According to reports, Věra Jourová and Didier Reynders will speak about Hungary at the College today. They will explain that the Budapest government has created the conditions for the disbursement of some of the funds that the EU has so far withheld due to Hungary’s violations of the rule of law and other EU values. Specifically, this involves around €10 billion that the Commission has not paid out due to Hungary’s attacks on the independence of the judiciary.
Budapest has fulfilled the requirements from Brussels. The Commission therefore has no choice but to state this. Otherwise, according to the Commission’s lawyers, Viktor Orbán would have a good chance if he were to sue the Commission before the ECJ. In concrete terms, this means that his government can now launch the Cohesion Fund, Mare, and ESF+ programs. If the invoices are submitted properly, the Commission will have to pay out the money step by step.
In contrast, Hungary has done next to nothing in the areas of academic freedom, child protection, and asylum procedures. Here too, the Commission is insisting on changes. As a result, €11.7 billion of a total of €21.7 billion EU funds remain blocked. A further €6.3 billion remains blocked under conditionality. Hungary has also not yet met the requirements for the Corona Reconstruction Fund and RePowerEU and must wait for billions. The bottom line after the Commission meeting is that €24 billion EU funds remain blocked for Hungary and “only” €11 billion will flow.
This week of all weeks: on Thursday and Friday at the European Council, the 26 member states will argue with Hungary about the start of accession negotiations with Ukraine, the billions in aid for Ukraine, and the MFF. Now the Commission has to make this decision.
She will take a lot of criticism for this. The fact that the decision is now pending is no coincidence. There is a nine-day deadline for a member state to notify the conditions for the release of funds. Orbán could just as easily have submitted the application earlier or later. But he did not do so. So the disgrace of having to pay out to Hungary and the summit with the showdown coincide directly. The autocrat is playing the choreographer.
The Commission, Council, and Parliament are expected to meet on Wednesday evening for the final trilogue on the EU due diligence act. The last major hurdle to an agreement is the question of whether financial service providers will also be included in the planned European standard for responsible corporate behavior (Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, CSDDD).
According to information obtained by Table.Media from negotiating circles, the Spanish Council Presidency is likely to propose excluding financial service providers from the directive altogether. This would be a painful concession for the Commission but above all for the EU Parliament. However, it is possible that financial service providers could be included in the law at a later date or regulated in another way.
If the trilogue negotiations for the CSDDD fail, the entire project could fail. This is because it is questionable whether a large majority in the next EU Parliament would once again be in favor of such regulation, as is currently the case.
Under pressure from France, the member states had already decided on a special role for the financial sector in their general approach. According to this, it should be left to each member state to decide whether or not financial services are covered by the law.
Parliament is calling for the due diligence obligations to be applied to the downstream part of the value chain of financial companies and for the main markets of the financial sector to be included. Germany, together with Denmark, the Netherlands, and Finland, had advocated due diligence obligations for credit and insurance services. However, France categorically rejects this.
Some large European business associations, including the Federation of German Employers (BDA) and Gesamtmetall from Germany, are trying to prevent an agreement on the CSDDD at the last minute. “The German government must not agree to this directive as it stands”, announced Gesamtmetall on Monday. The association wants to prevent companies from being held liable under civil law for human rights violations and environmental damage along the entire supply chain.
According to information from Table.Media, the two German associations have also joined forces with associations from Italy and France in order to prevent a stricter European directive compared to the German Supply Chain Due Diligence Act. According to observers, however, France will vote in favor of the directive if financial service providers are excluded. It is also considered unlikely that the Italian government will reject the legislation because the Catholic Church is in favor of it.
However, it seems possible that Germany could end up abstaining in the Council vote. Although this would be unusual, Germany has already done this once before in the case of e-fuels under pressure from the FDP.
In contrast, the Responsible Business Alliance, an association of almost 600 large companies, issued a statement calling for “political agreement to be reached on the final version of the law” together with other economic players. Although they have different views on certain aspects of the law:
In Germany, the attitude of the business community towards supply chain regulation is divided, with opinions also differing within the BDI. In addition, many companies do not share the negative attitude of large associations; even SMEs are positive about the rapid introduction of a European supply chain law.
