The Commission presented the draft law on the gas price cap after all. Several member states are said to have threatened to block the next emergency regulation on the energy crisis if a draft is not submitted to energy ministers before their meeting on Thursday. But the Commission wants to impose another condition: If the market correction mechanism is indeed activated, it wants to extend the gas savings target beyond March 2023. As recently as Friday, however, the Permanent Representatives wanted to remove all conditions for the price cap, as Manuel Berkel learned.
The Energy Charter Conference is taking place in Mongolia today. It is unlikely that a reform of the International Investment Treaties will take place there. A good part of the governments in the EU – such as Germany, France and the Netherlands – as well as climate activists reject it. As a result, the EU lacks the mandate to approve this reform, as Charlotte Wirth reports. The EU Commission’s last resort is a classic example of when nothing really works: It tries to postpone the vote.
A political scientist from Berlin has treated himself to a literary treat of a special kind. Christian Rauh from the Social Science Research Center Berlin used algorithms to examine around 45,000 press releases from the Commission from 1985 to 2020 that were available in English. His conclusion: The Commission has a “considerable deficit” in communication, reports Markus Grabitz. The language is very complex, peppered with special terms, and the Commission prefers a nominal style.
With the emergency regulation, the Commission wants to limit extremely high gas prices for one year, as was the case last summer. Europe.Table had already reported on the key points of the market correction mechanism. A concrete value for the price cap has not been decided yet and, therefore, not included in the bill. However, the Commission has made a number of changes to the key points.
In the summer, the member states agreed to reduce gas consumption by 15 percent by March 2023. A new decision could make this target mandatory. With the current draft, the Commission now wants to prevent EU member states from consuming more gas despite the politically set price brake. If the gas price cap is activated, the Commission should therefore submit another legislative proposal to extend the gas savings target beyond March, according to the explanatory memorandum.
Within two weeks of activating the price cap, member states are also expected to outline to the Commission what measures they have already taken to ensure that gas and electricity consumption do not increase and that the recently adopted gas and electricity savings targets are met.
In addition to the ECB, the financial supervisory authority ESMA and the energy supervisory authority ACER, industry associations are now to be involved in monitoring the consequences of the gas price cap – via the Gas Coordination Group and the gas network operators’ organization ENTSOG. The European consumer protection association BEUC is also represented in the former.
The Commission also wants to tighten up the conditions under which it can suspend the gas price cap. “Any kind of gas rationing” is now to be sufficient to stop the mechanism. This is now also to apply if “the validity of existing gas supply contracts” is affected – the key points referred only to long-term contracts.
If the stability of the energy futures markets is threatened, ESMA and ENTSOG are to issue an emergency assessment on the same day, which may lead to the suspension of the gas price cap.
However, the debate in COREPER on Friday went in the completely opposite direction. As Europe.Table learned, a majority of the member states wanted to completely delete the article with the safety conditions for the introduction of the market correction mechanism. Strong opposition came from Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark in particular. On Wednesday, the Permanent Representatives will meet again before the Energy Ministers meet on Thursday.
The Commission’s draft also states by when it plans to decide whether to extend the emergency regulation. By Nov. 1, 2023, it wants to present an evaluation that will be the basis for the decision.
The EU lacks the mandate to agree to modernize the controversial International Investment Treaties at today’s Energy Charter Conference in Mongolia. So has the reform failed? “The modernization process is over,” is how one EU diplomat puts it, anyway. Christian Ehler (CDU/CSU), a member of the EPP, takes a similar view. The German government had “committed intellectual and political suicide” by announcing its withdrawal and blocking the reform of the Charter.
The EU Commission continues to try to postpone the vote after no qualified majority could be found for the reform of the treaties in the Permanent Representatives Committee on Friday. The last chance to do so is likely to come today when the agenda is adopted. Because without an EU position, there is a deadlock.
