France’s reliance on nuclear energy is nothing new. However, what is new is how President Macron is currently repeating as a mantra the role of that controversial form of energy for the deindustrialization of his country and the energy transition. “Small Modular Reactors” is the magic phrase that is supposed to take the wind out of the sails of nuclear energy’s opponents. Charlotte Wirth analyses the real potential behind mini-nuclear power plants, why times seem good for nuclear power, and Germany’s position in the taxonomy debate.
By contrast, times are indisputably bad for coal power. On the third day of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), Germany, together with the rest of the EU, the UK, and the US, agreed on an energy partnership with South Africa to help the country phase out this climate-damaging form of energy. On why the issue of climate finance remains contentious, Timo Landenberger has the details.
Chat control – that sounds like traffic control and could be similarly popular. However, a wave in social media has now flushed the topic into public attention, as even the Bild newspaper reported. Why there is more than activism behind it and what regulatory conflicts the topic reveals at the EU level – Falk Steiner reports.
“Reinventing nuclear power” is how Emmanuel Macron described his vision of France’s energy transition in October. Nuclear energy plays a central role in his “France 2030” plan for the reindustrialization of the country: The French president wants to invest €1 billion in the promotion of small nuclear reactors, so-called “Small Modular Reactors“. At the same time, Paris is planning to build six new pressurized water reactors.
What is new is the intensity with which Macron is defending this line six months before the presidential elections. Hardly any of the president’s speeches are currently without the buzzword “nucléaire”. Nuclear power has become the miracle solution for achieving the EU’s climate goals. The economic survival of the French energy company EDF, which is primarily owned by the state, is also at stake.
But for France to mobilize the necessary funds to implement the vision of the new nuclear turnaround, it needs one thing above all: a green label. This explains why Macron is fighting so hard to have nuclear power included in the taxonomy for sustainable investments. After France was isolated with its vision in the Council for a long time, rising gas prices are providing new arguments.
“The energy crisis comes at a good time for nuclear power,” is how the European nuclear forum FORATOM puts it, talking about a resurgence of nuclear power. Due to the high gas prices, it is no longer only France and the Eastern European states pushing for nuclear power to be classified as “sustainable”. In Belgium, for example, where the decision to phase out nuclear power had been made long ago, the discussion about the end of lifetime extensions is flaring up anew and causing strong tensions within the government. Given the alarming energy prices, the Netherlands and Sweden have now also taken the side of the pro-nuclear countries. Pressure is mounting on the EU Commission.
The latter wanted to postpone the taxonomy decision until next year. But after the EU27 summit at the end of October, the Commission president intervened personally. Now Ursula von der Leyen wants to present the corresponding legal act this month, bowing to pressure from the pro-nuclear and pro-gas member states. Although delegated acts are actually the job of the Commission, a proposal from France is already circulating.
Luxembourg’s Energy Minister Claude Turmes warns that by including nuclear energy, the Commission is destroying the credibility of the taxonomy. But opponents, led by Luxembourg and Austria, are increasingly isolated.
In Germany, they would have a strong ally. After all, the Federal Environment Ministry is clearly against nuclear power in the taxonomy. But the outgoing German government is unlikely to side with the critics of nuclear power. The interest in natural gas as a bridging technology being given a sustainable label weighs too heavily. How a traffic light coalition would position itself remains to be seen. However, Green negotiator Sven Giegold stressed that his party firmly rejects the inclusion of nuclear energy in the taxonomy.
However, nothing has changed in the initial situation. The construction of new nuclear power plants continues to be expensive and protracted. Safety is still a problem. The search for final storage sites remains unresolved.
On the part of the nuclear lobby, one buzzword, in particular, is used to counter criticism of nuclear energy: Small Modular Reactors. These are reactors that are significantly smaller than conventional nuclear power plants. The advantage is that they can be made in whole or in part in factories and then moved to the operation site. This, according to the nuclear industry’s argument, means that the investment costs are significantly lower than for conventional nuclear power plants.
SMRs could thus deliver the domino effect the industry needs to make a comeback: mass production, competitive prices, adapted supply chains, new expertise. “Nuclear projects are emerging today after a long hiatus during which no reactors were built. Now the momentum is picking up again,” says Andrei Goicea of Foratom.
