Late yesterday, the Bureau of the European Parliament elected a new Secretary General. Parliament President Roberta Metsola’s wish was fulfilled: Her head of cabinet, Alessandro Chiocchetti (53), has prevailed over his three competitors, as Markus Grabitz has learned.
The Commission is picking up the pace on energy pricing. After working through the weekend, a new draft law emerged from the Commission’s offices yesterday. Member states that skim off high random revenues because of their electricity mix are supposed to share their revenues with neighboring states. For background on the new proposal, see my News.
In addition to energy, however, the EU bodies will be dealing with a whole range of other sustainability issues this fall. Leonie Düngefeld shows you what these are in her outlook.
In just two weeks, important decisions will be made in Italy, with the election of a new parliament. Read our second Feature to find out why a center-right coalition could soon be in power.
One decision has already been made in France. Garance Pineau will advise President Emmanuel Macron on European affairs. Read more in our Profile.
We take a brief trip back in time to before the summer break: The attempt by some MEPs to prevent the inclusion of natural gas and nuclear power projects in the green taxonomy ended in early July with the failure of their veto motion in Parliament. The corresponding Delegated Act will thus enter into force on January 1, 2023.
In addition to environmental associations such as Deutsche Umwelthilfe, the Austrian government also announced that it would file an action against the decision. “Austria is intensively preparing an action for annulment under Article 263 TFEU to bring it before the European Court of Justice before the scheduled deadline in early October,” a spokesperson for the Austrian Environment Ministry told Europe.Table. Luxembourg had already pledged support – and Austria also has “allies at various levels” in other member states, the spokesperson said.
After this difficult debate, it is uncertain whether the Commission will devote itself to the planned social taxonomy within the current mandate. The Platform on Sustainable Finance, the Commission’s advisory body, had already presented its final report on the social taxonomy in February and proposed concrete targets in it. The social one could be designed either separately to the green taxonomy or as an integrated model. Now the Commission must take action. Various sources doubt that a proposal will come soon; the word from Parliament is that pressure will be put on the Commission.
After a long delay, the Commission presented a proposal for a directive on corporate due diligence in February. The lead Legal Affairs Committee in Parliament recently exchanged views with the other committees involved for the first time. The tenor: the proposal is fine as a compromise but still requires fundamental changes toward a risk-based approach.
The law affects the environment and human rights along the entire value chain – the parliamentary committees, therefore, struggled extensively over responsibility. In the end, the Legal Affairs Committee was given the lead, but twelve other committees were given the right to issue opinions, five of which also had additional responsibilities. A group of MEPs around Axel Voss (EPP) criticized this large number of people involved. The Conference of Committee Chairs reached consensus last week: Some articles will continue to be divided among five committees, but the Legal Affairs Committee will receive all exclusive responsibilities. “Now we can finally get to work,” commented Axel Voss on the decision.
Commission proposal: February 24, 2022
Actors: Rapporteur Lara Wolters (S&D)
Schedule: Unclear.
Another legislative project is intended to hold companies accountable with regard to their supply chains: With the Deforestation Act, the Commission wants to restrict the consumption of products that cause deforestation and forest degradation. Last November, it presented a draft for this purpose. In July, the European Parliament’s Environment Committee adopted its draft.
Commission proposal: November 17, 2021
Actors: Environment Commissioner Frans Timmermans, rapporteur Christophe Hansen (EPP), Czech (and from January 1 Swedish) Council Presidency
Schedule: The proposal will be debated in Parliament’s plenary session in Strasbourg on September 12 and voted on Sept. 13. Trilogue negotiations with the European Council will begin then.
In March 2020, the Commission published its new Action Plan for the Circular Economy – the basis for a long series of projects that are already underway or will be launched this fall at the latest.
A public consultation on initial drafts of a regulation on ecodesign and energy labeling requirements for cell phones and tablets will run until the end of September (Europe.Table reported). The proposals include specifications that are intended to mitigate the environmental impact of device groups based on product design. A new product label is to reveal the energy efficiency, repairability and robustness of the devices and, for the first time, information on the proportion of critical raw materials in the product is to be accessible. “Adoption of the legislation is foreseen for late 2022 or early 2023. The requirements would apply 12 to 18 months (depending on type) after the acts enter into force, ” as Commission sources say.
