Shortly before she travels to China together with French President Emmanuel Macron, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen gave a keynote speech on European policy toward China. It was surprisingly clear, as Amelie Richter writes in her Analysis. “Our relations are unbalanced and increasingly distorted by China’s state capitalist system”, von der Leyen said, for example. Beijing is likely to be annoyed by these statements – and Brussels will probably not be happy either.
The parties spent all night negotiating, and yesterday morning there was finally an agreement in the last trilogue on the Renewable Energy Directive: By 2030, the EU must achieve a renewable energy target of 42.5 percent instead of 32 percent. At the suggestion of the Swedish Council Presidency, a voluntary surcharge of 2.5 percent also applies, which the states are to strive for together. France failed with its controversial push for nuclear energy. Manuel Berkel summarizes the results.
The Net-Zero Industry Act is intended to secure Europe’s competitiveness as a location for climate-friendly technologies. As Table.Media has learned, CDU MEP Christian Ehler will be the European Parliament’s rapporteur for this key EU legislative project. There will also be a German rapporteur for the Critical Raw Materials Act – this task will go to Parliament Vice President Nicola Beer (FDP).
Norbert Lins grew up on a small farm near Lake Constance, and the family had dairy cows and pigs. Today, Lins is an MEP and chairman of the powerful Agriculture Committee. In this capacity, he was instrumental in the CAP reform. There is no giving up on “greening the CAP”, he says, even if the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine and the grain crisis continue to make exceptions necessary in his view. Read more about Lins in today’s Heads by Paul Meerkamp.
Shortly before her first trip to Beijing as head of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen gave an idea of what she has to say in the Chinese capital in a surprisingly clear speech on EU-China relations. At the event organized by the think tanks European Policy Center and the Beijing-sanctioned Merics Institute in Brussels on Thursday, she advocated a joint EU-wide China policy. She called for “de-risking” in strategic areas rather than full decoupling. The EU triad of “partner, competitor, rival” usually repeated by officials to describe the relationship with the People’s Republic went unmentioned.
Together with France’s President Emmanuel Macron, von der Leyen will travel to China next week. The speech struck a challenging tone in advance. Von der Leyen has already spoken critically about individual aspects of EU-China policy in the past. However, this was the first time she gave a pure keynote speech on relations with Beijing. An overview of the most important points:
The speech of the head of the EU Commission was unexpectedly direct and in line with her recent tendency to take a more assertive stance on China policy. This was already evident at von der Leyen’s meeting with US President Joe Biden in Washington. Beijing is likely to be upset by the speech. China will accuse Brussels – not for the first time – of being a pawn of the USA.
Foreign policy expert Noah Barkin from the Berlin office of the German Marshall Fund (GMF) regards the EU Commission chief’s speech as a breakthrough: “von der Leyen has delivered the speech on China that Europe has been waiting for,” Barkin wrote on Twitter. Whether all of Europe or even EU institutions will agree, however, is questionable. Recently, a growing schism between the EU Commission and the EU Council of Member States emerged. EU Council President Charles Michel traveled alone to Beijing in November. He is rather skeptical about the confrontational course against China.
How closely von der Leyen will stick to her tone during the joint visit with Macron remains to be seen. “President von der Leyen and President Macron have not always sung exactly the same tune regarding China in the recent past,” Green Party European politician and head of the EU Parliament’s China delegation Reinhard Buetikofer told Table.Media. The joint visit would now provide an opportunity to let “Chinese attempts at division come to nothing”, Buetikofer said.
In any case, Macron already deserves praise for the approach of demonstrating European unity in Beijing, believes Mathieu Duchâtel, Director of the Asia Programme at the Montaigne Institute in Paris. “Of course, he will be criticized in parts of Europe for not being inclusive enough. But he could have made his visit purely bilateral,” Duchâtel said. However, when it comes to concrete results of the visit, the foreign policy expert is less optimistic: The EU hopes for a positive Chinese role in the Russia-Ukraine war. That is rather unlikely, he says.
