The right-wing groups EKR and ID are likely to emerge stronger from the European elections in June. The Greens must expect drastic losses, and the liberal Renew, the Socialists (S&D) and the Christian Democratic EPP are also likely to lose seats. This is indicated by the seat projections of political scientist Manuel Müller, which he compiles based on opinion polls from the member states and the current memberships in the European party families.
The shift to the right would have consequences for possible cooperation between political groups. Formal coalitions do not exist in the European Parliament and are also unlikely after the June election. But there are new options. Alternatives to the “eternal” cooperation of S&D and EPP, which had reached an agreement with Renew in the current mandate (Von-der-Leyen coalition), are beginning to emerge. For the first time, a center-right cooperation of EPP, Renew and EKR would be within reach, which would come to 355 seats in the projection after expected faction crossovers.
Manfred Weber, head of the EPP faction in Parliament and, since a year ago, also of the party family, is already looking for new partners. To this end, he is focusing first on the ECR Group and secondarily on the Liberals. Weber’s goal must be for the EPP to once again become the strongest group in the European Parliament. Already in this legislative period, the Christian Democrats have suffered painful voting defeats. Its influence will dwindle if it continues to lose seats.
Weber is taking a two-step approach. First, he tries to win new member parties for his own party family. If that does not work, he explores the potential for cooperation with national delegations or individual MEPs from EKR and Renew.
Once the results of the June election are known, negotiations will begin. The transfer market opens. If national parties change party families, the balance of power among the factions would shift once again. It is also conceivable that national parties will not immediately join a new party family but will only send MEPs to the parliamentary group. The British Tories, for example, were, for a time, part of the EPP group, but not a member of the party family.
Weber already indicated that he is open to new right-wing alliances. Joining the EPP from the ECR is possible but difficult in practice. The EPP group includes several parties whose more right-wing competitors from the nation-states belong to the ECR. Examples include Forza Italia and Fratelli d’Italia, Platforma Obywatelska (PO) and PiS in Poland, as well as N-VA and Belgian Christian Democrats. Formerly traditional but now marginalized Christian Democratic parties are resisting the inclusion of their fiercest competitors from national politics.
The balance of power will also change within the parliamentary groups. So far, the Polish PiS and the Fratelli d’Italia (FDI) have dominated the ECR (currently 66 seats). Manuel Müller expects the FDI (now nine seats) and the Spanish far-right party Vox to each gain a few seats. In addition, he said, FDI leader and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has emerged as the leading figure of the European right. Meloni has also just had herself confirmed as head of the ECR party family.
It is thus considered unlikely that Giorgia Meloni will give up the ECR’s independence and join the EPP Group with her deputies. The Czech ODS of Prime Minister Petr Fiala, which now has four seats and was previously in the EPP Group, is also no longer considered a hot candidate for change. Instead, Müller expects further accessions, which could give the ECR up to 89 seats in the new Parliament, giving it chances to become the third-strongest force behind the EPP and S&D. Since leaving the EPP, the twelve MEPs of Hungary’s Fidesz have been factionless. They may join EKR or even ID.
The FDI’s strong man and Meloni’s governor in the European Parliament is the ECR’s co-group leader, Nicola Procaccini. The 47-year-old is a trained journalist and worked for years as Meloni’s spokesman. Alongside him, Carlo Fidanza is seen as another leading figure. Müller assumes the Polish PiS will become the second strongest force after the FDI in the new Parliament. Co-faction leader Ryszard Legutko often strikes an unforgiving tone in Parliament, especially toward Germany.
Manuel Müller assumes that leading FDI politicians in the ECR will seize the opportunity should EPP leader Weber offer them right-wing alliances in individual votes. It would make sense to forge the alliances through EKR deputies whose parties in the nation-states are already in coalition with EPP member parties. Müller names FDI, Vox, Basisfinnen, Sweden Democrats and the Czech ODS: “MEPs from FDI, Vox and Co could specifically seek strategically important dossiers to make policy with the EPP via center-right majorities.”
The liberal Renew parliamentary group (currently 101 seats) could drop to 94 seats in the election, according to the projection. It is questionable whether there will be any departures from the group, which has so far been strongly steered from Paris by Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party. For example, the Free Voters from Germany (currently two seats) fit more with EKR than with Renew, where they are currently a member, regarding their voting behavior and programmatic approach in Germany.
There is also speculation as to whether the Dutch VVD, the party of Mark Rutte, will distance itself from its rival D66 after his departure from the EU and possibly switch from Renew to the EPP. One of the two liberal Danish parties could also move to the EPP. Even now, months before the election, the strategists of the European party families are planning for the next European Parliament.