The possible exclusion of the financial sector from the CSDDD has been met with harsh criticism from civil society. As civil society organizations that have been drawing attention to the involvement of banks, insurance companies, and investors in projects that violate human rights or damage the climate for years, “we are aware of the fatal consequences of the financial industry’s lack of binding due diligence obligations to date”, various NGOs such as Bread for the World, Urgewald and Deutsche Umwelthilfe are appealing to the German government. They are insisting on the inclusion of financial service providers.
Numerous financial companies are committed to voluntary standards such as the UN Principles for Responsible Investment (UN PRI) or the Global Compact. However, the NGOs complain that violations by companies financed by financial institutions do not lead to any serious consequences for those affected. In this respect, the real economy and the financial sector are similar. In the real economy, too, voluntary agreements have hardly improved conditions in supply chains, which is why states are now introducing binding legal requirements.
Financial players are among the biggest perpetrators of the climate crisis. In 2022 alone, banks invested more than $150 billion in companies whose fossil fuel projects could make climate targets unattainable. If the 425 largest projects worldwide were to continue, they would consume four times the already rapidly dwindling global emissions budget.
Europe is the world’s second-largest source of institutional investment in the fossil fuel industry. Numerous financial industry associations are also in favor of regulation, for example in the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden. The ECB is also in favor of involving the financial sector.
There is still room for compromise in tomorrow’s negotiations: At the last trilogue meeting at the political level on November 22, the provisions on climate protection plans and liability, among other things, remained open.
One issue is whether companies should be obliged not only to draw up climate protection plans, but also to implement them. The Council wants to remove this implementation obligation and align the plans with the EU target of climate neutrality by 2050. The Parliament is calling for an obligation to implement the plans and for them to be geared towards the climate target for 2030, i.e. a 55% reduction in emissions.
Secondly, it concerns the civil liability of companies in the event of a breach of the duty of care and the corresponding negative consequences. While the Council wants to prevent undue interference in the tort law of the Member States and therefore imposes certain conditions for liability, the Parliament wants to extend the provisions. For example, it calls for companies to also be held liable if they use multi-stakeholder initiatives or contractual clauses.
In a compromise proposal, the Spanish Council Presidency had shown itself willing to make access to justice easier in some respects. It is also possible that part of managers’ remuneration could be linked to compliance with due diligence obligations.
A result is not expected until Thursday morning at the earliest. The meeting begins on Wednesday at 9 p.m. – and the list of topics is still long.
The Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) is nearing the finish line. After Parliament agreed on a final legislative text with the Council in mid-November, MEPs will discuss the result this morning in Strasbourg and then vote on it at midday. The Industry Committee (ITRE), which is the lead committee, adopted it almost unanimously last Thursday. The vote in plenary is also considered a formality.
The negotiations were successful for the Parliament and MEPs were able to get their way on many points. The negotiations were very open and the Spanish Council Presidency was very receptive to new ideas, said rapporteur Nicola Beer (Renew) at a press conference yesterday. For example, on the issue of recycling critical raw materials: Here, the benchmark was raised to at least 25 percent of the EU’s annual raw material consumption. The benchmark should not only be based on projections of future waste, but also on existing waste deposits containing critical raw materials.
The final legislative text is also intended to boost the substitution of raw materials. Parliament has ensured that substitution projects are also given the status of strategic projects. “Anything that we can recycle or substitute, we don’t have to mine or import,” explained Beer.
Once the Parliament and the Council have formally adopted the legal act, the regulation will be published in the Official Journal of the EU and will enter into force 20 days later. According to Nicola Beer, the first strategic projects could be selected as early as next summer. “It can happen very, very quickly now,” she said – but that is also necessary: “We are relatively late in terms of the geopolitical situation. We can see that the Chinese are becoming more and more aggressive.”
The industry has followed the whole process with interest, Hildegard Bentele (EPP) also emphasizes. “We have clear signals that companies are ready and waiting for the go-ahead.” Various projects have already been identified in the industry initiative European Raw Materials Alliance (ERMA).
According to the new law, companies must submit an application to the EU Commission for a strategic project that meets certain conditions. These projects are then given priority for approval by the authorities and are in the “overriding public interest”.
For the Greens, this last point is a downer, explains Henrike Hahn: “Even in protected areas, the approval of strategic raw materials projects will be possible due to the overriding public interest. Parliament was unable to assert itself here. However, the CRMA does not change the fact that existing environmental legislation must be complied with and each application must be examined individually. The new requirements are therefore primarily concerned with the timing of the approval process.
