Commission President von der Leyen has a vision of how to prevent the migration of climate-friendly industries. In Davos, she presented her four-pillar plan – Till Hoppe knows which points will cause discussion.
The Federal Environment Agency has reviewed a new packaging regulation from the European Commission. The targets are ambitious but stretched out over a period that would be too long. When it comes to recycling, Germany meanwhile has set an example in some respects. Leonie Düngefeld has taken a close look at the proposal.
A twelve-member group of experts is to draw up proposals for institutional reforms of the European Union on behalf of Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron. Both want to present their plans at the Franco-German Council of Ministers on Sunday. Till Hoppe has learned more about this exclusively.
Ursula von der Leyen had not chosen the stage at random: There were many high-ranking business representatives in the audience when the Commission President presented her plans in Davos for making the EU the “home of clean tech and industrial innovations on the road to net zero.”
The CDU politician has named the program “Green Deal Industrial Plan.” The Commission intends to work out the details by February 1. A week later, the heads of state and government will discuss it at a special summit. They want to see action quickly – there is great concern about an exodus of climate-friendly industries. But there is still a lot to be discussed.
“We see aggressive attempts to attract our industrial capacity away to China and elsewhere,” von der Leyen warned. Her industrial program is based on four pillars:
The initiative’s core is the Net-Zero Industry Act, which is intended to improve the framework conditions for companies from climate-friendly sectors such as solar, wind, or hydrogen, following the model of the Chips Act. For these sectors, von der Leyen wants to formulate concrete targets, as the Commission has done for the semiconductor industry (20 percent of global production by 2030). Investments are to flow into strategically important projects along value chains, and new production facilities are to be approved by the authorities in accelerated procedures.
Von der Leyen wants to streamline the Important Projects of Common European Interest (IPCEI) instrument, which is already used for batteries and hydrogen. The projects should be “faster to process, easier to fund, and simpler to access for small companies and all member states,” said the Commission President.
To reduce dependence on China, in particular, for important raw materials such as rare earths or lithium, von der Leyen wants to establish a critical raw materials club in which allied states from the USA to Ukraine can participate.
The Commission is currently negotiating such cooperation with Washington, which could also address criticism in Europe of the IRA’s discrimination against its own companies. For US President Joe Biden, addressing partners’ concerns is a “top priority,” said Trade Representative Katherine Tai before a meeting with Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis.
Industry Commissioner Theirry Breton is also working on the Critical Raw Materials Act, which is intended to address the dependencies. According to the latest planning, the Commission intends to present the act on March 8.
The second pillar of their plan is intended to mobilize the necessary financial resources to counter Washington’s subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act, Beijing’s, or New Delhi’s for clean tech manufacturers. Member states are to be given more leeway, for a limited period of time, to lure investors with subsidies.
In the medium term, a European Sovereignty Fund is to be set up for this purpose, to be financed in the course of the upcoming revision of the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF). However, EU diplomats doubt that there will be the necessary support from the member states.
Until then, the Commission wants to bridge the time. In particular, the reallocation of the unclaimed billions from the Covid reconstruction program is being discussed. France recently spoke out in favor of this in a position paper. Germany is also open to the idea.
Von der Leyen’s Green Deal Industrial Plan overall bears a clear French signature. Not all member states, however, are convinced that the IRA justifies loosening the floodgates for state aid or creating new EU pots.
Before Christmas, six free-market-minded countries such as the Netherlands had already warned in a joint position paper that state aid for mass production could lead to a “fragmentation of the internal market.” Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager probably deliberately fed these concerns when she included a graph in her letter to ministers showing that Germany and France together account for more than three-quarters of the total aid framework approved during the crisis.
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson warned, speaking at the European Parliament on Tuesday, that “We must not forget that long-term competitiveness must be built on strong companies that are able to survive and thrive in competition in an open market.” Factors such as weak productivity, insufficient spending on research and development, or high electricity prices are a greater risk to competitiveness than a lack of subsidies, the Council President-in-office said.
