Ursula von der Leyen is spending a lot of time on airplanes these days. On her way from the African climate summit in Nairobi to the G20 summit in New Delhi, the Commission President made a stopover in the United Arab Emirates yesterday. There, she met with President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan to discuss the Ukraine war and the circumvention of Western sanctions against Russia. The emirates are reputed to serve as a hub for such matters. The UN climate conference in Dubai in December also came up.
Topics that she and Council President Charles Michel will encounter in New Delhi among the G20 heads of state and government. However, the Ukraine conflict and its implications for the rest of the world continue to dominate discussions among the world’s leading industrial and emerging economies. There is little room for other pressing issues like climate action.
From Berlin, Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Finance Minister Christian Lindner are traveling. The sherpas were still negotiating the wording of the closing statement on the eve of the summit. Host Narendra Modi is determined to pass a joint text. The prime minister wants to use the stage to present India as a diplomatic heavyweight to the world. However, according to the German government, reaching an agreement is not certain.
Modi’s negotiators face a Herculean task – for a consensus-approved declaration, all delegations must agree on all text elements. However, on many issues, the Western G7 countries are at odds with the extended BRICS bloc.
Finding a compromise on the wording regarding the Ukraine conflict and its consequences is particularly challenging, with the alliances running slightly differently in this case. At the recent summit in Bali, the G20 agreed on the wording “most members strongly condemned the war in Ukraine“. However, Russia’s position was taken into account with the sentence that there were “different views”. Modi’s desired consensus solution complicates such an exit.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is leading the negotiations for Moscow. President Vladimir Putin is staying away from the meeting, as is Chinese President Xi Jinping. So far, Beijing has been closely aligned with Moscow in the talks. Minister President Li Qiang will represent Xi. However, the premier does not have the same political weight as Xi, limiting China’s negotiating room at the summit.
It appears that there will be no clear condemnation of the Russian war. Russian and Chinese representatives had already made this clear before the summit of the leaders. The German government now hopes that the heads of state and government will at least agree that the territorial integrity of every state is inviolable. “That would be a lot already,” they said.
However, Europeans hope to include a demand for the resumption of the grain agreement in the declaration. There is support for this within the G20. Russia’s termination of the UN-mediated deal and Russian attacks on Ukraine’s export infrastructure also concern many emerging economies. At the same time, they weaken Moscow’s argument that Western sanctions are responsible for rising global food prices.
The search for common ground in the fight against climate change is also bumpy. The exit from fossil fuels such as coal and oil is particularly contentious. There is an alliance of Russia, China and Saudi Arabia that is making joint agreements at the G20 level more difficult, according to the German government. The trio is receiving increasingly more support from India, which relies on relatively cheap Russian oil. Despite this hurdle, Germany is banking on the G20 summit “finding an ambitious language” regarding the expansion of renewable energies.
India, for example, advocates mentioning a tripling of capacities for renewable energies and a doubling of energy efficiency goals in the closing statement. European G20 states and EU representatives support the presidency in this regard. However, other countries are more reserved. with Damir Fras
The Industry Committee (ITRE) in the EU Parliament approved its report on the Critical Raw Materials Act on Thursday. Members of Parliament accepted the draft by rapporteur Nicola Beer (Renew) with 53 votes in favor, one against, and five abstentions. The plenary is scheduled to vote on it next week.
“The Industry Committee has laid the foundation for stable European sovereignty and competitiveness today,” said Beer. “The agreed report provides a clear blueprint towards European supply security with a research and innovation offensive along the entire value chain.”
The Critical Raw Materials Act aims to strengthen value chains for 16 strategic raw materials. This involves establishing criteria for strategic projects as well as targets for mining, processing, recycling and import diversification. The report adopted now amends some of the benchmarks proposed in the Commission’s draft:
ITRE maintains the benchmarks for ten percent domestic mining capacities and a maximum of 65 percent imports of a raw material from a single third country. The committee adds an amendment seemingly referring to China: “Priority should be given to reducing dependence on unreliable partners who do not share EU values, respect for human rights, democracy and the rule of law,” the text says.
Greens and Social Democrats have managed to include a (albeit somewhat vague) goal to reduce raw material demand in the text: The EU should consume fewer critical raw materials through efficiency gains and substitution than according to a reference scenario, for which the Commission is to regularly make projections and break them down for member states and economic sectors. Member states are also expected to include the reduction of increased consumption of critical raw materials in their national circular economy programs.