At the heart of the first package of measures on the circular economy, which the Commission presented six months ago, is the amendment of the Ecodesign Directive (Europe.Table reported). This is to be converted into a regulation, which would then have a greater impact in the member states. On the basis of the amendment, almost all product groups are to have to fulfill extensive sustainability criteria – for example, certain recycling proportions of the materials or reparability.
Commission proposal: March 30, 2022
Actors: Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton, Rapporteur Simona Bonafè (S&D)
Schedule: Unclear.
According to the plan, the Commission will present a second package with four legislative proposals on the circular economy on November 30. Actually, the proposal was supposed to appear before the summer break. Now it is so far behind that it is uncertain whether the laws will even be passed in this mandate.
From the department of Climate Commissioner Frans Timmermans comes a proposal for a regulation on the proof of environmental claims, the so-called Green Claims. Using the method of the ecological footprint of products and organizations, the EU wants to take stronger action against greenwashing. With the goal of a circular economy for plastics, Timmermans also wants to present a legislative framework for the use of bio-based, biodegradable and compostable plastics.
With the amendment of the Packaging Directive, the Commission intends to review the requirements for packaging and packaging waste in the EU. This includes measures such as improving packaging design to promote reuse and recycling, increasing the proportion of recycled material in packaging, taking action against excessive packaging and reducing packaging waste.
The Commission is examining whether it can replace the directive with a regulation during the revision, as the many national measures could lead to fragmentation of the internal market. The legal basis would be the internal market article of the EU Treaty. This had been reported by Mattia Pellegrini, Head of Unit Waste and Resources of DG Environment, during a panel discussion before the summer break.
Věra Jourová, Commissioner for Values and Transparency, will also present a draft for strengthening the right to repair, which aims to promote the repair and reuse of goods and thus sustainable consumption.
Commission proposal: November 30, 2022
Actors: Frans Timmermans, Commissioner for Climate Action, Věra Jourová, Commissioner for Values and Transparency.
Schedule: The parliamentary rapporteurs will probably be determined in early 2023. It is unclear whether the negotiations will be concluded during the current mandate.
The EU Commission already published a proposal in December 2020 on an EU Battery Regulation to replace the previous Directive on Batteries and Accumulators from 2006. With this, it wants to ensure that all batteries sold and imported in Europe are manufactured and recycled sustainably. Due to the large scope of the regulation, trilogue negotiations are proceeding slowly.
Commission proposal: December 10, 2020
Actors: Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton, rapporteur Simona Bonafè (S&D), Czech (and presumably Swedish) Council Presidency.
Schedule: The next trilogue will take place on October 11. It is unlikely that the negotiations will be concluded before the end of the year; it is more likely that this will happen under the Swedish Council Presidency in the first half of 2023.
What happens to the scrap from old cars? To date, the End of Life Vehicles Directive, introduced in 2000, sets targets for the reuse, recycling and recovery of end of life vehicles and their components. In order to prevent such waste even more effectively and to improve the environmental performance of all economic actors involved in the life cycle of vehicles, the Commission plans to revise the directive.
Actors: Directorate General Environment of the Commission
Schedule: A Commission proposal has been announced for the fourth quarter of this year.
For months, Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton has been talking about the “global race to secure resources” in which Europe must not lag behind. In the RePowerEU Plan, the Commission then announced a proposal for a raw materials law. In July, the first building blocks of the legislative package became known (Europe.Table reported).
With its draft, the Commission will take up many of the demands from the European Parliament’s report, according to Peter Handley, head of unit for raw materials in DG Grow. In the legislative package, the Commission wants to
Actors: Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton, own-initiative rapporteur Hildegard Bentele (EPP)
Schedule: The Commission’s proposal was supposed to be ready by the end of the year, but has now been postponed until next year.
A center-right coalition could soon govern Italy. According to the latest poll, Giorgia Meloni’s nationalist Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) party is in the lead with 24.6 percent of the vote. According to the poll, Matteo Salvini’s right-wing populist Lega Nord would get 12 percent and Silvio Berlusconi’s right-wing conservative Forza Italia 7.7 percent. This would enable the alliance to gain a relative majority in the newly elected parliament.
Meloni could thus become the first woman in the history of the Republic to enter Palazzo Chigi. She also has good personal approval ratings: In the Demos poll, she ranked third behind Mario Draghi and Giuseppe Conte, head of the Five Star Movement (M5S) and Draghi’s predecessor as prime minister. Conte and his party had toppled the Draghi government in July, ending a brief period of stability.