The European Media Freedom Act (EMFA) is intended to harmonize a wide range of media law issues across Europe. The spectrum ranges from questions about the treatment of media content on third-party platforms and the protection of journalists to issues of media concentration and state influence on the media. The Committee on Culture (CULT) thus places a focus on the issue of transparency in ownership structures.
According to the CULT Committee, Article 6 of the EMFA is intended to disclose ownership structures for media service providers to a very large extent in the future and to store them in a database accessible in the case of justified interest. On the one hand, direct and indirect ownership or shareholdings of state, state-related or state-owned media providers are to be disclosed. On the other hand, details of the respective company network should also be disclosed.
To make conflicts of interest comprehensible economic interests beyond media ownership should also be disclosed, as should relationships with “Politically Exposed Persons.” State advertisements and support are also to be filed – as the deputies want. This database is to be maintained by the national supervisory authorities and their data is then to be reported to a “European database for media ownership.”
The Committee on Civil Liberties (LIBE) is responsible for parts of the Media Freedom Act that should regulate the relationship of state measures toward journalists with minimum standards. Its text on source protection and protection against unlawful surveillance in Article 4, adopted last week, is already intensely criticized by media associations, civil rights activists and journalists: The Parliament is threatening to enter negotiations with the Council with a weakly formulated starting position, at the end of which there would be an even weaker compromise, they fear.
Article 17 of the EMFA is also in particular focus: After the DSA enters into force, it is to regulate the relationship of content from professional media to the moderation regime for Very Large Online Platforms (VLOP). Here, the CULT Committee proposes that service operators structurally give professional media the opportunity to identify themselves as such. The prerequisite is that in doing so, they are subject to other, independent and widely accepted, co-regulated or self-regulatory mechanisms. If operators then interfere inadmissibly with their content from the point of view of media professionals, an out-of-court dispute resolution mechanism is to be created in addition to legal recourse.
When considering what a European EMFA compliance committee might look like, the CULT Committee emphasized one point: independence from the EU Commission. Both the committee and its secretariat should work independently of the Commission. Here, member states and parliamentarians had expressed sharp concerns about whether the Commission had even penetrated the principle of state neutrality in media supervision in its initial proposal.
However, even with the parliamentary amendments now on the table, the EMFA remains primarily an abstract piece of media regulation. The Commission hoped to draw in as many guard rails as possible to guarantee media freedom in Europe in the long term. However, one of the few regulatory ideas directly affecting consumers in the large EMFA potpourri could cause great delight: The responsible parliamentary committees want to make it mandatory for the design of user interfaces on both terminal devices and remote controls to be able to be rearranged according to the user’s preferences. This would mean, for example, that providers could ban unchangeably preassigned buttons on remote controls or in the on-screen menus of TVs and other playback applications.
Today’s dessert is meat. Not conventional meat but cultured meat from the 3D printer. After all, one in five Germans can imagine eating something like this. That is according to a survey conducted by the digital association Bitkom. Four years ago, the figure was 13 percent.
Lab meat is produced from animal cells in a bioreactor and formed into a meat-like structure with the help of a 3D printer. Surprisingly, the Germans are this open about it. After all, meat from the bioreactor is in a completely different league than schnitzel based on soy and wheat protein or vegan wieners made from pea and potato protein.
But the message has gotten through: We need to reduce meat consumption or we will not meet the EU’s climate targets. That is because the current meat suppliers – above all cattle – belch and fart too much harmful methane gas into the atmosphere. Meat from the laboratory is more climate-friendly.” That is why Petra Kluger, Vice President of Research at Reutlingen University, calls it “clean meat.”
With the farm-to-fork strategy and Regulation 2015/2283 on novel foods, the EU has already initiated the nutritional turnaround. Accordingly, anyone wanting to offer lab-grown meat needs approval. However, even if the ecological footprint of clean meat is lower than that of the natural variety, the production of muscle cells in the bioreactor still consumes a lot of energy. And obtaining the required muscle tissue via biopsy is a painful affair for the animal. But solutions are in sight: green energy and cells derived from umbilical blood.