Accordingly, SMRs serve as an essential gateway for the reinvention of nuclear power touted by Macron. “Many states are more comfortable with small reactors than with large nuclear power projects,” Goicea believes. The small nuclear reactors could be used, for example, to produce energy and heat for cities or to produce electricity at industrial sites.
Some member states are already jumping on this bandwagon. France wants to start building small nuclear reactors from 2030 and is mobilizing €1 billion for the purpose. To complement the six hydroelectric plants France is toying with, EDF wants to build at least one SMR-type plant, EDF executive Xavier Ursat told Capital.
In the long term, however, the French energy company plans to export the technology and market it abroad as an aid to the energy transition. After all, the piles are the size of coal mines, which now need to be replaced all over the world. The nuclear lobby also sees the potential. “The old mines provide the location and grid connection for the SMRs, and the coal workers can be retrained to operate the SMRs,” says Andrei Goicea.
In this sense, France’s move would also be a blow to the expansion of renewable energies, which are actually being traded as a long-term solution in the energy transition. In France, at least, the priorities are clear: “France 2030” provides only €500 million for the expansion of renewable energies, against €1 billion for nuclear power.
Nuclear power plants instead of coal-fired power: In this sense, the classification of nuclear power as “sustainable” is becoming the central argument for financing this strategy. Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, Bulgaria, and Italy are also increasingly interested in SMR regarding the energy transition. Warsaw signed corresponding memorandums of understanding with US and Canadian companies just last September. Yesterday the US and Bucharest announced their cooperation in constructing an SMR in Romania by the American company NuScale.
The EU Commission, for its part, does not seem averse to the technology. In any case, the EU consultancy JRC sees SMRs in particular as a solution to the high construction costs of nuclear power plants. After all, there is already growing interest in these reactors in the EU, the researchers write.
At the same time, under Horizon 2022, the Commission is funding the €4 billion project to license the technology, ELSMOR. In the summer, the Commission organized the “first EU workshop on SMRs” to explore the potential of reactors to decarbonize the EU. SMRs offer “innovative energy supply solutions”, and their development could contribute to the innovation and resilience of European industry, Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson replied to a parliamentary question from Tom Berendsen (EPP).
However, it is unclear whether the reactors are actually cheaper in the long run. At the moment, they are only in the project phase. In any case, the Federal Agency for Nuclear Safety does not expect costs to fall: “Significant cost savings due to greater modularity have not been observed in past reactor developments and are not to be expected in the future either, “ it writes in an expert opinion. According to the report, the cost advantage from factory construction would be offset by transportation costs. At the same time, BASE expects the reactors to have short lifetimes and warns that dismantling would be difficult.
In addition, it would take a large number of SMRs to achieve the power output of ordinary reactors. BASE is talking about a factor of 3 to 1000, which means that instead of around 400 nuclear power plants today, it would take “the construction of many thousands to tens of thousands of SMR plants” to achieve the same output. This would also multiply the number of risks associated with the plants. “SMRs shift the disadvantages of nuclear energy production from a (comparatively) few large plants to many small plants,” comments a BMU spokesperson.
Above all, however, SMR does not provide a solution for radioactive waste disposal: This problem would therefore be postponed to future generations, BASE criticizes. FORATOM counters that the EU is a pioneer in this area and planning the first deep geological repositories.
At the heart of the controversy is the question of the extent to which providers of online services are allowed to look into the data of their users, either automatically or manually. Preposterous or indispensable? The real debate about this has only just begun – and will intensify in the future.
Everything is prohibited that is not permitted – this principle has long been applied in data protection law. And this rule-exception relationship applies to all possible data processing: Either there is a legal requirement for permission, or the data subjects must give their active and informed consent to the processing of personal data.
But what about data stored not only on the end device but also at a service provider? Are providers allowed to process the data stored there? On the one hand, this dispute concerns the use of data for the provider’s own purposes, for example, to display relevant advertising to users of Gmail, Google’s mail service. But other purposes are also part of the discussion: Should providers be allowed to actively search for terrorist content, copyright infringements, or videos and images of child abuse in the stored data of their users? Or should they even have to? Where are the limits?
This has been the subject of intense debate for years, as the boundaries between local storage on a terminal device and the simultaneous storage of content on the network are becoming increasingly blurred. The confidentiality of data transmission via telecommunications networks is regulated by the E-Privacy Directive of 1997, which has been revised several times since then. It was actually supposed to be available as a counterpart to the General Data Protection Regulation, also revised in the form of a regulation, as early as 2018. However, there is still a dispute about the e-privacy regulation, which is unlikely to be adopted for the time being, despite minor progress on the Council compromise in recent weeks.
