It seems that the dust has settled somewhat due to the numerous top-level talks on the Ukraine crisis. The last meeting ended late Tuesday night in Berlin. For the first time in eleven years, the so-called Weimar Triangle of Poland, France, and Germany met at the chief executive level. Scholz, Macron, and Duda stressed that they want to work together to prevent a war through diplomatic efforts.
It is true that there are still no significant concessions from Vladimir Putin to withdraw Russian soldiers from the Ukrainian border. However, during his talks with Macron, the Kremlin leader no longer threatened “military-technical” action if NATO does not respond to his demands, as he had done before. Eric Bonse analyzes the distribution of roles in European crisis diplomacy in recent days and the baby steps on the way to a hopefully peaceful solution.
The Chips Act is intended not only to protect Europe’s industry from supply bottlenecks like the current one but also “to make Europe a leader in this very strategic market“, as Commission President Ursula von der Leyen put it. The goal is ambitious – at present, Europe is not playing at the top, neither through its companies nor as a location for the semiconductor industry. US companies dominate in chip design, while Asian countries such as South Korea and Taiwan dominate in production. Moreover, the US government is upgrading through its own Chips Act and massive subsidies, as are Japan, South Korea, and China. The stated goal of more than doubling Europe’s market share in semiconductor production to 20 percent within eight years seems even more ambitious against this backdrop, as Till Hoppe reports.
For the first time since the crisis began, the possibility of a diplomatic solution seems at least in sight, EU sources in Brussels said Tuesday. Council President Charles Michel considered convening a special EU summit next week, a diplomat said. The Franco-German offensive had begun Monday with trips to Washington by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and to Moscow by French President Emmanuel Macron. Macron’s trip to Russia had been coordinated with the EU, as well as the US, Britain, and NATO.
Macron traveled on to Kiev on Tuesday and then to Berlin, where he attended an evening meeting with Scholz and President of Poland Andrzej Duda. The “Weimar Triangle” meeting was intended to ensure that Poland, which has traditionally been critical of Russia, would be involved and support diplomatic efforts. For this to happen, however, the situation must not deteriorate further. Macron, therefore, called for a security dialogue with Russia, but one in which the Europeans would have to defend their principles, such as the inviolability of borders.
According to Duda, the Ukraine conflict represents the most difficult moment for NATO and the EU since 1989, the year the Berlin Wall fell. “We have an unprecedented concentration of Russian troops along the Ukrainian border. We also have large groupings in Belarus, where military exercises are currently being held and are expected to last until February 20. We are all wondering what will happen after that,” Duda said at the beginning of the meeting.
Macron, meanwhile, is spreading hope: Vladimir Putin has assured him that there will be “neither a deterioration nor an escalation”, he said after his nearly six-hour talks with the Kremlin leader. Talks should continue. Ukraine’s head of state, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, also expressed cautious optimism. “We assume that very soon we will be able to hold negotiations in the Normandy format,” he said after Tuesday’s talks with Macron in Kiev.
In this format, Germany, France, Ukraine, and Russia are working to de-escalate the war that has been raging in eastern Ukraine since 2014 in accordance with the Minsk Agreement. The talks had stalled before the current crisis began in the fall of 2021. A restart at the top level would reduce the risk of military escalation. However, it would not yet resolve the dangerous dispute over Russian troops that Putin has massed around Ukraine and in Belarus.
More than 100,000 Russian troops are waiting for their marching orders, according to US figures. Putin, however, denies invasion plans. During his talks with Macron on Monday, the Kremlin leader no longer threatened “military-technical” action, as he had done previously, if NATO does not respond to his demands. However, Putin also made no concessions.
Putin repeated his accusation that Ukraine was violating the Minsk Agreement and that NATO posed a threat to Russia’s security. On the other hand, Macron came to Ukraine’s defense and stressed that Russia had no right to exclusive zones of influence. However, unlike other Western politicians, the French leader also stressed that Putin represented legitimate security interests. Russia is part of Europe, so Europe must also be involved in talks on a possible new security order. So far, Moscow is only talking to Washington and NATO.
