Government formation in France + Luxembourg nominates Commissioner

Dear reader,

Six weeks after the parliamentary elections, France still does not have a new government. President Emmanuel Macron had announced that he would not start forming a government until after the Olympic Games. The calculation behind this is probably to take the wind out of the sails of the left-wing NFP alliance after the election victory. Now he is taking action. Today and on Monday, Macron will receive the party and parliamentary group leaders for talks at the Élysée Palace. Find out what happens next in Claire Stam‘s Analysis.

Belgium is also still without a new government. The Flemish separatist Bart De Wever has not yet succeeded in forming a federal government. You can read more about this in the News. You can also find out why the European Social Democrats are anything but enthusiastic about the Luxembourg government’s decision to nominate MEP Christophe Hansen as EU Commissioner.

I wish you an interesting read and a pleasant start to the weekend.

Your
Sarah Schaefer

Government formation: Macron sounding out for a ‘broad and stable majority’

By

Claire Stam

A month and a half after the second round of elections in France, President Emmanuel Macron is publicly taking care of the formation of the government. Today and on Monday, he is receiving the party and parliamentary group leaders at the Élysée Palace for talks. Who will be the new prime minister? Time is running out to find a successor to Gabriel Attal.

Left-wing alliance beats the drum for Castets

According to the Élysée Palace, “the appointment of a prime minister will follow the consultations and their conclusions”. Macron is counting on “continuing to work towards the formation of the broadest and most stable majority possible to serve the country”. The aim is to take the election result into account. In the two rounds of voting, the French had expressed their “will for change and for a broad coalition”.

For its part, the left, united in the Nouveau Front populaire (NFP), is putting pressure on the president. It wants Macron to appoint the high-ranking civil servant Lucie Castets as prime minister. The NFP argues that it has the most seats in parliament with 193 MPs. The four groupings of the NFP (Parti socialiste, La France insoumise, Les Écologistes and Parti communiste français) will pay their respects to Castets at the Élysée Palace this Friday. However, their candidacy was already rejected by Macron in July. “The question is what majority can be achieved in parliament”, he said.

Political inertia as a calculation

Six weeks after the parliamentary elections, France still has no new government. Day-to-day business is being conducted by the government of Prime Minister Gabriel Attal. The fact that things are progressing so slowly seems to be Macron’s calculation. He wanted to wait until the momentum created by the election result died down in favor of the left.

In fact, the constitution of the Fifth Republic gives the President of the Republic the privilege of appointing the Prime Minister. This is why Emmanuel Macron was initially able to announce that the formation of a new government would only take place after the “Olympic break”. So here we go.

Little time for budget proposal

However, there are limits to the president’s constitutional privilege: The state budget must be passed before the end of the year. It is therefore high time for those responsible to start preparing and drawing up the budget in September. In concrete terms, this means that the budget proposal must be presented to the Council of Ministers on Sept. 25. After submission to the Council of Ministers, the budget must then be submitted to the National Assembly by October 1 at the latest. The parliamentarians then have until mid-December to negotiate and vote on the 2025 budget.

The budget negotiations will therefore be highly political: Macron sees his room for maneuver as limited, as parliament ultimately has the final say. Since its dissolution and the early parliamentary elections, the political equation has become particularly complex: The lack of a political majority in the National Assembly could lead to a deadlock if the conflicting factions fail to reach a compromise on the budget. There has never been such a situation in the history of the Fifth Republic.

Left party castigates ‘austerity policy’

“We are walking a fine line”, comments an MP who wishes to remain anonymous. He observes that the left is taking a position on the budget that differs significantly from the views of the government and the Conservatives. The government wants to freeze the planned expenditure, the Conservatives want to reduce it. Lucie Castets, on the other hand, says: “I think it is inappropriate and irresponsible to pursue an austerity policy in the current context. It’s more of a dogma than economic logic.”