It remains to be seen how much coordination there will be between Macron and von der Leyen, said Merics EU expert Grzegorz Stec. “Given his stated goal of closer consideration of China’s potential positive contribution to resolving the war in Ukraine, Macron might adopt a softer and more flexible tone.” Macron recently voiced his support for China as a mediator after the G20 summit. But this goal may now have interfered with von der Leyen’s assertive line, Stec told Table.Media.
By 2030, the EU must achieve a renewables target of 42.5 percent instead of 32 percent. This was agreed by the negotiators in Brussels on Thursday morning in the last trilogue on the Renewable Energy Directive (RED) after a long night of negotiations. At the suggestion of the Swedish Council Presidency, a voluntary surcharge of 2.5 percent also applies, which the states are to jointly strive for.
The member states had entered the negotiations with an offer of only 40 percent; Parliament and the Commission wanted to push through a mandatory 45 percent. Nevertheless, the outcome was considered a success by those involved. “The agreement on a new, ambitious Renewable Energy Directive is good news for renewables not only in Europe but around the world“, wrote Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson and the head of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), Francesco La Camera, in a joint statement.
However, the member states must now show whether they really support the more ambitious renewables target in a new version of their national energy and climate plans. In these plans, the EU member states can set their own expansion targets. If the joint renewables target is in danger of being missed in total, the Commission can only take action at the Union level under the Governance Regulation.
For now, however, comments on yesterday’s decision focused on the voluntary 2.5 percent surcharge. The European level must take responsibility, said Green MEP Michael Bloss: “The EU must also be able to build wind and solar plants in the future“. Solar Power Europe does not want to go quite that far. For the “top up” the task now is to use available EU instruments, said CEO Walburga Hemetsberger. With REPowerEU, the Commission had already promised the member states additional funding.
To facilitate renewable expansion, the planning acceleration funds from last year’s emergency ordinance will be made permanent in the RED. In acceleration zones, for example, environmental inspections can be simplified. With some exceptions, the simplifications also apply to grid expansion.
Politically, the most controversial issue has been the role of nuclear energy. With the support of other countries, France wanted to ensure that “low-carbon energy sources” could also be counted toward the renewables targets. In the end, however, the result was only a reduction in the hydrogen quota for the industry.
For all member states, the target is that by 2030, at least 42 percent of hydrogen in the industry must be covered by RFNBOs, synthetic energy sources produced with the help of green electricity. By 2035, the rate must increase to 60 percent. Under certain conditions, states that have already decarbonized their industries can receive a minimal one-fifth discount on these quotas. However, according to the parliamentary rapporteur, the entry thresholds are so high that France, with its low share of renewables, is unlikely to benefit from them for a long time yet.
Only one country should be able to apply the regulation initially, and that should be Sweden, Markus Pieper (EPP) told the press at noon. “Those who wanted it – for them, it does not apply,” the MEP added afterwards.
Nevertheless, there is now a danger that the government in Paris will revisit the role of nuclear power in every energy and climate dossier in the coming years. The “friends of renewables” around Germany and Austria would therefore do well to find an overarching solution for nuclear power with France.
Renewable or hydrogen targets are also created for the transport and building sectors with the RED. In the transport sector, targets for sustainable biofuels also apply.
In the energy sector, the sustainability of biomass is the biggest criticism of the negotiated compromise by environmental organizations. Under the RED, combustion for electricity and heat generation can still be used to meet renewable targets. For forest-rich Sweden, it was even one of the main goals of its presidency. But government subsidies will be ended, Pieper said.
For WWF, however, the exact wording matters. It is true that direct financial support for the energy recovery of certain wood products and tree parts will be ended. Indirect incentives such as tax relief, however, will continue to be permitted.
The preliminary agreement must now be formally confirmed. Pieper expects Parliament to give its approval in mid-May, and the Council is also likely to approve it before the summer break.
“We need to make agriculture more sustainable while maintaining yields” – Norbert Lins repeats this demand several times. As a member of the European Parliament and chairman of the powerful Agriculture Committee, he is partly responsible for how well agriculture on the continent manages this balancing act. Whether it’s crop rotation, humus build-up or partridges – the 45-year-old has known the ropes since childhood. Lins grew up on a farm in Danketsweiler, Baden-Württemberg.
