The Single Market Emergency Instrument is supposed to prepare the EU’s internal market for crises. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen plans to present the instrument during her State of the Union address on September 13. But the first details are already out in the open: According to an internal document, the Commission wants to be able to instruct member states to set aside “strategic reserves” and specify the criteria according to which they should be allocated to the industry, in the event of a crisis. Markus Grabitz took a look at the paper and summarized the most important points.
Currently, two-thirds of the world’s chips come from East Asia. If Europe and the USA have their way, that will soon change due to the European Chips Act and the “Chips and Science Act” – as the law to strengthen the domestic semiconductor industry is called in Washington political slang – that was passed by the US Senate a few days ago. However, Beijing is also spending a lot of money to promote the Chinese chip industry – and is apparently enjoying considerable success. Felix Lee analyzed the global race for the chips lead.
Lars Hänsel is convinced that “Europe needs to completely rethink its business model”. The head of the Europe and North America department at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation wants to rethink Europe. For him, this also includes giving the member states more freedom and finding a different way of dealing with the Eastern European countries. Read more about Hänsel in today’s profile by Lisa-Martina Klein.
According to information available to Europe.Table, the new crisis instrument for the single market, which EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen plans to present on September 13 during her State of the Union address to the EU Parliament in Strasbourg, is to be switched like a traffic light in three phases – green, yellow, and red. Officials around Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton are still working flat out on the details of the Single Market Emergency Instrument (SMEI). Europe.Table has received an internal paper from the Commission that provides information on what the instrument could look like in concrete terms.
Accordingly, the crisis instrument is to have three “fundamental objectives”. The most important goal is to ensure the functioning of the internal market – even in times of crises such as a pandemic or a disruption of supply chains due to a war. The goal is also to minimize disruptions to the internal EU exchange of goods, services, and employees. It is also supposed to combat shortages of services and goods.
With the crisis instrument, the Commission aims to learn the lesson from the first months of the pandemic, when uncoordinated measures by member states, such as export bans on masks and medical devices, ruptured supply chains and led to severe disruptions in the internal market.
The Commission wants to design the instrument for the broadest possible application in the internal market: It covers all products of high relevance for the internal market, such as energy, fuels, agricultural products, or fisheries. It is intended to complement existing crisis instruments, such as export controls or the screening of foreign investments in the EU.
The governance structure of the SMEI has obviously not yet been finalized. It is clear that a committee is planned in which the Commission and all member states are represented. However, the Commission leaves it open whether the member states will be able to participate in decision-making in the committee and have voting rights or whether the Commission alone will decide.
In normal times, the crisis instrument is in the “green” phase in the traffic light logic below. In this phase, “the Commission will collect risk assessment information based on voluntary contributions from industry and member states”. The risk assessment is to be delivered once a year.
The traffic light switches to “yellow” when crises loom or when it is a question of preventing a crisis. Triggers could be drastic events such as earthquakes, floods, foreseeable shortages of raw materials, or threats to supply chains of overriding importance, such as a blockade of the Suez Canal. At this stage, the crisis instrument provides for a “more stringent” collection of information. The panel is increasingly dependent on feedback and “input” from industry.
In the case of “yellow”, initial measures could be taken: For example, member states could be instructed to create “strategic reserves“. It is explicitly stated that the member states, “not the industry”, are responsible for creating the reserves. The decision to create reserves should either be made by the Commission alone, or there should be a “consultation procedure” in which the member states are involved. In any case, the reserves should be created before a crisis breaks out and exorbitant price increases occur.
The “red” phase is the crisis mode. The crisis instrument is armed when the emergency phase is activated according to a sequence of defined criteria. In this phase, the member states are obliged to inform the Commission closely about the supply situation.
The most severe measure conceivable in the case of “red” is that the Commission can order the strategic reserves created in the case of “yellow” to be distributed in a coordinated and mandatory manner. It is also conceivable that specifications will be issued as to which customers have priority in the distribution of strategically important goods.