The member states could not simply vote individually in the absence of a legal decision. For its part, the EU cannot cast a vote on behalf of the EU26. Its only option, therefore, is to abstain. But can a vote even take place without the vote of 26 of all 53 contracting parties?
According to the Energy Charter Treaty, no. The vote is based on the consensus principle. In other words, the reform fails only if someone votes against it. At the same time, Article 36(6) of the ECT states that a simple majority is required. If the EU abstains, there are still 26 votes left, because both the EU and the EU26 abstain. Belarus is also suspended and may not vote. Even if the remaining 25 ECT parties all vote in favor of modernization, a simple majority would not be achieved.
In practice, such a scenario is unlikely anyway. It was the EU that initiated the reform of the controversial treaty. Other ECT parties, such as Japan and Kazakhstan, were not convinced by the reform from the outset.
The EU Commission is therefore hoping for a postponement of the vote. It wants to discuss the next steps with the EU member states first. But postponing the vote only postpones the problem: The Energy Charter Conference meets only once a year. “The fact that we are then stuck in limbo is the Commission’s own fault. It should now start the process of leaving the EU,” says Christina Eckes, a lecturer in European and public law at Maastricht University.
Among EU diplomats, the modernization of the ECT seems to have been written off already. The mood for an EU exit is constructive in the Council. On Thursday, the EU Parliament will vote on its position on the Energy Charter. However, the vote is rather symbolic.
But withdrawing from the Energy Charter without modernization entails some legal uncertainties, warns Christian Tietje, lecturer in public law, European law and international economic law at the University of Halle. One example is the additional protocol that the EU, Euratom and the 26 members of the ETC are to conclude among themselves independently of modernization. In this so-called inter se agreement, they want to commit themselves not to allow ECT lawsuits within the EU and to refrain from the sunset clause of the Energy Charter.
But such an agreement would not prevent EU investors from suing EU states, Tietje warns. “The arbitration courts would have to decide on the validity of the agreement in each individual case.” It is also unclear whether the Energy Charter’s notorious 20-year sunset clause can really be lifted with an additional protocol.
The risk of a lawsuit would therefore continue to exist for the duration of the forfeiture clause. Moreover, there are no precedents in arbitration courts: Judges, therefore, decide anew each trial whether the agreement is valid.
If the Energy Charter were to be reformed, at least intra-EU lawsuits would be ruled out. This is because the modernized text contains a clause that explicitly abolishes them. Although such lawsuits should theoretically be obsolete anyway since the Komstroy ruling of 2021, arbitration courts do not always comply with EU law.
Reform or not: Without a unified EU position, there is no certainty of a legal situation, warns Christian Tietje. If Germany withdraws from the Charter, for example, it will still be bound by the Charter to some extent as long as the EU remains in the ECT. Moreover, the most problematic aspects of the treaty, the arbitration courts, are the competence of the EU.
EU law also states that member states may not act contrary to EU positions. There is also a risk that arbitration proceedings could be postponed: For example, an investor could sue the EU instead of Germany after the expiration of the sunset clause.
The Commission uses language that is difficult to understand in its press releases. This is the conclusion drawn by Christian Rauh of the WZB Berlin Social Science Center, who used algorithms to examine around 45,000 Commission press releases from 1985 to 2020 that were available in English. The public politicization of European integration shows that there is a growing need for communication in EU politics, he said. “However, the messages that the Commission sends to citizens do not meet this need,” Rauh continued. With his study, the political scientist attests to a “considerable deficit in communication” on the part of the Commission.
He criticizes three points. The language of the Commission is:
Rauh compared the Commission’s language with the language in 92,000 press releases from the governments of Great Britain and Ireland. He also correlated it with journalistic articles and with essays from academia. He concludes that the language in British press releases is at about the educational level of high school texts. In contrast, the Commission uses language that is appropriate to the educational level of college graduates. The Commission uses as many technical terms (“jargon”) as is more common among scientists. In the Commission’s press releases, he said, sentences are longer on average, and the average number of syllables in words is also higher. What the Commission feeds into the public debate differs significantly from the language an EU citizen would otherwise encounter.