The German government insists on having a sound picture of how many of the manufacturers actually want to divert investments to the USA first. The Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and the Federal Ministry of Finance are each still in the process of compiling relevant information for the German economy. According to reports in Berlin, results may be available this week.
The Commission is working hard on its own analysis, von der Leyen assured. This is expected to be part of the package on February 1.
In Berlin, the non-paper from Paris circulating on Friday was also received with some frowning. According to the coalition government, the demands for the relaxation of state aid law and new EU funds read like a list of long-cherished wishes that had little to do with the IRA. Both sides are now trying to work out common ground between now and the Franco-German Council of Ministers. Before Christmas, Economics Minister Bruno Le Maire and Robert Habeck had already presented a joint paper.
The Commission’s draft for a new packaging ordinance is ambitious but falls short of the level already achieved in Germany on several points. This is the finding of a report by the Federal Environment Agency. At the end of November, the EU Commission had presented the draft as part of the second circular economy package.
According to the Federal Environment Agency, the staggering of the targets is also too slow. For example, according to the draft, at least 70 percent of packaging is not to be recycled until the end of 2030, and all packaging is not to be recyclable on an industrial scale until 2035.
The fact that reusable systems are to be strengthened throughout the EU is an important step in Germany’s opinion. The Commission is proposing specific quotas for the proportion of reusable packaging and refill systems. These are to apply to distributors in areas such as beverage or transport packaging. However, according to the Federal Environment Agency, these are also introduced very late and fall short of Germany’s targets: the first stage for 2030, for example, is to be ten percent for beverage packaging for non-alcoholic soft drinks. Germany is aiming for 70 percent – in 2020, 43.1 percent was already achieved for beverages subject to a deposit.
In Germany, the previous EU Packaging Directive is implemented by the Packaging Ordinance. To allow the member states more ambitious regulations and to do justice to national particularities, additional support of Article 192 (TFEU) on environmental protection would be particularly important in addition to the internal market as a legal basis, according to the Federal Environment Agency.
The planned introduction of bans on the use of certain disposable packaging, such as for fresh fruit and vegetables, would also bring further progress in Germany. However, extensive changes are already planned in the draft, so the regulation is already significantly weakened, explains a spokeswoman for the Federal Environment Agency.
According to the Federal Environment Agency, it is regrettable that electronic marketplaces and fulfillment service providers are not also included at the European level. Such regulation in the German Packaging Act would have achieved a significant improvement in the legal compliance of manufacturers here, especially from third countries.
Around two-thirds of all goods in Germany are packaged in corrugated board. The Association of the Corrugated Board Market (VDW) criticizes the planned reusable quotas: “In a direct comparison reusable packaging by no means always has the better eco-balance,” explains Managing Director Oliver Wolfrum. “Accordingly, the introduction of binding quota requirements, whether under European or national legislation, would be unjustified.” The Commission’s draft envisages a reusable quota of 90 percent for the packaging of major household appliances from 2030. For e-commerce packaging, a quota of 10 percent is to apply from 2030, and a quota of 50 percent from 2040.
“A reusable quota for packaging in which large-format household appliances are to be transported would amount to an expense of entirely new dimensions for the manufacturing industries concerned,” explains Wolfrum. “This would affect spatial capacities for storage, but also factors such as cleaning and return systems – and it is precisely the latter points that can have a negative impact on the eco-balance.”
According to a 2021 analysis by the association, the greenhouse gas balance of reusable plastic packaging performs worse than corrugated packaging in two out of three cases. The latter is made of 80 percent recycled material; the paper fibers survive at least 20 recycling cycles, according to the association. In addition, they can be adapted more efficiently to the respective product, while reusable systems are based on a limited number of standard formats. The focus should thus rather be on more efficient use of raw materials, says Wolfrum.