“We mainly had dairy cows and a few pigs”, he recalls. With eleven hectares, the farm was already rather small by the standards of the time. That was another reason why taking over the farm was not an option for him. Instead, Lins began studying for a degree in higher administration. At the age of 18, he joined the CDU.
He could well imagine going into local politics one day. But an internship in the EU Parliament led him to European politics. Then, when his party friend Andreas Schwab became an MEP shortly before the end of his studies, the perfect opportunity arose: Lins became his office manager.
“In the end, it was a stroke of luck”, he says in retrospect. He is a hard-working person, but it also takes a little “luck of the fittest”. That also helped him when he ran for office in 2014 and narrowly won a seat in the European Parliament. Five years later, he was re-elected – again by a narrow margin.
Since then, Lins has headed the Agriculture Committee and played a key role in the CAP reform. The fact that EU subsidies can quickly run into twelve-figure sums does not unsettle him. After all, he can always break the billions down to what a small or medium-sized farm receives.
Strengthening this was one of the objectives of the reform. In addition, the EU’s agricultural policy was to become more sustainable. Has that worked out? “We’re certainly not there yet with this reform, but we’ve taken a significant step forward”, says Lins.
When the country’s grain exports plummeted with the Ukraine war, he argued for exceptions to planned set-asides and crop rotations. This, he said, helped calm the grain markets. Unfortunately, there is no peace in sight in Ukraine. “That’s why I personally believe that exemptions are necessary for 2024 and 2025 as well“.
That doesn’t mean abandoning the “greening of the CAP”, he says, adding that the organic schemes with corresponding subsidies are still available. And he believes that crop rotations have a stronger impact on agricultural sustainability than set-asides anyway: “We have to succeed in stopping growing corn on corn on corn”.
Lins would like to continue working on this. In mid-April, his district association will be nominating candidates for the next European elections. He would be pleased if the voters then also extended his “five-year contract”. Paul Meerkamp
Shortly before she travels to China together with French President Emmanuel Macron, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen gave a keynote speech on European policy toward China. It was surprisingly clear, as Amelie Richter writes in her Analysis. “Our relations are unbalanced and increasingly distorted by China’s state capitalist system”, von der Leyen said, for example. Beijing is likely to be annoyed by these statements – and Brussels will probably not be happy either.
The parties spent all night negotiating, and yesterday morning there was finally an agreement in the last trilogue on the Renewable Energy Directive: By 2030, the EU must achieve a renewable energy target of 42.5 percent instead of 32 percent. At the suggestion of the Swedish Council Presidency, a voluntary surcharge of 2.5 percent also applies, which the states are to strive for together. France failed with its controversial push for nuclear energy. Manuel Berkel summarizes the results.
The Net-Zero Industry Act is intended to secure Europe’s competitiveness as a location for climate-friendly technologies. As Table.Media has learned, CDU MEP Christian Ehler will be the European Parliament’s rapporteur for this key EU legislative project. There will also be a German rapporteur for the Critical Raw Materials Act – this task will go to Parliament Vice President Nicola Beer (FDP).
Norbert Lins grew up on a small farm near Lake Constance, and the family had dairy cows and pigs. Today, Lins is an MEP and chairman of the powerful Agriculture Committee. In this capacity, he was instrumental in the CAP reform. There is no giving up on “greening the CAP”, he says, even if the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine and the grain crisis continue to make exceptions necessary in his view. Read more about Lins in today’s Heads by Paul Meerkamp.
Shortly before her first trip to Beijing as head of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen gave an idea of what she has to say in the Chinese capital in a surprisingly clear speech on EU-China relations. At the event organized by the think tanks European Policy Center and the Beijing-sanctioned Merics Institute in Brussels on Thursday, she advocated a joint EU-wide China policy. She called for “de-risking” in strategic areas rather than full decoupling. The EU triad of “partner, competitor, rival” usually repeated by officials to describe the relationship with the People’s Republic went unmentioned.