Since no company in the EU has yet applied for approval for lab meat, it will probably not be on the menu any time soon. But when the time comes, highly interesting specialties are conceivable – such as meatballs made from mammoth meat. The Australian start-up Vow has already pre-fried them. The advantage of the burger: this structure does not even require a 3D printer. Bon appetit. Corinna Visser
The right-wing groups EKR and ID are likely to emerge stronger from the European elections in June. The Greens must expect drastic losses, and the liberal Renew, the Socialists (S&D) and the Christian Democratic EPP are also likely to lose seats. This is indicated by the seat projections of political scientist Manuel Müller, which he compiles based on opinion polls from the member states and the current memberships in the European party families.
The shift to the right would have consequences for possible cooperation between political groups. Formal coalitions do not exist in the European Parliament and are also unlikely after the June election. But there are new options. Alternatives to the “eternal” cooperation of S&D and EPP, which had reached an agreement with Renew in the current mandate (Von-der-Leyen coalition), are beginning to emerge. For the first time, a center-right cooperation of EPP, Renew and EKR would be within reach, which would come to 355 seats in the projection after expected faction crossovers.
Manfred Weber, head of the EPP faction in Parliament and, since a year ago, also of the party family, is already looking for new partners. To this end, he is focusing first on the ECR Group and secondarily on the Liberals. Weber’s goal must be for the EPP to once again become the strongest group in the European Parliament. Already in this legislative period, the Christian Democrats have suffered painful voting defeats. Its influence will dwindle if it continues to lose seats.
Weber is taking a two-step approach. First, he tries to win new member parties for his own party family. If that does not work, he explores the potential for cooperation with national delegations or individual MEPs from EKR and Renew.
Once the results of the June election are known, negotiations will begin. The transfer market opens. If national parties change party families, the balance of power among the factions would shift once again. It is also conceivable that national parties will not immediately join a new party family but will only send MEPs to the parliamentary group. The British Tories, for example, were, for a time, part of the EPP group, but not a member of the party family.
Weber already indicated that he is open to new right-wing alliances. Joining the EPP from the ECR is possible but difficult in practice. The EPP group includes several parties whose more right-wing competitors from the nation-states belong to the ECR. Examples include Forza Italia and Fratelli d’Italia, Platforma Obywatelska (PO) and PiS in Poland, as well as N-VA and Belgian Christian Democrats. Formerly traditional but now marginalized Christian Democratic parties are resisting the inclusion of their fiercest competitors from national politics.
The balance of power will also change within the parliamentary groups. So far, the Polish PiS and the Fratelli d’Italia (FDI) have dominated the ECR (currently 66 seats). Manuel Müller expects the FDI (now nine seats) and the Spanish far-right party Vox to each gain a few seats. In addition, he said, FDI leader and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has emerged as the leading figure of the European right. Meloni has also just had herself confirmed as head of the ECR party family.
It is thus considered unlikely that Giorgia Meloni will give up the ECR’s independence and join the EPP Group with her deputies. The Czech ODS of Prime Minister Petr Fiala, which now has four seats and was previously in the EPP Group, is also no longer considered a hot candidate for change. Instead, Müller expects further accessions, which could give the ECR up to 89 seats in the new Parliament, giving it chances to become the third-strongest force behind the EPP and S&D. Since leaving the EPP, the twelve MEPs of Hungary’s Fidesz have been factionless. They may join EKR or even ID.
The FDI’s strong man and Meloni’s governor in the European Parliament is the ECR’s co-group leader, Nicola Procaccini. The 47-year-old is a trained journalist and worked for years as Meloni’s spokesman. Alongside him, Carlo Fidanza is seen as another leading figure. Müller assumes the Polish PiS will become the second strongest force after the FDI in the new Parliament. Co-faction leader Ryszard Legutko often strikes an unforgiving tone in Parliament, especially toward Germany.
Manuel Müller assumes that leading FDI politicians in the ECR will seize the opportunity should EPP leader Weber offer them right-wing alliances in individual votes. It would make sense to forge the alliances through EKR deputies whose parties in the nation-states are already in coalition with EPP member parties. Müller names FDI, Vox, Basisfinnen, Sweden Democrats and the Czech ODS: “MEPs from FDI, Vox and Co could specifically seek strategically important dossiers to make policy with the EPP via center-right majorities.”
The liberal Renew parliamentary group (currently 101 seats) could drop to 94 seats in the election, according to the projection. It is questionable whether there will be any departures from the group, which has so far been strongly steered from Paris by Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party. For example, the Free Voters from Germany (currently two seats) fit more with EKR than with Renew, where they are currently a member, regarding their voting behavior and programmatic approach in Germany.
There is also speculation as to whether the Dutch VVD, the party of Mark Rutte, will distance itself from its rival D66 after his departure from the EU and possibly switch from Renew to the EPP. One of the two liberal Danish parties could also move to the EPP. Even now, months before the election, the strategists of the European party families are planning for the next European Parliament.
