Ambitious Social Democrats who want to lead their party family into the European elections on June 9 have until Wednesday to throw their hats into the ring. Shortly before the deadline, the field of candidates for the lead candidate is manageable: Only Labor Commissioner Nicolas Schmit has applied.
The Luxembourger also no longer has to fear competition from Katarina Barley. The SPD’s top candidate had previously been rumored to have her own ambitions, but the S&D leadership candidacy is not a priority for the German Social Democrats. According to the SPD, they will support Nicolas Schmit.
Leading social democrats are quick to praise Schmit’s achievements in the Commission – he has pushed through key issues such as a European framework for minimum wages. However, the 70-year-old former Luxembourg labor minister did not become known to a wider public.
Should Ursula von der Leyen run for a second term of office as expected, Euronico, as he is known in his home country, would probably have a difficult time.
I wish you a good start to the day!
The FDP rejects the current draft of the EU Supply Chain Directive (CSDDD) and is thus positioning itself against the compromise reached by the Council and the European Parliament in December 2023. In doing so, the party has also distanced itself from the line that the German government has been pursuing at European level to date.
In its decision on Monday, the FDP Executive Committee gave nine reasons for its vote, including:
The FDP’s decision comes at a late stage. On Dec. 14, the Commission, Council and Parliament reached a trilogue agreement on the content of the “Directive on corporate due diligence with regard to sustainability”. This means that adoption in the Council and Parliament is usually only a formality.
According to information from Table.Media, the Council will deal with the directive at working level in January, but the EU ambassadors will not deal with it before February. The vote in Parliament is planned for April. There, the same majorities are expected as in the vote on the parliamentary position, which the FDP MEPs also rejected.
There is currently little to suggest that the FDP will be able to prevent the adoption of the Due Diligence Act in Brussels. As the SPD and Greens support the project, Germany is likely to abstain in the Council. The FDP would therefore have to launch at least one massive campaign, as it did a year ago on the subject of e-fuels, in order to stop the directive. So far, it has made no attempt to do so.
Many other member states have expressly endorsed the directive. At an initial exchange of views before Christmas, experts from most governments assessed the trilogue result as fundamentally positive, even if many details are still open.
Previously, only the former Polish PiS government had opposed the project. It is unlikely that France will opt out because it has prevailed on one important point: the provisional exclusion of financial service providers from the directive. Countries across the EU such as Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic are considered to be advocates of the regulation.
The FDP’s decision is surprising, as the German government has already achieved some changes to the directive in Brussels, not least at the behest of the Free Democrats, such as a significant weakening of the EU Parliament’s climate policy ideas.
In the future, companies will be required to draw up and implement climate plans that are in line with the Paris climate target. However, in the future, authorities will only check whether these plans exist and whether they theoretically meet the content requirements. The practical implementation remains unchecked. This means that inaction would not be punished.
Unlike the FDP, the Green Minister for Economic Affairs Robert Habeck and Minister of Labor Hubertus Heil (SPD) were still in favor of sanctions in the summer of 2023 for cases in which companies do not implement their climate plans.
The FDP and like-minded parties were also able to claim as a success that the due diligence obligations at European level do not cover the entire value chain of companies, but only the so-called “activity chain”. The sale and use of exported products, i.e. the downstream value chain, are to be excluded. Whether, for example, pesticides that are hazardous to health are sprayed on fields in countries of the global South is therefore outside the responsibility of European chemical companies.
In addition, the proposed concrete form of the liability regulation is closely based on German civil law, which was also a negotiating success for the FDP. The bottom line is that the agreement in the trilogue roughly corresponded to the positions of the German government, according to government circles.
So why is the FDP still backing away from the agreement? This is probably largely due to pressure from some large business associations. Shortly before the trilogue, leading representatives of the BDI, BDA, the Italian Confindustra and the Mouvement des Enterprises de France had already spoken out against the agreement in a letter to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
On the other hand, many German and European companies have spoken out in favor of the German law and the stricter EU version. These include Ikea, Epson, Tchibo, Primark and Vaude. Of 2000 companies surveyed by the Handelsblatt Research Institute on behalf of Creditreform, only seven percent recently rejected binding supply chain requirements for human rights and environmental standards. Just under 44 percent of those surveyed were already paying attention to sustainability in their supply chains, a further 37 percent were already doing so to some extent and only eleven percent were doing nothing at all.