The most difficult issues that the Council and Parliament negotiated until the end were, on the one hand, the right of indigenous peoples to co-determination. Parliament had called for the principle of free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) to be explicitly mentioned in the law. However, Sweden vetoed this in the Council. In the end, the Greens and representatives of civil society still see the agreement as positive: the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) will be included in the criteria for strategic projects and explicitly mentioned in the law. This also includes the FPIC principle.
On the other hand, the issue of deep-sea mining remained controversial to the end. The Council’s legal service had legal concerns about the competence of the seabed authority, it is said. The final version now states that, in line with the precautionary principle, the Commission “can only grant strategic status to a deep-sea mining project once the impact on the marine environment, biodiversity, and human activities has been sufficiently researched”. In addition, the risks must be known and the technologies and operating procedures must demonstrate that the environment will not be seriously harmed.
The reactions in the German industry are generally positive. “The agreement on the Critical Raw Materials Act will allow Europe to expand its sovereignty and resilience in the supply of raw materials,” explains Anne Lauenroth from the Federation of German Industries (BDI). However, taxonomy, supply chain, and chemical regulation as well as high energy prices threaten to slow down the necessary investments in the development and expansion of the required capacities, she criticizes.
The lack of funding also jeopardizes the success of the law. The CRMA’s main aim is to stimulate private investment through planning security. A raw materials fund has not been set up; however, the Parliament wants to continue to work towards this. When it comes to the question of financing, however, Europe needs to get its act together anyway. “China has invested around $962 billion in strategic infrastructure and raw materials projects since 2013 as part of its Silk Road Initiative alone”, said Lauenroth. “If Europe wants to keep up, it now needs innovative solutions, at least a strategic linking of existing funding pools and instruments at national and European level.”
In order to combine various instruments and financial flows of foreign trade promotion and development financing, the EU Commission is currently taking stock. In particular, the Global Gateway Initiative aims to put together more packages of different instruments.
“The CRMA is an important step in the right direction”, says Oliver Blank, Head of Global Affairs at the German Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers’ Association (ZVEI). He sees a problem in the lack of a cross-border component. “The establishment of recycling structures in Europe in particular will not work without Europe-wide standards and common infrastructures.” There is therefore a risk that in a few years’ time, when many electric cars have reached the end of their service life and can be recycled, there will be no efficient European secondary raw materials market, but rather a small national market.
Civil society also sees some positive impetus in the CRMA. “It is to be welcomed that the EU has agreed on higher recycling targets,” says Michael Reckordt from the NGO PowerShift. “At the same time, it is still unclear to what extent the globally unjust and ecologically destructive consumption of raw materials will be tackled in the EU. After all, this high consumption is the starting point for the violation of human and labor rights, indigenous rights, and environmental standards.”
The CRMA contains a requirement to moderate the expected consumption of critical raw materials. The Commission is obliged to draw up a corresponding reference scenario within 18 months of the law coming into force. However, it remains unclear exactly how consumption is to be reduced.
Tobias Kind-Rieper from WWF continues to see gaps, including in the area of strategic raw materials partnerships: “Strategic partnerships with third countries must be able to be assessed properly and must not be based solely on certification systems,” he explains. “Transparency about the agreement between the EU and third countries must be made possible, as well as the participation of civil society, especially in third countries.”
Almost two months after the elections, Poland’s Sejm has elected a new Prime Minister: Donald Tusk. The leader of the democratic opposition, which received a clear vote from voters on October 15 and immediately afterward declared its willingness to form a coalition government, received 248 votes, 17 votes more than the required majority. Tusk will present his government today, Tuesday, as the coalition has long since agreed on the ministerial appointments.
This marks the end of a political farce. Jarosław Kaczyński’s PiS party, which had been in power for eight years, used every trick in the book to cling on to power for as long as possible. Although it emerged from the election as the strongest force, it was clear to everyone from the outset that nobody wanted to form a coalition with Kaczyński. Nevertheless, Poland’s President Andrzej Duda, who was appointed by the PiS, tasked former Prime Minister Mateus Morawiecki with forming a government a month ago.
During this time, PiS politicians have done everything they can to put as many stumbling blocks in the way of Tusk and his new team as possible. For example, they fueled the crisis at the Ukrainian border, where Polish freight forwarders have been blocking all border crossings for four weeks. Their ministers destroyed documents that would prove criminal decisions and gave millions of taxpayers’ money to friendly foundations, where some of them would get secure jobs. President Duda appointed hundreds of new judges shortly before the deadline to cement PiS control over the courts.
