The Liberal Renew Group has re-elected its chairwoman Valérie Hayer by acclamation. The group leadership will be completed today: Nine deputy positions in the group, which currently has 74 MEPs, will be allocated. Thirteen group members have thrown their hats into the ring.
There are two nominations for First Vice-President. Billy Kelleher from Ireland is given the best chance. Hilde Vautmans from Flanders is running against him. The Portuguese João Cotrim de Figueiredo is among the eleven MEPs vying for the eight deputy group leader posts. He had briefly announced that he would run against Hayer for the group chairmanship. His withdrawal is now to be rewarded with the deputy post.
Renew had recently lost ground regarding the number of MEPs and currently has 74 seats. Hayer has announced new additions for next week. It remains to be seen who these will be.
The election of the co-leaders of the conservative ECR parliamentary group is taking place today. Nicola Procacchini from the Fratelli, a Giorgia Meloni confidant, is again running for the post. The Polish PiS delegation once again has the second-largest number of MEPs after the Fratelli and is laying claim to the co-leadership of the parliamentary group. Just a few hours before the election, it is still unclear who the PiS will put forward for this post.
Have a successful day.
The European party families of Christian Democrats, Socialists and Liberals have reached an agreement on the appointment of the EU’s top jobs. In a conference call on Tuesday morning, it was agreed that EPP lead candidate Ursula von der Leyen would be proposed to Parliament for a second term as Commission President. Former Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa from the socialist party family is to become President of the Council.
The Prime Minister of Estonia, Kaja Kallas, from the Liberal Party, is to become foreign affairs commissioner. This means that the personnel package that the heads of state and government were unable to agree on at their dinner on June 17 has largely been agreed.
The only change is that the EPP has succeeded with the demand to appoint a new Council President after two and a half years. The office of Commission President and Foreign Affairs Commissioner will be awarded for five years, while the Council President will initially be elected for half a term. The Christian Democrats had argued that after two and a half years they would only have the Commission President among the top jobs. Roberta Metsola (EPP), who is to become President of Parliament again, is to hand over her office to a Socialist after half the term.
The deal was preceded by several rounds of negotiations by the negotiating delegation. The heads of government of Poland and Greece, Donald Tusk and Kyriakos Mitsotakis, led the negotiations for the Christian Democratic EPP; Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez for the Socialist PES and French President Emmanuel Macron and the outgoing Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte, for the Liberals.
The agreement was reached two days before the regular European Council, at which the heads of state and government want to decide on the personnel pact. Unlike other decisions at a summit, the Council’s proposal to the Parliament for the next Commission President does not require unanimity. A qualified majority of 20 heads of government, representing 65% of the EU population, is sufficient. The EPP has twelve heads of state and government in the Council, the PES four and the Liberals five. This means that a total of 21 countries are governed by governments that were already part of the Von der Leyen coalition in the last legislative period.
It remains to be seen whether Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who heads the conservative EKR party family, will support von der Leyen in the Council. This also depends on the commitments that Ursula von der Leyen may have promised in the Italian Commissioner’s portfolio. Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has announced his rejection: “The agreement between the Christian Democrats, Socialists and Liberals contradicts everything on which the EU is based.”
Von der Leyen was not part of the negotiating delegation, but has held talks with heads of state and government over the past few days. If the heads of state and government give the green light for the personnel package on Thursday, von der Leyen’s election can be scheduled for the first week of the new European Parliament session July 16-19 in Strasbourg. She needs the approval of 361 out of 720 MEPs for her election. The EPP, S&D and Renew currently have a total of 399 seats. It is expected that the von der Leyen camp will again vote against her. Von der Leyen could therefore hold talks with other political groups.
First of all, the substantive negotiations between the parties of the informal Von der Leyen Coalition II will now begin. EPP party and group leader Manfred Weber claims that the party’s manifesto from the congress in Bucharest will form the basis of the political plans in the next mandate. One focus is to take further steps against illegal immigration and to handle asylum procedures in third countries.