The Left Party’s draft budget aims to boost growth. To this end, an economic stimulus program is to be launched. According to estimates, this Keynesian-inspired plan, which is aimed at investment and infrastructure, could amount to up to €10 billion. A few days ago, Prime Minister Attal, who was voted out of office but is still in office, presented a draft budget that envisages ten billion euros in savings in order to limit spending to €492 billion.

Luxembourg nominates EPP politician Hansen as EU Commissioner

He will soon only be a guest in Parliament. The Luxembourg government wants Christophe Hansen to switch sides and join the Commission.

The EPP MEP Christophe Hansen is to become an EU Commissioner. This was announced yesterday, Thursday, by Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Luc Frieden via X. Hansen has made a name for himself in Parliament as an agricultural, environmental and trade politician and played a leading role in the negotiations on the Deforestation Directive.

Hansen was elected to the European Parliament in 2018. At the end of 2023, he resigned as an MEP to move to the Luxembourg Chamber of Deputies, only to return to the European Parliament in June of this year.

Hansen would add another male member to Ursula von der Leyen’s second commission. Von der Leyen’s goal of a commission with a balanced gender ratio is therefore a long way off.

The nomination has caused displeasure among the Social Democrats. They had nominated the current Luxembourg EU Commissioner Nicolas Schmit as their lead candidate in the European elections. In this way, the Social Democrats hoped to secure Schmit’s place in the Commission, even though Luxembourg currently has a conservative government. In 2019, the liberal Dutch government nominated the Social Democratic lead candidate Frans Timmermans.

In a press release, the chairman of the European SPD René Repasi accuses the Luxembourg government of “bad style” for disregarding the top candidate principle. “The process casts an unfavorable light on the second term of office of the Von der Leyen Commission, which is now beginning”, said Repasi. jaa

Formation of federal government in Belgium failed

The formation of a new federal government in Belgium has failed for the time being. The Flemish politician tasked with forming the government, Bart De Wever, announced on Thursday that he intended to resign from office. The five parties involved in the coalition negotiations had previously fallen out over tax policy.

According to Belgian media reports, the King accepted the resignation on Thursday evening after talks with De Wever. Nevertheless, the coalition talks are to continue on Friday.

The sticking point in the talks is the taxation of profits from capital transactions. The Flemish Social Democrats of Vooruit had demanded a tax of ten percent; the Walloon Liberals of the Mouvement Réformateur categorically rejected this. De Wever did not succeed in bridging the differences.

All parties want to continue

Everyone involved is under time pressure. Belgium must nominate a candidate for the next EU Commission by the end of the month. By September 15, the country must also submit a plan to the Brussels authority to reduce its budget deficit of around €25 billion. The massive cuts required for this have been a burden on the coalition talks from the outset.

The previous coalition under the caretaker Prime Minister Alexandre De Croo lost its majority in the parliamentary elections on June 9. A new coalition was now planned. However, 74 days after the election, it looks as if it is already in crisis. ebo

Data leak: Data protectionists lodge complaint against EU Parliament

The European Parliament has once again come under fire from data protection activists. The European Center for Digital Rights – noyb of Austrian civil rights activist Max Schrems has submitted two complaints (Complaint 1 and Complaint 2) to the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) on behalf of four employees of the European Parliament. This was announced by noyb on Thursday.

At the beginning of May 2024, Parliament informed its employees about a massive data leak on the recruitment platform. The personal data of more than 8,000 current and former employees had been compromised. This included sensitive documents such as ID cards, passports, criminal records and marriage certificates.

“It is worrying that EU institutions are still so vulnerable to attacks“, said Max Schrems. Attackers could use this type of sensitive information to influence democratic processes.

noyb (none of your business), which has been active since 2018, campaigns for the enforcement of European data protection rights and has already initiated around 800 proceedings against companies such as Google and Facebook. The organization sees the current incident at the EU Parliament as a violation of several articles of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and is calling for an appropriate response from the EDPS.