It is unclear whether all 27 EU states share this view. Macron can apparently rely on Chancellor Scholz – he has welcomed the French initiative. Poland and the Baltic countries, however, have repeatedly expressed reservations – they don’t want to rely on France and are counting on the US instead. According to his critics, Macron is acting too much in his own self-interest and eyeing the French presidential campaign. The visit to Putin was ideally suited to present himself as a general in the Ukraine crisis, French media wrote.
Scholz also encounters skepticism. After his visit to Washington, the chancellor can point out that US President Joe Biden left no doubt about Germany’s loyalty to the alliance. However, that Scholz avoided publicly backing away from the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea continues to raise eyebrows in Eastern Europe.
The Franco-German claim to leadership in the EU is also repeatedly disputed. Therefore, it is unclear how far Macron’s and Scholz’s diplomatic offensive will bear fruit. They have bought time, which now must be used for further talks, according to Brussels.
An EU summit could then decide on how to proceed. It is expected in the middle of next week at the earliest – after a meeting between Chancellor Scholz and Putin in Moscow on February 15.With Tanja Kuchenbecker
For Thierry Breton, it is “one of the most important industrial policy projects in many years“: The European Chips Act, announced by the Commission with much fanfare and now presented yesterday. The legislative proposal, which was drawn up under great time pressure, is intended not only to protect Europe’s industry from supply bottlenecks like the current one but also “to make Europe a leader in this very strategic market”, as Commission President Ursula von der Leyen put it.
The goal is ambitious – at present, Europe is not playing at the top, neither through its companies nor as a location for the semiconductor industry. US companies dominate chip design, while Asian countries such as South Korea and Taiwan dominate production. The US government, moreover, is upgrading through its own Chips Act and massive subsidies, as are Japan, South Korea, and China. Europe cannot continue to stand by and watch, Breton said: “It’s time for us to get into the race.”
According to von der Leyen’s count, the Commission now wants to mobilize around €15 billion in additional funds, including contributions from national budgets and private investors to financing instruments such as the EU Chips Fund for start-ups. In addition, there are to be around €30 billion that the member states have already promised for the semiconductor industry. However, in a global comparison, even that is not a great deal. The goal set by Breton and Co. of more than doubling Europe’s market share in semiconductor production to 20 percent within eight years seems even more ambitious against this backdrop.
The funding is intended primarily to benefit new technologies that are not yet ready for the market. Breton again mentioned semiconductors with ultra-small structure sizes of less than two millimeters. Despite all the general approval, this narrow focus has met with criticism from industry and experts. Particularly since the data basis on which the Commission bases its forecast of rapidly growing demand in this area appears to be fragile.
The package of measures is made up of three pillars:
The Commission wants to mobilize around €11 billion from EU and national pots to catapult Europe to the technological top in the chip industry in the medium and long term. The funds, including 1.65 billion each from the EU’s Horizon Europe research program and the Digital Europe pot, are intended to benefit the development of particularly powerful and energy-saving semiconductors and to promote their implementation in market-ready products – something Europe has traditionally struggled with. The activities are to be managed by a so-called joint undertaking within the framework of the Horizon Europe program, in which the public and private sectors work together.
Specifically, the Commission wants to have a virtual platform for chip design set up that start-ups and SMEs can also use. In addition, open test facilities are to be promoted on which companies can improve their prototypes. The Commission cites semiconductors with structure sizes of less than two nanometers and quantum chips as examples of technologies to be promoted. A European network of competence centers is also to be promoted.
In addition, the Commission wants to increase Europe’s attractiveness as a location for the mass production of modern chips – with the argument of security of supply. To this end, the authority is defining a new legal framework in the Chips Act, intended to offer companies more investment security.
Accordingly, manufacturers are to undertake to invest in chips of the new generation and, in the event of supply bottlenecks, to initially serve customers in Europe. According to the Commission, contract manufacturers such as Globalfoundries in Dresden or TSMC from Taiwan are eligible, as are manufacturers that, like Intel, have so far only produced for their own needs.
In return, the companies’ projects should count on accelerated approval procedures in the EU states, preferential access to the test facilities, and, above all, lavish state aid. This is because semiconductor companies whose facilities are classified as first-of-a-kind facilities in Europe can hope for special treatment. The Commission examines member states’ subsidies for new fabs directly on the basis of the EU Treaty.