“One has the impression that the ecological turnaround has disappeared into a trapdoor.” This was not stated by the party representatives who presented their programs to business associations in Paris on Thursday, but by the moderator of the debate, journalist Hedwige Chevrillon.
The various candidates had come to present their programs in detail. They all took the stage one after the other. The result: the social, ecological and climate-neutral transformation of the economy was rarely mentioned. And when they did, it was only in relation to energy policy.
The two candidates of the left-wing alliance Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP), Boris Vallaud and Eric Coquerel, confirmed their desire to pass an energy and climate law as quickly as possible if their alliance were to win the parliamentary elections. Ecological planning is at the heart of their program.
When asked about the NFP coalition’s position on nuclear power, Coquerel explained that the coalition of left-wing parties does not want to reverse the current program. “We are not touching the current power plant fleet and are postponing decisions on how to proceed until the next presidential election.” The construction of six pressurized water reactors, known as EPRs, which Macron committed to in his speech in Belfort in February 2022, could therefore be suspended until 2027. However, the NFP coalition’s position on nuclear power is fundamentally divided: While the Communist Party is pro-nuclear, La France Insoumise and the Greens are against nuclear power. The Socialist Party is somewhere in the middle.
The socialist Vallaud, who illustrated the differences between the various NFP parties on this issue, spoke out in favor of nuclear energy and said that “we must first decarbonize and then denuclearize”.
These statements did not convince the current Finance and Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire from Macron’s Renaissance party. He criticized the NRP’s hesitation on the nuclear issue. “The construction of the six EPRs will require considerable construction sites; we have no time to lose.” According to Le Maire, the six EPRs would not come with the NFP.
Le Maire emphasized that his top priority in the coming years is “the re-industrialization of France”. In this context, he announced the resumption of negotiations with the electricity supplier EDF on the price in long-term contracts to reduce the price of carbon-free energy for companies. “The proposed tariffs are not satisfactory for industry, they are not sufficiently competitive. We will therefore enter into new discussions with EDF.”
For his part, the chairman of the Rassemblement National, Jordan Bardella, defended his proposal to reduce VAT on electrical products and fuels to 15 percent. He put the cost of this measure at €12 billion. He considers the measure to be “a priority” so that the French would get back “the fruits of their labor”, explained Bardella. However, the reduction in VAT to below 15 percent is not possible for fuels due to the EU VAT Directive.
Bardella also mentioned the possibility of leaving the European electricity market in order to “introduce a national electricity price, as Spain and Portugal have done”. A proposal that Le Maire immediately dismissed, stating that this would amount to a “Frexit”. “This means the end of France’s ties with other countries”, the minister continued, “this year, more than €4 billion in exports generated thanks to the revival of nuclear energy, which EDF would have had to forgo”.
As the last speaker of the morning, Bruno Retailleau for Les Républicains made himself an advocate of “technological neutrality”: “You have to set targets for greenhouse gas emissions and it is then up to the market and companies to determine how these targets can be achieved”, explained the senator. “What does a Commissioner or the European Parliament know more than the research departments and engineers of a company?”
When the European Inventor Award (EPO) is presented in Malta on July 9, Cordelia Schmid can also hope to receive an award. The German scientist has been nominated in the Research category for her innovative work with computer-based image processing. She and her team are up against competitors from Malta and France for the Audience Award.
The 56-year-old got to grips with image processing long before the hype surrounding artificial intelligence, machine learning and deep learning had reached the mainstream. “When I started out, hardly anyone was really interested in these topics”, says Schmid looking back.
She began her career by studying computer science at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in 1987. Schmid already focused on image processing in her diploma thesis. From the very beginning, her motivation was to continuously develop the initially rudimentary technology of automatic image processing. “At first, AI couldn’t even recognize a cube“, she recalls.