Today’s parliamentary debate also felt like absurd theater. Although the PiS knew that its government would fail, it spent hours emphasizing the “great successes” of its two terms in office in front of the TV audience. The “Prime Minister” Morawiecki spoke for 69 minutes and presented himself as a defender of women and an advocate of ending the Polish-Polish war. At the same time, during the election campaign, he railed against Donald Tusk like no other. He only received 190 votes, with 266 MPs expressing their distrust of him.
Nevertheless, the PiS grandees tried until the end to discredit Donald Tusk and warn against the EU. Instead of congratulating Tusk on his election, as is good form, Kaczyński once again insulted the newly elected prime minister as a “Berlin agent”. Andrzej Rybak
When Thanasis Bakolas came to Brussels in June 2022 and became Secretary General of the Christian Democratic party family EPP, he was a largely unknown quantity on the EU scene. In Greece, he had made a career as an advisor to Kyriakos Mitsotakis in Nea Dimokratia. Bakolas (56) certainly has things in common with the current Prime Minister of Greece. Bakolas and Mitsotakis studied at elite universities in the USA. This experience has shaped both of them, in their appearance and in the way they speak English. When Mitsotakis took over the government in Athens, he made Bakolas his advisor, responsible for the EU and the USA.
Then Manfred Weber brought Bakolas to Brussels. At the very moment in 2022 when Weber, head of the largest parliamentary group in the European Parliament since 2014, also became head of the party family. Weber appointed him as a close colleague of one of his biggest advocates in Europe: in 2018, the Christian Democratic party family announced Weber as the lead candidate for the 2019 European elections. The Lower Bavarian was initially nominated by three parties: the CDU and CSU, which was no surprise as this call came from his political homeland – and from Nea Dimokratia under the leadership of Mitsotakis in Greece.
Bakolas got to know Weber during the sovereign debt crisis when he visited Greece. At the time, Mitsotakis was in opposition to Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras (Syriza). Weber, the leader of the Christian Democrats in the Strasbourg parliamentary group, and Mitsotakis, the opposition leader in Athens, worked closely together.
The Secretary General of the EPP is an introvert. In his digital interview with Table.Media, he reveals little more about himself than that he smokes. The mission that Weber gave him a year and a half ago is clear: Bakolas is to clean up the party headquarters. Weber’s power base has always been the parliamentary group, with its 178 MPs and more than 200 employees.
By contrast, the party based in Rue de Commerce in Brussels only has a small apparatus. It has just over 30 employees. For years, the party led a life of its own. It was not uncommon for party functionaries not to work with the parliamentary group, but rather against it. Weber himself felt this bitterly during the 2019 election campaign, in which he did not perform particularly well. Weber knew that he had to eliminate this weak point for the next election campaign.
This is how Bakola became the party’s top manager. He sent the long-serving deputy German general secretary into retirement. He terminated a number of lucrative contracts with consultants and did not make many friends in the party apparatus. Bakolas also ensured that the party was given a social media presence in the first place.
So far, Bakolas has made few public appearances. Only recently has he given the occasional interview. For example, he criticizes the formation of a government in Spain. He accuses socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of violating EU values and the rule of law. He is also dishonest: “Pedro Sánchez had a completely different position on the amnesty before the elections. In order to stay in power, he made concessions to the separatists.”
He is also very critical of the external observers that the coalition in Madrid has asked to monitor the controversial amnesty agreement: “The first meeting will take place in Switzerland. What does this kind of international intervention say about democracy in Spain?”
Thanasis Bakolas’ predecessor as General Secretary also held a seat in the European Parliament in addition to his party office. Bakolas, on the other hand, is the party’s full-time manager. One of his most important tasks now is to prepare the campaign. The election campaign will start later this time than in 2019 and will also be less elaborate than the campaign in which Manfred Weber was the lead candidate and wanted to become Commission President. The party congress of the Christian Democrats will take place in Bucharest on March 6 and 7. Bakolas is editorially responsible for the election program, the manifesto, to which the member parties from all EU states contribute.