Together with France’s President Emmanuel Macron, von der Leyen will travel to China next week. The speech struck a challenging tone in advance. Von der Leyen has already spoken critically about individual aspects of EU-China policy in the past. However, this was the first time she gave a pure keynote speech on relations with Beijing. An overview of the most important points:
The speech of the head of the EU Commission was unexpectedly direct and in line with her recent tendency to take a more assertive stance on China policy. This was already evident at von der Leyen’s meeting with US President Joe Biden in Washington. Beijing is likely to be upset by the speech. China will accuse Brussels – not for the first time – of being a pawn of the USA.
Foreign policy expert Noah Barkin from the Berlin office of the German Marshall Fund (GMF) regards the EU Commission chief’s speech as a breakthrough: “von der Leyen has delivered the speech on China that Europe has been waiting for,” Barkin wrote on Twitter. Whether all of Europe or even EU institutions will agree, however, is questionable. Recently, a growing schism between the EU Commission and the EU Council of Member States emerged. EU Council President Charles Michel traveled alone to Beijing in November. He is rather skeptical about the confrontational course against China.
How closely von der Leyen will stick to her tone during the joint visit with Macron remains to be seen. “President von der Leyen and President Macron have not always sung exactly the same tune regarding China in the recent past,” Green Party European politician and head of the EU Parliament’s China delegation Reinhard Buetikofer told Table.Media. The joint visit would now provide an opportunity to let “Chinese attempts at division come to nothing”, Buetikofer said.
In any case, Macron already deserves praise for the approach of demonstrating European unity in Beijing, believes Mathieu Duchâtel, Director of the Asia Programme at the Montaigne Institute in Paris. “Of course, he will be criticized in parts of Europe for not being inclusive enough. But he could have made his visit purely bilateral,” Duchâtel said. However, when it comes to concrete results of the visit, the foreign policy expert is less optimistic: The EU hopes for a positive Chinese role in the Russia-Ukraine war. That is rather unlikely, he says.
It remains to be seen how much coordination there will be between Macron and von der Leyen, said Merics EU expert Grzegorz Stec. “Given his stated goal of closer consideration of China’s potential positive contribution to resolving the war in Ukraine, Macron might adopt a softer and more flexible tone.” Macron recently voiced his support for China as a mediator after the G20 summit. But this goal may now have interfered with von der Leyen’s assertive line, Stec told Table.Media.
By 2030, the EU must achieve a renewables target of 42.5 percent instead of 32 percent. This was agreed by the negotiators in Brussels on Thursday morning in the last trilogue on the Renewable Energy Directive (RED) after a long night of negotiations. At the suggestion of the Swedish Council Presidency, a voluntary surcharge of 2.5 percent also applies, which the states are to jointly strive for.
The member states had entered the negotiations with an offer of only 40 percent; Parliament and the Commission wanted to push through a mandatory 45 percent. Nevertheless, the outcome was considered a success by those involved. “The agreement on a new, ambitious Renewable Energy Directive is good news for renewables not only in Europe but around the world“, wrote Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson and the head of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), Francesco La Camera, in a joint statement.
However, the member states must now show whether they really support the more ambitious renewables target in a new version of their national energy and climate plans. In these plans, the EU member states can set their own expansion targets. If the joint renewables target is in danger of being missed in total, the Commission can only take action at the Union level under the Governance Regulation.
For now, however, comments on yesterday’s decision focused on the voluntary 2.5 percent surcharge. The European level must take responsibility, said Green MEP Michael Bloss: “The EU must also be able to build wind and solar plants in the future“. Solar Power Europe does not want to go quite that far. For the “top up” the task now is to use available EU instruments, said CEO Walburga Hemetsberger. With REPowerEU, the Commission had already promised the member states additional funding.
To facilitate renewable expansion, the planning acceleration funds from last year’s emergency ordinance will be made permanent in the RED. In acceleration zones, for example, environmental inspections can be simplified. With some exceptions, the simplifications also apply to grid expansion.