Plastic packaging is to contain minimum quantities of recyclate from post-consumer waste from 2030, according to the Commission’s draft. The German take-back system provider Der Grüne Punkt sees a problem in the proposals: “The EU Commission has the option of revising the 2030 recyclate input targets, which have already been weakened compared to the previous version, two years beforehand,” explains a spokesperson. This could be possible if the relevant technologies are unavailable or not approved, or if the use of recyclates is unreasonable for manufacturers – for example, due to “lack of availability or excessive prices for certain recycled plastics.” PET recyclates are now more expensive than new PET, it said. If this were interpreted as “excessive prices,” the use of recyclate could therefore be prevented. Investments in corresponding technologies would thus be too risky, and the objectives of the regulation could not be achieved.
The German Environment Agency describes the staggered recyclate quotas as very ambitious. Especially for food contact packaging, however, it is necessary for the Commission to allow suitable mechanical recycling processes, as otherwise the quotas can only be met by chemical recycling. However, the ecological benefits and economic feasibility have not been clarified for the chemical process.
The year 2022 was the year in which Sven Rösner received more attention than ever before. Like so many changes this year, this was due to the Russian war of aggression on Ukraine and the accompanying energy crisis in Europe. “Before, we were primarily dealing with individual units,” says Rösner: “Now, the German Chancellor’s Office and the Élysée Palace are also approaching us.”
By us, the energy expert means the German-French Office for Energy Transition (DFBEW), an intergovernmental organization that has been around since 2006 and that Rösner has headed since 2016. The association’s mission is to help exchange information and experience between the German and French positions regarding renewable energies and the energy transition. It flew under the radar for a long time, but in the face of pan-European energy bottlenecks, it is suddenly taking on a central role.
The office is most likely to be a sparring partner for representatives of both sides when they initiate new projects and ask themselves: Are there perhaps insights from the neighbor that can be used for one’s own path? This happened most recently, for example, with the German Ministry of Economics’ plans to use contracts for difference as a funding instrument for the expansion of green electricity. “France already has a similar instrument, and we were able to mirror our experience in Germany,” recalls Rösner.
But it is also the job of Rösner and his team to point out differences if there are any. “When it comes to the expansion of wind farms, we can hardly compare German and French law,” he says. While spatial planning in Germany is a matter for the states, it is regulated centrally in France, including possible distance regulations for wind turbines. “What Paris says goes,” Rösner sums it up.
But Rösner also clarifies that the differences are not so significant everywhere. “Of course, there are extreme differences, especially on the nuclear power issue,” he says. But on about 80 percent of the issues surrounding the energy transition, he says, the German and French problems are very similar, and the approaches to solving them are also comparable. “Both countries are working on hydrogen strategies, and electricity grids have long since ceased to be a national issue in Europe,” says Rösner.
Over the years, the exchange is much less complicated than the year 2022 would suggest, with many French nuclear power plants shut down: “Over ten years, the transfer of electricity between the two countries is much more balanced. In addition, the market coupling has brought about €34 billion in savings for the national economies over this period.
Such figures give the courage to overcome even possible differences – and the DFBEW chief is ideally suited to do so. He grew up in Stuttgart, the heart of German industry, where the question of where energy comes from has always been very important. In the meantime, however, Sven Rösner, who is married to a French woman, has been living in France for years and has worked there in the photovoltaic sector. So he knows both sides very well. In 2022, he even received the Order of Merit of the Grande Nation, as the only German in that year.
It was the same year that industry was added to the DFBEW’s remit. Since then, the exchange with companies has been even closer than before. Whether in Germany or France, the picture at events held by the DFBEW is the same. “The other day, we had one in Paris, and we noticed that the companies were on edge,” says Rösner. Power-intensive companies have the same existential fears on both sides of the border right now. Sven Rösner is convinced that these can be better solved across borders – with his office as a sparring partner. Lars-Thorben Niggehoff
Commission President von der Leyen has a vision of how to prevent the migration of climate-friendly industries. In Davos, she presented her four-pillar plan – Till Hoppe knows which points will cause discussion.