Planning the campaign is not a task to be envied by Bakolas. To this day, he insists, he does not know which top candidate the EPP will put forward. Does Commission President Ursula von der Leyen want to serve another term? And on what terms is she available? She probably only knows the answers to these questions herself. Isabel Cuesta
According to reports, Věra Jourová and Didier Reynders will speak about Hungary at the College today. They will explain that the Budapest government has created the conditions for the disbursement of some of the funds that the EU has so far withheld due to Hungary’s violations of the rule of law and other EU values. Specifically, this involves around €10 billion that the Commission has not paid out due to Hungary’s attacks on the independence of the judiciary.
Budapest has fulfilled the requirements from Brussels. The Commission therefore has no choice but to state this. Otherwise, according to the Commission’s lawyers, Viktor Orbán would have a good chance if he were to sue the Commission before the ECJ. In concrete terms, this means that his government can now launch the Cohesion Fund, Mare, and ESF+ programs. If the invoices are submitted properly, the Commission will have to pay out the money step by step.
In contrast, Hungary has done next to nothing in the areas of academic freedom, child protection, and asylum procedures. Here too, the Commission is insisting on changes. As a result, €11.7 billion of a total of €21.7 billion EU funds remain blocked. A further €6.3 billion remains blocked under conditionality. Hungary has also not yet met the requirements for the Corona Reconstruction Fund and RePowerEU and must wait for billions. The bottom line after the Commission meeting is that €24 billion EU funds remain blocked for Hungary and “only” €11 billion will flow.
This week of all weeks: on Thursday and Friday at the European Council, the 26 member states will argue with Hungary about the start of accession negotiations with Ukraine, the billions in aid for Ukraine, and the MFF. Now the Commission has to make this decision.
She will take a lot of criticism for this. The fact that the decision is now pending is no coincidence. There is a nine-day deadline for a member state to notify the conditions for the release of funds. Orbán could just as easily have submitted the application earlier or later. But he did not do so. So the disgrace of having to pay out to Hungary and the summit with the showdown coincide directly. The autocrat is playing the choreographer.
The Commission, Council, and Parliament are expected to meet on Wednesday evening for the final trilogue on the EU due diligence act. The last major hurdle to an agreement is the question of whether financial service providers will also be included in the planned European standard for responsible corporate behavior (Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, CSDDD).
According to information obtained by Table.Media from negotiating circles, the Spanish Council Presidency is likely to propose excluding financial service providers from the directive altogether. This would be a painful concession for the Commission but above all for the EU Parliament. However, it is possible that financial service providers could be included in the law at a later date or regulated in another way.
If the trilogue negotiations for the CSDDD fail, the entire project could fail. This is because it is questionable whether a large majority in the next EU Parliament would once again be in favor of such regulation, as is currently the case.
Under pressure from France, the member states had already decided on a special role for the financial sector in their general approach. According to this, it should be left to each member state to decide whether or not financial services are covered by the law.
Parliament is calling for the due diligence obligations to be applied to the downstream part of the value chain of financial companies and for the main markets of the financial sector to be included. Germany, together with Denmark, the Netherlands, and Finland, had advocated due diligence obligations for credit and insurance services. However, France categorically rejects this.
Some large European business associations, including the Federation of German Employers (BDA) and Gesamtmetall from Germany, are trying to prevent an agreement on the CSDDD at the last minute. “The German government must not agree to this directive as it stands”, announced Gesamtmetall on Monday. The association wants to prevent companies from being held liable under civil law for human rights violations and environmental damage along the entire supply chain.
According to information from Table.Media, the two German associations have also joined forces with associations from Italy and France in order to prevent a stricter European directive compared to the German Supply Chain Due Diligence Act. According to observers, however, France will vote in favor of the directive if financial service providers are excluded. It is also considered unlikely that the Italian government will reject the legislation because the Catholic Church is in favor of it.
However, it seems possible that Germany could end up abstaining in the Council vote. Although this would be unusual, Germany has already done this once before in the case of e-fuels under pressure from the FDP.
In contrast, the Responsible Business Alliance, an association of almost 600 large companies, issued a statement calling for “political agreement to be reached on the final version of the law” together with other economic players. Although they have different views on certain aspects of the law:
In Germany, the attitude of the business community towards supply chain regulation is divided, with opinions also differing within the BDI. In addition, many companies do not share the negative attitude of large associations; even SMEs are positive about the rapid introduction of a European supply chain law.