Also due to these delays, further services have been made subject to the ePrivacy Directive with effect from the end of 2020 – including “interpersonal communication services”, i.e., programs that can be used for chatting without the telephone network being responsible for this, such as WhatsApp, Threema, or Telegram.
This extension caused an unexpected intervention on the part of Ashton Kutcher: The US actor publicly contacted SPD chairwoman Saskia Esken and SPD MEP Birgit Sippel at the end of October 2020, which triggered some media hype. Kutcher is campaigning against the spread of child abuse depictions – and saw a problem: The extension of the ePrivacy Directive would have meant that companies such as Facebook, which previously filtered out content using algorithms for already known depictions of child abuse, would no longer be allowed to do so. A view that more legally trained actors also shared.
In July, shortly before the summer break, the European Parliament passed a regulation that temporarily suspends this ban for a maximum of three years, unless other legislation addresses the problem differently.
But this does not solve the problem. The trend towards the cloud and online service providers, from Microsoft and Apple to Dropbox and chat services, where a third party stores the data, put old concepts of regulation in distress. Whereas in the past, a clear distinction had to be made between ongoing communication – for example, a telephone call or fax dispatch – and dormant communication – the e-mail that was stored exclusively on the recipient’s computer – today content is both dormant and ongoing.
What are still individual cases today may affect many more users tomorrow: Which data streams in edge computing should be allowed to be examined, when, and by whom? If end devices increasingly become terminals for cloud services, what will become of the fundamental right to privacy, or should this simply not apply to automated systems?
Moreover, the debate coincides with a second one: that around effective encryption. After all, any investigation of content by providers can only take place in unencrypted content or content that can be decrypted with a provider’s master key. Effective end-to-end encryption prevents reading from one end device to another – and even in cloud storage, effective encryption means that providers cannot know what is actually on their servers. This is why many providers exclude such encryption from the outset and explicitly allow the search of online backups and online storage in their terms and conditions.
But it is precisely in the area of messenger that an intense debate is currently raging after Apple announced that it would not only search for images of child abuse in the iCloud storage. The company also wants to include a filter function in iMessage, the messenger service that is part of the iOS operating system – albeit only for accounts of minors that are assigned to a family account.
But precisely this kind of thing could now become the subject of another regulation – which was supposed to come in December. Dubravka Šuica and Margaritis Schinas were then supposed to present measures to “effectively fight child sexual abuse online”. But the announcement has disappeared from the Commission’s work plan in the past two weeks.
The scope is said to be broad: “All means of communication” should be included in the Commission’s proposal, including private communications. Moreover, as Deputy Director General Olivier Onidi put it in response to a question from Breyer, end-to-end encryption should not lead to providers failing to meet possible regulatory obligations – but that is technically impossible: Truly secure encryption always provides security even against intrusions by an intermediary service.
So the debate about “chat control” may be more of an occasion. But it is high time to discuss these issues more intensively – even if the campaign launched by the German parliamentary pirate and professional magistrate Breyer is not the most objective approach to the subject.
The goal is clear. However, to actually limit global warming to 1.5 °C, mere lip service to climate neutrality around the middle of the century will not be enough. BMU State Secretary Jochen Flasbarth once again made this clear at the World Climate Conference in Glasgow and called for a more specific commitment. He said that the decade was crucial for clear measures and that the conditions for this were being built in Glasgow in the next few days.
This also includes helping to emerge and developing countries to shift to green technologies. The promise by industrialized nations to provide $100 billion for this very purpose from 2020 will probably only be implemented with a three-year delay. This sum is “miles away from the actual needs of the poorest and most vulnerable to the climate crisis,” says Christoph Bals, political director of the environmental organization Germanwatch. The issue of climate financing remains controversial and is one of the key topics of COP26.
The energy partnership with South Africa announced on Tuesday could be an important step in this direction. Together with the EU, France, the UK, and the US, Germany has pledged to support the first partner country in the Southern Hemisphere in phasing out coal. Germanwatch Director Bals welcomes the initiative and calls for it to be extended to other coal-dependent emerging economies such as India and Indonesia in the near future.