Parliament acknowledged weaknesses in its cybersecurity after conducting an internal review in November 2023. This found that Parliament’s IT security measures were not up to industry standards. noyb is now demanding that Parliament bring its data protection practices in line with the GDPR. And it is demanding that the EDPS impose an administrative fine to prevent future breaches. vis

Study: Climate action measures rarely successful

Whether strict regulations, subsidies or price incentives: Governments around the world have introduced numerous climate protection measures over the past 20 years. Which of these are really effective often remains unclear. Researchers have now found that only 63 out of 1,500 climate measures introduced worldwide in the past two decades have led to significant reductions in emissions. According to the data, a reduction of at least 5 to 10 percent was classified as “significant”. The average value for the successful cases was 19 percent.

According to the study published in the journal “Science”, these success stories have one thing in common: They rely on the leverage effect of tax and price incentives. The authors of the study point out that a mixture of approaches is particularly useful: “Our results clearly show that the success of climate measures depends on the right mix of instruments”, says lead author Annika Stechemesser from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).

‘A lot of action does not automatically help a lot’

According to the study, it is not enough to rely on subsidies or regulation alone. “A lot of action does not automatically help a lot”, says Nicolas Koch, another lead author from PIK and the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC).

According to a press release, the researchers found no case in which bans alone led to significant reductions in emissions. Only in combination with tax and price incentives did they achieve a reduction.

For the study, the research team led by PIK and MCC analyzed 1,500 climate measures from 41 countries across 6 continents from 1998 to 2022.

Other countries, other measures

A mix of measures is particularly effective in economically developed countries, they continued. For Germany, the researchers cite the eco-tax reform from 1999 and the truck toll in 2005 as successful measures in the transport sector. It is the only policy combination that has led to a significant reduction in emissions in Germany to date.

Other countries have opted for a different mix of measures: The USA has reduced the burden in the transport sector through tax incentives, subsidies for environmentally friendly vehicles and CO2 efficiency standards, for example. In the UK, for example, the combination of a minimum CO2 price, subsidies for renewable energies and a coal phase-out plan proved to be particularly successful in the electricity sector. In the building sector in Sweden, it was a mixture of CO2 pricing and subsidy programs for renovations and heating system replacements.

Measures cannot be copied directly

Proven best practices could be derived from the results. “Across the building, electricity, industry and transport sectors and both in industrialized countries and in the often neglected developing countries”, says Koch.

It is true that the measures from the various countries “cannot necessarily be transferred 1:1 to others”. However, it is possible that the mix of measures from the successful cases can provide orientation for similarly developed countries, says Stechemesser. “We believe that this orientation knowledge is of great importance to support politics and society in the transformation to climate neutrality.” dpa

These World Heritage Sites are threatened by climate change

According to a new data analysis, climate change is increasing the risk of many UNESCO World Heritage Sites being damaged by floods, storms or extreme heat. Among the 50 most endangered sites in the Asia-Pacific region, North America and Europe are two sites in Germany, the British analysis company Climate X announced on Thursday.

The former Zollverein coal mine in Essen is in twelfth place. There is an increased risk of flooding there. The characteristic winding tower is located a few kilometers from the Ruhr and the Rhine-Herne Canal. In 22nd place, Climate X lists the old towns of Stralsund and Wismar. They are threatened by rivers bursting their banks, heavy rainfall and storms.

