major challenge, said Pellegrini at the Reuse Conference hosted by Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH). That the plans are therefore intended to play reuse and recycling off against each other, as portrayed in the press and lobby campaigns, is simply wrong: “We want both”, Pellegrini stressed. It depends on the specific case whether reusable or recyclable packaging is better suited.
Delara Burkhardt, the S&D’s shadow rapporteur, expressed clear concern about the single-use lobby’s campaign, which is financed with huge budgets, and sharply criticized their methods: they are “really problematic and cross lines”. The single-use lobby submits studies that mostly do not stand up to scientific scrutiny and are rather “unbalanced lobby papers with a few numbers and statistics”, Burkhardt criticized.
Sharp criticism of methods of the disposable lobby
In addition, she says, there is a lot of fake news and half-truths about what is supposedly in the Commission’s proposal in terms of reuse, leading to panicked reactions – such as the recent discussion about the alleged threat of destruction of German beer bottles and beer crates. Burkhardt, meanwhile, spends more time demystifying those arguments than actually working on the proposal. “They are flooding the European Parliament and the European arena with this and casting doubts on the ecological sense of the Commission’s proposals“, the MEP raged.
In her view, however, the strategy seems to be working, because after the Commission also watered down the targets, which were much more ambitious in an earlier draft, many amendments have already been tabled in Parliament to delete or water down the ban on single-use packaging and the provisions on reuse, for example. Rapporteur Frédérique Ries (Renew) also wants to delete the reusable targets for the take-away sector.
Deutsche Umwelthilfe, together with other civil society organizations, is taking a stand against this, calling in an open letter to the EU Parliament and Council for the introduction of well-designed reuse systems. “To tackle the current crisis around packaging waste, its production and consumption must be prevented as much as possible by using efficient reusable systems and moving away from single-use packaging”, they say.
Germany: Municipalities may introduce single-use tax
According to the Commission’s early warning report, Germany will also achieve the material-specific recycling targets for paper, ferrous metals, aluminum, glass, plastics and wood in 2025. One more reason for the German government to lobby the Council for a strong packaging law. At yesterday’s event, German Environment Minister Steffi Lemke (Greens) said she was committed to ensuring that member states retained scope for even more ambitious measures. This would be particularly important with regard to the planned reusable targets, as Germany’s reusable quotas and targets are already significantly higher than the targets in the Commission’s draft.
Meanwhile, at the municipal level in Germany, it is also becoming apparent that things can be done faster: The lawsuit filed by fast food chain McDonald’s against the city of Tübingen’s tax on disposable packaging recently failed in the second instance at the Federal Administrative Court. Tübingen had introduced a local tax on disposable packaging for take-away food at the beginning of 2022, after which the majority of restaurants and cafés began offering reusable containers. Following the ruling, other municipalities may soon follow suit and promote reusable systems through financial incentives.
- Consumer protection
- Recycling
News
Agreement: asylum procedures to be tightened
Asylum procedures in the EU are to be significantly tightened in view of the problems with illegal migration. At a meeting of interior ministers in Luxembourg on Thursday, a sufficiently large majority of member states voted in favor of comprehensive reform plans, according to the Swedish presidency. In particular, they provide for a significantly more rigid approach to migrants without prospects of staying.
In the future, people arriving from countries considered to be safe would be sent to strictly controlled reception facilities after crossing the border under conditions similar to those in detention centers. There, they would normally be examined within twelve weeks to determine whether the applicant has a chance of obtaining asylum. If not, they would be sent back immediately.
Green Party Minister for Foreign Affairs Annalena Baerbock defended Germany’s yes vote. “Anyone who thinks this compromise is unacceptable is accepting for the future that no one will be distributed. That families and children from Syria or from Afghanistan, who have fled war, torture and the most serious human rights violations, will be stuck at the external border forever and without prospects”. A no or abstention by Germany on the reform “would have meant more suffering, not less”, Baerbock continued.
Parliament wants to use right of co-determination for renegotiations
During the negotiations, the German government had strongly advocated that families with children be exempted from the so-called border procedures. However, in order to make the breakthrough possible, it ultimately had to accept that this might not be possible after all. At the meeting, however, Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser said that the German government would continue to work to ensure that all children’s rights remain granted.
It is also conceivable that the EU Parliament will still push through changes. It has a say in the reform and will negotiate the project with representatives of the EU member states in the coming months.
In addition to stricter asylum procedures, the plans adopted on Thursday also provide for more solidarity with the heavily burdened member states at the EU’s external borders. In the future, it would no longer be voluntary, but mandatory. Countries that do not want to take in refugees would be forced to make compensation payments. Countries like Hungary therefore voted against the plan.
The remaining negotiations with the EU Parliament should ideally be concluded before the end of the year. Then the laws could be passed before the European elections in June 2024. Should this not succeed, a change in the balance of political power could make new negotiations necessary. dpa/lei
Italy and Germany agree on closer cooperation
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni have agreed on closer cooperation between the two countries. The two EU governments intend to set this down in writing in an action plan before the end of 2023. Scholz praised the plan to build a new natural gas and hydrogen pipeline from Italy via Austria to Germany. Meloni also called for closer cooperation between the EU and North African countries.