South Africa is the seventh-largest coal producer in the world and generates almost 90 percent of its power demand from coal. The country ranks 9th in the global ranking of carbon dioxide emissions per capita.
The new partnership provides for a total of $8.5 billion in financial aid over the next five years, much of it in the form of loans. Germany intends to contribute just under €700 million. The funds are intended to enable entry into renewable energies, provide technological innovations, including green hydrogen, for South Africa and create new jobs. More than 90,000 workers still work in coal mines, unemployment is high, and career chances for young people are poor. Germany would also provide its own experience. After all, the coal phase-out is not easy here either and must not be at the expense of workers, said State Secretary Maria Flachsbarth of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.
In a report to the United Nations back in September, South Africa announced plans to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by a third by 2030 and close at least six coal-fired power plants. Helen Mountford, Vice-President for climate and economics at the World Resources Institute (WRI), told Bloomberg that South Africa’s new climate plan “underscores the goal of achieving net-zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 and sets the stage for the country to invest heavily in clean energy while accelerating the transition away from coal.”
Previously, the state-owned utility Eskom, which is responsible for around 90 percent of power generation in South Africa, had invested a lot of money in the construction of new coal-fired power plants, running up huge debts in the process. But the country’s outdated plants do not supply enough power to meet the growing demand of the approximately 60 million South Africans. Eskom was therefore forced to ration power supply for several years.
Now, Africa’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter has proposed a $10 billion plan to its lenders to shut down most of its coal-fired power plants by 2050 and shift to renewable energy. Various scenarios were modeled to achieve the net-zero emissions target by 2050, said Mandy Rambharos, Eskom’s head of department for Just Energy Transition. “The whole world is transitioning, we have to get on this bandwagon – for South Africa to remain competitive and for our economy to grow.”
The partnership with South Africa for a socially just energy transition could set standards for a new phase of international climate cooperation, says Federal Environment Minister Svenja Schulze. A successful coal phase-out in South Africa could become a model project for other regions. The potential for power generation from renewables on the African continent is huge, but it has hardly been utilized so far.
“Artificial intelligence is a hot topic here in Brussels at the moment,” says Ursula Pachl. The Deputy Director-General of the European Consumer Organization BEUC (Bureau Européen des Unions de Consommateurs) has been championing the interests of consumers for over 20 years. BEUC is an umbrella organization with currently 45 members. What they all have in common is that they are independent European national consumer associations. “Our task is to represent the interests of the member organizations and thus indirectly those of European consumers, and to influence European policy in their interests”. The association does this primarily by submitting statements on European legislative projects affecting consumer interests to the European Parliament.
Ursula Pachl’s commitment to consumers began at a national level: “My first job after graduating was at the Ministry of Health and Consumer Protection in Vienna. There, I already worked for the interests of Austrian consumers by preparing statements on legislative proposals, it was a lot about product safety, for example.” Before Pachl started her first job, she studied law in Innsbruck. Even then, her motivation was to defend the rights of individuals: “Justice has always been important to me, so I’m grateful to be able to contribute a little bit to a fairer world with my job.” In 1997 Ursula Pachl applied for the position of Legal Officer at BEUC and has worked for the consumer association ever since.
Ursula Pachl is currently focusing on artificial intelligence (AI). In April, the European Commission presented a draft law to regulate the use of AI. “This is the first draft law on artificial intelligence that exists anywhere in the world. Europe wants to set the tone in AI regulation,” says Pachl. From BEUC’s point of view, however, the Commission’s draft needs to be greatly improved: “The constant online surveillance of consumers needs to be more strongly restricted by regulation.” The new AI law could make a significant contribution to this. So-called social scoring – the evaluation of human behavior – should be banned, not only when it is utilized by authorities but also when it is used by companies for commercial purposes. Similarly, biometric identification in public spaces should not be allowed, nor should so-called emotion recognition for, among other things, commercial purposes. “I am committed to ensuring that these bans are included in the new AI law,” assures Pachl.