Companies can be obliged to give priority to selling their goods to certain customers. The Commission can also undertake public procurement in this phase, as it did with vaccines during the pandemic. However, as in the case of vaccines, the member states must pay for the public procurement.
A particular focus is on the mobility of employees. The Commission intends to pay very close attention to ensuring that no member state unilaterally imposes measures that impede the free movement of persons. A list of measures that are expressly prohibited is to be drawn up. Here, as an example, reference is made to the fact that Hungary, for example, banned medical personnel from leaving the country at the height of the pandemic.
Internal market expert Andreas Schwab (CDU) told Europe.Table: “It is to be welcomed that the Commission is expanding the toolbox for crises. Situations like at the beginning of the pandemic, when Germany stopped the export of medical equipment to Italy and Hungary did not allow medical personnel to leave the country, must not be repeated.” In emergencies, he said, it is also necessary to build up reserves of sensitive products. “However,” the MEP continued, “the Commission should be careful not to dictate to companies where they manufacture products.”
Where do we go from here? By the end of the month, the Commission’s internal Regulatory Scrutiny Board is due to deliver its second assessment of plans for the crisis instrument. In a first impact assessment, the controllers had pointed out shortcomings and obliged the Commission to rework. According to reports in Brussels, a number of member states have reservations about the crisis instrument. Nevertheless, Ursula von der Leyen wants it to be presented as part of the “State of the Union” speech in Strasbourg as a central project in the coming months.
They are at the heart of modern industrial products, and whoever masters their production will decide who is the leader in future technologies: Semiconductors, more commonly known as microchips. That is why China, the USA and the EU are currently doing everything to bolster their technological position.
The USA is now pressing ahead. The Senate passed a bill to this effect on Wednesday. All that remains is the approval of the House of Representatives, which is considered certain. But the EU and China are also trying hard to boost their own semiconductor production with subsidies, tax breaks and other incentives. The EU has already presented a corresponding proposal for a bundle of measures with the European Chips Act.
The stakes are high. It is no longer just a matter of principle to be at the forefront of technology. In the wake of geopolitical and trade rivalries, national economies aim to restore their manufacturing independence after decades of relying on foreign sourcing. The pandemic has shown, not least to the German electronics and automotive industries, what happens when supplies from the Far East fail to arrive. Some car manufacturers have had to cut their production by a third at times.
Currently, more than two-thirds of all modern semiconductors are manufactured in Taiwan, South Korea, China and Japan. The Germans do not want to rely on supplies from Taiwan, in particular, in the long term. After all, there is a fear that the leadership in Beijing will launch an attack on the democratically governed island state because it considers Taiwan to be its own territory.
Not least in light of the Chinese catch-up campaign, Albert Heuberger, chip expert and Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits, believes that the European Chips Act is both right and important. The chip industry is a key industry that strongly determines the technological foundations in this country. “We also have to fight for such manufacturing industries to be located in Germany and Europe so that we have the know-how,” Heuberger said. “Chip companies will base their location decisions on where the right workforce is available.”
The EU already acted in the spring with the European Chips Act and initiated a program of around €15 billion to expand the domestic chip industry, in addition to the already planned public investment of €30 billion.
Admittedly, there is also criticism of the Commission’s approach: The focus on ultra-modern chips ignores the fact that simpler components are also needed as workhorses of the industry. In addition, Brussels is not providing enough money out of its own pocket. Of the €43 billion, only €4 billion will actually come from EU funds; the rest is to be provided by member states or private investors.
But the EU’s subsidy programs show effect: Bosch has announced plans to take advantage of the subsidies and invest almost €1 billion in its semiconductor development centers in the German cities of Reutlingen and Dresden, among others. The chip giants STMicroelectronics and GlobalFoundries want to invest around €5.7 billion in a new semiconductor plant in France. The US company Intel even wants to build a new mega-chip site in Germany and has budgeted €17 billion for the construction of two semiconductor plants.