The possible exclusion of the financial sector from the CSDDD has been met with harsh criticism from civil society. As civil society organizations that have been drawing attention to the involvement of banks, insurance companies, and investors in projects that violate human rights or damage the climate for years, “we are aware of the fatal consequences of the financial industry’s lack of binding due diligence obligations to date”, various NGOs such as Bread for the World, Urgewald and Deutsche Umwelthilfe are appealing to the German government. They are insisting on the inclusion of financial service providers.
Numerous financial companies are committed to voluntary standards such as the UN Principles for Responsible Investment (UN PRI) or the Global Compact. However, the NGOs complain that violations by companies financed by financial institutions do not lead to any serious consequences for those affected. In this respect, the real economy and the financial sector are similar. In the real economy, too, voluntary agreements have hardly improved conditions in supply chains, which is why states are now introducing binding legal requirements.
Financial players are among the biggest perpetrators of the climate crisis. In 2022 alone, banks invested more than $150 billion in companies whose fossil fuel projects could make climate targets unattainable. If the 425 largest projects worldwide were to continue, they would consume four times the already rapidly dwindling global emissions budget.
Europe is the world’s second-largest source of institutional investment in the fossil fuel industry. Numerous financial industry associations are also in favor of regulation, for example in the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden. The ECB is also in favor of involving the financial sector.
There is still room for compromise in tomorrow’s negotiations: At the last trilogue meeting at the political level on November 22, the provisions on climate protection plans and liability, among other things, remained open.
One issue is whether companies should be obliged not only to draw up climate protection plans, but also to implement them. The Council wants to remove this implementation obligation and align the plans with the EU target of climate neutrality by 2050. The Parliament is calling for an obligation to implement the plans and for them to be geared towards the climate target for 2030, i.e. a 55% reduction in emissions.
Secondly, it concerns the civil liability of companies in the event of a breach of the duty of care and the corresponding negative consequences. While the Council wants to prevent undue interference in the tort law of the Member States and therefore imposes certain conditions for liability, the Parliament wants to extend the provisions. For example, it calls for companies to also be held liable if they use multi-stakeholder initiatives or contractual clauses.
In a compromise proposal, the Spanish Council Presidency had shown itself willing to make access to justice easier in some respects. It is also possible that part of managers’ remuneration could be linked to compliance with due diligence obligations.
A result is not expected until Thursday morning at the earliest. The meeting begins on Wednesday at 9 p.m. – and the list of topics is still long.
The Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) is nearing the finish line. After Parliament agreed on a final legislative text with the Council in mid-November, MEPs will discuss the result this morning in Strasbourg and then vote on it at midday. The Industry Committee (ITRE), which is the lead committee, adopted it almost unanimously last Thursday. The vote in plenary is also considered a formality.
The negotiations were successful for the Parliament and MEPs were able to get their way on many points. The negotiations were very open and the Spanish Council Presidency was very receptive to new ideas, said rapporteur Nicola Beer (Renew) at a press conference yesterday. For example, on the issue of recycling critical raw materials: Here, the benchmark was raised to at least 25 percent of the EU’s annual raw material consumption. The benchmark should not only be based on projections of future waste, but also on existing waste deposits containing critical raw materials.
The final legislative text is also intended to boost the substitution of raw materials. Parliament has ensured that substitution projects are also given the status of strategic projects. “Anything that we can recycle or substitute, we don’t have to mine or import,” explained Beer.
Once the Parliament and the Council have formally adopted the legal act, the regulation will be published in the Official Journal of the EU and will enter into force 20 days later. According to Nicola Beer, the first strategic projects could be selected as early as next summer. “It can happen very, very quickly now,” she said – but that is also necessary: “We are relatively late in terms of the geopolitical situation. We can see that the Chinese are becoming more and more aggressive.”
The industry has followed the whole process with interest, Hildegard Bentele (EPP) also emphasizes. “We have clear signals that companies are ready and waiting for the go-ahead.” Various projects have already been identified in the industry initiative European Raw Materials Alliance (ERMA).
According to the new law, companies must submit an application to the EU Commission for a strategic project that meets certain conditions. These projects are then given priority for approval by the authorities and are in the “overriding public interest”.
For the Greens, this last point is a downer, explains Henrike Hahn: “Even in protected areas, the approval of strategic raw materials projects will be possible due to the overriding public interest. Parliament was unable to assert itself here. However, the CRMA does not change the fact that existing environmental legislation must be complied with and each application must be examined individually. The new requirements are therefore primarily concerned with the timing of the approval process.