In addition, noun structures occur conspicuously often in the sentence structure of the Commission. This nominal style is distinguished from a language that relies more on verbs (verbal style). The linguists’ verdict: nominal style tends to disguise who is the author of an action, and verbal style tends to convey concrete clues about the author. The Commission’s press releases were characterized by an “unusually pronounced nominal style.” The style gives “preference to abstract processes over temporally identifiable sequences of actions.”
Rauh attests to the Commission’s inability to learn: “The technocratic language has hardly changed at all in the course of the last 35 years of European integration.” This is true, he says, even though the Commission has repeatedly paid “lip service” to better communicate with citizens. It has also invested money to improve the organization, strategy and personnel in communication.
The Commission’s technocratic style may be suitable for reaching the political professionals in the Council and the European Parliament as well as lobbyists. However, the style of language is a missed opportunity in communicating with the public, which is characterized by increasing political polarization, high voting shares for parties critical of the EU, and politicians in the member states who like to blame Brussels for problems. The language of the technocrats plays into the hands of those who already like to attest to Brussels’ remoteness from the citizens.
Christiane Barth actually wanted to become a journalist. She studied political science and English in Mannheim, worked for the Allgemeine Zeitung, and interned at the Süddeutsche Zeitung and ZDF. But during an internship with MEP Reinhard Bütikofer, she was gripped by enthusiasm. “Brussels is a very young, international and dynamic environment,” Barth says. “It didn’t let me go.” Others in the European Parliament studied European politics in Maastricht or Bruges. For her Master’s, she therefore chose Maastricht.
She then worked for a few months in the liaison office of the Green parliamentary group in Brussels before moving to VKU in 2017. There, Barth has had a stellar career: Five years ago, she became a desk officer in the VKU office in Brussels, and two years ago she was promoted to office manager – at just 28 years old. The Brussels fever has not let her go. “I only wanted to work here for one to two years. Now I’ve been in Brussels for six years and want to stay,” says Barth.
The VKU is the German association representing the interests of the municipal utility and waste disposal industry, with more than 1,500 member companies. The system of municipal utilities and water suppliers exists in this form throughout Europe only in Austria. In other EU countries, services of general interest have been privatized. That is why Barth and her four staff members in Brussels are primarily addressing the German members of parliament. “Every MEP also has a municipal company at home in their constituency,” she says. That’s why sympathy for the problems of the member companies is usually greater.
She and her team are currently concerned about the emergency measures for the energy crisis presented by the Commission in October. 15 member states have recently called for a gas price cap. It’s good that the EU Commission is very cautious about a general price cap, Barth says. “A cap could weaken the EU’s position in international competition for scarce gas. We worry that Europe will run out of gas.” That Brussels wants to buy gas together for the EU would strengthen Europe. But when it comes to implementing the measures, VKU calls for more flexibility because the German system is unique.
The Commission has now initiated one of the VKU’s demands: The aid scheme is to be amended for a limited period so that national aid can be permitted. Local municipal utilities could benefit from this. “We are currently examining whether this time-limited framework is sufficient for the Commission,” says Barth.
As a small lobby group in Brussels, Barth and her team network with others, including the umbrella organization SGI Europe, one of the social partners recognized by the Commission. “We have a very regular exchange with the municipal family, that is, with the Association of Cities and Towns, the Association of Towns and Municipalities and the Association of Counties.” And, of course, with the Association of Austrian Municipal Enterprises (VKÖ), as well as with environmental and industrial associations, depending on the topic.