The law is expected to be finalized in 2023 and will apply to all companies operating on the European market two years later. However, it is already doubtful how action can be taken in the future against companies that are based outside Europe: “It will be difficult to take action against a company that is only based in Asia, for example, in the event of an infringement,” says Pachl. So the question of how to enforce the law internationally will require a lot of thought and discussion. Alina Jensen
France’s reliance on nuclear energy is nothing new. However, what is new is how President Macron is currently repeating as a mantra the role of that controversial form of energy for the deindustrialization of his country and the energy transition. “Small Modular Reactors” is the magic phrase that is supposed to take the wind out of the sails of nuclear energy’s opponents. Charlotte Wirth analyses the real potential behind mini-nuclear power plants, why times seem good for nuclear power, and Germany’s position in the taxonomy debate.
By contrast, times are indisputably bad for coal power. On the third day of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), Germany, together with the rest of the EU, the UK, and the US, agreed on an energy partnership with South Africa to help the country phase out this climate-damaging form of energy. On why the issue of climate finance remains contentious, Timo Landenberger has the details.
Chat control – that sounds like traffic control and could be similarly popular. However, a wave in social media has now flushed the topic into public attention, as even the Bild newspaper reported. Why there is more than activism behind it and what regulatory conflicts the topic reveals at the EU level – Falk Steiner reports.
“Reinventing nuclear power” is how Emmanuel Macron described his vision of France’s energy transition in October. Nuclear energy plays a central role in his “France 2030” plan for the reindustrialization of the country: The French president wants to invest €1 billion in the promotion of small nuclear reactors, so-called “Small Modular Reactors“. At the same time, Paris is planning to build six new pressurized water reactors.
What is new is the intensity with which Macron is defending this line six months before the presidential elections. Hardly any of the president’s speeches are currently without the buzzword “nucléaire”. Nuclear power has become the miracle solution for achieving the EU’s climate goals. The economic survival of the French energy company EDF, which is primarily owned by the state, is also at stake.
But for France to mobilize the necessary funds to implement the vision of the new nuclear turnaround, it needs one thing above all: a green label. This explains why Macron is fighting so hard to have nuclear power included in the taxonomy for sustainable investments. After France was isolated with its vision in the Council for a long time, rising gas prices are providing new arguments.
“The energy crisis comes at a good time for nuclear power,” is how the European nuclear forum FORATOM puts it, talking about a resurgence of nuclear power. Due to the high gas prices, it is no longer only France and the Eastern European states pushing for nuclear power to be classified as “sustainable”. In Belgium, for example, where the decision to phase out nuclear power had been made long ago, the discussion about the end of lifetime extensions is flaring up anew and causing strong tensions within the government. Given the alarming energy prices, the Netherlands and Sweden have now also taken the side of the pro-nuclear countries. Pressure is mounting on the EU Commission.
The latter wanted to postpone the taxonomy decision until next year. But after the EU27 summit at the end of October, the Commission president intervened personally. Now Ursula von der Leyen wants to present the corresponding legal act this month, bowing to pressure from the pro-nuclear and pro-gas member states. Although delegated acts are actually the job of the Commission, a proposal from France is already circulating.
Luxembourg’s Energy Minister Claude Turmes warns that by including nuclear energy, the Commission is destroying the credibility of the taxonomy. But opponents, led by Luxembourg and Austria, are increasingly isolated.
In Germany, they would have a strong ally. After all, the Federal Environment Ministry is clearly against nuclear power in the taxonomy. But the outgoing German government is unlikely to side with the critics of nuclear power. The interest in natural gas as a bridging technology being given a sustainable label weighs too heavily. How a traffic light coalition would position itself remains to be seen. However, Green negotiator Sven Giegold stressed that his party firmly rejects the inclusion of nuclear energy in the taxonomy.
However, nothing has changed in the initial situation. The construction of new nuclear power plants continues to be expensive and protracted. Safety is still a problem. The search for final storage sites remains unresolved.
On the part of the nuclear lobby, one buzzword, in particular, is used to counter criticism of nuclear energy: Small Modular Reactors. These are reactors that are significantly smaller than conventional nuclear power plants. The advantage is that they can be made in whole or in part in factories and then moved to the operation site. This, according to the nuclear industry’s argument, means that the investment costs are significantly lower than for conventional nuclear power plants.
SMRs could thus deliver the domino effect the industry needs to make a comeback: mass production, competitive prices, adapted supply chains, new expertise. “Nuclear projects are emerging today after a long hiatus during which no reactors were built. Now the momentum is picking up again,” says Andrei Goicea of Foratom.