The report overall strengthens requirements for sustainability and circularity as well as the promotion of the substitution of strategic raw materials. Secondary raw materials, for instance, are included in the definition of raw material extraction. The substitution of strategic raw materials, climate, environmental, and human rights issues are incorporated into the criteria for recognizing strategic projects, including in third countries. Strategic projects in third countries should only be carried out in “like-minded partner countries,” according to the text.
The dispute between the Greens and the EPP over whether raw material projects in protected areas should be approved seems to have been resolved through a compromise. According to the report, the Commission may not recognize a refining or recycling project in a protected area as a strategic project unless it is sufficiently justified. According to the parliamentary report, mining projects can also take place in protected areas, provided it is in the “public interest”.
The ITRE supports the Commission’s proposals regarding the duration of approval procedures (24 months for strategic mining projects, twelve months for processing and recycling projects). These had been criticized as very short and unrealistic. The report adds a maximum duration of 18 months for projects involving mineral waste.
The report also strengthens the inclusion of affected communities. Anyone submitting an application for a strategic project must provide a plan with measures “to ensure meaningful involvement and active participation of affected communities,” establish communication channels with them, and ensure that involuntary relocations take place only as a last resort. The text also refers to the International Labour Organization (ILO) standards.
Many of the proposals from Beer’s draft report, aimed at reducing bureaucratic and administrative burdens for companies and authorities, have been adopted. The role of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is also strengthened.
Reactions from shadow rapporteurs were mostly positive. Hildegard Bentele (EPP) praised the report as a “key foundation” for “a European raw materials law that thinks strategically and globally about raw materials and ensures access to reliable sources.” Many aspects from Parliament’s 2021 initiative report can be found in the report.
Henrike Hahn (Greens) said that the report contains “many good elements, especially provisions for the circular economy“. However, in some aspects, the compromise is not as ambitious as she would have liked: “EU support for competitive ‘Made in Europe’ economic activity must always conjugate the highest possible ecological and social criteria equally – the CRMA compromise in the ITRE committee has not fully utilized the potential to support companies in the best possible sustainable way.” Accelerating approval procedures should not lead to undermining environmental and social standards, she added.
The plenary of the Parliament in Strasbourg is set to vote on the report next week. The Council has already adopted its position, so trilogue negotiations could begin soon. The goal of the Spanish Council Presidency is to conclude these by the end of the year.
One of the summer’s topics in France was whether the French left would field a joint list in the upcoming European elections. The answer came with the start of the “Rentrée”: It will be “non”. The Greens, the Communist Party and the Socialist Party will field their own lists.
In doing so, they are rejecting La France Insoumise (LFI), the party led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon. However, this did not prevent the party from assigning European MEP Martin Aubry to “coordinate the campaign” for La France insoumise last Tuesday. The leader of the Insoumis in the European Parliament is running “with the aim of a unified NUPES list“, a left-wing alliance for the 2024 European elections.
Why? “For us, the European election cannot be separated from the context in which the country lives and which illustrates a broader trend in Europe,” says LFI in its press release. According to LFI’s logic, only one list can actually “defeat the Macronist bloc and the Rassemblement National list” in France.
Apart from the political message conveyed in this statement by LFI, it clearly highlights a peculiarity of French politics: that European elections serve as a political springboard for national politics. “In France, national considerations come first,” says Eric Maurice, Head of the Brussels Office of the Schuman Foundation. “The European elections in June 2024 are primarily perceived as an interim election before the next national elections in 2027.”
The fact that the left-wing parties united under the umbrella of NUPES are fielding their own list for the European elections allows them to diminish the political weight of LFI within this organization. This way, they remain audible on the national political stage, explained a source from the Paris Parliament.
For the conservative Les Républicains (LR) on the right side of the political spectrum, the European elections are simply a matter of “political survival”, the source continued. With only eight members in the European Parliament, their voice is not really heard. “Even if François-Xavier Bellamy does a good job there, you hardly hear him. He’s not a politician; he was brought in from nowhere by Laurent Wauquiez, he has no national presence.”
LR, led by Bellamy in 2019, had received only 8.48 percent of the votes at the time and was squeezed between President Emmanuel Macron’s party Renaissance and the far-right Rassemblement National (RN). If LR falls below five percent in the upcoming European elections, “what voice will they have in France?” asks our Parisian interlocutor with feigned innocence.
“In European elections, French voters generally tend to vote for protest parties like Rassemblement National or the Greens,” explains Eric Maurice. Indeed, the Socialist Party and the Republicans were the losers in the last elections. Rassemblement National, the Greens and Renaissance benefited from it.
Renaissance even emerged as the biggest winner in the last European elections and also has the largest political delegation from France in the European Parliament with 23 MEPs. Within the heterogeneous group represented by Renew, it holds considerable weight.