Tropical irrigation community in first place

According to the analysis, the top three places are occupied by

the Subak system, an irrigation community on the Indonesian island of Bali
Kakadu National Park in Australia
the old trading center in Quanzhou, China

In Europe, there are several other endangered World Heritage sites in the top 50 in addition to the German ones. In fourth place, for example, are the ironworks in Engelsberg, Sweden, and in sixth place are the famous paintings in the Chauvet Cave in southern France, which are threatened by heavy rain and landslides. ber

EUROPE.TABLE EDITORIAL OFFICE

Till
Hoppe

Sarah
Schaefer

Lukas
Knigge

Corinna
Visser

Markus
Grabitz

Alina
Leimbach

Eric
Bonse

Manuel
Berkel

Stephan
Israel

Claire
Stam

János
Allenbach-Ammann

Dear reader,

Six weeks after the parliamentary elections, France still does not have a new government. President Emmanuel Macron had announced that he would not start forming a government until after the Olympic Games. The calculation behind this is probably to take the wind out of the sails of the left-wing NFP alliance after the election victory. Now he is taking action. Today and on Monday, Macron will receive the party and parliamentary group leaders for talks at the Élysée Palace. Find out what happens next in Claire Stam‘s Analysis.

Belgium is also still without a new government. The Flemish separatist Bart De Wever has not yet succeeded in forming a federal government. You can read more about this in the News. You can also find out why the European Social Democrats are anything but enthusiastic about the Luxembourg government’s decision to nominate MEP Christophe Hansen as EU Commissioner.

I wish you an interesting read and a pleasant start to the weekend.

Your
Sarah Schaefer

Government formation: Macron sounding out for a ‘broad and stable majority’

By

Claire Stam

A month and a half after the second round of elections in France, President Emmanuel Macron is publicly taking care of the formation of the government. Today and on Monday, he is receiving the party and parliamentary group leaders at the Élysée Palace for talks. Who will be the new prime minister? Time is running out to find a successor to Gabriel Attal.

Left-wing alliance beats the drum for Castets

According to the Élysée Palace, “the appointment of a prime minister will follow the consultations and their conclusions”. Macron is counting on “continuing to work towards the formation of the broadest and most stable majority possible to serve the country”. The aim is to take the election result into account. In the two rounds of voting, the French had expressed their “will for change and for a broad coalition”.

For its part, the left, united in the Nouveau Front populaire (NFP), is putting pressure on the president. It wants Macron to appoint the high-ranking civil servant Lucie Castets as prime minister. The NFP argues that it has the most seats in parliament with 193 MPs. The four groupings of the NFP (Parti socialiste, La France insoumise, Les Écologistes and Parti communiste français) will pay their respects to Castets at the Élysée Palace this Friday. However, their candidacy was already rejected by Macron in July. “The question is what majority can be achieved in parliament”, he said.

Political inertia as a calculation

Six weeks after the parliamentary elections, France still has no new government. Day-to-day business is being conducted by the government of Prime Minister Gabriel Attal. The fact that things are progressing so slowly seems to be Macron’s calculation. He wanted to wait until the momentum created by the election result died down in favor of the left.

In fact, the constitution of the Fifth Republic gives the President of the Republic the privilege of appointing the Prime Minister. This is why Emmanuel Macron was initially able to announce that the formation of a new government would only take place after the “Olympic break”. So here we go.

Little time for budget proposal

However, there are limits to the president’s constitutional privilege: The state budget must be passed before the end of the year. It is therefore high time for those responsible to start preparing and drawing up the budget in September. In concrete terms, this means that the budget proposal must be presented to the Council of Ministers on Sept. 25. After submission to the Council of Ministers, the budget must then be submitted to the National Assembly by October 1 at the latest. The parliamentarians then have until mid-December to negotiate and vote on the 2025 budget.

The budget negotiations will therefore be highly political: Macron sees his room for maneuver as limited, as parliament ultimately has the final say. Since its dissolution and the early parliamentary elections, the political equation has become particularly complex: The lack of a political majority in the National Assembly could lead to a deadlock if the conflicting factions fail to reach a compromise on the budget. There has never been such a situation in the history of the Fifth Republic.

Left party castigates ‘austerity policy’

“We are walking a fine line”, comments an MP who wishes to remain anonymous. He observes that the left is taking a position on the budget that differs significantly from the views of the government and the Conservatives. The government wants to freeze the planned expenditure, the Conservatives want to reduce it. Lucie Castets, on the other hand, says: “I think it is inappropriate and irresponsible to pursue an austerity policy in the current context. It’s more of a dogma than economic logic.”