The Federal Environment Agency has reviewed a new packaging regulation from the European Commission. The targets are ambitious but stretched out over a period that would be too long. When it comes to recycling, Germany meanwhile has set an example in some respects. Leonie Düngefeld has taken a close look at the proposal.
A twelve-member group of experts is to draw up proposals for institutional reforms of the European Union on behalf of Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron. Both want to present their plans at the Franco-German Council of Ministers on Sunday. Till Hoppe has learned more about this exclusively.
Ursula von der Leyen had not chosen the stage at random: There were many high-ranking business representatives in the audience when the Commission President presented her plans in Davos for making the EU the “home of clean tech and industrial innovations on the road to net zero.”
The CDU politician has named the program “Green Deal Industrial Plan.” The Commission intends to work out the details by February 1. A week later, the heads of state and government will discuss it at a special summit. They want to see action quickly – there is great concern about an exodus of climate-friendly industries. But there is still a lot to be discussed.
“We see aggressive attempts to attract our industrial capacity away to China and elsewhere,” von der Leyen warned. Her industrial program is based on four pillars:
The initiative’s core is the Net-Zero Industry Act, which is intended to improve the framework conditions for companies from climate-friendly sectors such as solar, wind, or hydrogen, following the model of the Chips Act. For these sectors, von der Leyen wants to formulate concrete targets, as the Commission has done for the semiconductor industry (20 percent of global production by 2030). Investments are to flow into strategically important projects along value chains, and new production facilities are to be approved by the authorities in accelerated procedures.
Von der Leyen wants to streamline the Important Projects of Common European Interest (IPCEI) instrument, which is already used for batteries and hydrogen. The projects should be “faster to process, easier to fund, and simpler to access for small companies and all member states,” said the Commission President.
To reduce dependence on China, in particular, for important raw materials such as rare earths or lithium, von der Leyen wants to establish a critical raw materials club in which allied states from the USA to Ukraine can participate.
The Commission is currently negotiating such cooperation with Washington, which could also address criticism in Europe of the IRA’s discrimination against its own companies. For US President Joe Biden, addressing partners’ concerns is a “top priority,” said Trade Representative Katherine Tai before a meeting with Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis.
Industry Commissioner Theirry Breton is also working on the Critical Raw Materials Act, which is intended to address the dependencies. According to the latest planning, the Commission intends to present the act on March 8.
The second pillar of their plan is intended to mobilize the necessary financial resources to counter Washington’s subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act, Beijing’s, or New Delhi’s for clean tech manufacturers. Member states are to be given more leeway, for a limited period of time, to lure investors with subsidies.
In the medium term, a European Sovereignty Fund is to be set up for this purpose, to be financed in the course of the upcoming revision of the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF). However, EU diplomats doubt that there will be the necessary support from the member states.
Until then, the Commission wants to bridge the time. In particular, the reallocation of the unclaimed billions from the Covid reconstruction program is being discussed. France recently spoke out in favor of this in a position paper. Germany is also open to the idea.
Von der Leyen’s Green Deal Industrial Plan overall bears a clear French signature. Not all member states, however, are convinced that the IRA justifies loosening the floodgates for state aid or creating new EU pots.
Before Christmas, six free-market-minded countries such as the Netherlands had already warned in a joint position paper that state aid for mass production could lead to a “fragmentation of the internal market.” Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager probably deliberately fed these concerns when she included a graph in her letter to ministers showing that Germany and France together account for more than three-quarters of the total aid framework approved during the crisis.
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson warned, speaking at the European Parliament on Tuesday, that “We must not forget that long-term competitiveness must be built on strong companies that are able to survive and thrive in competition in an open market.” Factors such as weak productivity, insufficient spending on research and development, or high electricity prices are a greater risk to competitiveness than a lack of subsidies, the Council President-in-office said.