However, the President’s party has not yet announced its lead candidate for the next European elections. But the discreet Secretary of State for Europe, Laurence Boone, could well see herself taking the lead. Her statements to the French press are more than clear (see here or here).
To prepare for this challenging path, she is already building her team and has just hired a new Director of Communications: Hugues Beaudouin. The former journalist and Brussels correspondent joined the Renew group in 2020 and has been in charge of communication for the group in the European Parliament. In a few weeks, he will take up his duties as Communications Advisor to the Secretary of State for European Affairs. This transfer is temporary. He plans to resume his responsibilities with the Renew group after the elections.
It is important to remember here that Nathalie Loiseau, the former Secretary of State for Europe, was the lead candidate for the French President’s party in the last European elections. So, there are many signs in favor of Laurence Boone.
However, in the current context where nationalism is on the rise and the discourse of identity is becoming deeply entrenched, it is not certain this time that the consciously European message of Renaissance will succeed, even though issues like ecological transition, debt, or the war in Ukraine have national consequences but require European solutions. The further question is whether French political parties will treat them as such.
Today, we have cake for dessert again. No, unfortunately, not for you, but for the head of the Irish budget airline Ryanair. Climate activists threw a soy whipped cream cake in Michael O’Leary’s face. And since the Ryanair CEO was in Brussels for PR purposes, there was someone filming the pie attack – and Ryanair shared it with the world via X.
“Stop the environmental pollution,” shouted a black-clad protester during the pie attack. Another cake hit the back of the Ryanair CEO’s head. The demonstrators, who claimed no affiliation with any group, were protesting against the climate-damaging CO2 emissions of air travel.
According to information from the Brussels NGO Transport & Environment, Ryanair was once again the airline in Europe that had the greatest environmental impact last year, with CO2 emissions of 13.3 million tons.
But that wasn’t why O’Leary was in Brussels. Rather, he wanted to present a petition with 1.5 million signatures to Ursula von der Leyen and the Commission. In it, Ryanair and the signatories demand that overflights over France remain possible even when air traffic control in France is on strike.
Ryanair and other airlines were affected by the massive strikes by air traffic controllers in the dispute over the retirement age in France and had to take detours. In doing so, the planes emitted even more climate-damaging CO2. But that’s a whole different pie. vis
Ursula von der Leyen is spending a lot of time on airplanes these days. On her way from the African climate summit in Nairobi to the G20 summit in New Delhi, the Commission President made a stopover in the United Arab Emirates yesterday. There, she met with President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan to discuss the Ukraine war and the circumvention of Western sanctions against Russia. The emirates are reputed to serve as a hub for such matters. The UN climate conference in Dubai in December also came up.
Topics that she and Council President Charles Michel will encounter in New Delhi among the G20 heads of state and government. However, the Ukraine conflict and its implications for the rest of the world continue to dominate discussions among the world’s leading industrial and emerging economies. There is little room for other pressing issues like climate action.
From Berlin, Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Finance Minister Christian Lindner are traveling. The sherpas were still negotiating the wording of the closing statement on the eve of the summit. Host Narendra Modi is determined to pass a joint text. The prime minister wants to use the stage to present India as a diplomatic heavyweight to the world. However, according to the German government, reaching an agreement is not certain.
Modi’s negotiators face a Herculean task – for a consensus-approved declaration, all delegations must agree on all text elements. However, on many issues, the Western G7 countries are at odds with the extended BRICS bloc.
Finding a compromise on the wording regarding the Ukraine conflict and its consequences is particularly challenging, with the alliances running slightly differently in this case. At the recent summit in Bali, the G20 agreed on the wording “most members strongly condemned the war in Ukraine“. However, Russia’s position was taken into account with the sentence that there were “different views”. Modi’s desired consensus solution complicates such an exit.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is leading the negotiations for Moscow. President Vladimir Putin is staying away from the meeting, as is Chinese President Xi Jinping. So far, Beijing has been closely aligned with Moscow in the talks. Minister President Li Qiang will represent Xi. However, the premier does not have the same political weight as Xi, limiting China’s negotiating room at the summit.
It appears that there will be no clear condemnation of the Russian war. Russian and Chinese representatives had already made this clear before the summit of the leaders. The German government now hopes that the heads of state and government will at least agree that the territorial integrity of every state is inviolable. “That would be a lot already,” they said.
However, Europeans hope to include a demand for the resumption of the grain agreement in the declaration. There is support for this within the G20. Russia’s termination of the UN-mediated deal and Russian attacks on Ukraine’s export infrastructure also concern many emerging economies. At the same time, they weaken Moscow’s argument that Western sanctions are responsible for rising global food prices.