The Left Party’s draft budget aims to boost growth. To this end, an economic stimulus program is to be launched. According to estimates, this Keynesian-inspired plan, which is aimed at investment and infrastructure, could amount to up to €10 billion. A few days ago, Prime Minister Attal, who was voted out of office but is still in office, presented a draft budget that envisages ten billion euros in savings in order to limit spending to €492 billion.

Luxembourg nominates EPP politician Hansen as EU Commissioner

The EPP MEP Christophe Hansen is to become an EU Commissioner. This was announced yesterday, Thursday, by Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Luc Frieden via X. Hansen has made a name for himself in Parliament as an agricultural, environmental and trade politician and played a leading role in the negotiations on the Deforestation Directive.

Hansen was elected to the European Parliament in 2018. At the end of 2023, he resigned as an MEP to move to the Luxembourg Chamber of Deputies, only to return to the European Parliament in June of this year.

Hansen would add another male member to Ursula von der Leyen’s second commission. Von der Leyen’s goal of a commission with a balanced gender ratio is therefore a long way off.

The nomination has caused displeasure among the Social Democrats. They had nominated the current Luxembourg EU Commissioner Nicolas Schmit as their lead candidate in the European elections. In this way, the Social Democrats hoped to secure Schmit’s place in the Commission, even though Luxembourg currently has a conservative government. In 2019, the liberal Dutch government nominated the Social Democratic lead candidate Frans Timmermans.

In a press release, the chairman of the European SPD René Repasi accuses the Luxembourg government of “bad style” for disregarding the top candidate principle. “The process casts an unfavorable light on the second term of office of the Von der Leyen Commission, which is now beginning”, said Repasi. jaa

Formation of federal government in Belgium failed

The formation of a new federal government in Belgium has failed for the time being. The Flemish politician tasked with forming the government, Bart De Wever, announced on Thursday that he intended to resign from office. The five parties involved in the coalition negotiations had previously fallen out over tax policy.

According to Belgian media reports, the King accepted the resignation on Thursday evening after talks with De Wever. Nevertheless, the coalition talks are to continue on Friday.

The sticking point in the talks is the taxation of profits from capital transactions. The Flemish Social Democrats of Vooruit had demanded a tax of ten percent; the Walloon Liberals of the Mouvement Réformateur categorically rejected this. De Wever did not succeed in bridging the differences.

All parties want to continue

Everyone involved is under time pressure. Belgium must nominate a candidate for the next EU Commission by the end of the month. By September 15, the country must also submit a plan to the Brussels authority to reduce its budget deficit of around €25 billion. The massive cuts required for this have been a burden on the coalition talks from the outset.

The previous coalition under the caretaker Prime Minister Alexandre De Croo lost its majority in the parliamentary elections on June 9. A new coalition was now planned. However, 74 days after the election, it looks as if it is already in crisis. ebo

Data leak: Data protectionists lodge complaint against EU Parliament

The European Parliament has once again come under fire from data protection activists. The European Center for Digital Rights – noyb of Austrian civil rights activist Max Schrems has submitted two complaints (Complaint 1 and Complaint 2) to the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) on behalf of four employees of the European Parliament. This was announced by noyb on Thursday.

At the beginning of May 2024, Parliament informed its employees about a massive data leak on the recruitment platform. The personal data of more than 8,000 current and former employees had been compromised. This included sensitive documents such as ID cards, passports, criminal records and marriage certificates.

“It is worrying that EU institutions are still so vulnerable to attacks“, said Max Schrems. Attackers could use this type of sensitive information to influence democratic processes.

noyb (none of your business), which has been active since 2018, campaigns for the enforcement of European data protection rights and has already initiated around 800 proceedings against companies such as Google and Facebook. The organization sees the current incident at the EU Parliament as a violation of several articles of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and is calling for an appropriate response from the EDPS.