Washington now wants to directly stimulate the domestic semiconductor industry with $52 billion. In addition, the US government intends to exempt chip factories from taxation and provide no less than $170 billion for the R&D of new semiconductors. Both the European Chips Act and the US program are designed to attract private investment through public subsidies.
China is putting up a similar amount of money as the USA. The state development fund is equipped with €170 billion. Regional players are also getting involved. The technology metropolis of Shenzhen currently has a manufacturer of memory chips in the works for €40 billion. Not all money always flows into the right channels when things need to happen fast. But overall, funding already has an impact.
Despite sanctions imposed by the US on China’s high-tech sector, leading Chinese chipmaker SMIC has apparently managed to pull off a technical leap, also with massive government backing. The company has managed to ship its first chips with a structure width of just 7 nanometers. At least that is what the news agency Bloomberg reports. If this news proves true, then the learning curve would be considerable. Because until now, many observers assumed that China’s chip industry was behind the top countries Taiwan, South Korea and the USA by about four years.
The Chinese manufacturer SMIC has so far mainly been active in the 14-nanometer segment, i.e. in much larger semiconductors. The rule here is that the fewer nanometers wide the current paths are, the faster and more efficiently the components calculate. China is already extremely successful in the 14-nanometer range. With the transition to the 7-nanometer range, however, applications and thus market opportunities for Chinese products are broadening. Recently, Korean economics professor Keun Lee called older generation chips “almost worthless” in a guest article for China.Table.
It is not known whether the 7-nanometer chips are really market-ready and can be produced in large quantities while maintaining good quality. But what can be gleaned from this development is that the Chinese are obviously not as out of touch as the USA would like them to be. The harder it becomes to stock up on the global market, the more attractive it becomes to order from Chinese suppliers.
The fact is that German companies are also purchasing more and more chips from China. In 2001, China’s share of the global chip market was still less than one percent. By 2010, it had surpassed 10 percent. At the beginning of the pandemic, it reached 20 percent. According to US observers, it could reach nearly one quarter by 2030.
German experts have also been pointing to the rapid development in the People’s Republic for some time: “China already has a stronger ecosystem for chip design than Europe,” according to a joint analysis by the Berlin-based China think tank Merics and the Stiftung Neue Verantwortung last December. High investments would also enable Chinese companies to scale more quickly, i.e., to achieve higher quantities and thus lower prices.
Nevertheless, there is “a lot of catching up to do” in China compared to the US and its Asian neighbors, says Heuberger. The production of modern chips is a particularly challenging undertaking that requires a great deal of experience.
Heuberger also believes that the EU initiative will only show a clear effect in a few years. “In a growing market, we need to triple to quadruple production in Europe to get to the targeted 20 percent global market share. A period of five to eight years is needed before we catch up,” said Heuberger, who is also a spokesman for the Fraunhofer Group for Microelectronics.
The Merics study identifies European weaknesses primarily in so-called back-end manufacturing, that is, the assembly, testing and packaging of high-tech chips. However, this part of the production will become significantly more important in the future, especially for the development of high-performance and energy-efficient chips. China, on the other hand, already has a considerable global market share in back-end manufacturing, experts say. That is why Europe is likely to continue to rely on chips from China in the foreseeable future.
The Europe of the future? Lars Hänsel (55), head of the Europe and North America department at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, has a very precise vision of this: a common Europe that is capable of acting globally. For him, this means being able to ensure its own security – independently of the United States, but in strong partnership with it. When it comes to the economy, for him it means no longer being dependent on China for survival and no longer being dependent on Russia for raw materials.
“Europe needs to completely rethink its business model,” says Hänsel. But not only that: “I would like to rethink Europe completely, especially the principle of subsidiarity. What exactly do we need to tackle together, what do we need to leave to the countries?” It’s clear, he said, that the big issues like climate change, security, and energy need to be solved together. “But beyond that, shouldn’t countries be given more freedom?”