Just under four times a year, the VKU office in Brussels invites everyone involved in the water industry to a “Water Breakfast”. Just under 15 to 20 people regularly take part. The VKU has a special service for member companies. They can send employees to Brussels for a week of shadowing. Tom Schmidtgen
The Commission presented the draft law on the gas price cap after all. Several member states are said to have threatened to block the next emergency regulation on the energy crisis if a draft is not submitted to energy ministers before their meeting on Thursday. But the Commission wants to impose another condition: If the market correction mechanism is indeed activated, it wants to extend the gas savings target beyond March 2023. As recently as Friday, however, the Permanent Representatives wanted to remove all conditions for the price cap, as Manuel Berkel learned.
The Energy Charter Conference is taking place in Mongolia today. It is unlikely that a reform of the International Investment Treaties will take place there. A good part of the governments in the EU – such as Germany, France and the Netherlands – as well as climate activists reject it. As a result, the EU lacks the mandate to approve this reform, as Charlotte Wirth reports. The EU Commission’s last resort is a classic example of when nothing really works: It tries to postpone the vote.
A political scientist from Berlin has treated himself to a literary treat of a special kind. Christian Rauh from the Social Science Research Center Berlin used algorithms to examine around 45,000 press releases from the Commission from 1985 to 2020 that were available in English. His conclusion: The Commission has a “considerable deficit” in communication, reports Markus Grabitz. The language is very complex, peppered with special terms, and the Commission prefers a nominal style.
With the emergency regulation, the Commission wants to limit extremely high gas prices for one year, as was the case last summer. Europe.Table had already reported on the key points of the market correction mechanism. A concrete value for the price cap has not been decided yet and, therefore, not included in the bill. However, the Commission has made a number of changes to the key points.
In the summer, the member states agreed to reduce gas consumption by 15 percent by March 2023. A new decision could make this target mandatory. With the current draft, the Commission now wants to prevent EU member states from consuming more gas despite the politically set price brake. If the gas price cap is activated, the Commission should therefore submit another legislative proposal to extend the gas savings target beyond March, according to the explanatory memorandum.
Within two weeks of activating the price cap, member states are also expected to outline to the Commission what measures they have already taken to ensure that gas and electricity consumption do not increase and that the recently adopted gas and electricity savings targets are met.
In addition to the ECB, the financial supervisory authority ESMA and the energy supervisory authority ACER, industry associations are now to be involved in monitoring the consequences of the gas price cap – via the Gas Coordination Group and the gas network operators’ organization ENTSOG. The European consumer protection association BEUC is also represented in the former.
The Commission also wants to tighten up the conditions under which it can suspend the gas price cap. “Any kind of gas rationing” is now to be sufficient to stop the mechanism. This is now also to apply if “the validity of existing gas supply contracts” is affected – the key points referred only to long-term contracts.
If the stability of the energy futures markets is threatened, ESMA and ENTSOG are to issue an emergency assessment on the same day, which may lead to the suspension of the gas price cap.
However, the debate in COREPER on Friday went in the completely opposite direction. As Europe.Table learned, a majority of the member states wanted to completely delete the article with the safety conditions for the introduction of the market correction mechanism. Strong opposition came from Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark in particular. On Wednesday, the Permanent Representatives will meet again before the Energy Ministers meet on Thursday.
The Commission’s draft also states by when it plans to decide whether to extend the emergency regulation. By Nov. 1, 2023, it wants to present an evaluation that will be the basis for the decision.
The EU lacks the mandate to agree to modernize the controversial International Investment Treaties at today’s Energy Charter Conference in Mongolia. So has the reform failed? “The modernization process is over,” is how one EU diplomat puts it, anyway. Christian Ehler (CDU/CSU), a member of the EPP, takes a similar view. The German government had “committed intellectual and political suicide” by announcing its withdrawal and blocking the reform of the Charter.
The EU Commission continues to try to postpone the vote after no qualified majority could be found for the reform of the treaties in the Permanent Representatives Committee on Friday. The last chance to do so is likely to come today when the agenda is adopted. Because without an EU position, there is a deadlock.