This was followed by constant progress, including during her doctorate, which she completed at the French Institut Polytechnique de Grenoble. Her habilitation followed in 2001 with the topic “From image matching to learning visual models”. Since 2004, she has led her own research group at the National Research Institute for Computer Science and Automation, where she has been constantly developing the topic of AI-driven image processing ever since. She also joined Google in 2018, where she has been working on the practical application of the techniques ever since.
Having already received the Körber Prize for European Science in 2023, endowed with €1 million, Schmid could follow this up in July with the EPO awarded by the European Patent Office. The focus here is on Schmid’s use of machine learning to improve the perception and processing of computer systems. The technology is already being used in autonomous driving, diagnostics in the healthcare sector and interactive robotics.
Robotics in particular could help out in many areas of everyday life in a few years, for example, to compensate for the shortage of skilled workers. Demand is already high in elderly care, where self-driving platforms could use Schmid’s technology to support senior citizens in their everyday lives. “Robots can already bring something to the table, hold something for them or play music with them”, explains Schmid. In the future, it is also conceivable that AI agents could be used in schools to relieve teachers. “I assume that many developments will come faster than we currently think”, she says.
However, they are not yet in widespread use. According to the scientist, the next goals are to make the technology and algorithms behind the systems more robust and interpretable, i.e. to make the underlying processes more comprehensible. It is also important to improve the energy efficiency of the computers.
Schmid sees the rapid progress in the field of AI systems as positive, although care must be taken “to ensure that they are not used for bad purposes such as fake news”. She believes that an initial Europe-wide regulation of development through the AI Act is a sensible solution from a social perspective. For research, however, “a happy medium must be found so as not to regulate too much”, says Schmid.
Cordelia Schmid would like to see the nomination for the European Inventor Award as a positive sign for Europe as a science location. In the future, too, Europe should ensure “that it does not fall behind the USA and other countries”, says Schmid. She therefore demands: “We should not wait too long to bring the developments into everyday life, otherwise we could lose important time in Europe.” Jasper Bennink
The Liberal Renew Group has re-elected its chairwoman Valérie Hayer by acclamation. The group leadership will be completed today: Nine deputy positions in the group, which currently has 74 MEPs, will be allocated. Thirteen group members have thrown their hats into the ring.
There are two nominations for First Vice-President. Billy Kelleher from Ireland is given the best chance. Hilde Vautmans from Flanders is running against him. The Portuguese João Cotrim de Figueiredo is among the eleven MEPs vying for the eight deputy group leader posts. He had briefly announced that he would run against Hayer for the group chairmanship. His withdrawal is now to be rewarded with the deputy post.
Renew had recently lost ground regarding the number of MEPs and currently has 74 seats. Hayer has announced new additions for next week. It remains to be seen who these will be.
The election of the co-leaders of the conservative ECR parliamentary group is taking place today. Nicola Procacchini from the Fratelli, a Giorgia Meloni confidant, is again running for the post. The Polish PiS delegation once again has the second-largest number of MEPs after the Fratelli and is laying claim to the co-leadership of the parliamentary group. Just a few hours before the election, it is still unclear who the PiS will put forward for this post.
Have a successful day.
The European party families of Christian Democrats, Socialists and Liberals have reached an agreement on the appointment of the EU’s top jobs. In a conference call on Tuesday morning, it was agreed that EPP lead candidate Ursula von der Leyen would be proposed to Parliament for a second term as Commission President. Former Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa from the socialist party family is to become President of the Council.
The Prime Minister of Estonia, Kaja Kallas, from the Liberal Party, is to become foreign affairs commissioner. This means that the personnel package that the heads of state and government were unable to agree on at their dinner on June 17 has largely been agreed.
The only change is that the EPP has succeeded with the demand to appoint a new Council President after two and a half years. The office of Commission President and Foreign Affairs Commissioner will be awarded for five years, while the Council President will initially be elected for half a term. The Christian Democrats had argued that after two and a half years they would only have the Commission President among the top jobs. Roberta Metsola (EPP), who is to become President of Parliament again, is to hand over her office to a Socialist after half the term.