A survey conducted by the Hamburg Institute for Business Ethics last summer also revealed a contradiction between the decisive rejection of the European Supply Chain Directive by representatives of large associations and companies themselves. One of the companies’ arguments: They have long been confronted with having to comply with their human rights due diligence obligations due to customer requirements.
The FDP’s decision was met with incomprehension by the Supply Chain Act Initiative, which represents more than 120 organizations. “The EU Supply Chain Act is not about annoying bureaucracy, but about fundamental human rights and environmental standards“, it said on Monday. With its U-turn shortly before the finish line, the FDP is putting Germany’s credibility in the EU in terms of sustainability at risk.
Armin Paasch from Misereor finds it remarkable that the FDP is suddenly complaining about the lack of a safe harbor solution, even though Justice Minister Marco Buschmann “never called for it in the trilogue”. The FDP is also isolating itself internationally with its blockade stance, according to the Supply Chain Act Initiative. This is because the liberal group in the EU Parliament celebrated the agreement on a compromise on the EU supply chain law in December as a great success.
The liberal group in the EU Parliament continues to support the agreement on the Due Diligence Act, said Renew’s shadow rapporteur Adrián Vázquez Lazara. “This was decided in several group meetings where the issue was discussed internally and was reflected in the plenary vote on the Parliament’s position on June 1, 2023”, he explained. A large majority of the Renew Group supported the text. “Of course, with this and any other directive or regulation, it is possible that some parties within the group legitimately decide to reject the text”, added Vázquez Lazara. Cooperation: Till Hoppe
The signal is clear: For his first trip as Minister responsible for energy, Bruno Le Maire decided to visit the Gravelines nuclear power plant in northern France. It is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. The minister, who is now also responsible for energy alongside economic, financial, industrial and digital sovereignty, has always been a supporter of nuclear power. “Being in charge of energy means being able to accelerate the reindustrialization of the country and the implementation of the French nuclear program“, he recently told the conservative daily newspaper Le Figaro.
Bruno Le Maire had already called for the energy sector to be assigned to his ministry in June 2022. This initiative was supported at the time during the presidential election campaign by companies and in particular by the employers’ association Medef, the French equivalent of the BDA, and France Industrie.
At European level, the new allocation of the energy sector means that Paris has its sights set on the next EU Commission. “We must ensure that nuclear energy is at the heart of the future European Commission’s roadmap“, according to sources close to the new energy minister. Paris will try to replace the term “renewable energies” with “carbon-free energies”, explains the French source. The term of office of the new Commission is expected to begin in November.
France has already implemented the principle by sending the Commission its draft integrated national energy and climate plan for the years 2021 to 2030 at the end of November. In it, Paris refuses to quantify the share of renewables in final energy consumption by 2030, although the Renewable Energy Directive increases the EU target to 42.5 percent. France merely mentions that it is aiming for a 59% share of “decarbonized energy” in final energy consumption by 2030 and 71% by 2035.
France and Belgium are also planning a nuclear summit with the heads of state and government in Brussels in March. This summit will be the political counterpart of the Nuclear Alliance, which regularly brings together ministers from 13 member states. This alliance was launched in March last year by former French Energy Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher.
Paris considers this alliance to be one of the French minister’s greatest successes. She also enjoys the support of numerous MEPs, including Frenchman Christophe Grudler (Renaissance) and Industry Commissioner Thierry Breton. Paris has networked well – a strategy that is paying off.
The French government has not shied away from conflict with the German government, which is skeptical about nuclear power. Paris has recently scored several victories:
The Minister also scored a diplomatic victory at COP 28: For the first time, the COP resolution mentions the use of nuclear power as an aid to phasing out fossil fuels.
