You can mark June 6-9, 2024 in your calendar to be on the safe side, because according to information from Table.Media, the European elections will most likely take place during this period. In Germany, the election would thus fall on June 9. The parties are already preparing to draw up their lists. Nervousness is likely to increase among German MEPs – also because prominent federal politicians want to move to Strasbourg. Markus Grabitz gives an overview of the parties’ candidates and schedules.
With its proposal on intellectual property, the Commission wants to make the patent system less bureaucratic and reduce the fragmentation of the internal market. The ongoing dispute over Standard Essential Patents (SEPs) is also to be defused. There have been fierce disputes over SEPs in recent years, for example between Mercedes and Nokia. The package also includes a proposal for an EU-wide legal instrument for compulsory licenses that can be used in the event of a crisis, as Markus Grabitz also reports.
Negotiators in the EU Parliament have reached a preliminary agreement on the AI Act. “We have all worked hard on this dossier”, said co-rapporteur Dragoș Tudorache (Renew) on Thursday. But no one is really happy with the outcome, apparently, with the EPP calling the agreement fragile. Read more in the News.
The parties are already preparing to draw up lists for the European elections. Germany is entitled to 96 of the 705 seats in the Strasbourg plenum. The rule of thumb applies: For one percent of the votes, each party in Germany gets one mandate in the Strasbourg plenum.
It is likely that the next European elections will also not have a threshold clause, so that even representatives of micro-parties with a one percent share of the vote will be able to get in. An overview of the parties’ preparations:
The Christian Democrats are the only German group in the European Parliament that is not running with a federal list. Each federal state has its own state list. This is due to the fact that the CSU is only contesting in Bavaria and the CDU is contesting in the other federal states. On election night, this circumstance leads to a long period of uncertainty for the candidates in the back seats. Which state list wins then depends on several factors, such as the number of votes and voter turnout.
The German group of CDU/CSU members in the European Parliament has 30 members in this mandate, including 23 CDU members, six CSU members and one member of the Family Party. The state lists will be elected by the state associations during the year. Baden-Württemberg will be first on May 13.
According to a resolution of the federal party, there should be at least one woman among every three candidates in the European elections. NRW state leader Wüst has announced that the zipper procedure will apply in NRW, i.e. there should be five women on the first ten places on the list. NRW currently has six CDU/CSU delegates in Strasbourg, five men and one woman. So far, no candidate from NRW has announced that they no longer wish to stand.
The Social Democrats are accepting nominations for the European list until Nov. 15. At a European congress in the third week of January, the SPD will vote on the list proposed by the party executive. It is certain that Katarina Barley will run for first place. The zipper procedure also applies, so that men run for the even-numbered places and women for the odd-numbered places. There are currently 16 Social Democrats from Germany in the European Parliament, six women and ten men.
According to reports, all SPD deputies are seeking candidacy. The excess number of men can be explained by the fact that two women left during the election period and were replaced by men. In the future, this will no longer be the case. When drawing up the European list, the substitute candidate must in future be of the same gender as the person on the list.
The competition for promising list positions will therefore be fierce. Two male SPD members of parliament can expect to be left out of the running if they achieve the same election results. This week, Michelle Müntefering, a member of the Bundestag from North Rhine-Westphalia, also announced her candidacy.
According to information from Table.Media, the party executive board wants the state associations to place their candidates up to list position 26 according to the parameters of population, number of members, result of the Bundestag election. In addition, “individual candidates (…) should address relevant target groups”, according to a Table.Media document of a meeting between Secretary-General Kevin Kühnert and top representatives of the state parties, which took place on Monday. So it could be that the SPD party executive committee has special requests for the list. In the last European elections, the party executive board had wanted to place two Juso candidates in promising positions.
The Green Party‘s federal list will be elected at its national party conference in Karlsruhe on Nov. 23. Negotiations are currently underway between the state associations on the positioning of their candidates on the lists. It is clear that parliamentary group leader Terry Reintke will run for first place. In the Green Party, men are running for the even-numbered places and women for the odd-numbered places. Michael Bloss, the head of the German Green Group Rasmus Andresen, Daniel Freund and Sergey Lagodinsky are competing for second place.