Accordingly, SMRs serve as an essential gateway for the reinvention of nuclear power touted by Macron. “Many states are more comfortable with small reactors than with large nuclear power projects,” Goicea believes. The small nuclear reactors could be used, for example, to produce energy and heat for cities or to produce electricity at industrial sites.
Some member states are already jumping on this bandwagon. France wants to start building small nuclear reactors from 2030 and is mobilizing €1 billion for the purpose. To complement the six hydroelectric plants France is toying with, EDF wants to build at least one SMR-type plant, EDF executive Xavier Ursat told Capital.
In the long term, however, the French energy company plans to export the technology and market it abroad as an aid to the energy transition. After all, the piles are the size of coal mines, which now need to be replaced all over the world. The nuclear lobby also sees the potential. “The old mines provide the location and grid connection for the SMRs, and the coal workers can be retrained to operate the SMRs,” says Andrei Goicea.
In this sense, France’s move would also be a blow to the expansion of renewable energies, which are actually being traded as a long-term solution in the energy transition. In France, at least, the priorities are clear: “France 2030” provides only €500 million for the expansion of renewable energies, against €1 billion for nuclear power.
Nuclear power plants instead of coal-fired power: In this sense, the classification of nuclear power as “sustainable” is becoming the central argument for financing this strategy. Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, Bulgaria, and Italy are also increasingly interested in SMR regarding the energy transition. Warsaw signed corresponding memorandums of understanding with US and Canadian companies just last September. Yesterday the US and Bucharest announced their cooperation in constructing an SMR in Romania by the American company NuScale.
The EU Commission, for its part, does not seem averse to the technology. In any case, the EU consultancy JRC sees SMRs in particular as a solution to the high construction costs of nuclear power plants. After all, there is already growing interest in these reactors in the EU, the researchers write.
At the same time, under Horizon 2022, the Commission is funding the €4 billion project to license the technology, ELSMOR. In the summer, the Commission organized the “first EU workshop on SMRs” to explore the potential of reactors to decarbonize the EU. SMRs offer “innovative energy supply solutions”, and their development could contribute to the innovation and resilience of European industry, Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson replied to a parliamentary question from Tom Berendsen (EPP).
However, it is unclear whether the reactors are actually cheaper in the long run. At the moment, they are only in the project phase. In any case, the Federal Agency for Nuclear Safety does not expect costs to fall: “Significant cost savings due to greater modularity have not been observed in past reactor developments and are not to be expected in the future either, “ it writes in an expert opinion. According to the report, the cost advantage from factory construction would be offset by transportation costs. At the same time, BASE expects the reactors to have short lifetimes and warns that dismantling would be difficult.
In addition, it would take a large number of SMRs to achieve the power output of ordinary reactors. BASE is talking about a factor of 3 to 1000, which means that instead of around 400 nuclear power plants today, it would take “the construction of many thousands to tens of thousands of SMR plants” to achieve the same output. This would also multiply the number of risks associated with the plants. “SMRs shift the disadvantages of nuclear energy production from a (comparatively) few large plants to many small plants,” comments a BMU spokesperson.
Above all, however, SMR does not provide a solution for radioactive waste disposal: This problem would therefore be postponed to future generations, BASE criticizes. FORATOM counters that the EU is a pioneer in this area and planning the first deep geological repositories.
At the heart of the controversy is the question of the extent to which providers of online services are allowed to look into the data of their users, either automatically or manually. Preposterous or indispensable? The real debate about this has only just begun – and will intensify in the future.
Everything is prohibited that is not permitted – this principle has long been applied in data protection law. And this rule-exception relationship applies to all possible data processing: Either there is a legal requirement for permission, or the data subjects must give their active and informed consent to the processing of personal data.
But what about data stored not only on the end device but also at a service provider? Are providers allowed to process the data stored there? On the one hand, this dispute concerns the use of data for the provider’s own purposes, for example, to display relevant advertising to users of Gmail, Google’s mail service. But other purposes are also part of the discussion: Should providers be allowed to actively search for terrorist content, copyright infringements, or videos and images of child abuse in the stored data of their users? Or should they even have to? Where are the limits?
This has been the subject of intense debate for years, as the boundaries between local storage on a terminal device and the simultaneous storage of content on the network are becoming increasingly blurred. The confidentiality of data transmission via telecommunications networks is regulated by the E-Privacy Directive of 1997, which has been revised several times since then. It was actually supposed to be available as a counterpart to the General Data Protection Regulation, also revised in the form of a regulation, as early as 2018. However, there is still a dispute about the e-privacy regulation, which is unlikely to be adopted for the time being, despite minor progress on the Council compromise in recent weeks.