State aid would thus still have to meet the criteria of appropriateness and necessity, as Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager emphasized. But the exemption allows governments to directly support new production facilities and cover up to 100 percent of the funding gap. Otherwise, state aid is only allowed for research and development projects up to series maturity under an Important Projects of Common European Interest (IPCEI).
Not only chip factories are to count as first-of-a-kind facilities. The authority also includes facilities from upstream and downstream production stages. These include suppliers of the necessary chemicals, such as silicon carbide, as well as companies that package the chips produced. Here, too, significant performance improvements can be achieved with new technologies. According to the Chips Act, the criterion for classification should be that the technology in question is not yet used on a large scale in Europe and that it performs better than conventional technology in terms of performance or energy efficiency, for example.
Acute chip supply bottlenecks like the current ones, which are slowing down entire industries, should not be repeated. To this end, the Commission wants to establish permanent monitoring of the industry in cooperation with the member states. The responsible national authorities are to obtain information from the individual companies for this purpose, with assurances of confidentiality. If a country sees indications of an impending supply crisis, such as sharp fluctuations in demand, it should alert the Commission. In this case, the Brussels-based authority can convene the new European Semiconductor Council to coordinate a concerted response with the member states.
In the event of a crisis, member states can instruct the Commission to purchase semiconductors or raw materials. The Commission also wants to discuss joint remedial measures with friendly third countries. In addition, the authority wants to be able to oblige a manufacturer to supply European customers first. If the company does not comply, it could face fines of up to 1.5 percent of annual sales.
However, the Commission does not want to wait until the European Parliament and the Council have passed the Chips Act. In the transitional period, member states willing to cooperate are already to take up monitoring in a European expert group for semiconductors.
The far-reaching powers of intervention for the Commission in a crisis have met with criticism from the industry. Requiring individual manufacturers to prioritize specific orders is disproportionate, says Wolfgang Weber, chairman of the ZVEI board of directors. “That undermines the basic economic order.” Jan Peter Kleinhans, an expert at the German think tank Stiftung Neue Verantwortung doubts that the instrument of joint procurement for vaccines can be applied to semiconductors. After all, these are highly specialized and diversified products.
The focus on specific structure sizes also meets with opposition: Concentrating on sizes of less than 10 nanometers “misses the needs of the European customer industry”, says Weber. Europe must strengthen its expertise in all structure sizes, he said, adding that power electronics and sensor technology are also crucial to the success of the green and digital transformation. In these areas, significantly larger technology nodes are common.
Approval, on the other hand, comes from other industries: Europe can only ensure a leading role in the markets of the future, such as connected driving if it enters this market itself, said VDA President Hildegard Müller. Encouragement also came from the German government. It is important “that the European Commission sets the framework for state aid law in such a way that all possibilities are exhausted and companies and member states can get started quickly,” said Franziska Brantner, Parliamentary State Secretary in the Ministry of Economics.
Around a quarter of the known animal and plant species on our planet are threatened, half of which are critically endangered or even threatened with extinction. According to the European Environment Agency, the conservation status of European animal species and ecosystems deteriorated even further between 2013 and 2018. This also has consequences for us humans because without healthy ecosystems, we have neither drinkable water nor clean air, fertile soils, fish-rich oceans, pollinated fruit trees, bio-based active ingredients, and much more. The threat of zoonotic diseases such as COVID-19 also becomes more likely in the future due to pressure on wild areas.
The pressing dangers of the biodiversity crisis have long been known. But instead of politically binding measures, often only voluntary commitments have been announced. However, the past has shown that lip service is of no use. For example, the strategic biodiversity targets adopted in 2010 (“Aichi Targets”) were missed. The goals of the EU Biodiversity Strategy 2020 have also not been achieved. According to an in-depth analysis by the European Environment Agency as part of its State of Nature 2020 report, not only have improvements failed to materialize, but on the contrary: Populations are declining, and habitats are shrinking.
The biodiversity crisis, together with the climate crisis, represents the existential threat to the continuation of human civilization. We can no longer shrug our shoulders as strategies fail and targets are not met. In the area of biodiversity, in particular, this requires a shift from voluntary commitments to legally binding targets.