There are currently 21 German Greens in the European Parliament. Four MEPs from ÖDP, Volt, Pirates and one independent have joined the group. So far, Reinhard Bütikofer and Ska Keller, group leader until September, have announced they will not run again. It is also expected that Nico Semsrott, who entered parliament for Die Partei, will not run again.
The Left Party will vote on the list for the European elections at its European Party Congress in Augsburg from Nov. 17-19. The party’s federal committee proposes the list. There are two lists, each of which is allocated half of the list places: Men are running on the mixed list, and women are running on the “list to secure the minimum quota”.
The European list will be headed by party leader Martin Schirdewan, who is also co-chairman of the parliamentary group in Strasbourg. The Left Party from Germany currently sends five deputies to the European Parliament. According to reports, Cornelia Ernst, Martina Michels and Helmut Scholz are no longer running.
The Liberals want to vote on the list for the European elections at a European party conference in January. Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann wants to switch from federal politics to European politics and will run for first place on the list. The previous top candidate Nicola Beer is to become Vice-President of the European Investment Bank (EIB) and will not run again.
The FDP currently sends five members to the European Parliament. The other four deputies reportedly want to run again. The liberal group in the European Parliament has been joined from Germany by the Free Voters Ulrike Müller and Engin Eroglu.
Harmonized patent rules are at the heart of the Commission’s proposal on intellectual property. The Commission promises that the patent system will become less bureaucratic, the fragmentation of the internal market will decrease, and conflicts over access to Standard Essential Patents (SEPs) will be defused.
The package is related to the unitary patent, which will already come into force on the first of June. Initially, the unitary patent will only start in 17 of 27 member states.
The Commission’s package includes regulatory proposals in three areas: SEPs, compulsory licenses and supplementary protection certificates.
Standard Essential Patents:
The Commission proposes that a competence center for SEPs be created at the EUIPO (European Intellectual Property Office) in Alicante, Spain. SEPs are to be registered there, and a database is to be created. With the cooperation of external experts, there should also be expert opinions on SEP total licensing fees. In the event of disputes, negotiations will take at least nine months.
The regulation is to apply to SEPs registered after the regulation comes into force. For SEPs already on the market, the Commission reserves the right to intervene if there are massive problems between owners and users. For future patents, the Commission wants to determine which standards are excluded from royalties and “FRAND” conditions if they do not threaten to distort the internal market.
There have been serious disputes in the past over access to Standard Essential Patents. SEPs are patents that are essential for the application of key technologies. SEPs from the mobile communications sector are one example. Since all cars with type approval must be equipped with the ecall automatic emergency call system as of April 1, 2018, all new vehicles are internet-enabled. For each vehicle built, manufacturers must purchase SEP mobile radio patents.
There had been fierce disputes over this between Mercedes and Nokia, for example. SEP owners are obliged to surrender the rights of use on “FRAND” terms. “FRAND” stands for Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory. This means that the owner is not free to set the price for the SEP, but must play by the rules.
Compulsory licenses:
The state can oblige an owner of a patent to surrender his intellectual property to a user even against his will. The legal basis for this exists in the member states, but differs in many cases. The Commission now wants to create an EU-wide legal instrument for compulsory licensing. The instrument is intended to ensure that in the event of a crisis, such as a pandemic or war, medicines, vaccines or other existentially important items can be produced throughout the Single Market.
The compulsory license complements other crisis instruments for the Single Market such as the Single Market Emergency Instrument (SMEI), the Chips Act, and HERA. In the event of an emergency, the Commission would grant the compulsory license, which would be valid throughout the EU, after first consulting the member states.
Supplementary Protection Certificates (SPC):
Supplementary Protection Certificates (SPC) are designed to supplement the unitary patent. An SPC is a patent on a drug for humans or animals or a plant protection product, the term of which can be extended by up to five years. The aim is to spur inventors to develop and provide growth and employment. A centralized examination procedure at the EUIPO will be introduced for SPCs. The validity of an SPC may be limited to one or more member states.