Bruno Le Maire’s priorities in energy issues include reducing the proportion of fossil fuels in the French energy mix, “strengthening the country’s energy autonomy” and reducing energy consumption. The Minister points out that fossil fuels still account for 60 percent of the French energy mix. This means that Bruno Le Maire’s super ministry envisages developing renewable energies (solar panels and offshore wind power), continuing the construction of the six new EPR reactors and reducing energy consumption by 40 to 50 percent by 2050 compared to 2021 levels.
The draft law on energy sovereignty is intended to act as a lever to achieve these goals. The text, which the government put out for consultation on January 8, was prepared by Le Maire’s predecessor Pannier-Runacher. It contains detailed information on the programmatic goals in the areas of energy and climate, consumer protection measures as well as the reform of the electricity market and the issue of hydropower concessions. The timetable for the parliamentary scrutiny has not yet been set, “but Bruno Le Maire will make a statement on this topic in the next few days”, according to the ministry.
The UN Climate Change Conference in December made it clearer than ever before that the world is still a long way from a 1.5-degree pathway: global greenhouse gas emissions must fall by 43% by 2030 in order to achieve this. Germany and the EU are not yet making a sufficient contribution to this either. The EU member states have until the end of June to present their final National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs) to show how they intend to get the EU on track. So far, Germany has been anything but progressive.
The EU Commission has now assessed the draft of the German NECP, which was submitted with considerable delay on Nov. 6 – as have Germanwatch and other environmental organizations. Conclusion: Germany is lagging behind despite important progress on several EU climate targets and binding requirements.
This not only jeopardizes the joint achievement of the European climate targets for 2030, but also poses financial, political and legal risks for Germany. In an open letter to the German government this week, the environmental organizations will demand that the remaining time until June be used seriously to make improvements.
Although Germany is currently achieving great success in the expansion of renewable energies, according to the current projection it will miss the binding targets of the EU Climate Protection Regulation (“Effort Sharing”) for 2030 by more than 15 percentage points. The reason is a lack of measures to combat transport and building emissions.
Even the current failure to meet targets in these areas – according to Agora Energiewende, there were hardly any improvements in 2023 either – is unlawful and expensive: If emissions are too high, the German government will have to buy certificates from other member states worth several billion euros instead of using the public money for necessary investments in Germany.
Three major construction sites that the federal government must now tackle the following:
Some climate protection measures in the areas of heating and mobility have a direct impact on people’s daily lives because the foreseeable rise in CO2 prices can place a disproportionate burden on some low-income households. Therefore, additional social compensation measures are needed to ease the burden.
Article 3 of the EU Governance Regulation requires member states to estimate the number of households affected by energy poverty in their NECP. If this concerns a “significant” number of households, the member state is obliged to include a national indicative target for reducing energy poverty in its plan and to list corresponding measures. In Germany, however, there is currently no uniform definition of energy poverty and no regular survey, which is why the German NECP does not contain any data or targets for reducing energy poverty.
The proportion of households overburdened by energy costs, i.e. those who spend more than ten percent of their income on electricity and heating, rose from 26 percent to 43 percent between March 2022 and June 2023, according to the German Council of Consumer Experts. According to a more conservative estimate of energy cost overload, the proportion has risen from 17% to 25%. It is therefore unacceptable that the German NECP remains so vague in the area of energy poverty.
From a long-term perspective, it is also important that Germany develops a comprehensive strategy that recognizes and combats energy poverty as a multidimensional phenomenon. The recommendations on energy poverty published by the European Commission last October could serve as a basis for this.
According to the EU Governance Regulation (Article 10), the member states are obliged to conduct public consultations and establish a “permanent energy policy dialog” when drawing up the NECP. This is intended to involve civil society, business and investors in energy and climate policy. Instead, the BMWK is only planning an online consultation from February.
“Effective and early” participation in the sense of the Governance Regulation looks different. The failure to involve civil society in the drafting of the NECP and thus the possible obstruction of a debate on the further development of climate target achievement based on this makes the German government legally vulnerable. And it is not a role model for those EU member states in which civil society is generally hardly involved in climate policy decisions. The German government should make good use of the time until the end of June to set a better example with a comprehensive and transparent consultation.