When the global community meets this spring in Kunming, China, for the 15th World Biodiversity Conference (COP15), a year and a half later than planned due to the pandemic, a global legally binding agreement must be adopted. It must contain measurable and ambitious targets and commitments. This is what the European Parliament called for in its resolution on the UN Biodiversity Conference in Kunming.
We need the protection of at least 30 percent of the world’s land and marine areas by 2030 and the restoration of at least 30 percent of degraded ecosystems by 2030. For this, national biodiversity strategies and action plans must be strengthened, and five-year monitoring and review mechanisms must be introduced. COP15 must become a milestone for the biodiversity of our planet, comparable to the Paris Climate Agreement.
As in the area of climate policy, the European Union has a special responsibility and role model function in the negotiations. Before the international community meets in Kunming, the EU must formulate far-reaching European goals. This is the only way to make a credible appearance in Kunming. And the opportunity is there: For the first time in twenty years, the European Union is planning a legislative project in the field of nature, the nature restoration law. Originally scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2021, the proposal has been postponed until March 23, 2022. The Commission would be well advised to use this additional time to draft far-reaching, binding protection and restoration measures. European nature cannot wait any longer.
There needs to be clear, area-based targets, guidelines for ecosystem connectivity, and a focus on peatlands and wetlands, which are not only particularly degraded but are our allies in both climate change mitigation and adaptation by sequestering carbon and buffering drought or heavy rainfall. We need better monitoring, data collection, and systematic reporting to protect pollinators and their habitats.
As part of the EU biodiversity strategy, the European Commission had already announced that it would focus on the renaturation of rivers. 25,000 kilometers of free-flowing rivers are the target, and existing data suggest that this target could even be raised because more than 100,000 barriers in our rivers are no longer even needed today because, for example, the associated mill has long since stopped grinding flour.
In addition to an ambitious renaturation law, the Commission must also finally ensure that European nature conservation law, which is already in force, is enforced. It is not very credible to call for the conservation of the Sumatran tiger in Kunming if the killing of protected species such as wolves or lynx is not adequately prosecuted in Europe.
It seems that the dust has settled somewhat due to the numerous top-level talks on the Ukraine crisis. The last meeting ended late Tuesday night in Berlin. For the first time in eleven years, the so-called Weimar Triangle of Poland, France, and Germany met at the chief executive level. Scholz, Macron, and Duda stressed that they want to work together to prevent a war through diplomatic efforts.
It is true that there are still no significant concessions from Vladimir Putin to withdraw Russian soldiers from the Ukrainian border. However, during his talks with Macron, the Kremlin leader no longer threatened “military-technical” action if NATO does not respond to his demands, as he had done before. Eric Bonse analyzes the distribution of roles in European crisis diplomacy in recent days and the baby steps on the way to a hopefully peaceful solution.
The Chips Act is intended not only to protect Europe’s industry from supply bottlenecks like the current one but also “to make Europe a leader in this very strategic market“, as Commission President Ursula von der Leyen put it. The goal is ambitious – at present, Europe is not playing at the top, neither through its companies nor as a location for the semiconductor industry. US companies dominate in chip design, while Asian countries such as South Korea and Taiwan dominate in production. Moreover, the US government is upgrading through its own Chips Act and massive subsidies, as are Japan, South Korea, and China. The stated goal of more than doubling Europe’s market share in semiconductor production to 20 percent within eight years seems even more ambitious against this backdrop, as Till Hoppe reports.
For the first time since the crisis began, the possibility of a diplomatic solution seems at least in sight, EU sources in Brussels said Tuesday. Council President Charles Michel considered convening a special EU summit next week, a diplomat said. The Franco-German offensive had begun Monday with trips to Washington by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and to Moscow by French President Emmanuel Macron. Macron’s trip to Russia had been coordinated with the EU, as well as the US, Britain, and NATO.
Macron traveled on to Kiev on Tuesday and then to Berlin, where he attended an evening meeting with Scholz and President of Poland Andrzej Duda. The “Weimar Triangle” meeting was intended to ensure that Poland, which has traditionally been critical of Russia, would be involved and support diplomatic efforts. For this to happen, however, the situation must not deteriorate further. Macron, therefore, called for a security dialogue with Russia, but one in which the Europeans would have to defend their principles, such as the inviolability of borders.