The search for common ground in the fight against climate change is also bumpy. The exit from fossil fuels such as coal and oil is particularly contentious. There is an alliance of Russia, China and Saudi Arabia that is making joint agreements at the G20 level more difficult, according to the German government. The trio is receiving increasingly more support from India, which relies on relatively cheap Russian oil. Despite this hurdle, Germany is banking on the G20 summit “finding an ambitious language” regarding the expansion of renewable energies.
India, for example, advocates mentioning a tripling of capacities for renewable energies and a doubling of energy efficiency goals in the closing statement. European G20 states and EU representatives support the presidency in this regard. However, other countries are more reserved. with Damir Fras
The Industry Committee (ITRE) in the EU Parliament approved its report on the Critical Raw Materials Act on Thursday. Members of Parliament accepted the draft by rapporteur Nicola Beer (Renew) with 53 votes in favor, one against, and five abstentions. The plenary is scheduled to vote on it next week.
“The Industry Committee has laid the foundation for stable European sovereignty and competitiveness today,” said Beer. “The agreed report provides a clear blueprint towards European supply security with a research and innovation offensive along the entire value chain.”
The Critical Raw Materials Act aims to strengthen value chains for 16 strategic raw materials. This involves establishing criteria for strategic projects as well as targets for mining, processing, recycling and import diversification. The report adopted now amends some of the benchmarks proposed in the Commission’s draft:
ITRE maintains the benchmarks for ten percent domestic mining capacities and a maximum of 65 percent imports of a raw material from a single third country. The committee adds an amendment seemingly referring to China: “Priority should be given to reducing dependence on unreliable partners who do not share EU values, respect for human rights, democracy and the rule of law,” the text says.
Greens and Social Democrats have managed to include a (albeit somewhat vague) goal to reduce raw material demand in the text: The EU should consume fewer critical raw materials through efficiency gains and substitution than according to a reference scenario, for which the Commission is to regularly make projections and break them down for member states and economic sectors. Member states are also expected to include the reduction of increased consumption of critical raw materials in their national circular economy programs.
The report overall strengthens requirements for sustainability and circularity as well as the promotion of the substitution of strategic raw materials. Secondary raw materials, for instance, are included in the definition of raw material extraction. The substitution of strategic raw materials, climate, environmental, and human rights issues are incorporated into the criteria for recognizing strategic projects, including in third countries. Strategic projects in third countries should only be carried out in “like-minded partner countries,” according to the text.
The dispute between the Greens and the EPP over whether raw material projects in protected areas should be approved seems to have been resolved through a compromise. According to the report, the Commission may not recognize a refining or recycling project in a protected area as a strategic project unless it is sufficiently justified. According to the parliamentary report, mining projects can also take place in protected areas, provided it is in the “public interest”.
The ITRE supports the Commission’s proposals regarding the duration of approval procedures (24 months for strategic mining projects, twelve months for processing and recycling projects). These had been criticized as very short and unrealistic. The report adds a maximum duration of 18 months for projects involving mineral waste.
The report also strengthens the inclusion of affected communities. Anyone submitting an application for a strategic project must provide a plan with measures “to ensure meaningful involvement and active participation of affected communities,” establish communication channels with them, and ensure that involuntary relocations take place only as a last resort. The text also refers to the International Labour Organization (ILO) standards.
Many of the proposals from Beer’s draft report, aimed at reducing bureaucratic and administrative burdens for companies and authorities, have been adopted. The role of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is also strengthened.
Reactions from shadow rapporteurs were mostly positive. Hildegard Bentele (EPP) praised the report as a “key foundation” for “a European raw materials law that thinks strategically and globally about raw materials and ensures access to reliable sources.” Many aspects from Parliament’s 2021 initiative report can be found in the report.
Henrike Hahn (Greens) said that the report contains “many good elements, especially provisions for the circular economy“. However, in some aspects, the compromise is not as ambitious as she would have liked: “EU support for competitive ‘Made in Europe’ economic activity must always conjugate the highest possible ecological and social criteria equally – the CRMA compromise in the ITRE committee has not fully utilized the potential to support companies in the best possible sustainable way.” Accelerating approval procedures should not lead to undermining environmental and social standards, she added.
The plenary of the Parliament in Strasbourg is set to vote on the report next week. The Council has already adopted its position, so trilogue negotiations could begin soon. The goal of the Spanish Council Presidency is to conclude these by the end of the year.
One of the summer’s topics in France was whether the French left would field a joint list in the upcoming European elections. The answer came with the start of the “Rentrée”: It will be “non”. The Greens, the Communist Party and the Socialist Party will field their own lists.