Meloni has been president of the Brothers of Italy since 2014. The party emerged from the post-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI), which was founded by supporters of dictator Benito Mussolini. Although the openly neo-fascist MSI is no longer close to Meloni’s party, the logos of both formations share the same iconography: a tri-color flame in the colors of the Italian flag-a design created by the movement’s founders in 1946 that represents the continuity of the post-fascist political tradition. Moreover, some politicians who used to belong to the MSI are now in Meloni’s party.
In recent weeks, however, the 45-year-old politician presented herself as a moderate: She condemned fascism and denied that there would be “anti-democratic tendencies” in the country if she won the election. She is trying to present herself as a reliable leader, especially in foreign policy. Meloni has condemned “Russia’s brutal aggression against Ukraine”, although less than a year ago she spoke in her biography of Putin’s Russia as part of the European value system. Meloni thus wants to distinguish herself from the positions of her allies in the right-wing coalition, who have cultivated a certain closeness to the Kremlin – above all Lega leader Salvini.
Meloni now promulgates pro-EU and pro-NATO messages and promises an international policy along the lines of the Draghi government. She also reiterated that her party does not hold euroskeptic positions and stressed her membership in the European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR), “which shares values and experience with the British Tories and the American Republicans.”
But her party’s campaign also draws on familiar right-wing themes: Migration and, more recently, concerns that Italian children are being subjected to “unacceptable gender indoctrination”. The occasion was public broadcaster RAI’s plan to air a new episode of the animated series “Peppa Wutz”, in which a protagonist lives with two mothers.
At the end of August, European People’s Party President Manfred Weber met with Berlusconi and former European Parliament President Antonio Tajani in Rome to support Forza Italia in the election campaign. For the CSU politician, the EPP member party is the guarantor of a pro-European approach in the center-right coalition. The coalition texts agreed by the three parties are “quite close to everything I can sign for the EPP,” Weber said.
The right-wing alliance would have to deal with difficult tasks in the event of an election victory: The energy crisis, which is based on the country’s once heavy dependence on Russia, is placing an enormous burden on households and businesses. Italy is also dependent on a good relationship with Brussels – with almost 200 billion euros in grants and loans, the country is the largest recipient of European economic aid. The entire package from the Next Generation EU program is tied to the implementation of a series of reforms begun by Draghi’s government.
The Democratic Party (PD) and the coalition formed by former Prime Minister Enrico Letta could still prevent a victory for the right-wing coalition. Ultimately, President Sergio Mattarella will decide whom to entrust with forming a government. Letta’s idea is to polarize the fight – either him or Meloni. According to the poll, the PD could win 22.4 percent of the vote.
But Latta’s personal approval ratings are far below those of Conte and Meloni. The leaders of the so-called Third Pole, Carlo Calenda and ex-Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, also seem unattractive to the electorate. The former foreign minister Luigi Di Maio, who left his party M5S in July and founded his own party Impegno Civico, seems unable to achieve any relevance.
In France’s politics, Europe is increasingly in the hands of women. After Foreign and European Affairs Minister Catherine Colonna and Laurence Boone, Secretary of State for Europe, a third woman is now taking care of Europe for President Emmanuel Macron. Garance Pineau succeeds Alexandre Adam and Clément Beaune as advisor for European affairs at the Elysée Palace.
Pineau has long been active in the European arena. For over two years, she was most recently head of cabinet for the Secretary of State for European Affairs. Since 2018, she has worked as head of European affairs for Macron’s La République en Marche movement. Before that, she spent a year as diplomatic adviser to former Labor Minister Muriel Pénicaud. She also handled European affairs at the French employers’ federation Medef from 2013 to 2017. Europe has also been at the center of her studies. She holds a master’s degree in European and international law from the University of Paris Sud, where she graduated in 2000.
Pineau is very well connected in the EU, where she campaigned for Macron’s project of a strong Europe, but in France she is still an unknown quantity among the general public. She is avowedly pro-European and opposed nationalist currents in Europe. “We have a huge responsibility to reorient the European project,” as she once declared a few years ago.
Employees described her as skilled in negotiations, moving things forward. A pragmatist who focuses less on big words and more on action. At Medef, she was present at negotiations in the EU and represented the association at key international organizations. She has worked closely with Clément Beaune on Macron’s proposals for conditions under which Europeans can work in other European countries. Tanja Kuchenbecker
Late yesterday, the Bureau of the European Parliament elected a new Secretary General. Parliament President Roberta Metsola’s wish was fulfilled: Her head of cabinet, Alessandro Chiocchetti (53), has prevailed over his three competitors, as Markus Grabitz has learned.