This also means, says Hänsel, that cooperation with Eastern European countries is conducted differently. In the Western EU member states, there is often a lack of deeper understanding of where the Eastern European countries have historically come from and where their reservations about Brussels stem from: “Why does a country like Poland defend its sovereignty so vehemently? It has always been occupied by other countries. Therefore, they think differently about sovereignty.”
Many Eastern European countries have also often warned against Russia but were not heard by the West. “Germany is strongly characterized by never wanting to be the perpetrator again,” says Hänsel. On the other hand, Eastern Europeans no longer want to be victims. Countries like Germany also set benchmarks, such as in dealing with minorities, that other countries then have to meet, which simply aren’t as far along in this area. “A certain amount of basic diversity is something the EU must be able to tolerate.” Eastern Europeans often feel they must first meet a Western European expectation in order to be accepted and belong.
To conform, to meet the expectations of others, not to be able to develop in a self-determined way – the aversion to this often drove Hänsel. He grew up in the GDR, did not join any party, did not share the prevailing ideology as a Christian, and became a construction soldier when he was drafted into the National People’s Army. While this was a legal way to refuse to serve in the armed forces, it had harsh consequences.
And so he was also denied his great desire to study medicine as he did not meet the ideological expectations for a degree. This drove him onto the streets to join protests in Leipzig in 1989. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, as one of a few East German theology students at the university in Tübingen, he was often confronted with the question: “How long will it take you to be like us?” And again he faced the expectation to conform.
For his doctorate, Hänsel received a scholarship from the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. He has not left the foundation since, spending many years in the offices in St. Augustin (NRW), Jerusalem, and Washington. Above all, Israel’s social and religious complexity fascinates the theologian to this day. From Berlin, he now heads 34 offices throughout Europe and North America, and until recently also one in Russia.
In his work, it is always important for him to identify partners for common goals. “An important task in the coming years will be dealing with China. The challenge here is also to find a common European approach in the face of different interests.” Lisa-Martina Klein
The Single Market Emergency Instrument is supposed to prepare the EU’s internal market for crises. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen plans to present the instrument during her State of the Union address on September 13. But the first details are already out in the open: According to an internal document, the Commission wants to be able to instruct member states to set aside “strategic reserves” and specify the criteria according to which they should be allocated to the industry, in the event of a crisis. Markus Grabitz took a look at the paper and summarized the most important points.
Currently, two-thirds of the world’s chips come from East Asia. If Europe and the USA have their way, that will soon change due to the European Chips Act and the “Chips and Science Act” – as the law to strengthen the domestic semiconductor industry is called in Washington political slang – that was passed by the US Senate a few days ago. However, Beijing is also spending a lot of money to promote the Chinese chip industry – and is apparently enjoying considerable success. Felix Lee analyzed the global race for the chips lead.
Lars Hänsel is convinced that “Europe needs to completely rethink its business model”. The head of the Europe and North America department at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation wants to rethink Europe. For him, this also includes giving the member states more freedom and finding a different way of dealing with the Eastern European countries. Read more about Hänsel in today’s profile by Lisa-Martina Klein.
According to information available to Europe.Table, the new crisis instrument for the single market, which EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen plans to present on September 13 during her State of the Union address to the EU Parliament in Strasbourg, is to be switched like a traffic light in three phases – green, yellow, and red. Officials around Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton are still working flat out on the details of the Single Market Emergency Instrument (SMEI). Europe.Table has received an internal paper from the Commission that provides information on what the instrument could look like in concrete terms.
Accordingly, the crisis instrument is to have three “fundamental objectives”. The most important goal is to ensure the functioning of the internal market – even in times of crises such as a pandemic or a disruption of supply chains due to a war. The goal is also to minimize disruptions to the internal EU exchange of goods, services, and employees. It is also supposed to combat shortages of services and goods.
With the crisis instrument, the Commission aims to learn the lesson from the first months of the pandemic, when uncoordinated measures by member states, such as export bans on masks and medical devices, ruptured supply chains and led to severe disruptions in the internal market.