In doing so, they are rejecting La France Insoumise (LFI), the party led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon. However, this did not prevent the party from assigning European MEP Martin Aubry to “coordinate the campaign” for La France insoumise last Tuesday. The leader of the Insoumis in the European Parliament is running “with the aim of a unified NUPES list“, a left-wing alliance for the 2024 European elections.
Why? “For us, the European election cannot be separated from the context in which the country lives and which illustrates a broader trend in Europe,” says LFI in its press release. According to LFI’s logic, only one list can actually “defeat the Macronist bloc and the Rassemblement National list” in France.
Apart from the political message conveyed in this statement by LFI, it clearly highlights a peculiarity of French politics: that European elections serve as a political springboard for national politics. “In France, national considerations come first,” says Eric Maurice, Head of the Brussels Office of the Schuman Foundation. “The European elections in June 2024 are primarily perceived as an interim election before the next national elections in 2027.”
The fact that the left-wing parties united under the umbrella of NUPES are fielding their own list for the European elections allows them to diminish the political weight of LFI within this organization. This way, they remain audible on the national political stage, explained a source from the Paris Parliament.
For the conservative Les Républicains (LR) on the right side of the political spectrum, the European elections are simply a matter of “political survival”, the source continued. With only eight members in the European Parliament, their voice is not really heard. “Even if François-Xavier Bellamy does a good job there, you hardly hear him. He’s not a politician; he was brought in from nowhere by Laurent Wauquiez, he has no national presence.”
LR, led by Bellamy in 2019, had received only 8.48 percent of the votes at the time and was squeezed between President Emmanuel Macron’s party Renaissance and the far-right Rassemblement National (RN). If LR falls below five percent in the upcoming European elections, “what voice will they have in France?” asks our Parisian interlocutor with feigned innocence.
“In European elections, French voters generally tend to vote for protest parties like Rassemblement National or the Greens,” explains Eric Maurice. Indeed, the Socialist Party and the Republicans were the losers in the last elections. Rassemblement National, the Greens and Renaissance benefited from it.
Renaissance even emerged as the biggest winner in the last European elections and also has the largest political delegation from France in the European Parliament with 23 MEPs. Within the heterogeneous group represented by Renew, it holds considerable weight.
However, the President’s party has not yet announced its lead candidate for the next European elections. But the discreet Secretary of State for Europe, Laurence Boone, could well see herself taking the lead. Her statements to the French press are more than clear (see here or here).
To prepare for this challenging path, she is already building her team and has just hired a new Director of Communications: Hugues Beaudouin. The former journalist and Brussels correspondent joined the Renew group in 2020 and has been in charge of communication for the group in the European Parliament. In a few weeks, he will take up his duties as Communications Advisor to the Secretary of State for European Affairs. This transfer is temporary. He plans to resume his responsibilities with the Renew group after the elections.
It is important to remember here that Nathalie Loiseau, the former Secretary of State for Europe, was the lead candidate for the French President’s party in the last European elections. So, there are many signs in favor of Laurence Boone.
However, in the current context where nationalism is on the rise and the discourse of identity is becoming deeply entrenched, it is not certain this time that the consciously European message of Renaissance will succeed, even though issues like ecological transition, debt, or the war in Ukraine have national consequences but require European solutions. The further question is whether French political parties will treat them as such.
Today, we have cake for dessert again. No, unfortunately, not for you, but for the head of the Irish budget airline Ryanair. Climate activists threw a soy whipped cream cake in Michael O’Leary’s face. And since the Ryanair CEO was in Brussels for PR purposes, there was someone filming the pie attack – and Ryanair shared it with the world via X.
“Stop the environmental pollution,” shouted a black-clad protester during the pie attack. Another cake hit the back of the Ryanair CEO’s head. The demonstrators, who claimed no affiliation with any group, were protesting against the climate-damaging CO2 emissions of air travel.
According to information from the Brussels NGO Transport & Environment, Ryanair was once again the airline in Europe that had the greatest environmental impact last year, with CO2 emissions of 13.3 million tons.
But that wasn’t why O’Leary was in Brussels. Rather, he wanted to present a petition with 1.5 million signatures to Ursula von der Leyen and the Commission. In it, Ryanair and the signatories demand that overflights over France remain possible even when air traffic control in France is on strike.
Ryanair and other airlines were affected by the massive strikes by air traffic controllers in the dispute over the retirement age in France and had to take detours. In doing so, the planes emitted even more climate-damaging CO2. But that’s a whole different pie. vis