The SPD politician’s visit to the right-wing conservative politician in Rome had been eagerly anticipated. “Italy is an important partner and reliable friend“, Scholz said after the talks. Meloni stressed that the economies of the two countries complemented each other and pointed to the German-Italian trade balance of more than €168 billion.
Both stressed the similarities between the two countries in migration policy. Differences over two boats detained by Italy to rescue shipwrecked migrants and refugees in the Mediterranean were not addressed, according to Meloni. Instead, both leaders urged the other 25 EU governments to agree to EU asylum reform, which was being negotiated among EU ministers on the day of the visit. Meloni also plans to travel to Tunisia with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, she announced Thursday. The North African state is currently the departure point for many boats carrying migrants trying to reach the EU via the Mediterranean.
The Stability Pact is where the common ground ends
There was also unanimity on the issue of Ukraine: The country must be supported in its defense against the Russian attack for as long as this is necessary. Words like peace and invasion simply do not go together, Meloni stressed, alluding to calls for peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.
Differences emerged, however, in other areas of EU policy. Meloni renewed the call for a new Stability and Growth Pact, while Scholz had previously rather slowed down in the debate. Italy also rejects the extension of majority decisions among the 27 EU states in areas such as foreign and tax policy, which Scholz has vehemently called for. rtr
Renaturation: Commission accommodates critics
The European Commission has offered to scale back some of the objectives of its flagship Renaturation Directive in order to reach agreement on the proposed legislation. The proposal was last blocked by some parliamentarians, led by the EPP group.
In a document sent to EU countries and lawmakers and obtained by Table.Media, Brussels proposed removing specific targets for countries to increase green space in cities and allowing countries to use more non-agricultural land to meet the goal of reviving dried-up peatlands.
The Renaturation Act is on the brink of a vote in the European Parliament. EPP MEPs argue that the law would harm farmers and take land out of agricultural use.
The commission document states that some of the targets rejected by the EPP – such as the goal of locating trees, ponds and other biodiversity features on 10 percent of farmland – are not binding and that economic activities such as agriculture can continue to take place in areas where nature is enhanced. tm/rtr
- Agricultural Policy
- Climate & Environment
- Environmental policy
- EVP
- Renaturation
Chip IPCEI: Commission clears the way for billions in aid
Around two and a half years after the project was launched, the EU Commission approved billions in aid for the chip industry. The new IPCEI Microelectronics and Communication Technologies comprises 68 projects, which the 14 member states involved may fund with up to €8.1 billion. The companies are to invest an additional €13.7 billion as part of the project.
Major chip manufacturers such as Infineon, Bosch, ST Microelectronics and Globalfoundries are receiving funding, as are basic material suppliers such as Wacker Chemie and customers such as Airbus and Renault. Germany alone is providing around half of the funding.
No money for companies with owners in China
Of the initial 32 German projects, however, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action removed one from the list: a plant of the Dutch company Nexperia, which has Chinese owners. Behind the decision was apparently the concern that know-how could flow to China.
The companies involved had been waiting with growing impatience for approval from the EU Commission. It had taken one and a half years from the notification of the projects to the decision – “that’s too long to keep up with international competition”, said Oliver Blank, head of Global Affairs at ZVEI. Among other things, many process steps could take place in parallel.
Globalfoundries spokesman Jens Drews commented that the company was pleased with “the long-awaited approval under state aid law”. This is an important administrative milestone and the company can now concentrate on its actual task of delivering innovations. Among other things, the company intends to develop new trusted functionalities (NTF) for its chips at its Dresden site.
‘These are very complex projects’
Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager appealed for understanding for the lengthy review: “These are very complex projects,” she said. However, the code of good practices published in mid-May could help to make the procedures easier for the companies.
Not all of the planned large-scale chip projects are part of the second IPCEI Microelectronics. The German government is currently negotiating with the US company Intel to significantly increase the investment volume and funding for the semiconductor factory planned in Magdeburg. This would be based on the recently passed European Chips Act. Negotiations with the Taiwanese manufacturer TSMC on a foundry in Dresden are also underway within the framework of the simplified procedures of the Chips Act. tho
Traffic light coalition agrees on national security strategy
Many European partners have been eagerly awaiting it – now, after almost a year and a half of work and a long back and forth between the coalition partners in Berlin, the national security strategy has been finalized. At the same time, the coalition decided to classify it as secret in order to avoid getting into public partial debates again at least until the official adoption in the cabinet next Wednesday. This happened to the traffic light coalition around the turn of the year, when drafts of individual parts became public.
It remains to be seen whether the strategy will work this time. But internally, it is seen as an indicator of how trustingly the three partners will continue to act. The next goal of the traffic light coalition is to finalize the China strategy. steb
China: Armored vehicles for Russian military
According to reports, the Russian military received Chinese armored vehicles. The Polish-based Defense Blog reported that Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov has confirmed that the Russian military has received the first delivery of Chinese Tiger 4×4 armored vehicles. According to the report, Kadyrov had released footage showing “new vehicles purchased for Chechen units participating in the ‘Special Military Operation.’” This is the term Moscow uses for the war in Ukraine; it can therefore be assumed that Kadyrov is referring to this war.