The member states could not simply vote individually in the absence of a legal decision. For its part, the EU cannot cast a vote on behalf of the EU26. Its only option, therefore, is to abstain. But can a vote even take place without the vote of 26 of all 53 contracting parties?
According to the Energy Charter Treaty, no. The vote is based on the consensus principle. In other words, the reform fails only if someone votes against it. At the same time, Article 36(6) of the ECT states that a simple majority is required. If the EU abstains, there are still 26 votes left, because both the EU and the EU26 abstain. Belarus is also suspended and may not vote. Even if the remaining 25 ECT parties all vote in favor of modernization, a simple majority would not be achieved.
In practice, such a scenario is unlikely anyway. It was the EU that initiated the reform of the controversial treaty. Other ECT parties, such as Japan and Kazakhstan, were not convinced by the reform from the outset.
The EU Commission is therefore hoping for a postponement of the vote. It wants to discuss the next steps with the EU member states first. But postponing the vote only postpones the problem: The Energy Charter Conference meets only once a year. “The fact that we are then stuck in limbo is the Commission’s own fault. It should now start the process of leaving the EU,” says Christina Eckes, a lecturer in European and public law at Maastricht University.
Among EU diplomats, the modernization of the ECT seems to have been written off already. The mood for an EU exit is constructive in the Council. On Thursday, the EU Parliament will vote on its position on the Energy Charter. However, the vote is rather symbolic.
But withdrawing from the Energy Charter without modernization entails some legal uncertainties, warns Christian Tietje, lecturer in public law, European law and international economic law at the University of Halle. One example is the additional protocol that the EU, Euratom and the 26 members of the ETC are to conclude among themselves independently of modernization. In this so-called inter se agreement, they want to commit themselves not to allow ECT lawsuits within the EU and to refrain from the sunset clause of the Energy Charter.
But such an agreement would not prevent EU investors from suing EU states, Tietje warns. “The arbitration courts would have to decide on the validity of the agreement in each individual case.” It is also unclear whether the Energy Charter’s notorious 20-year sunset clause can really be lifted with an additional protocol.
The risk of a lawsuit would therefore continue to exist for the duration of the forfeiture clause. Moreover, there are no precedents in arbitration courts: Judges, therefore, decide anew each trial whether the agreement is valid.
If the Energy Charter were to be reformed, at least intra-EU lawsuits would be ruled out. This is because the modernized text contains a clause that explicitly abolishes them. Although such lawsuits should theoretically be obsolete anyway since the Komstroy ruling of 2021, arbitration courts do not always comply with EU law.
Reform or not: Without a unified EU position, there is no certainty of a legal situation, warns Christian Tietje. If Germany withdraws from the Charter, for example, it will still be bound by the Charter to some extent as long as the EU remains in the ECT. Moreover, the most problematic aspects of the treaty, the arbitration courts, are the competence of the EU.
EU law also states that member states may not act contrary to EU positions. There is also a risk that arbitration proceedings could be postponed: For example, an investor could sue the EU instead of Germany after the expiration of the sunset clause.
The Commission uses language that is difficult to understand in its press releases. This is the conclusion drawn by Christian Rauh of the WZB Berlin Social Science Center, who used algorithms to examine around 45,000 Commission press releases from 1985 to 2020 that were available in English. The public politicization of European integration shows that there is a growing need for communication in EU politics, he said. “However, the messages that the Commission sends to citizens do not meet this need,” Rauh continued. With his study, the political scientist attests to a “considerable deficit in communication” on the part of the Commission.
He criticizes three points. The language of the Commission is:
Rauh compared the Commission’s language with the language in 92,000 press releases from the governments of Great Britain and Ireland. He also correlated it with journalistic articles and with essays from academia. He concludes that the language in British press releases is at about the educational level of high school texts. In contrast, the Commission uses language that is appropriate to the educational level of college graduates. The Commission uses as many technical terms (“jargon”) as is more common among scientists. In the Commission’s press releases, he said, sentences are longer on average, and the average number of syllables in words is also higher. What the Commission feeds into the public debate differs significantly from the language an EU citizen would otherwise encounter.