Ambitious Social Democrats who want to lead their party family into the European elections on June 9 have until Wednesday to throw their hats into the ring. Shortly before the deadline, the field of candidates for the lead candidate is manageable: Only Labor Commissioner Nicolas Schmit has applied.
The Luxembourger also no longer has to fear competition from Katarina Barley. The SPD’s top candidate had previously been rumored to have her own ambitions, but the S&D leadership candidacy is not a priority for the German Social Democrats. According to the SPD, they will support Nicolas Schmit.
Leading social democrats are quick to praise Schmit’s achievements in the Commission – he has pushed through key issues such as a European framework for minimum wages. However, the 70-year-old former Luxembourg labor minister did not become known to a wider public.
Should Ursula von der Leyen run for a second term of office as expected, Euronico, as he is known in his home country, would probably have a difficult time.
I wish you a good start to the day!
The FDP rejects the current draft of the EU Supply Chain Directive (CSDDD) and is thus positioning itself against the compromise reached by the Council and the European Parliament in December 2023. In doing so, the party has also distanced itself from the line that the German government has been pursuing at European level to date.
In its decision on Monday, the FDP Executive Committee gave nine reasons for its vote, including:
The FDP’s decision comes at a late stage. On Dec. 14, the Commission, Council and Parliament reached a trilogue agreement on the content of the “Directive on corporate due diligence with regard to sustainability”. This means that adoption in the Council and Parliament is usually only a formality.
According to information from Table.Media, the Council will deal with the directive at working level in January, but the EU ambassadors will not deal with it before February. The vote in Parliament is planned for April. There, the same majorities are expected as in the vote on the parliamentary position, which the FDP MEPs also rejected.
There is currently little to suggest that the FDP will be able to prevent the adoption of the Due Diligence Act in Brussels. As the SPD and Greens support the project, Germany is likely to abstain in the Council. The FDP would therefore have to launch at least one massive campaign, as it did a year ago on the subject of e-fuels, in order to stop the directive. So far, it has made no attempt to do so.
Many other member states have expressly endorsed the directive. At an initial exchange of views before Christmas, experts from most governments assessed the trilogue result as fundamentally positive, even if many details are still open.
Previously, only the former Polish PiS government had opposed the project. It is unlikely that France will opt out because it has prevailed on one important point: the provisional exclusion of financial service providers from the directive. Countries across the EU such as Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic are considered to be advocates of the regulation.
The FDP’s decision is surprising, as the German government has already achieved some changes to the directive in Brussels, not least at the behest of the Free Democrats, such as a significant weakening of the EU Parliament’s climate policy ideas.
In the future, companies will be required to draw up and implement climate plans that are in line with the Paris climate target. However, in the future, authorities will only check whether these plans exist and whether they theoretically meet the content requirements. The practical implementation remains unchecked. This means that inaction would not be punished.
Unlike the FDP, the Green Minister for Economic Affairs Robert Habeck and Minister of Labor Hubertus Heil (SPD) were still in favor of sanctions in the summer of 2023 for cases in which companies do not implement their climate plans.
The FDP and like-minded parties were also able to claim as a success that the due diligence obligations at European level do not cover the entire value chain of companies, but only the so-called “activity chain”. The sale and use of exported products, i.e. the downstream value chain, are to be excluded. Whether, for example, pesticides that are hazardous to health are sprayed on fields in countries of the global South is therefore outside the responsibility of European chemical companies.
In addition, the proposed concrete form of the liability regulation is closely based on German civil law, which was also a negotiating success for the FDP. The bottom line is that the agreement in the trilogue roughly corresponded to the positions of the German government, according to government circles.
So why is the FDP still backing away from the agreement? This is probably largely due to pressure from some large business associations. Shortly before the trilogue, leading representatives of the BDI, BDA, the Italian Confindustra and the Mouvement des Enterprises de France had already spoken out against the agreement in a letter to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
On the other hand, many German and European companies have spoken out in favor of the German law and the stricter EU version. These include Ikea, Epson, Tchibo, Primark and Vaude. Of 2000 companies surveyed by the Handelsblatt Research Institute on behalf of Creditreform, only seven percent recently rejected binding supply chain requirements for human rights and environmental standards. Just under 44 percent of those surveyed were already paying attention to sustainability in their supply chains, a further 37 percent were already doing so to some extent and only eleven percent were doing nothing at all.