According to Duda, the Ukraine conflict represents the most difficult moment for NATO and the EU since 1989, the year the Berlin Wall fell. “We have an unprecedented concentration of Russian troops along the Ukrainian border. We also have large groupings in Belarus, where military exercises are currently being held and are expected to last until February 20. We are all wondering what will happen after that,” Duda said at the beginning of the meeting.
Macron, meanwhile, is spreading hope: Vladimir Putin has assured him that there will be “neither a deterioration nor an escalation”, he said after his nearly six-hour talks with the Kremlin leader. Talks should continue. Ukraine’s head of state, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, also expressed cautious optimism. “We assume that very soon we will be able to hold negotiations in the Normandy format,” he said after Tuesday’s talks with Macron in Kiev.
In this format, Germany, France, Ukraine, and Russia are working to de-escalate the war that has been raging in eastern Ukraine since 2014 in accordance with the Minsk Agreement. The talks had stalled before the current crisis began in the fall of 2021. A restart at the top level would reduce the risk of military escalation. However, it would not yet resolve the dangerous dispute over Russian troops that Putin has massed around Ukraine and in Belarus.
More than 100,000 Russian troops are waiting for their marching orders, according to US figures. Putin, however, denies invasion plans. During his talks with Macron on Monday, the Kremlin leader no longer threatened “military-technical” action, as he had done previously, if NATO does not respond to his demands. However, Putin also made no concessions.
Putin repeated his accusation that Ukraine was violating the Minsk Agreement and that NATO posed a threat to Russia’s security. On the other hand, Macron came to Ukraine’s defense and stressed that Russia had no right to exclusive zones of influence. However, unlike other Western politicians, the French leader also stressed that Putin represented legitimate security interests. Russia is part of Europe, so Europe must also be involved in talks on a possible new security order. So far, Moscow is only talking to Washington and NATO.
It is unclear whether all 27 EU states share this view. Macron can apparently rely on Chancellor Scholz – he has welcomed the French initiative. Poland and the Baltic countries, however, have repeatedly expressed reservations – they don’t want to rely on France and are counting on the US instead. According to his critics, Macron is acting too much in his own self-interest and eyeing the French presidential campaign. The visit to Putin was ideally suited to present himself as a general in the Ukraine crisis, French media wrote.
Scholz also encounters skepticism. After his visit to Washington, the chancellor can point out that US President Joe Biden left no doubt about Germany’s loyalty to the alliance. However, that Scholz avoided publicly backing away from the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea continues to raise eyebrows in Eastern Europe.
The Franco-German claim to leadership in the EU is also repeatedly disputed. Therefore, it is unclear how far Macron’s and Scholz’s diplomatic offensive will bear fruit. They have bought time, which now must be used for further talks, according to Brussels.
An EU summit could then decide on how to proceed. It is expected in the middle of next week at the earliest – after a meeting between Chancellor Scholz and Putin in Moscow on February 15.With Tanja Kuchenbecker
For Thierry Breton, it is “one of the most important industrial policy projects in many years“: The European Chips Act, announced by the Commission with much fanfare and now presented yesterday. The legislative proposal, which was drawn up under great time pressure, is intended not only to protect Europe’s industry from supply bottlenecks like the current one but also “to make Europe a leader in this very strategic market”, as Commission President Ursula von der Leyen put it.
The goal is ambitious – at present, Europe is not playing at the top, neither through its companies nor as a location for the semiconductor industry. US companies dominate chip design, while Asian countries such as South Korea and Taiwan dominate production. The US government, moreover, is upgrading through its own Chips Act and massive subsidies, as are Japan, South Korea, and China. Europe cannot continue to stand by and watch, Breton said: “It’s time for us to get into the race.”
According to von der Leyen’s count, the Commission now wants to mobilize around €15 billion in additional funds, including contributions from national budgets and private investors to financing instruments such as the EU Chips Fund for start-ups. In addition, there are to be around €30 billion that the member states have already promised for the semiconductor industry. However, in a global comparison, even that is not a great deal. The goal set by Breton and Co. of more than doubling Europe’s market share in semiconductor production to 20 percent within eight years seems even more ambitious against this backdrop.