Politically, the most controversial issue has been the role of nuclear energy. With the support of other countries, France wanted to ensure that “low-carbon energy sources” could also be counted toward the renewables targets. In the end, however, the result was only a reduction in the hydrogen quota for the industry.
For all member states, the target is that by 2030, at least 42 percent of hydrogen in the industry must be covered by RFNBOs, synthetic energy sources produced with the help of green electricity. By 2035, the rate must increase to 60 percent. Under certain conditions, states that have already decarbonized their industries can receive a minimal one-fifth discount on these quotas. However, according to the parliamentary rapporteur, the entry thresholds are so high that France, with its low share of renewables, is unlikely to benefit from them for a long time yet.
Only one country should be able to apply the regulation initially, and that should be Sweden, Markus Pieper (EPP) told the press at noon. “Those who wanted it – for them, it does not apply,” the MEP added afterwards.
Nevertheless, there is now a danger that the government in Paris will revisit the role of nuclear power in every energy and climate dossier in the coming years. The “friends of renewables” around Germany and Austria would therefore do well to find an overarching solution for nuclear power with France.
Renewable or hydrogen targets are also created for the transport and building sectors with the RED. In the transport sector, targets for sustainable biofuels also apply.
In the energy sector, the sustainability of biomass is the biggest criticism of the negotiated compromise by environmental organizations. Under the RED, combustion for electricity and heat generation can still be used to meet renewable targets. For forest-rich Sweden, it was even one of the main goals of its presidency. But government subsidies will be ended, Pieper said.
For WWF, however, the exact wording matters. It is true that direct financial support for the energy recovery of certain wood products and tree parts will be ended. Indirect incentives such as tax relief, however, will continue to be permitted.
The preliminary agreement must now be formally confirmed. Pieper expects Parliament to give its approval in mid-May, and the Council is also likely to approve it before the summer break.
“We need to make agriculture more sustainable while maintaining yields” – Norbert Lins repeats this demand several times. As a member of the European Parliament and chairman of the powerful Agriculture Committee, he is partly responsible for how well agriculture on the continent manages this balancing act. Whether it’s crop rotation, humus build-up or partridges – the 45-year-old has known the ropes since childhood. Lins grew up on a farm in Danketsweiler, Baden-Württemberg.
“We mainly had dairy cows and a few pigs”, he recalls. With eleven hectares, the farm was already rather small by the standards of the time. That was another reason why taking over the farm was not an option for him. Instead, Lins began studying for a degree in higher administration. At the age of 18, he joined the CDU.
He could well imagine going into local politics one day. But an internship in the EU Parliament led him to European politics. Then, when his party friend Andreas Schwab became an MEP shortly before the end of his studies, the perfect opportunity arose: Lins became his office manager.
“In the end, it was a stroke of luck”, he says in retrospect. He is a hard-working person, but it also takes a little “luck of the fittest”. That also helped him when he ran for office in 2014 and narrowly won a seat in the European Parliament. Five years later, he was re-elected – again by a narrow margin.
Since then, Lins has headed the Agriculture Committee and played a key role in the CAP reform. The fact that EU subsidies can quickly run into twelve-figure sums does not unsettle him. After all, he can always break the billions down to what a small or medium-sized farm receives.
Strengthening this was one of the objectives of the reform. In addition, the EU’s agricultural policy was to become more sustainable. Has that worked out? “We’re certainly not there yet with this reform, but we’ve taken a significant step forward”, says Lins.
When the country’s grain exports plummeted with the Ukraine war, he argued for exceptions to planned set-asides and crop rotations. This, he said, helped calm the grain markets. Unfortunately, there is no peace in sight in Ukraine. “That’s why I personally believe that exemptions are necessary for 2024 and 2025 as well“.
That doesn’t mean abandoning the “greening of the CAP”, he says, adding that the organic schemes with corresponding subsidies are still available. And he believes that crop rotations have a stronger impact on agricultural sustainability than set-asides anyway: “We have to succeed in stopping growing corn on corn on corn”.
Lins would like to continue working on this. In mid-April, his district association will be nominating candidates for the next European elections. He would be pleased if the voters then also extended his “five-year contract”. Paul Meerkamp