Also due to these delays, further services have been made subject to the ePrivacy Directive with effect from the end of 2020 – including “interpersonal communication services”, i.e., programs that can be used for chatting without the telephone network being responsible for this, such as WhatsApp, Threema, or Telegram.
This extension caused an unexpected intervention on the part of Ashton Kutcher: The US actor publicly contacted SPD chairwoman Saskia Esken and SPD MEP Birgit Sippel at the end of October 2020, which triggered some media hype. Kutcher is campaigning against the spread of child abuse depictions – and saw a problem: The extension of the ePrivacy Directive would have meant that companies such as Facebook, which previously filtered out content using algorithms for already known depictions of child abuse, would no longer be allowed to do so. A view that more legally trained actors also shared.
In July, shortly before the summer break, the European Parliament passed a regulation that temporarily suspends this ban for a maximum of three years, unless other legislation addresses the problem differently.
But this does not solve the problem. The trend towards the cloud and online service providers, from Microsoft and Apple to Dropbox and chat services, where a third party stores the data, put old concepts of regulation in distress. Whereas in the past, a clear distinction had to be made between ongoing communication – for example, a telephone call or fax dispatch – and dormant communication – the e-mail that was stored exclusively on the recipient’s computer – today content is both dormant and ongoing.
What are still individual cases today may affect many more users tomorrow: Which data streams in edge computing should be allowed to be examined, when, and by whom? If end devices increasingly become terminals for cloud services, what will become of the fundamental right to privacy, or should this simply not apply to automated systems?
Moreover, the debate coincides with a second one: that around effective encryption. After all, any investigation of content by providers can only take place in unencrypted content or content that can be decrypted with a provider’s master key. Effective end-to-end encryption prevents reading from one end device to another – and even in cloud storage, effective encryption means that providers cannot know what is actually on their servers. This is why many providers exclude such encryption from the outset and explicitly allow the search of online backups and online storage in their terms and conditions.
But it is precisely in the area of messenger that an intense debate is currently raging after Apple announced that it would not only search for images of child abuse in the iCloud storage. The company also wants to include a filter function in iMessage, the messenger service that is part of the iOS operating system – albeit only for accounts of minors that are assigned to a family account.
But precisely this kind of thing could now become the subject of another regulation – which was supposed to come in December. Dubravka Šuica and Margaritis Schinas were then supposed to present measures to “effectively fight child sexual abuse online”. But the announcement has disappeared from the Commission’s work plan in the past two weeks.
The scope is said to be broad: “All means of communication” should be included in the Commission’s proposal, including private communications. Moreover, as Deputy Director General Olivier Onidi put it in response to a question from Breyer, end-to-end encryption should not lead to providers failing to meet possible regulatory obligations – but that is technically impossible: Truly secure encryption always provides security even against intrusions by an intermediary service.
So the debate about “chat control” may be more of an occasion. But it is high time to discuss these issues more intensively – even if the campaign launched by the German parliamentary pirate and professional magistrate Breyer is not the most objective approach to the subject.
The goal is clear. However, to actually limit global warming to 1.5 °C, mere lip service to climate neutrality around the middle of the century will not be enough. BMU State Secretary Jochen Flasbarth once again made this clear at the World Climate Conference in Glasgow and called for a more specific commitment. He said that the decade was crucial for clear measures and that the conditions for this were being built in Glasgow in the next few days.
This also includes helping to emerge and developing countries to shift to green technologies. The promise by industrialized nations to provide $100 billion for this very purpose from 2020 will probably only be implemented with a three-year delay. This sum is “miles away from the actual needs of the poorest and most vulnerable to the climate crisis,” says Christoph Bals, political director of the environmental organization Germanwatch. The issue of climate financing remains controversial and is one of the key topics of COP26.
The energy partnership with South Africa announced on Tuesday could be an important step in this direction. Together with the EU, France, the UK, and the US, Germany has pledged to support the first partner country in the Southern Hemisphere in phasing out coal. Germanwatch Director Bals welcomes the initiative and calls for it to be extended to other coal-dependent emerging economies such as India and Indonesia in the near future.