The funding is intended primarily to benefit new technologies that are not yet ready for the market. Breton again mentioned semiconductors with ultra-small structure sizes of less than two millimeters. Despite all the general approval, this narrow focus has met with criticism from industry and experts. Particularly since the data basis on which the Commission bases its forecast of rapidly growing demand in this area appears to be fragile.
The package of measures is made up of three pillars:
The Commission wants to mobilize around €11 billion from EU and national pots to catapult Europe to the technological top in the chip industry in the medium and long term. The funds, including 1.65 billion each from the EU’s Horizon Europe research program and the Digital Europe pot, are intended to benefit the development of particularly powerful and energy-saving semiconductors and to promote their implementation in market-ready products – something Europe has traditionally struggled with. The activities are to be managed by a so-called joint undertaking within the framework of the Horizon Europe program, in which the public and private sectors work together.
Specifically, the Commission wants to have a virtual platform for chip design set up that start-ups and SMEs can also use. In addition, open test facilities are to be promoted on which companies can improve their prototypes. The Commission cites semiconductors with structure sizes of less than two nanometers and quantum chips as examples of technologies to be promoted. A European network of competence centers is also to be promoted.
In addition, the Commission wants to increase Europe’s attractiveness as a location for the mass production of modern chips – with the argument of security of supply. To this end, the authority is defining a new legal framework in the Chips Act, intended to offer companies more investment security.
Accordingly, manufacturers are to undertake to invest in chips of the new generation and, in the event of supply bottlenecks, to initially serve customers in Europe. According to the Commission, contract manufacturers such as Globalfoundries in Dresden or TSMC from Taiwan are eligible, as are manufacturers that, like Intel, have so far only produced for their own needs.
In return, the companies’ projects should count on accelerated approval procedures in the EU states, preferential access to the test facilities, and, above all, lavish state aid. This is because semiconductor companies whose facilities are classified as first-of-a-kind facilities in Europe can hope for special treatment. The Commission examines member states’ subsidies for new fabs directly on the basis of the EU Treaty.
State aid would thus still have to meet the criteria of appropriateness and necessity, as Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager emphasized. But the exemption allows governments to directly support new production facilities and cover up to 100 percent of the funding gap. Otherwise, state aid is only allowed for research and development projects up to series maturity under an Important Projects of Common European Interest (IPCEI).
Not only chip factories are to count as first-of-a-kind facilities. The authority also includes facilities from upstream and downstream production stages. These include suppliers of the necessary chemicals, such as silicon carbide, as well as companies that package the chips produced. Here, too, significant performance improvements can be achieved with new technologies. According to the Chips Act, the criterion for classification should be that the technology in question is not yet used on a large scale in Europe and that it performs better than conventional technology in terms of performance or energy efficiency, for example.
Acute chip supply bottlenecks like the current ones, which are slowing down entire industries, should not be repeated. To this end, the Commission wants to establish permanent monitoring of the industry in cooperation with the member states. The responsible national authorities are to obtain information from the individual companies for this purpose, with assurances of confidentiality. If a country sees indications of an impending supply crisis, such as sharp fluctuations in demand, it should alert the Commission. In this case, the Brussels-based authority can convene the new European Semiconductor Council to coordinate a concerted response with the member states.
In the event of a crisis, member states can instruct the Commission to purchase semiconductors or raw materials. The Commission also wants to discuss joint remedial measures with friendly third countries. In addition, the authority wants to be able to oblige a manufacturer to supply European customers first. If the company does not comply, it could face fines of up to 1.5 percent of annual sales.
However, the Commission does not want to wait until the European Parliament and the Council have passed the Chips Act. In the transitional period, member states willing to cooperate are already to take up monitoring in a European expert group for semiconductors.
The far-reaching powers of intervention for the Commission in a crisis have met with criticism from the industry. Requiring individual manufacturers to prioritize specific orders is disproportionate, says Wolfgang Weber, chairman of the ZVEI board of directors. “That undermines the basic economic order.” Jan Peter Kleinhans, an expert at the German think tank Stiftung Neue Verantwortung doubts that the instrument of joint procurement for vaccines can be applied to semiconductors. After all, these are highly specialized and diversified products.