The Commission wants to use the instrument to reduce the high cost of SPCs in the EU. Currently, an SPC costs 60 times as much as in the US, according to the Commission. With an EU-wide SPC, the Commission promises that fees will drop by 55 percent. The savings per application would be around €100,000.
The industry association ACEA explicitly praises the Commission’s “efforts to improve transparency and create mechanisms that enable more balanced licensing negotiations” in the SEP matter. High demands by SEP holders would deprive manufacturers of funds they need for innovation. This, they said, also has a negative impact on innovation in mobile technology in the transport sector.
Markus Ferber (CSU) says: “There has been a lot of shenanigans with SEP in the past”. The proposals point in the right direction, but come a few years too late. With regard to the register to be created at the EUIPO, however, Ferber cautions, “If the register bureaucratizes the licensing process too much, nothing will be gained”. Tiemo Woelken (SPD) comments on patent renewal for the entire EU: “Innovative companies benefit threefold: a uniform EU-wide certificate saves time, bureaucracy and money”.
Éric Andrieu will leave the EU Parliament at the beginning of June. This farewell from political life has been prepared “for over a year” and his successor has already been decided, the French MEP tells Table.Media over an orange juice in the European Parliament’s press bar. He will hand over his post to Christophe Clergeau, the first non-elected person on the Socialists’ list in the 2019 European elections.
Clergeau, who describes himself as an entrepreneur, is a Socialist Party regional deputy for the Pays de Loire region (central France) and a member of the European Committee of the Regions. He will keep the same team and sit on the same parliamentary committees as his predecessor. Andrieu is still a member of the Committees for Agriculture and Rural Areas (AGRI), Environment and Health (ENVI) and Cooperation and Development (DEVE).
When asked about the outcome of his work, Andrieu says, “I don’t know if you can talk about success, but I think I contributed to the awareness of the need to give agriculture a new meaning and to re-establish the link between agriculture, nutrition, health and biodiversity“.
In the ten years of his European mandate, Andrieu has always maintained his distinctive southern French accent. A native of the Mediterranean town of Narbonne, he was thus born in the land of Jean Jaures, an icon of the French left. It is therefore not surprising that he joined the Socialist Party in 1986, when he was 26 years old.
A member of the European Parliament since May 2012, Andrieu first became vice-chairman of the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development in 2014 and agricultural policy spokesman for the S&D Group (Socialists and Democrats) in 2017. As an opponent of free trade agreements (TTIP, CETA, MERCOSUR) and a proponent of a far-reaching reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the MEP made the pesticide framework his hobbyhorse, which did not exactly make him popular with everyone in agriculture circles, to say the least.
As of 2018, he was chair of the Commission to Investigate the Pesticide Evaluation Process in Europe (PEST Commission). “This role was my greatest achievement“, he says. Among other things, he fought to phase out glyphosate and ban neonicotinoids, which are extremely harmful to insects. Currently, he is concerned about patents on new genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
In the negotiations with the Commission and the Council on the CAP reforms, “we never gave up”, says Andrieu. This is all the more true because there was cross-party unity among parliamentarians. “That is a strength that enabled us in the trialogues to win even battles that seemed impossible at the beginning”, he recalls.
Thus, the parliamentarian is pleased that he has succeeded in bringing more regulation to an agricultural market that, in his opinion, is more in the hands of the large agricultural corporations than in those of the farmers.
“This may be presumptuous, but we have evolved in terms of environmental awareness“. In concrete terms, he said, this can be seen in the relationship with scientific research institutes in the field of agriculture. “At the beginning of my involvement, we were more confrontational with the scientists. They told us that productivism was the key to success in agriculture”, he recalls.
Now, he said, issues of environment, food and biodiversity are also part of the scientific analyses – thanks in part to the many discussions with Andrieu and other deputies. “And that’s a very big step forward”.