A survey conducted by the Hamburg Institute for Business Ethics last summer also revealed a contradiction between the decisive rejection of the European Supply Chain Directive by representatives of large associations and companies themselves. One of the companies’ arguments: They have long been confronted with having to comply with their human rights due diligence obligations due to customer requirements.
The FDP’s decision was met with incomprehension by the Supply Chain Act Initiative, which represents more than 120 organizations. “The EU Supply Chain Act is not about annoying bureaucracy, but about fundamental human rights and environmental standards“, it said on Monday. With its U-turn shortly before the finish line, the FDP is putting Germany’s credibility in the EU in terms of sustainability at risk.
Armin Paasch from Misereor finds it remarkable that the FDP is suddenly complaining about the lack of a safe harbor solution, even though Justice Minister Marco Buschmann “never called for it in the trilogue”. The FDP is also isolating itself internationally with its blockade stance, according to the Supply Chain Act Initiative. This is because the liberal group in the EU Parliament celebrated the agreement on a compromise on the EU supply chain law in December as a great success.
The liberal group in the EU Parliament continues to support the agreement on the Due Diligence Act, said Renew’s shadow rapporteur Adrián Vázquez Lazara. “This was decided in several group meetings where the issue was discussed internally and was reflected in the plenary vote on the Parliament’s position on June 1, 2023”, he explained. A large majority of the Renew Group supported the text. “Of course, with this and any other directive or regulation, it is possible that some parties within the group legitimately decide to reject the text”, added Vázquez Lazara. Cooperation: Till Hoppe
The signal is clear: For his first trip as Minister responsible for energy, Bruno Le Maire decided to visit the Gravelines nuclear power plant in northern France. It is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. The minister, who is now also responsible for energy alongside economic, financial, industrial and digital sovereignty, has always been a supporter of nuclear power. “Being in charge of energy means being able to accelerate the reindustrialization of the country and the implementation of the French nuclear program“, he recently told the conservative daily newspaper Le Figaro.
Bruno Le Maire had already called for the energy sector to be assigned to his ministry in June 2022. This initiative was supported at the time during the presidential election campaign by companies and in particular by the employers’ association Medef, the French equivalent of the BDA, and France Industrie.
At European level, the new allocation of the energy sector means that Paris has its sights set on the next EU Commission. “We must ensure that nuclear energy is at the heart of the future European Commission’s roadmap“, according to sources close to the new energy minister. Paris will try to replace the term “renewable energies” with “carbon-free energies”, explains the French source. The term of office of the new Commission is expected to begin in November.
France has already implemented the principle by sending the Commission its draft integrated national energy and climate plan for the years 2021 to 2030 at the end of November. In it, Paris refuses to quantify the share of renewables in final energy consumption by 2030, although the Renewable Energy Directive increases the EU target to 42.5 percent. France merely mentions that it is aiming for a 59% share of “decarbonized energy” in final energy consumption by 2030 and 71% by 2035.
France and Belgium are also planning a nuclear summit with the heads of state and government in Brussels in March. This summit will be the political counterpart of the Nuclear Alliance, which regularly brings together ministers from 13 member states. This alliance was launched in March last year by former French Energy Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher.
Paris considers this alliance to be one of the French minister’s greatest successes. She also enjoys the support of numerous MEPs, including Frenchman Christophe Grudler (Renaissance) and Industry Commissioner Thierry Breton. Paris has networked well – a strategy that is paying off.
The French government has not shied away from conflict with the German government, which is skeptical about nuclear power. Paris has recently scored several victories:
The Minister also scored a diplomatic victory at COP 28: For the first time, the COP resolution mentions the use of nuclear power as an aid to phasing out fossil fuels.