The European Media Freedom Act (EMFA) is intended to harmonize a wide range of media law issues across Europe. The spectrum ranges from questions about the treatment of media content on third-party platforms and the protection of journalists to issues of media concentration and state influence on the media. The Committee on Culture (CULT) thus places a focus on the issue of transparency in ownership structures.
According to the CULT Committee, Article 6 of the EMFA is intended to disclose ownership structures for media service providers to a very large extent in the future and to store them in a database accessible in the case of justified interest. On the one hand, direct and indirect ownership or shareholdings of state, state-related or state-owned media providers are to be disclosed. On the other hand, details of the respective company network should also be disclosed.
To make conflicts of interest comprehensible economic interests beyond media ownership should also be disclosed, as should relationships with “Politically Exposed Persons.” State advertisements and support are also to be filed – as the deputies want. This database is to be maintained by the national supervisory authorities and their data is then to be reported to a “European database for media ownership.”
The Committee on Civil Liberties (LIBE) is responsible for parts of the Media Freedom Act that should regulate the relationship of state measures toward journalists with minimum standards. Its text on source protection and protection against unlawful surveillance in Article 4, adopted last week, is already intensely criticized by media associations, civil rights activists and journalists: The Parliament is threatening to enter negotiations with the Council with a weakly formulated starting position, at the end of which there would be an even weaker compromise, they fear.
Article 17 of the EMFA is also in particular focus: After the DSA enters into force, it is to regulate the relationship of content from professional media to the moderation regime for Very Large Online Platforms (VLOP). Here, the CULT Committee proposes that service operators structurally give professional media the opportunity to identify themselves as such. The prerequisite is that in doing so, they are subject to other, independent and widely accepted, co-regulated or self-regulatory mechanisms. If operators then interfere inadmissibly with their content from the point of view of media professionals, an out-of-court dispute resolution mechanism is to be created in addition to legal recourse.
When considering what a European EMFA compliance committee might look like, the CULT Committee emphasized one point: independence from the EU Commission. Both the committee and its secretariat should work independently of the Commission. Here, member states and parliamentarians had expressed sharp concerns about whether the Commission had even penetrated the principle of state neutrality in media supervision in its initial proposal.
However, even with the parliamentary amendments now on the table, the EMFA remains primarily an abstract piece of media regulation. The Commission hoped to draw in as many guard rails as possible to guarantee media freedom in Europe in the long term. However, one of the few regulatory ideas directly affecting consumers in the large EMFA potpourri could cause great delight: The responsible parliamentary committees want to make it mandatory for the design of user interfaces on both terminal devices and remote controls to be able to be rearranged according to the user’s preferences. This would mean, for example, that providers could ban unchangeably preassigned buttons on remote controls or in the on-screen menus of TVs and other playback applications.
Today’s dessert is meat. Not conventional meat but cultured meat from the 3D printer. After all, one in five Germans can imagine eating something like this. That is according to a survey conducted by the digital association Bitkom. Four years ago, the figure was 13 percent.
Lab meat is produced from animal cells in a bioreactor and formed into a meat-like structure with the help of a 3D printer. Surprisingly, the Germans are this open about it. After all, meat from the bioreactor is in a completely different league than schnitzel based on soy and wheat protein or vegan wieners made from pea and potato protein.
But the message has gotten through: We need to reduce meat consumption or we will not meet the EU’s climate targets. That is because the current meat suppliers – above all cattle – belch and fart too much harmful methane gas into the atmosphere. Meat from the laboratory is more climate-friendly.” That is why Petra Kluger, Vice President of Research at Reutlingen University, calls it “clean meat.”
With the farm-to-fork strategy and Regulation 2015/2283 on novel foods, the EU has already initiated the nutritional turnaround. Accordingly, anyone wanting to offer lab-grown meat needs approval. However, even if the ecological footprint of clean meat is lower than that of the natural variety, the production of muscle cells in the bioreactor still consumes a lot of energy. And obtaining the required muscle tissue via biopsy is a painful affair for the animal. But solutions are in sight: green energy and cells derived from umbilical blood.
Since no company in the EU has yet applied for approval for lab meat, it will probably not be on the menu any time soon. But when the time comes, highly interesting specialties are conceivable – such as meatballs made from mammoth meat. The Australian start-up Vow has already pre-fried them. The advantage of the burger: this structure does not even require a 3D printer. Bon appetit. Corinna Visser