The Commission wants to design the instrument for the broadest possible application in the internal market: It covers all products of high relevance for the internal market, such as energy, fuels, agricultural products, or fisheries. It is intended to complement existing crisis instruments, such as export controls or the screening of foreign investments in the EU.
The governance structure of the SMEI has obviously not yet been finalized. It is clear that a committee is planned in which the Commission and all member states are represented. However, the Commission leaves it open whether the member states will be able to participate in decision-making in the committee and have voting rights or whether the Commission alone will decide.
In normal times, the crisis instrument is in the “green” phase in the traffic light logic below. In this phase, “the Commission will collect risk assessment information based on voluntary contributions from industry and member states”. The risk assessment is to be delivered once a year.
The traffic light switches to “yellow” when crises loom or when it is a question of preventing a crisis. Triggers could be drastic events such as earthquakes, floods, foreseeable shortages of raw materials, or threats to supply chains of overriding importance, such as a blockade of the Suez Canal. At this stage, the crisis instrument provides for a “more stringent” collection of information. The panel is increasingly dependent on feedback and “input” from industry.
In the case of “yellow”, initial measures could be taken: For example, member states could be instructed to create “strategic reserves“. It is explicitly stated that the member states, “not the industry”, are responsible for creating the reserves. The decision to create reserves should either be made by the Commission alone, or there should be a “consultation procedure” in which the member states are involved. In any case, the reserves should be created before a crisis breaks out and exorbitant price increases occur.
The “red” phase is the crisis mode. The crisis instrument is armed when the emergency phase is activated according to a sequence of defined criteria. In this phase, the member states are obliged to inform the Commission closely about the supply situation.
The most severe measure conceivable in the case of “red” is that the Commission can order the strategic reserves created in the case of “yellow” to be distributed in a coordinated and mandatory manner. It is also conceivable that specifications will be issued as to which customers have priority in the distribution of strategically important goods.
Companies can be obliged to give priority to selling their goods to certain customers. The Commission can also undertake public procurement in this phase, as it did with vaccines during the pandemic. However, as in the case of vaccines, the member states must pay for the public procurement.
A particular focus is on the mobility of employees. The Commission intends to pay very close attention to ensuring that no member state unilaterally imposes measures that impede the free movement of persons. A list of measures that are expressly prohibited is to be drawn up. Here, as an example, reference is made to the fact that Hungary, for example, banned medical personnel from leaving the country at the height of the pandemic.
Internal market expert Andreas Schwab (CDU) told Europe.Table: “It is to be welcomed that the Commission is expanding the toolbox for crises. Situations like at the beginning of the pandemic, when Germany stopped the export of medical equipment to Italy and Hungary did not allow medical personnel to leave the country, must not be repeated.” In emergencies, he said, it is also necessary to build up reserves of sensitive products. “However,” the MEP continued, “the Commission should be careful not to dictate to companies where they manufacture products.”
Where do we go from here? By the end of the month, the Commission’s internal Regulatory Scrutiny Board is due to deliver its second assessment of plans for the crisis instrument. In a first impact assessment, the controllers had pointed out shortcomings and obliged the Commission to rework. According to reports in Brussels, a number of member states have reservations about the crisis instrument. Nevertheless, Ursula von der Leyen wants it to be presented as part of the “State of the Union” speech in Strasbourg as a central project in the coming months.
They are at the heart of modern industrial products, and whoever masters their production will decide who is the leader in future technologies: Semiconductors, more commonly known as microchips. That is why China, the USA and the EU are currently doing everything to bolster their technological position.
The USA is now pressing ahead. The Senate passed a bill to this effect on Wednesday. All that remains is the approval of the House of Representatives, which is considered certain. But the EU and China are also trying hard to boost their own semiconductor production with subsidies, tax breaks and other incentives. The EU has already presented a corresponding proposal for a bundle of measures with the European Chips Act.