Bruno Le Maire’s priorities in energy issues include reducing the proportion of fossil fuels in the French energy mix, “strengthening the country’s energy autonomy” and reducing energy consumption. The Minister points out that fossil fuels still account for 60 percent of the French energy mix. This means that Bruno Le Maire’s super ministry envisages developing renewable energies (solar panels and offshore wind power), continuing the construction of the six new EPR reactors and reducing energy consumption by 40 to 50 percent by 2050 compared to 2021 levels.
The draft law on energy sovereignty is intended to act as a lever to achieve these goals. The text, which the government put out for consultation on January 8, was prepared by Le Maire’s predecessor Pannier-Runacher. It contains detailed information on the programmatic goals in the areas of energy and climate, consumer protection measures as well as the reform of the electricity market and the issue of hydropower concessions. The timetable for the parliamentary scrutiny has not yet been set, “but Bruno Le Maire will make a statement on this topic in the next few days”, according to the ministry.
The UN Climate Change Conference in December made it clearer than ever before that the world is still a long way from a 1.5-degree pathway: global greenhouse gas emissions must fall by 43% by 2030 in order to achieve this. Germany and the EU are not yet making a sufficient contribution to this either. The EU member states have until the end of June to present their final National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs) to show how they intend to get the EU on track. So far, Germany has been anything but progressive.
The EU Commission has now assessed the draft of the German NECP, which was submitted with considerable delay on Nov. 6 – as have Germanwatch and other environmental organizations. Conclusion: Germany is lagging behind despite important progress on several EU climate targets and binding requirements.
This not only jeopardizes the joint achievement of the European climate targets for 2030, but also poses financial, political and legal risks for Germany. In an open letter to the German government this week, the environmental organizations will demand that the remaining time until June be used seriously to make improvements.
Although Germany is currently achieving great success in the expansion of renewable energies, according to the current projection it will miss the binding targets of the EU Climate Protection Regulation (“Effort Sharing”) for 2030 by more than 15 percentage points. The reason is a lack of measures to combat transport and building emissions.
Even the current failure to meet targets in these areas – according to Agora Energiewende, there were hardly any improvements in 2023 either – is unlawful and expensive: If emissions are too high, the German government will have to buy certificates from other member states worth several billion euros instead of using the public money for necessary investments in Germany.
Three major construction sites that the federal government must now tackle the following:
Some climate protection measures in the areas of heating and mobility have a direct impact on people’s daily lives because the foreseeable rise in CO2 prices can place a disproportionate burden on some low-income households. Therefore, additional social compensation measures are needed to ease the burden.
Article 3 of the EU Governance Regulation requires member states to estimate the number of households affected by energy poverty in their NECP. If this concerns a “significant” number of households, the member state is obliged to include a national indicative target for reducing energy poverty in its plan and to list corresponding measures. In Germany, however, there is currently no uniform definition of energy poverty and no regular survey, which is why the German NECP does not contain any data or targets for reducing energy poverty.
The proportion of households overburdened by energy costs, i.e. those who spend more than ten percent of their income on electricity and heating, rose from 26 percent to 43 percent between March 2022 and June 2023, according to the German Council of Consumer Experts. According to a more conservative estimate of energy cost overload, the proportion has risen from 17% to 25%. It is therefore unacceptable that the German NECP remains so vague in the area of energy poverty.
From a long-term perspective, it is also important that Germany develops a comprehensive strategy that recognizes and combats energy poverty as a multidimensional phenomenon. The recommendations on energy poverty published by the European Commission last October could serve as a basis for this.
According to the EU Governance Regulation (Article 10), the member states are obliged to conduct public consultations and establish a “permanent energy policy dialog” when drawing up the NECP. This is intended to involve civil society, business and investors in energy and climate policy. Instead, the BMWK is only planning an online consultation from February.
“Effective and early” participation in the sense of the Governance Regulation looks different. The failure to involve civil society in the drafting of the NECP and thus the possible obstruction of a debate on the further development of climate target achievement based on this makes the German government legally vulnerable. And it is not a role model for those EU member states in which civil society is generally hardly involved in climate policy decisions. The German government should make good use of the time until the end of June to set a better example with a comprehensive and transparent consultation.