The deal was preceded by several rounds of negotiations by the negotiating delegation. The heads of government of Poland and Greece, Donald Tusk and Kyriakos Mitsotakis, led the negotiations for the Christian Democratic EPP; Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez for the Socialist PES and French President Emmanuel Macron and the outgoing Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte, for the Liberals.
The agreement was reached two days before the regular European Council, at which the heads of state and government want to decide on the personnel pact. Unlike other decisions at a summit, the Council’s proposal to the Parliament for the next Commission President does not require unanimity. A qualified majority of 20 heads of government, representing 65% of the EU population, is sufficient. The EPP has twelve heads of state and government in the Council, the PES four and the Liberals five. This means that a total of 21 countries are governed by governments that were already part of the Von der Leyen coalition in the last legislative period.
It remains to be seen whether Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who heads the conservative EKR party family, will support von der Leyen in the Council. This also depends on the commitments that Ursula von der Leyen may have promised in the Italian Commissioner’s portfolio. Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has announced his rejection: “The agreement between the Christian Democrats, Socialists and Liberals contradicts everything on which the EU is based.”
Von der Leyen was not part of the negotiating delegation, but has held talks with heads of state and government over the past few days. If the heads of state and government give the green light for the personnel package on Thursday, von der Leyen’s election can be scheduled for the first week of the new European Parliament session July 16-19 in Strasbourg. She needs the approval of 361 out of 720 MEPs for her election. The EPP, S&D and Renew currently have a total of 399 seats. It is expected that the von der Leyen camp will again vote against her. Von der Leyen could therefore hold talks with other political groups.
First of all, the substantive negotiations between the parties of the informal Von der Leyen Coalition II will now begin. EPP party and group leader Manfred Weber claims that the party’s manifesto from the congress in Bucharest will form the basis of the political plans in the next mandate. One focus is to take further steps against illegal immigration and to handle asylum procedures in third countries.
“One has the impression that the ecological turnaround has disappeared into a trapdoor.” This was not stated by the party representatives who presented their programs to business associations in Paris on Thursday, but by the moderator of the debate, journalist Hedwige Chevrillon.
The various candidates had come to present their programs in detail. They all took the stage one after the other. The result: the social, ecological and climate-neutral transformation of the economy was rarely mentioned. And when they did, it was only in relation to energy policy.
The two candidates of the left-wing alliance Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP), Boris Vallaud and Eric Coquerel, confirmed their desire to pass an energy and climate law as quickly as possible if their alliance were to win the parliamentary elections. Ecological planning is at the heart of their program.
When asked about the NFP coalition’s position on nuclear power, Coquerel explained that the coalition of left-wing parties does not want to reverse the current program. “We are not touching the current power plant fleet and are postponing decisions on how to proceed until the next presidential election.” The construction of six pressurized water reactors, known as EPRs, which Macron committed to in his speech in Belfort in February 2022, could therefore be suspended until 2027. However, the NFP coalition’s position on nuclear power is fundamentally divided: While the Communist Party is pro-nuclear, La France Insoumise and the Greens are against nuclear power. The Socialist Party is somewhere in the middle.
The socialist Vallaud, who illustrated the differences between the various NFP parties on this issue, spoke out in favor of nuclear energy and said that “we must first decarbonize and then denuclearize”.
These statements did not convince the current Finance and Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire from Macron’s Renaissance party. He criticized the NRP’s hesitation on the nuclear issue. “The construction of the six EPRs will require considerable construction sites; we have no time to lose.” According to Le Maire, the six EPRs would not come with the NFP.
Le Maire emphasized that his top priority in the coming years is “the re-industrialization of France”. In this context, he announced the resumption of negotiations with the electricity supplier EDF on the price in long-term contracts to reduce the price of carbon-free energy for companies. “The proposed tariffs are not satisfactory for industry, they are not sufficiently competitive. We will therefore enter into new discussions with EDF.”