The most difficult issues that the Council and Parliament negotiated until the end were, on the one hand, the right of indigenous peoples to co-determination. Parliament had called for the principle of free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) to be explicitly mentioned in the law. However, Sweden vetoed this in the Council. In the end, the Greens and representatives of civil society still see the agreement as positive: the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) will be included in the criteria for strategic projects and explicitly mentioned in the law. This also includes the FPIC principle.
On the other hand, the issue of deep-sea mining remained controversial to the end. The Council’s legal service had legal concerns about the competence of the seabed authority, it is said. The final version now states that, in line with the precautionary principle, the Commission “can only grant strategic status to a deep-sea mining project once the impact on the marine environment, biodiversity, and human activities has been sufficiently researched”. In addition, the risks must be known and the technologies and operating procedures must demonstrate that the environment will not be seriously harmed.
The reactions in the German industry are generally positive. “The agreement on the Critical Raw Materials Act will allow Europe to expand its sovereignty and resilience in the supply of raw materials,” explains Anne Lauenroth from the Federation of German Industries (BDI). However, taxonomy, supply chain, and chemical regulation as well as high energy prices threaten to slow down the necessary investments in the development and expansion of the required capacities, she criticizes.
The lack of funding also jeopardizes the success of the law. The CRMA’s main aim is to stimulate private investment through planning security. A raw materials fund has not been set up; however, the Parliament wants to continue to work towards this. When it comes to the question of financing, however, Europe needs to get its act together anyway. “China has invested around $962 billion in strategic infrastructure and raw materials projects since 2013 as part of its Silk Road Initiative alone”, said Lauenroth. “If Europe wants to keep up, it now needs innovative solutions, at least a strategic linking of existing funding pools and instruments at national and European level.”
In order to combine various instruments and financial flows of foreign trade promotion and development financing, the EU Commission is currently taking stock. In particular, the Global Gateway Initiative aims to put together more packages of different instruments.
“The CRMA is an important step in the right direction”, says Oliver Blank, Head of Global Affairs at the German Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers’ Association (ZVEI). He sees a problem in the lack of a cross-border component. “The establishment of recycling structures in Europe in particular will not work without Europe-wide standards and common infrastructures.” There is therefore a risk that in a few years’ time, when many electric cars have reached the end of their service life and can be recycled, there will be no efficient European secondary raw materials market, but rather a small national market.
Civil society also sees some positive impetus in the CRMA. “It is to be welcomed that the EU has agreed on higher recycling targets,” says Michael Reckordt from the NGO PowerShift. “At the same time, it is still unclear to what extent the globally unjust and ecologically destructive consumption of raw materials will be tackled in the EU. After all, this high consumption is the starting point for the violation of human and labor rights, indigenous rights, and environmental standards.”
The CRMA contains a requirement to moderate the expected consumption of critical raw materials. The Commission is obliged to draw up a corresponding reference scenario within 18 months of the law coming into force. However, it remains unclear exactly how consumption is to be reduced.
Tobias Kind-Rieper from WWF continues to see gaps, including in the area of strategic raw materials partnerships: “Strategic partnerships with third countries must be able to be assessed properly and must not be based solely on certification systems,” he explains. “Transparency about the agreement between the EU and third countries must be made possible, as well as the participation of civil society, especially in third countries.”
Almost two months after the elections, Poland’s Sejm has elected a new Prime Minister: Donald Tusk. The leader of the democratic opposition, which received a clear vote from voters on October 15 and immediately afterward declared its willingness to form a coalition government, received 248 votes, 17 votes more than the required majority. Tusk will present his government today, Tuesday, as the coalition has long since agreed on the ministerial appointments.
This marks the end of a political farce. Jarosław Kaczyński’s PiS party, which had been in power for eight years, used every trick in the book to cling on to power for as long as possible. Although it emerged from the election as the strongest force, it was clear to everyone from the outset that nobody wanted to form a coalition with Kaczyński. Nevertheless, Poland’s President Andrzej Duda, who was appointed by the PiS, tasked former Prime Minister Mateus Morawiecki with forming a government a month ago.
During this time, PiS politicians have done everything they can to put as many stumbling blocks in the way of Tusk and his new team as possible. For example, they fueled the crisis at the Ukrainian border, where Polish freight forwarders have been blocking all border crossings for four weeks. Their ministers destroyed documents that would prove criminal decisions and gave millions of taxpayers’ money to friendly foundations, where some of them would get secure jobs. President Duda appointed hundreds of new judges shortly before the deadline to cement PiS control over the courts.