The German government insists on having a sound picture of how many of the manufacturers actually want to divert investments to the USA first. The Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and the Federal Ministry of Finance are each still in the process of compiling relevant information for the German economy. According to reports in Berlin, results may be available this week.
The Commission is working hard on its own analysis, von der Leyen assured. This is expected to be part of the package on February 1.
In Berlin, the non-paper from Paris circulating on Friday was also received with some frowning. According to the coalition government, the demands for the relaxation of state aid law and new EU funds read like a list of long-cherished wishes that had little to do with the IRA. Both sides are now trying to work out common ground between now and the Franco-German Council of Ministers. Before Christmas, Economics Minister Bruno Le Maire and Robert Habeck had already presented a joint paper.
The Commission’s draft for a new packaging ordinance is ambitious but falls short of the level already achieved in Germany on several points. This is the finding of a report by the Federal Environment Agency. At the end of November, the EU Commission had presented the draft as part of the second circular economy package.
According to the Federal Environment Agency, the staggering of the targets is also too slow. For example, according to the draft, at least 70 percent of packaging is not to be recycled until the end of 2030, and all packaging is not to be recyclable on an industrial scale until 2035.
The fact that reusable systems are to be strengthened throughout the EU is an important step in Germany’s opinion. The Commission is proposing specific quotas for the proportion of reusable packaging and refill systems. These are to apply to distributors in areas such as beverage or transport packaging. However, according to the Federal Environment Agency, these are also introduced very late and fall short of Germany’s targets: the first stage for 2030, for example, is to be ten percent for beverage packaging for non-alcoholic soft drinks. Germany is aiming for 70 percent – in 2020, 43.1 percent was already achieved for beverages subject to a deposit.
In Germany, the previous EU Packaging Directive is implemented by the Packaging Ordinance. To allow the member states more ambitious regulations and to do justice to national particularities, additional support of Article 192 (TFEU) on environmental protection would be particularly important in addition to the internal market as a legal basis, according to the Federal Environment Agency.
The planned introduction of bans on the use of certain disposable packaging, such as for fresh fruit and vegetables, would also bring further progress in Germany. However, extensive changes are already planned in the draft, so the regulation is already significantly weakened, explains a spokeswoman for the Federal Environment Agency.
According to the Federal Environment Agency, it is regrettable that electronic marketplaces and fulfillment service providers are not also included at the European level. Such regulation in the German Packaging Act would have achieved a significant improvement in the legal compliance of manufacturers here, especially from third countries.
Around two-thirds of all goods in Germany are packaged in corrugated board. The Association of the Corrugated Board Market (VDW) criticizes the planned reusable quotas: “In a direct comparison reusable packaging by no means always has the better eco-balance,” explains Managing Director Oliver Wolfrum. “Accordingly, the introduction of binding quota requirements, whether under European or national legislation, would be unjustified.” The Commission’s draft envisages a reusable quota of 90 percent for the packaging of major household appliances from 2030. For e-commerce packaging, a quota of 10 percent is to apply from 2030, and a quota of 50 percent from 2040.
“A reusable quota for packaging in which large-format household appliances are to be transported would amount to an expense of entirely new dimensions for the manufacturing industries concerned,” explains Wolfrum. “This would affect spatial capacities for storage, but also factors such as cleaning and return systems – and it is precisely the latter points that can have a negative impact on the eco-balance.”
According to a 2021 analysis by the association, the greenhouse gas balance of reusable plastic packaging performs worse than corrugated packaging in two out of three cases. The latter is made of 80 percent recycled material; the paper fibers survive at least 20 recycling cycles, according to the association. In addition, they can be adapted more efficiently to the respective product, while reusable systems are based on a limited number of standard formats. The focus should thus rather be on more efficient use of raw materials, says Wolfrum.