The Commission is picking up the pace on energy pricing. After working through the weekend, a new draft law emerged from the Commission’s offices yesterday. Member states that skim off high random revenues because of their electricity mix are supposed to share their revenues with neighboring states. For background on the new proposal, see my News.
In addition to energy, however, the EU bodies will be dealing with a whole range of other sustainability issues this fall. Leonie Düngefeld shows you what these are in her outlook.
In just two weeks, important decisions will be made in Italy, with the election of a new parliament. Read our second Feature to find out why a center-right coalition could soon be in power.
One decision has already been made in France. Garance Pineau will advise President Emmanuel Macron on European affairs. Read more in our Profile.
We take a brief trip back in time to before the summer break: The attempt by some MEPs to prevent the inclusion of natural gas and nuclear power projects in the green taxonomy ended in early July with the failure of their veto motion in Parliament. The corresponding Delegated Act will thus enter into force on January 1, 2023.
In addition to environmental associations such as Deutsche Umwelthilfe, the Austrian government also announced that it would file an action against the decision. “Austria is intensively preparing an action for annulment under Article 263 TFEU to bring it before the European Court of Justice before the scheduled deadline in early October,” a spokesperson for the Austrian Environment Ministry told Europe.Table. Luxembourg had already pledged support – and Austria also has “allies at various levels” in other member states, the spokesperson said.
After this difficult debate, it is uncertain whether the Commission will devote itself to the planned social taxonomy within the current mandate. The Platform on Sustainable Finance, the Commission’s advisory body, had already presented its final report on the social taxonomy in February and proposed concrete targets in it. The social one could be designed either separately to the green taxonomy or as an integrated model. Now the Commission must take action. Various sources doubt that a proposal will come soon; the word from Parliament is that pressure will be put on the Commission.
After a long delay, the Commission presented a proposal for a directive on corporate due diligence in February. The lead Legal Affairs Committee in Parliament recently exchanged views with the other committees involved for the first time. The tenor: the proposal is fine as a compromise but still requires fundamental changes toward a risk-based approach.
The law affects the environment and human rights along the entire value chain – the parliamentary committees, therefore, struggled extensively over responsibility. In the end, the Legal Affairs Committee was given the lead, but twelve other committees were given the right to issue opinions, five of which also had additional responsibilities. A group of MEPs around Axel Voss (EPP) criticized this large number of people involved. The Conference of Committee Chairs reached consensus last week: Some articles will continue to be divided among five committees, but the Legal Affairs Committee will receive all exclusive responsibilities. “Now we can finally get to work,” commented Axel Voss on the decision.
Commission proposal: February 24, 2022
Actors: Rapporteur Lara Wolters (S&D)
Schedule: Unclear.
Another legislative project is intended to hold companies accountable with regard to their supply chains: With the Deforestation Act, the Commission wants to restrict the consumption of products that cause deforestation and forest degradation. Last November, it presented a draft for this purpose. In July, the European Parliament’s Environment Committee adopted its draft.
Commission proposal: November 17, 2021
Actors: Environment Commissioner Frans Timmermans, rapporteur Christophe Hansen (EPP), Czech (and from January 1 Swedish) Council Presidency
Schedule: The proposal will be debated in Parliament’s plenary session in Strasbourg on September 12 and voted on Sept. 13. Trilogue negotiations with the European Council will begin then.
In March 2020, the Commission published its new Action Plan for the Circular Economy – the basis for a long series of projects that are already underway or will be launched this fall at the latest.
A public consultation on initial drafts of a regulation on ecodesign and energy labeling requirements for cell phones and tablets will run until the end of September (Europe.Table reported). The proposals include specifications that are intended to mitigate the environmental impact of device groups based on product design. A new product label is to reveal the energy efficiency, repairability and robustness of the devices and, for the first time, information on the proportion of critical raw materials in the product is to be accessible. “Adoption of the legislation is foreseen for late 2022 or early 2023. The requirements would apply 12 to 18 months (depending on type) after the acts enter into force, ” as Commission sources say.