You can mark June 6-9, 2024 in your calendar to be on the safe side, because according to information from Table.Media, the European elections will most likely take place during this period. In Germany, the election would thus fall on June 9. The parties are already preparing to draw up their lists. Nervousness is likely to increase among German MEPs – also because prominent federal politicians want to move to Strasbourg. Markus Grabitz gives an overview of the parties’ candidates and schedules.
With its proposal on intellectual property, the Commission wants to make the patent system less bureaucratic and reduce the fragmentation of the internal market. The ongoing dispute over Standard Essential Patents (SEPs) is also to be defused. There have been fierce disputes over SEPs in recent years, for example between Mercedes and Nokia. The package also includes a proposal for an EU-wide legal instrument for compulsory licenses that can be used in the event of a crisis, as Markus Grabitz also reports.
Negotiators in the EU Parliament have reached a preliminary agreement on the AI Act. “We have all worked hard on this dossier”, said co-rapporteur Dragoș Tudorache (Renew) on Thursday. But no one is really happy with the outcome, apparently, with the EPP calling the agreement fragile. Read more in the News.
The parties are already preparing to draw up lists for the European elections. Germany is entitled to 96 of the 705 seats in the Strasbourg plenum. The rule of thumb applies: For one percent of the votes, each party in Germany gets one mandate in the Strasbourg plenum.
It is likely that the next European elections will also not have a threshold clause, so that even representatives of micro-parties with a one percent share of the vote will be able to get in. An overview of the parties’ preparations:
The Christian Democrats are the only German group in the European Parliament that is not running with a federal list. Each federal state has its own state list. This is due to the fact that the CSU is only contesting in Bavaria and the CDU is contesting in the other federal states. On election night, this circumstance leads to a long period of uncertainty for the candidates in the back seats. Which state list wins then depends on several factors, such as the number of votes and voter turnout.
The German group of CDU/CSU members in the European Parliament has 30 members in this mandate, including 23 CDU members, six CSU members and one member of the Family Party. The state lists will be elected by the state associations during the year. Baden-Württemberg will be first on May 13.
According to a resolution of the federal party, there should be at least one woman among every three candidates in the European elections. NRW state leader Wüst has announced that the zipper procedure will apply in NRW, i.e. there should be five women on the first ten places on the list. NRW currently has six CDU/CSU delegates in Strasbourg, five men and one woman. So far, no candidate from NRW has announced that they no longer wish to stand.
The Social Democrats are accepting nominations for the European list until Nov. 15. At a European congress in the third week of January, the SPD will vote on the list proposed by the party executive. It is certain that Katarina Barley will run for first place. The zipper procedure also applies, so that men run for the even-numbered places and women for the odd-numbered places. There are currently 16 Social Democrats from Germany in the European Parliament, six women and ten men.
According to reports, all SPD deputies are seeking candidacy. The excess number of men can be explained by the fact that two women left during the election period and were replaced by men. In the future, this will no longer be the case. When drawing up the European list, the substitute candidate must in future be of the same gender as the person on the list.
The competition for promising list positions will therefore be fierce. Two male SPD members of parliament can expect to be left out of the running if they achieve the same election results. This week, Michelle Müntefering, a member of the Bundestag from North Rhine-Westphalia, also announced her candidacy.
According to information from Table.Media, the party executive board wants the state associations to place their candidates up to list position 26 according to the parameters of population, number of members, result of the Bundestag election. In addition, “individual candidates (…) should address relevant target groups”, according to a Table.Media document of a meeting between Secretary-General Kevin Kühnert and top representatives of the state parties, which took place on Monday. So it could be that the SPD party executive committee has special requests for the list. In the last European elections, the party executive board had wanted to place two Juso candidates in promising positions.
The Green Party‘s federal list will be elected at its national party conference in Karlsruhe on Nov. 23. Negotiations are currently underway between the state associations on the positioning of their candidates on the lists. It is clear that parliamentary group leader Terry Reintke will run for first place. In the Green Party, men are running for the even-numbered places and women for the odd-numbered places. Michael Bloss, the head of the German Green Group Rasmus Andresen, Daniel Freund and Sergey Lagodinsky are competing for second place.