The stakes are high. It is no longer just a matter of principle to be at the forefront of technology. In the wake of geopolitical and trade rivalries, national economies aim to restore their manufacturing independence after decades of relying on foreign sourcing. The pandemic has shown, not least to the German electronics and automotive industries, what happens when supplies from the Far East fail to arrive. Some car manufacturers have had to cut their production by a third at times.
Currently, more than two-thirds of all modern semiconductors are manufactured in Taiwan, South Korea, China and Japan. The Germans do not want to rely on supplies from Taiwan, in particular, in the long term. After all, there is a fear that the leadership in Beijing will launch an attack on the democratically governed island state because it considers Taiwan to be its own territory.
Not least in light of the Chinese catch-up campaign, Albert Heuberger, chip expert and Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits, believes that the European Chips Act is both right and important. The chip industry is a key industry that strongly determines the technological foundations in this country. “We also have to fight for such manufacturing industries to be located in Germany and Europe so that we have the know-how,” Heuberger said. “Chip companies will base their location decisions on where the right workforce is available.”
The EU already acted in the spring with the European Chips Act and initiated a program of around €15 billion to expand the domestic chip industry, in addition to the already planned public investment of €30 billion.
Admittedly, there is also criticism of the Commission’s approach: The focus on ultra-modern chips ignores the fact that simpler components are also needed as workhorses of the industry. In addition, Brussels is not providing enough money out of its own pocket. Of the €43 billion, only €4 billion will actually come from EU funds; the rest is to be provided by member states or private investors.
But the EU’s subsidy programs show effect: Bosch has announced plans to take advantage of the subsidies and invest almost €1 billion in its semiconductor development centers in the German cities of Reutlingen and Dresden, among others. The chip giants STMicroelectronics and GlobalFoundries want to invest around €5.7 billion in a new semiconductor plant in France. The US company Intel even wants to build a new mega-chip site in Germany and has budgeted €17 billion for the construction of two semiconductor plants.
Washington now wants to directly stimulate the domestic semiconductor industry with $52 billion. In addition, the US government intends to exempt chip factories from taxation and provide no less than $170 billion for the R&D of new semiconductors. Both the European Chips Act and the US program are designed to attract private investment through public subsidies.
China is putting up a similar amount of money as the USA. The state development fund is equipped with €170 billion. Regional players are also getting involved. The technology metropolis of Shenzhen currently has a manufacturer of memory chips in the works for €40 billion. Not all money always flows into the right channels when things need to happen fast. But overall, funding already has an impact.
Despite sanctions imposed by the US on China’s high-tech sector, leading Chinese chipmaker SMIC has apparently managed to pull off a technical leap, also with massive government backing. The company has managed to ship its first chips with a structure width of just 7 nanometers. At least that is what the news agency Bloomberg reports. If this news proves true, then the learning curve would be considerable. Because until now, many observers assumed that China’s chip industry was behind the top countries Taiwan, South Korea and the USA by about four years.
The Chinese manufacturer SMIC has so far mainly been active in the 14-nanometer segment, i.e. in much larger semiconductors. The rule here is that the fewer nanometers wide the current paths are, the faster and more efficiently the components calculate. China is already extremely successful in the 14-nanometer range. With the transition to the 7-nanometer range, however, applications and thus market opportunities for Chinese products are broadening. Recently, Korean economics professor Keun Lee called older generation chips “almost worthless” in a guest article for China.Table.
It is not known whether the 7-nanometer chips are really market-ready and can be produced in large quantities while maintaining good quality. But what can be gleaned from this development is that the Chinese are obviously not as out of touch as the USA would like them to be. The harder it becomes to stock up on the global market, the more attractive it becomes to order from Chinese suppliers.
The fact is that German companies are also purchasing more and more chips from China. In 2001, China’s share of the global chip market was still less than one percent. By 2010, it had surpassed 10 percent. At the beginning of the pandemic, it reached 20 percent. According to US observers, it could reach nearly one quarter by 2030.