At the heart of the first package of measures on the circular economy, which the Commission presented six months ago, is the amendment of the Ecodesign Directive (Europe.Table reported). This is to be converted into a regulation, which would then have a greater impact in the member states. On the basis of the amendment, almost all product groups are to have to fulfill extensive sustainability criteria – for example, certain recycling proportions of the materials or reparability.
Commission proposal: March 30, 2022
Actors: Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton, Rapporteur Simona Bonafè (S&D)
Schedule: Unclear.
According to the plan, the Commission will present a second package with four legislative proposals on the circular economy on November 30. Actually, the proposal was supposed to appear before the summer break. Now it is so far behind that it is uncertain whether the laws will even be passed in this mandate.
From the department of Climate Commissioner Frans Timmermans comes a proposal for a regulation on the proof of environmental claims, the so-called Green Claims. Using the method of the ecological footprint of products and organizations, the EU wants to take stronger action against greenwashing. With the goal of a circular economy for plastics, Timmermans also wants to present a legislative framework for the use of bio-based, biodegradable and compostable plastics.
With the amendment of the Packaging Directive, the Commission intends to review the requirements for packaging and packaging waste in the EU. This includes measures such as improving packaging design to promote reuse and recycling, increasing the proportion of recycled material in packaging, taking action against excessive packaging and reducing packaging waste.
The Commission is examining whether it can replace the directive with a regulation during the revision, as the many national measures could lead to fragmentation of the internal market. The legal basis would be the internal market article of the EU Treaty. This had been reported by Mattia Pellegrini, Head of Unit Waste and Resources of DG Environment, during a panel discussion before the summer break.
Věra Jourová, Commissioner for Values and Transparency, will also present a draft for strengthening the right to repair, which aims to promote the repair and reuse of goods and thus sustainable consumption.
Commission proposal: November 30, 2022
Actors: Frans Timmermans, Commissioner for Climate Action, Věra Jourová, Commissioner for Values and Transparency.
Schedule: The parliamentary rapporteurs will probably be determined in early 2023. It is unclear whether the negotiations will be concluded during the current mandate.
The EU Commission already published a proposal in December 2020 on an EU Battery Regulation to replace the previous Directive on Batteries and Accumulators from 2006. With this, it wants to ensure that all batteries sold and imported in Europe are manufactured and recycled sustainably. Due to the large scope of the regulation, trilogue negotiations are proceeding slowly.
Commission proposal: December 10, 2020
Actors: Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton, rapporteur Simona Bonafè (S&D), Czech (and presumably Swedish) Council Presidency.
Schedule: The next trilogue will take place on October 11. It is unlikely that the negotiations will be concluded before the end of the year; it is more likely that this will happen under the Swedish Council Presidency in the first half of 2023.
What happens to the scrap from old cars? To date, the End of Life Vehicles Directive, introduced in 2000, sets targets for the reuse, recycling and recovery of end of life vehicles and their components. In order to prevent such waste even more effectively and to improve the environmental performance of all economic actors involved in the life cycle of vehicles, the Commission plans to revise the directive.
Actors: Directorate General Environment of the Commission
Schedule: A Commission proposal has been announced for the fourth quarter of this year.
For months, Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton has been talking about the “global race to secure resources” in which Europe must not lag behind. In the RePowerEU Plan, the Commission then announced a proposal for a raw materials law. In July, the first building blocks of the legislative package became known (Europe.Table reported).
With its draft, the Commission will take up many of the demands from the European Parliament’s report, according to Peter Handley, head of unit for raw materials in DG Grow. In the legislative package, the Commission wants to
Actors: Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton, own-initiative rapporteur Hildegard Bentele (EPP)
Schedule: The Commission’s proposal was supposed to be ready by the end of the year, but has now been postponed until next year.
A center-right coalition could soon govern Italy. According to the latest poll, Giorgia Meloni’s nationalist Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) party is in the lead with 24.6 percent of the vote. According to the poll, Matteo Salvini’s right-wing populist Lega Nord would get 12 percent and Silvio Berlusconi’s right-wing conservative Forza Italia 7.7 percent. This would enable the alliance to gain a relative majority in the newly elected parliament.
Meloni could thus become the first woman in the history of the Republic to enter Palazzo Chigi. She also has good personal approval ratings: In the Demos poll, she ranked third behind Mario Draghi and Giuseppe Conte, head of the Five Star Movement (M5S) and Draghi’s predecessor as prime minister. Conte and his party had toppled the Draghi government in July, ending a brief period of stability.