Plastic packaging is to contain minimum quantities of recyclate from post-consumer waste from 2030, according to the Commission’s draft. The German take-back system provider Der Grüne Punkt sees a problem in the proposals: “The EU Commission has the option of revising the 2030 recyclate input targets, which have already been weakened compared to the previous version, two years beforehand,” explains a spokesperson. This could be possible if the relevant technologies are unavailable or not approved, or if the use of recyclates is unreasonable for manufacturers – for example, due to “lack of availability or excessive prices for certain recycled plastics.” PET recyclates are now more expensive than new PET, it said. If this were interpreted as “excessive prices,” the use of recyclate could therefore be prevented. Investments in corresponding technologies would thus be too risky, and the objectives of the regulation could not be achieved.
The German Environment Agency describes the staggered recyclate quotas as very ambitious. Especially for food contact packaging, however, it is necessary for the Commission to allow suitable mechanical recycling processes, as otherwise the quotas can only be met by chemical recycling. However, the ecological benefits and economic feasibility have not been clarified for the chemical process.
The year 2022 was the year in which Sven Rösner received more attention than ever before. Like so many changes this year, this was due to the Russian war of aggression on Ukraine and the accompanying energy crisis in Europe. “Before, we were primarily dealing with individual units,” says Rösner: “Now, the German Chancellor’s Office and the Élysée Palace are also approaching us.”
By us, the energy expert means the German-French Office for Energy Transition (DFBEW), an intergovernmental organization that has been around since 2006 and that Rösner has headed since 2016. The association’s mission is to help exchange information and experience between the German and French positions regarding renewable energies and the energy transition. It flew under the radar for a long time, but in the face of pan-European energy bottlenecks, it is suddenly taking on a central role.
The office is most likely to be a sparring partner for representatives of both sides when they initiate new projects and ask themselves: Are there perhaps insights from the neighbor that can be used for one’s own path? This happened most recently, for example, with the German Ministry of Economics’ plans to use contracts for difference as a funding instrument for the expansion of green electricity. “France already has a similar instrument, and we were able to mirror our experience in Germany,” recalls Rösner.
But it is also the job of Rösner and his team to point out differences if there are any. “When it comes to the expansion of wind farms, we can hardly compare German and French law,” he says. While spatial planning in Germany is a matter for the states, it is regulated centrally in France, including possible distance regulations for wind turbines. “What Paris says goes,” Rösner sums it up.
But Rösner also clarifies that the differences are not so significant everywhere. “Of course, there are extreme differences, especially on the nuclear power issue,” he says. But on about 80 percent of the issues surrounding the energy transition, he says, the German and French problems are very similar, and the approaches to solving them are also comparable. “Both countries are working on hydrogen strategies, and electricity grids have long since ceased to be a national issue in Europe,” says Rösner.
Over the years, the exchange is much less complicated than the year 2022 would suggest, with many French nuclear power plants shut down: “Over ten years, the transfer of electricity between the two countries is much more balanced. In addition, the market coupling has brought about €34 billion in savings for the national economies over this period.
Such figures give the courage to overcome even possible differences – and the DFBEW chief is ideally suited to do so. He grew up in Stuttgart, the heart of German industry, where the question of where energy comes from has always been very important. In the meantime, however, Sven Rösner, who is married to a French woman, has been living in France for years and has worked there in the photovoltaic sector. So he knows both sides very well. In 2022, he even received the Order of Merit of the Grande Nation, as the only German in that year.
It was the same year that industry was added to the DFBEW’s remit. Since then, the exchange with companies has been even closer than before. Whether in Germany or France, the picture at events held by the DFBEW is the same. “The other day, we had one in Paris, and we noticed that the companies were on edge,” says Rösner. Power-intensive companies have the same existential fears on both sides of the border right now. Sven Rösner is convinced that these can be better solved across borders – with his office as a sparring partner. Lars-Thorben Niggehoff