The vehicles are manufactured by China’s Shaanxi Baoji Special Vehicles Manufacturing and look like raised armored jeeps. While these armored vehicles are not weapons, their application is clearly military. The EU could see the delivery as a further escalation. Brussels repeatedly warned China against supplying Russia with weapons and ammunition. The German government also urged China not to provide Russia with weapons.
The dispute has so far been over so-called dual-use goods, i.e., civilian goods used for weapons production. However, due to their different applications, they are not proof of arms deliveries. The EU is currently working on a sanctions package that focuses on circumventing the previous punitive measures. This could also affect Chinese companies. ari
Column
What’s cooking in Brussels? Green Deal as a political pawn
The parliamentarians of the ENVI Committee will vote on June 15 on the Nature Restoration Law as proposed by the Vice-President of the European Commission and Green Deal leader Frans Timmermans. And this vote is drawing all the attention of the Brussels bubble right now. Meanwhile, the negotiations resemble a political contest worthy of House of Cards in the European bubble’s version. In this case, it is a showdown between the EPP and the polyglot Frans Timmermans.
A majority with one vote
Indeed, the EPP withdrew from negotiations on the text, leaving Pascal Canfin (Renew), chairman of the ENVI Committee and a supporter of the European Commission’s proposed legislation, with the extremely delicate task of finding a majority for the text in his own group as well as among the Greens, the S&D and the Left. As it stands, he would only have a one-vote majority to get the proposal through, he said recently in Paris. Actually, this would be a good time to place the popcorn emoji right here.
And when you say that the Brussels Bubble is boiling, it looks like this: On the one hand, there are the supporters of the Commission’s proposal, who are coming together in a coalition to urge EU parliamentarians to support the proposal. We are talking, for example, about hunters or even companies – 1,400, which is no small number – which together account for five trillion dollars – which is definitely not a small sum in turn.
On the other hand, the EPP does not hesitate to publish accusations of pressure that the group allegedly faces from the Commission – and also denounces “hidden lobbying” by the Business and Biodiversity platform, which is housed in the Environment Directorate-General. It would contact members of Parliament and send out an information package. It looks like the Commission is funding its own lobby, which goes beyond the normal role of a commission, said Esther de Lange, EPP deputy group leader.
‘Turnaround in the ENVI Committee’
There is no doubt that environmental issues have become top political priorities, on par with budgetary or geopolitical issues. The political parties in Brussels have understood this, of course, and one year before the elections they are refining their strategies. In this respect, the EPP had a good nose. For it was able to score point victories on several occasions.
On May 23, the co-advisory AGRI Committee rejected the proposal for the Nature Restoration Regulation. The rejection was defended by French Anne Sander, EPP member and draftsperson, and passed with 30 votes in favor, 16 against and one abstention. The EPP received the votes of the two far-right groups ECR and ID, one deputy from La Gauche, and all Renew deputies, except for the abstention of Frenchman Jérémy Decerle. The votes against the rejection, mainly from S&D and the Greens, were not enough.
The next day, it was the Fisheries Committee’s turn to reject the regulation: 15 MEPs were in favor, mainly from the EPP, ID and ECR groups; 13 were against, from the S&D, Greens and La Gauche groups. The Renew group was split: Three were for rejection, one against, French Stéphanie Yon-Courtin. French Green MEP Caroline Roose, draftsman of the committee’s opinion, called the vote “shameful”.
The EPP Group won a third political victory on May 25 in the dossier to revise the Industrial Emissions Directive. The Commission had proposed including livestock farms. The ENVI Committee did not reject this, but increased the thresholds to limit the number of agricultural installations affected (between 200 and 300 livestock units depending on the type of animal, compared to the initial proposed threshold of 150). It also excluded farms with extensive livestock production.
On this occasion, German Peter Liese (EPP) welcomed a “turnaround in the ENVI Committee” and reported that it had “for the first time“ “considerably weakened in all points” a Commission proposal.
Alliance of right-wingers and right-wing extremists
The leader of the EPP group, Manfred Weber, has recently tightened his position towards the Green Deal: In 2019 he had to support this political project wanted by Ursula von der Leyen, who, like him, comes from the CDU-CSU and was put at the head of the Commission by Angela Merkel. However, he no longer has this concern now that his party is no longer part of the coalition that governs in Berlin. With his rejection, Weber is siding with parties even further to the right. This is also in line with the political trend observed in several member states, where alliances between the right and the extreme right are becoming more frequent (Italy, Sweden and Finland).
So has the Green Deal become a political pawn? EPP Group Vice-President Esther de Lange answered this question with a firm “no” in the press room in Brussels. “The EPP has always supported the Green Deal”, she said. She said the EPP wanted to put the question of “quality before speed” before passing the ball back to the Green Group, which she said was blocking all “forward-looking” and “nature-friendly” technological advances. Claire Stam
Europe.Table Editorial Office