For his part, the chairman of the Rassemblement National, Jordan Bardella, defended his proposal to reduce VAT on electrical products and fuels to 15 percent. He put the cost of this measure at €12 billion. He considers the measure to be “a priority” so that the French would get back “the fruits of their labor”, explained Bardella. However, the reduction in VAT to below 15 percent is not possible for fuels due to the EU VAT Directive.
Bardella also mentioned the possibility of leaving the European electricity market in order to “introduce a national electricity price, as Spain and Portugal have done”. A proposal that Le Maire immediately dismissed, stating that this would amount to a “Frexit”. “This means the end of France’s ties with other countries”, the minister continued, “this year, more than €4 billion in exports generated thanks to the revival of nuclear energy, which EDF would have had to forgo”.
As the last speaker of the morning, Bruno Retailleau for Les Républicains made himself an advocate of “technological neutrality”: “You have to set targets for greenhouse gas emissions and it is then up to the market and companies to determine how these targets can be achieved”, explained the senator. “What does a Commissioner or the European Parliament know more than the research departments and engineers of a company?”
When the European Inventor Award (EPO) is presented in Malta on July 9, Cordelia Schmid can also hope to receive an award. The German scientist has been nominated in the Research category for her innovative work with computer-based image processing. She and her team are up against competitors from Malta and France for the Audience Award.
The 56-year-old got to grips with image processing long before the hype surrounding artificial intelligence, machine learning and deep learning had reached the mainstream. “When I started out, hardly anyone was really interested in these topics”, says Schmid looking back.
She began her career by studying computer science at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in 1987. Schmid already focused on image processing in her diploma thesis. From the very beginning, her motivation was to continuously develop the initially rudimentary technology of automatic image processing. “At first, AI couldn’t even recognize a cube“, she recalls.
This was followed by constant progress, including during her doctorate, which she completed at the French Institut Polytechnique de Grenoble. Her habilitation followed in 2001 with the topic “From image matching to learning visual models”. Since 2004, she has led her own research group at the National Research Institute for Computer Science and Automation, where she has been constantly developing the topic of AI-driven image processing ever since. She also joined Google in 2018, where she has been working on the practical application of the techniques ever since.
Having already received the Körber Prize for European Science in 2023, endowed with €1 million, Schmid could follow this up in July with the EPO awarded by the European Patent Office. The focus here is on Schmid’s use of machine learning to improve the perception and processing of computer systems. The technology is already being used in autonomous driving, diagnostics in the healthcare sector and interactive robotics.
Robotics in particular could help out in many areas of everyday life in a few years, for example, to compensate for the shortage of skilled workers. Demand is already high in elderly care, where self-driving platforms could use Schmid’s technology to support senior citizens in their everyday lives. “Robots can already bring something to the table, hold something for them or play music with them”, explains Schmid. In the future, it is also conceivable that AI agents could be used in schools to relieve teachers. “I assume that many developments will come faster than we currently think”, she says.
However, they are not yet in widespread use. According to the scientist, the next goals are to make the technology and algorithms behind the systems more robust and interpretable, i.e. to make the underlying processes more comprehensible. It is also important to improve the energy efficiency of the computers.
Schmid sees the rapid progress in the field of AI systems as positive, although care must be taken “to ensure that they are not used for bad purposes such as fake news”. She believes that an initial Europe-wide regulation of development through the AI Act is a sensible solution from a social perspective. For research, however, “a happy medium must be found so as not to regulate too much”, says Schmid.
Cordelia Schmid would like to see the nomination for the European Inventor Award as a positive sign for Europe as a science location. In the future, too, Europe should ensure “that it does not fall behind the USA and other countries”, says Schmid. She therefore demands: “We should not wait too long to bring the developments into everyday life, otherwise we could lose important time in Europe.” Jasper Bennink