Parliament acknowledged weaknesses in its cybersecurity after conducting an internal review in November 2023. This found that Parliament’s IT security measures were not up to industry standards. noyb is now demanding that Parliament bring its data protection practices in line with the GDPR. And it is demanding that the EDPS impose an administrative fine to prevent future breaches. vis

Study: Climate action measures rarely successful

Whether strict regulations, subsidies or price incentives: Governments around the world have introduced numerous climate protection measures over the past 20 years. Which of these are really effective often remains unclear. Researchers have now found that only 63 out of 1,500 climate measures introduced worldwide in the past two decades have led to significant reductions in emissions. According to the data, a reduction of at least 5 to 10 percent was classified as “significant”. The average value for the successful cases was 19 percent.

According to the study published in the journal “Science”, these success stories have one thing in common: They rely on the leverage effect of tax and price incentives. The authors of the study point out that a mixture of approaches is particularly useful: “Our results clearly show that the success of climate measures depends on the right mix of instruments”, says lead author Annika Stechemesser from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).

‘A lot of action does not automatically help a lot’

According to the study, it is not enough to rely on subsidies or regulation alone. “A lot of action does not automatically help a lot”, says Nicolas Koch, another lead author from PIK and the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC).

According to a press release, the researchers found no case in which bans alone led to significant reductions in emissions. Only in combination with tax and price incentives did they achieve a reduction.

For the study, the research team led by PIK and MCC analyzed 1,500 climate measures from 41 countries across 6 continents from 1998 to 2022.

Other countries, other measures

A mix of measures is particularly effective in economically developed countries, they continued. For Germany, the researchers cite the eco-tax reform from 1999 and the truck toll in 2005 as successful measures in the transport sector. It is the only policy combination that has led to a significant reduction in emissions in Germany to date.

Other countries have opted for a different mix of measures: The USA has reduced the burden in the transport sector through tax incentives, subsidies for environmentally friendly vehicles and CO2 efficiency standards, for example. In the UK, for example, the combination of a minimum CO2 price, subsidies for renewable energies and a coal phase-out plan proved to be particularly successful in the electricity sector. In the building sector in Sweden, it was a mixture of CO2 pricing and subsidy programs for renovations and heating system replacements.

Measures cannot be copied directly

Proven best practices could be derived from the results. “Across the building, electricity, industry and transport sectors and both in industrialized countries and in the often neglected developing countries”, says Koch.

It is true that the measures from the various countries “cannot necessarily be transferred 1:1 to others”. However, it is possible that the mix of measures from the successful cases can provide orientation for similarly developed countries, says Stechemesser. “We believe that this orientation knowledge is of great importance to support politics and society in the transformation to climate neutrality.” dpa

These World Heritage Sites are threatened by climate change

According to a new data analysis, climate change is increasing the risk of many UNESCO World Heritage Sites being damaged by floods, storms or extreme heat. Among the 50 most endangered sites in the Asia-Pacific region, North America and Europe are two sites in Germany, the British analysis company Climate X announced on Thursday.

The former Zollverein coal mine in Essen is in twelfth place. There is an increased risk of flooding there. The characteristic winding tower is located a few kilometers from the Ruhr and the Rhine-Herne Canal. In 22nd place, Climate X lists the old towns of Stralsund and Wismar. They are threatened by rivers bursting their banks, heavy rainfall and storms.

Tropical irrigation community in first place

According to the analysis, the top three places are occupied by

the Subak system, an irrigation community on the Indonesian island of Bali
Kakadu National Park in Australia
the old trading center in Quanzhou, China

In Europe, there are several other endangered World Heritage sites in the top 50 in addition to the German ones. In fourth place, for example, are the ironworks in Engelsberg, Sweden, and in sixth place are the famous paintings in the Chauvet Cave in southern France, which are threatened by heavy rain and landslides. ber