There are currently 21 German Greens in the European Parliament. Four MEPs from ÖDP, Volt, Pirates and one independent have joined the group. So far, Reinhard Bütikofer and Ska Keller, group leader until September, have announced they will not run again. It is also expected that Nico Semsrott, who entered parliament for Die Partei, will not run again.
The Left Party will vote on the list for the European elections at its European Party Congress in Augsburg from Nov. 17-19. The party’s federal committee proposes the list. There are two lists, each of which is allocated half of the list places: Men are running on the mixed list, and women are running on the “list to secure the minimum quota”.
The European list will be headed by party leader Martin Schirdewan, who is also co-chairman of the parliamentary group in Strasbourg. The Left Party from Germany currently sends five deputies to the European Parliament. According to reports, Cornelia Ernst, Martina Michels and Helmut Scholz are no longer running.
The Liberals want to vote on the list for the European elections at a European party conference in January. Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann wants to switch from federal politics to European politics and will run for first place on the list. The previous top candidate Nicola Beer is to become Vice-President of the European Investment Bank (EIB) and will not run again.
The FDP currently sends five members to the European Parliament. The other four deputies reportedly want to run again. The liberal group in the European Parliament has been joined from Germany by the Free Voters Ulrike Müller and Engin Eroglu.
Harmonized patent rules are at the heart of the Commission’s proposal on intellectual property. The Commission promises that the patent system will become less bureaucratic, the fragmentation of the internal market will decrease, and conflicts over access to Standard Essential Patents (SEPs) will be defused.
The package is related to the unitary patent, which will already come into force on the first of June. Initially, the unitary patent will only start in 17 of 27 member states.
The Commission’s package includes regulatory proposals in three areas: SEPs, compulsory licenses and supplementary protection certificates.
Standard Essential Patents:
The Commission proposes that a competence center for SEPs be created at the EUIPO (European Intellectual Property Office) in Alicante, Spain. SEPs are to be registered there, and a database is to be created. With the cooperation of external experts, there should also be expert opinions on SEP total licensing fees. In the event of disputes, negotiations will take at least nine months.
The regulation is to apply to SEPs registered after the regulation comes into force. For SEPs already on the market, the Commission reserves the right to intervene if there are massive problems between owners and users. For future patents, the Commission wants to determine which standards are excluded from royalties and “FRAND” conditions if they do not threaten to distort the internal market.
There have been serious disputes in the past over access to Standard Essential Patents. SEPs are patents that are essential for the application of key technologies. SEPs from the mobile communications sector are one example. Since all cars with type approval must be equipped with the ecall automatic emergency call system as of April 1, 2018, all new vehicles are internet-enabled. For each vehicle built, manufacturers must purchase SEP mobile radio patents.
There had been fierce disputes over this between Mercedes and Nokia, for example. SEP owners are obliged to surrender the rights of use on “FRAND” terms. “FRAND” stands for Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory. This means that the owner is not free to set the price for the SEP, but must play by the rules.
Compulsory licenses:
The state can oblige an owner of a patent to surrender his intellectual property to a user even against his will. The legal basis for this exists in the member states, but differs in many cases. The Commission now wants to create an EU-wide legal instrument for compulsory licensing. The instrument is intended to ensure that in the event of a crisis, such as a pandemic or war, medicines, vaccines or other existentially important items can be produced throughout the Single Market.
The compulsory license complements other crisis instruments for the Single Market such as the Single Market Emergency Instrument (SMEI), the Chips Act, and HERA. In the event of an emergency, the Commission would grant the compulsory license, which would be valid throughout the EU, after first consulting the member states.
Supplementary Protection Certificates (SPC):
Supplementary Protection Certificates (SPC) are designed to supplement the unitary patent. An SPC is a patent on a drug for humans or animals or a plant protection product, the term of which can be extended by up to five years. The aim is to spur inventors to develop and provide growth and employment. A centralized examination procedure at the EUIPO will be introduced for SPCs. The validity of an SPC may be limited to one or more member states.