Today’s parliamentary debate also felt like absurd theater. Although the PiS knew that its government would fail, it spent hours emphasizing the “great successes” of its two terms in office in front of the TV audience. The “Prime Minister” Morawiecki spoke for 69 minutes and presented himself as a defender of women and an advocate of ending the Polish-Polish war. At the same time, during the election campaign, he railed against Donald Tusk like no other. He only received 190 votes, with 266 MPs expressing their distrust of him.
Nevertheless, the PiS grandees tried until the end to discredit Donald Tusk and warn against the EU. Instead of congratulating Tusk on his election, as is good form, Kaczyński once again insulted the newly elected prime minister as a “Berlin agent”. Andrzej Rybak
When Thanasis Bakolas came to Brussels in June 2022 and became Secretary General of the Christian Democratic party family EPP, he was a largely unknown quantity on the EU scene. In Greece, he had made a career as an advisor to Kyriakos Mitsotakis in Nea Dimokratia. Bakolas (56) certainly has things in common with the current Prime Minister of Greece. Bakolas and Mitsotakis studied at elite universities in the USA. This experience has shaped both of them, in their appearance and in the way they speak English. When Mitsotakis took over the government in Athens, he made Bakolas his advisor, responsible for the EU and the USA.
Then Manfred Weber brought Bakolas to Brussels. At the very moment in 2022 when Weber, head of the largest parliamentary group in the European Parliament since 2014, also became head of the party family. Weber appointed him as a close colleague of one of his biggest advocates in Europe: in 2018, the Christian Democratic party family announced Weber as the lead candidate for the 2019 European elections. The Lower Bavarian was initially nominated by three parties: the CDU and CSU, which was no surprise as this call came from his political homeland – and from Nea Dimokratia under the leadership of Mitsotakis in Greece.
Bakolas got to know Weber during the sovereign debt crisis when he visited Greece. At the time, Mitsotakis was in opposition to Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras (Syriza). Weber, the leader of the Christian Democrats in the Strasbourg parliamentary group, and Mitsotakis, the opposition leader in Athens, worked closely together.
The Secretary General of the EPP is an introvert. In his digital interview with Table.Media, he reveals little more about himself than that he smokes. The mission that Weber gave him a year and a half ago is clear: Bakolas is to clean up the party headquarters. Weber’s power base has always been the parliamentary group, with its 178 MPs and more than 200 employees.
By contrast, the party based in Rue de Commerce in Brussels only has a small apparatus. It has just over 30 employees. For years, the party led a life of its own. It was not uncommon for party functionaries not to work with the parliamentary group, but rather against it. Weber himself felt this bitterly during the 2019 election campaign, in which he did not perform particularly well. Weber knew that he had to eliminate this weak point for the next election campaign.
This is how Bakola became the party’s top manager. He sent the long-serving deputy German general secretary into retirement. He terminated a number of lucrative contracts with consultants and did not make many friends in the party apparatus. Bakolas also ensured that the party was given a social media presence in the first place.
So far, Bakolas has made few public appearances. Only recently has he given the occasional interview. For example, he criticizes the formation of a government in Spain. He accuses socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of violating EU values and the rule of law. He is also dishonest: “Pedro Sánchez had a completely different position on the amnesty before the elections. In order to stay in power, he made concessions to the separatists.”
He is also very critical of the external observers that the coalition in Madrid has asked to monitor the controversial amnesty agreement: “The first meeting will take place in Switzerland. What does this kind of international intervention say about democracy in Spain?”
Thanasis Bakolas’ predecessor as General Secretary also held a seat in the European Parliament in addition to his party office. Bakolas, on the other hand, is the party’s full-time manager. One of his most important tasks now is to prepare the campaign. The election campaign will start later this time than in 2019 and will also be less elaborate than the campaign in which Manfred Weber was the lead candidate and wanted to become Commission President. The party congress of the Christian Democrats will take place in Bucharest on March 6 and 7. Bakolas is editorially responsible for the election program, the manifesto, to which the member parties from all EU states contribute.
Planning the campaign is not a task to be envied by Bakolas. To this day, he insists, he does not know which top candidate the EPP will put forward. Does Commission President Ursula von der Leyen want to serve another term? And on what terms is she available? She probably only knows the answers to these questions herself. Isabel Cuesta