South Africa is the seventh-largest coal producer in the world and generates almost 90 percent of its power demand from coal. The country ranks 9th in the global ranking of carbon dioxide emissions per capita.
The new partnership provides for a total of $8.5 billion in financial aid over the next five years, much of it in the form of loans. Germany intends to contribute just under €700 million. The funds are intended to enable entry into renewable energies, provide technological innovations, including green hydrogen, for South Africa and create new jobs. More than 90,000 workers still work in coal mines, unemployment is high, and career chances for young people are poor. Germany would also provide its own experience. After all, the coal phase-out is not easy here either and must not be at the expense of workers, said State Secretary Maria Flachsbarth of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.
In a report to the United Nations back in September, South Africa announced plans to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by a third by 2030 and close at least six coal-fired power plants. Helen Mountford, Vice-President for climate and economics at the World Resources Institute (WRI), told Bloomberg that South Africa’s new climate plan “underscores the goal of achieving net-zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 and sets the stage for the country to invest heavily in clean energy while accelerating the transition away from coal.”
Previously, the state-owned utility Eskom, which is responsible for around 90 percent of power generation in South Africa, had invested a lot of money in the construction of new coal-fired power plants, running up huge debts in the process. But the country’s outdated plants do not supply enough power to meet the growing demand of the approximately 60 million South Africans. Eskom was therefore forced to ration power supply for several years.
Now, Africa’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter has proposed a $10 billion plan to its lenders to shut down most of its coal-fired power plants by 2050 and shift to renewable energy. Various scenarios were modeled to achieve the net-zero emissions target by 2050, said Mandy Rambharos, Eskom’s head of department for Just Energy Transition. “The whole world is transitioning, we have to get on this bandwagon – for South Africa to remain competitive and for our economy to grow.”
The partnership with South Africa for a socially just energy transition could set standards for a new phase of international climate cooperation, says Federal Environment Minister Svenja Schulze. A successful coal phase-out in South Africa could become a model project for other regions. The potential for power generation from renewables on the African continent is huge, but it has hardly been utilized so far.
“Artificial intelligence is a hot topic here in Brussels at the moment,” says Ursula Pachl. The Deputy Director-General of the European Consumer Organization BEUC (Bureau Européen des Unions de Consommateurs) has been championing the interests of consumers for over 20 years. BEUC is an umbrella organization with currently 45 members. What they all have in common is that they are independent European national consumer associations. “Our task is to represent the interests of the member organizations and thus indirectly those of European consumers, and to influence European policy in their interests”. The association does this primarily by submitting statements on European legislative projects affecting consumer interests to the European Parliament.
Ursula Pachl’s commitment to consumers began at a national level: “My first job after graduating was at the Ministry of Health and Consumer Protection in Vienna. There, I already worked for the interests of Austrian consumers by preparing statements on legislative proposals, it was a lot about product safety, for example.” Before Pachl started her first job, she studied law in Innsbruck. Even then, her motivation was to defend the rights of individuals: “Justice has always been important to me, so I’m grateful to be able to contribute a little bit to a fairer world with my job.” In 1997 Ursula Pachl applied for the position of Legal Officer at BEUC and has worked for the consumer association ever since.
Ursula Pachl is currently focusing on artificial intelligence (AI). In April, the European Commission presented a draft law to regulate the use of AI. “This is the first draft law on artificial intelligence that exists anywhere in the world. Europe wants to set the tone in AI regulation,” says Pachl. From BEUC’s point of view, however, the Commission’s draft needs to be greatly improved: “The constant online surveillance of consumers needs to be more strongly restricted by regulation.” The new AI law could make a significant contribution to this. So-called social scoring – the evaluation of human behavior – should be banned, not only when it is utilized by authorities but also when it is used by companies for commercial purposes. Similarly, biometric identification in public spaces should not be allowed, nor should so-called emotion recognition for, among other things, commercial purposes. “I am committed to ensuring that these bans are included in the new AI law,” assures Pachl.
The law is expected to be finalized in 2023 and will apply to all companies operating on the European market two years later. However, it is already doubtful how action can be taken in the future against companies that are based outside Europe: “It will be difficult to take action against a company that is only based in Asia, for example, in the event of an infringement,” says Pachl. So the question of how to enforce the law internationally will require a lot of thought and discussion. Alina Jensen