Meloni has been president of the Brothers of Italy since 2014. The party emerged from the post-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI), which was founded by supporters of dictator Benito Mussolini. Although the openly neo-fascist MSI is no longer close to Meloni’s party, the logos of both formations share the same iconography: a tri-color flame in the colors of the Italian flag-a design created by the movement’s founders in 1946 that represents the continuity of the post-fascist political tradition. Moreover, some politicians who used to belong to the MSI are now in Meloni’s party.
In recent weeks, however, the 45-year-old politician presented herself as a moderate: She condemned fascism and denied that there would be “anti-democratic tendencies” in the country if she won the election. She is trying to present herself as a reliable leader, especially in foreign policy. Meloni has condemned “Russia’s brutal aggression against Ukraine”, although less than a year ago she spoke in her biography of Putin’s Russia as part of the European value system. Meloni thus wants to distinguish herself from the positions of her allies in the right-wing coalition, who have cultivated a certain closeness to the Kremlin – above all Lega leader Salvini.
Meloni now promulgates pro-EU and pro-NATO messages and promises an international policy along the lines of the Draghi government. She also reiterated that her party does not hold euroskeptic positions and stressed her membership in the European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR), “which shares values and experience with the British Tories and the American Republicans.”
But her party’s campaign also draws on familiar right-wing themes: Migration and, more recently, concerns that Italian children are being subjected to “unacceptable gender indoctrination”. The occasion was public broadcaster RAI’s plan to air a new episode of the animated series “Peppa Wutz”, in which a protagonist lives with two mothers.
At the end of August, European People’s Party President Manfred Weber met with Berlusconi and former European Parliament President Antonio Tajani in Rome to support Forza Italia in the election campaign. For the CSU politician, the EPP member party is the guarantor of a pro-European approach in the center-right coalition. The coalition texts agreed by the three parties are “quite close to everything I can sign for the EPP,” Weber said.
The right-wing alliance would have to deal with difficult tasks in the event of an election victory: The energy crisis, which is based on the country’s once heavy dependence on Russia, is placing an enormous burden on households and businesses. Italy is also dependent on a good relationship with Brussels – with almost 200 billion euros in grants and loans, the country is the largest recipient of European economic aid. The entire package from the Next Generation EU program is tied to the implementation of a series of reforms begun by Draghi’s government.
The Democratic Party (PD) and the coalition formed by former Prime Minister Enrico Letta could still prevent a victory for the right-wing coalition. Ultimately, President Sergio Mattarella will decide whom to entrust with forming a government. Letta’s idea is to polarize the fight – either him or Meloni. According to the poll, the PD could win 22.4 percent of the vote.
But Latta’s personal approval ratings are far below those of Conte and Meloni. The leaders of the so-called Third Pole, Carlo Calenda and ex-Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, also seem unattractive to the electorate. The former foreign minister Luigi Di Maio, who left his party M5S in July and founded his own party Impegno Civico, seems unable to achieve any relevance.
In France’s politics, Europe is increasingly in the hands of women. After Foreign and European Affairs Minister Catherine Colonna and Laurence Boone, Secretary of State for Europe, a third woman is now taking care of Europe for President Emmanuel Macron. Garance Pineau succeeds Alexandre Adam and Clément Beaune as advisor for European affairs at the Elysée Palace.
Pineau has long been active in the European arena. For over two years, she was most recently head of cabinet for the Secretary of State for European Affairs. Since 2018, she has worked as head of European affairs for Macron’s La République en Marche movement. Before that, she spent a year as diplomatic adviser to former Labor Minister Muriel Pénicaud. She also handled European affairs at the French employers’ federation Medef from 2013 to 2017. Europe has also been at the center of her studies. She holds a master’s degree in European and international law from the University of Paris Sud, where she graduated in 2000.
Pineau is very well connected in the EU, where she campaigned for Macron’s project of a strong Europe, but in France she is still an unknown quantity among the general public. She is avowedly pro-European and opposed nationalist currents in Europe. “We have a huge responsibility to reorient the European project,” as she once declared a few years ago.
Employees described her as skilled in negotiations, moving things forward. A pragmatist who focuses less on big words and more on action. At Medef, she was present at negotiations in the EU and represented the association at key international organizations. She has worked closely with Clément Beaune on Macron’s proposals for conditions under which Europeans can work in other European countries. Tanja Kuchenbecker