The Commission wants to use the instrument to reduce the high cost of SPCs in the EU. Currently, an SPC costs 60 times as much as in the US, according to the Commission. With an EU-wide SPC, the Commission promises that fees will drop by 55 percent. The savings per application would be around €100,000.
The industry association ACEA explicitly praises the Commission’s “efforts to improve transparency and create mechanisms that enable more balanced licensing negotiations” in the SEP matter. High demands by SEP holders would deprive manufacturers of funds they need for innovation. This, they said, also has a negative impact on innovation in mobile technology in the transport sector.
Markus Ferber (CSU) says: “There has been a lot of shenanigans with SEP in the past”. The proposals point in the right direction, but come a few years too late. With regard to the register to be created at the EUIPO, however, Ferber cautions, “If the register bureaucratizes the licensing process too much, nothing will be gained”. Tiemo Woelken (SPD) comments on patent renewal for the entire EU: “Innovative companies benefit threefold: a uniform EU-wide certificate saves time, bureaucracy and money”.
Éric Andrieu will leave the EU Parliament at the beginning of June. This farewell from political life has been prepared “for over a year” and his successor has already been decided, the French MEP tells Table.Media over an orange juice in the European Parliament’s press bar. He will hand over his post to Christophe Clergeau, the first non-elected person on the Socialists’ list in the 2019 European elections.
Clergeau, who describes himself as an entrepreneur, is a Socialist Party regional deputy for the Pays de Loire region (central France) and a member of the European Committee of the Regions. He will keep the same team and sit on the same parliamentary committees as his predecessor. Andrieu is still a member of the Committees for Agriculture and Rural Areas (AGRI), Environment and Health (ENVI) and Cooperation and Development (DEVE).
When asked about the outcome of his work, Andrieu says, “I don’t know if you can talk about success, but I think I contributed to the awareness of the need to give agriculture a new meaning and to re-establish the link between agriculture, nutrition, health and biodiversity“.
In the ten years of his European mandate, Andrieu has always maintained his distinctive southern French accent. A native of the Mediterranean town of Narbonne, he was thus born in the land of Jean Jaures, an icon of the French left. It is therefore not surprising that he joined the Socialist Party in 1986, when he was 26 years old.
A member of the European Parliament since May 2012, Andrieu first became vice-chairman of the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development in 2014 and agricultural policy spokesman for the S&D Group (Socialists and Democrats) in 2017. As an opponent of free trade agreements (TTIP, CETA, MERCOSUR) and a proponent of a far-reaching reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the MEP made the pesticide framework his hobbyhorse, which did not exactly make him popular with everyone in agriculture circles, to say the least.
As of 2018, he was chair of the Commission to Investigate the Pesticide Evaluation Process in Europe (PEST Commission). “This role was my greatest achievement“, he says. Among other things, he fought to phase out glyphosate and ban neonicotinoids, which are extremely harmful to insects. Currently, he is concerned about patents on new genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
In the negotiations with the Commission and the Council on the CAP reforms, “we never gave up”, says Andrieu. This is all the more true because there was cross-party unity among parliamentarians. “That is a strength that enabled us in the trialogues to win even battles that seemed impossible at the beginning”, he recalls.
Thus, the parliamentarian is pleased that he has succeeded in bringing more regulation to an agricultural market that, in his opinion, is more in the hands of the large agricultural corporations than in those of the farmers.
“This may be presumptuous, but we have evolved in terms of environmental awareness“. In concrete terms, he said, this can be seen in the relationship with scientific research institutes in the field of agriculture. “At the beginning of my involvement, we were more confrontational with the scientists. They told us that productivism was the key to success in agriculture”, he recalls.
Now, he said, issues of environment, food and biodiversity are also part of the scientific analyses – thanks in part to the many discussions with Andrieu and other deputies. “And that’s a very big step forward”.