The focus on specific structure sizes also meets with opposition: Concentrating on sizes of less than 10 nanometers “misses the needs of the European customer industry”, says Weber. Europe must strengthen its expertise in all structure sizes, he said, adding that power electronics and sensor technology are also crucial to the success of the green and digital transformation. In these areas, significantly larger technology nodes are common.
Approval, on the other hand, comes from other industries: Europe can only ensure a leading role in the markets of the future, such as connected driving if it enters this market itself, said VDA President Hildegard Müller. Encouragement also came from the German government. It is important “that the European Commission sets the framework for state aid law in such a way that all possibilities are exhausted and companies and member states can get started quickly,” said Franziska Brantner, Parliamentary State Secretary in the Ministry of Economics.
Around a quarter of the known animal and plant species on our planet are threatened, half of which are critically endangered or even threatened with extinction. According to the European Environment Agency, the conservation status of European animal species and ecosystems deteriorated even further between 2013 and 2018. This also has consequences for us humans because without healthy ecosystems, we have neither drinkable water nor clean air, fertile soils, fish-rich oceans, pollinated fruit trees, bio-based active ingredients, and much more. The threat of zoonotic diseases such as COVID-19 also becomes more likely in the future due to pressure on wild areas.
The pressing dangers of the biodiversity crisis have long been known. But instead of politically binding measures, often only voluntary commitments have been announced. However, the past has shown that lip service is of no use. For example, the strategic biodiversity targets adopted in 2010 (“Aichi Targets”) were missed. The goals of the EU Biodiversity Strategy 2020 have also not been achieved. According to an in-depth analysis by the European Environment Agency as part of its State of Nature 2020 report, not only have improvements failed to materialize, but on the contrary: Populations are declining, and habitats are shrinking.
The biodiversity crisis, together with the climate crisis, represents the existential threat to the continuation of human civilization. We can no longer shrug our shoulders as strategies fail and targets are not met. In the area of biodiversity, in particular, this requires a shift from voluntary commitments to legally binding targets.
When the global community meets this spring in Kunming, China, for the 15th World Biodiversity Conference (COP15), a year and a half later than planned due to the pandemic, a global legally binding agreement must be adopted. It must contain measurable and ambitious targets and commitments. This is what the European Parliament called for in its resolution on the UN Biodiversity Conference in Kunming.
We need the protection of at least 30 percent of the world’s land and marine areas by 2030 and the restoration of at least 30 percent of degraded ecosystems by 2030. For this, national biodiversity strategies and action plans must be strengthened, and five-year monitoring and review mechanisms must be introduced. COP15 must become a milestone for the biodiversity of our planet, comparable to the Paris Climate Agreement.
As in the area of climate policy, the European Union has a special responsibility and role model function in the negotiations. Before the international community meets in Kunming, the EU must formulate far-reaching European goals. This is the only way to make a credible appearance in Kunming. And the opportunity is there: For the first time in twenty years, the European Union is planning a legislative project in the field of nature, the nature restoration law. Originally scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2021, the proposal has been postponed until March 23, 2022. The Commission would be well advised to use this additional time to draft far-reaching, binding protection and restoration measures. European nature cannot wait any longer.
There needs to be clear, area-based targets, guidelines for ecosystem connectivity, and a focus on peatlands and wetlands, which are not only particularly degraded but are our allies in both climate change mitigation and adaptation by sequestering carbon and buffering drought or heavy rainfall. We need better monitoring, data collection, and systematic reporting to protect pollinators and their habitats.
As part of the EU biodiversity strategy, the European Commission had already announced that it would focus on the renaturation of rivers. 25,000 kilometers of free-flowing rivers are the target, and existing data suggest that this target could even be raised because more than 100,000 barriers in our rivers are no longer even needed today because, for example, the associated mill has long since stopped grinding flour.
In addition to an ambitious renaturation law, the Commission must also finally ensure that European nature conservation law, which is already in force, is enforced. It is not very credible to call for the conservation of the Sumatran tiger in Kunming if the killing of protected species such as wolves or lynx is not adequately prosecuted in Europe.