German experts have also been pointing to the rapid development in the People’s Republic for some time: “China already has a stronger ecosystem for chip design than Europe,” according to a joint analysis by the Berlin-based China think tank Merics and the Stiftung Neue Verantwortung last December. High investments would also enable Chinese companies to scale more quickly, i.e., to achieve higher quantities and thus lower prices.
Nevertheless, there is “a lot of catching up to do” in China compared to the US and its Asian neighbors, says Heuberger. The production of modern chips is a particularly challenging undertaking that requires a great deal of experience.
Heuberger also believes that the EU initiative will only show a clear effect in a few years. “In a growing market, we need to triple to quadruple production in Europe to get to the targeted 20 percent global market share. A period of five to eight years is needed before we catch up,” said Heuberger, who is also a spokesman for the Fraunhofer Group for Microelectronics.
The Merics study identifies European weaknesses primarily in so-called back-end manufacturing, that is, the assembly, testing and packaging of high-tech chips. However, this part of the production will become significantly more important in the future, especially for the development of high-performance and energy-efficient chips. China, on the other hand, already has a considerable global market share in back-end manufacturing, experts say. That is why Europe is likely to continue to rely on chips from China in the foreseeable future.
The Europe of the future? Lars Hänsel (55), head of the Europe and North America department at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, has a very precise vision of this: a common Europe that is capable of acting globally. For him, this means being able to ensure its own security – independently of the United States, but in strong partnership with it. When it comes to the economy, for him it means no longer being dependent on China for survival and no longer being dependent on Russia for raw materials.
“Europe needs to completely rethink its business model,” says Hänsel. But not only that: “I would like to rethink Europe completely, especially the principle of subsidiarity. What exactly do we need to tackle together, what do we need to leave to the countries?” It’s clear, he said, that the big issues like climate change, security, and energy need to be solved together. “But beyond that, shouldn’t countries be given more freedom?”
This also means, says Hänsel, that cooperation with Eastern European countries is conducted differently. In the Western EU member states, there is often a lack of deeper understanding of where the Eastern European countries have historically come from and where their reservations about Brussels stem from: “Why does a country like Poland defend its sovereignty so vehemently? It has always been occupied by other countries. Therefore, they think differently about sovereignty.”
Many Eastern European countries have also often warned against Russia but were not heard by the West. “Germany is strongly characterized by never wanting to be the perpetrator again,” says Hänsel. On the other hand, Eastern Europeans no longer want to be victims. Countries like Germany also set benchmarks, such as in dealing with minorities, that other countries then have to meet, which simply aren’t as far along in this area. “A certain amount of basic diversity is something the EU must be able to tolerate.” Eastern Europeans often feel they must first meet a Western European expectation in order to be accepted and belong.
To conform, to meet the expectations of others, not to be able to develop in a self-determined way – the aversion to this often drove Hänsel. He grew up in the GDR, did not join any party, did not share the prevailing ideology as a Christian, and became a construction soldier when he was drafted into the National People’s Army. While this was a legal way to refuse to serve in the armed forces, it had harsh consequences.
And so he was also denied his great desire to study medicine as he did not meet the ideological expectations for a degree. This drove him onto the streets to join protests in Leipzig in 1989. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, as one of a few East German theology students at the university in Tübingen, he was often confronted with the question: “How long will it take you to be like us?” And again he faced the expectation to conform.
For his doctorate, Hänsel received a scholarship from the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. He has not left the foundation since, spending many years in the offices in St. Augustin (NRW), Jerusalem, and Washington. Above all, Israel’s social and religious complexity fascinates the theologian to this day. From Berlin, he now heads 34 offices throughout Europe and North America, and until recently also one in Russia.
In his work, it is always important for him to identify partners for common goals. “An important task in the coming years will be dealing with China. The challenge here is also to find a common European approach in the face of different interests.” Lisa-Martina Klein