In addition, noun structures occur conspicuously often in the sentence structure of the Commission. This nominal style is distinguished from a language that relies more on verbs (verbal style). The linguists’ verdict: nominal style tends to disguise who is the author of an action, and verbal style tends to convey concrete clues about the author. The Commission’s press releases were characterized by an “unusually pronounced nominal style.” The style gives “preference to abstract processes over temporally identifiable sequences of actions.”
Rauh attests to the Commission’s inability to learn: “The technocratic language has hardly changed at all in the course of the last 35 years of European integration.” This is true, he says, even though the Commission has repeatedly paid “lip service” to better communicate with citizens. It has also invested money to improve the organization, strategy and personnel in communication.
The Commission’s technocratic style may be suitable for reaching the political professionals in the Council and the European Parliament as well as lobbyists. However, the style of language is a missed opportunity in communicating with the public, which is characterized by increasing political polarization, high voting shares for parties critical of the EU, and politicians in the member states who like to blame Brussels for problems. The language of the technocrats plays into the hands of those who already like to attest to Brussels’ remoteness from the citizens.
Christiane Barth actually wanted to become a journalist. She studied political science and English in Mannheim, worked for the Allgemeine Zeitung, and interned at the Süddeutsche Zeitung and ZDF. But during an internship with MEP Reinhard Bütikofer, she was gripped by enthusiasm. “Brussels is a very young, international and dynamic environment,” Barth says. “It didn’t let me go.” Others in the European Parliament studied European politics in Maastricht or Bruges. For her Master’s, she therefore chose Maastricht.
She then worked for a few months in the liaison office of the Green parliamentary group in Brussels before moving to VKU in 2017. There, Barth has had a stellar career: Five years ago, she became a desk officer in the VKU office in Brussels, and two years ago she was promoted to office manager – at just 28 years old. The Brussels fever has not let her go. “I only wanted to work here for one to two years. Now I’ve been in Brussels for six years and want to stay,” says Barth.
The VKU is the German association representing the interests of the municipal utility and waste disposal industry, with more than 1,500 member companies. The system of municipal utilities and water suppliers exists in this form throughout Europe only in Austria. In other EU countries, services of general interest have been privatized. That is why Barth and her four staff members in Brussels are primarily addressing the German members of parliament. “Every MEP also has a municipal company at home in their constituency,” she says. That’s why sympathy for the problems of the member companies is usually greater.
She and her team are currently concerned about the emergency measures for the energy crisis presented by the Commission in October. 15 member states have recently called for a gas price cap. It’s good that the EU Commission is very cautious about a general price cap, Barth says. “A cap could weaken the EU’s position in international competition for scarce gas. We worry that Europe will run out of gas.” That Brussels wants to buy gas together for the EU would strengthen Europe. But when it comes to implementing the measures, VKU calls for more flexibility because the German system is unique.
The Commission has now initiated one of the VKU’s demands: The aid scheme is to be amended for a limited period so that national aid can be permitted. Local municipal utilities could benefit from this. “We are currently examining whether this time-limited framework is sufficient for the Commission,” says Barth.
As a small lobby group in Brussels, Barth and her team network with others, including the umbrella organization SGI Europe, one of the social partners recognized by the Commission. “We have a very regular exchange with the municipal family, that is, with the Association of Cities and Towns, the Association of Towns and Municipalities and the Association of Counties.” And, of course, with the Association of Austrian Municipal Enterprises (VKÖ), as well as with environmental and industrial associations, depending on the topic.
Just under four times a year, the VKU office in Brussels invites everyone involved in the water industry to a “Water Breakfast”. Just under 15 to 20 people regularly take part. The VKU has a special service for member companies. They can send employees to Brussels for a week of shadowing. Tom Schmidtgen
