In the middle of the week, the Christian Democratic Party (EPP) family will meet for its two-day congress in Bucharest. The strongest European force with Manfred Weber (CSU) at the head of the parliamentary group and the party is going into the election campaign with a lot of tailwinds. The EPP is doing well in the polls. The manifesto with which the EPP candidates are entering the European election campaign will be adopted on Wednesday afternoon. The paper is around 15 pages long and is so broadly worded that it covers the ideological spectrum of all member parties from 44 countries. In other words, it contains virtually no rough edges.
On Thursday, Ursula von der Leyen will officially be put on the shield. The delegates will vote on whether she will be the lead candidate for a second term as Commission President. This is in contrast to the socialist party family, where there was no formal vote on the lead candidate at the weekend. Instead, Nicolas Schmit was acclaimed.
If all is not mistaken, the vote is likely to be a high point in von der Leyen’s party career. She has always struggled with extremely meager voting results at her CDU’s federal party conferences. In 2018, she only received 57% as deputy to party leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer. That should change in Bucharest. In 2018, the delegates elected Manfred Weber as their lead candidate with almost 80%. Unlike Weber in Helsinki, however, von der Leyen has no rival candidate this time: She can therefore expect approval well above the 80 percent mark.
Wishing you a successful day.
The Taurus leak did not make any major waves at the headquarters of NATO and the EU on Monday. However, the fact that senior German military officials are communicating via unsecured channels is causing diplomats to frown. Germany is the number one target of Russian disinformation and influence peddling, something that has apparently still not been recognized in Berlin, people in Brussels wonder. The accusation of dilettantism is in the air.
Officially, the allies largely kept a low profile on Monday. It was up to Germany to investigate the affair and they had “Chancellor Scholz’s word on the matter”, said the British Prime Minister’s spokesman Rishi Sunak. Former Defence Secretary Ben Wallace added that the revelation showed that Germany was “neither safe nor reliable“.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had already caused irritation in both London and Paris last week when he justified his no vote for German Taurus cruise missiles for Ukraine. He spoke about the cooperation between France and the United Kingdom with Kyiv on their Scalp and Storm Shadow systems and that both countries may have stationed soldiers in Ukraine for this purpose. He was criticized for this because the information is classified as secret.
On Monday, the Chancellor reiterated his rejection: “It is unacceptable to deliver a weapon system that reaches very far and then not think about how control over the weapon system can take place,” he argued in Sindelfingen. “And if you want to have control and it only works if German soldiers are involved, that is completely out of the question.” There was nothing to shake about this statement: “I am the Chancellor, and that is why it applies.”
However, Green Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock immediately contradicted Scholz. She pointed out that Germany had promised to do everything in its power to defend Ukraine and had to put everything to the test: “And from my point of view, the facts are very, very clear.”
The statements from the recording of a conversation between Bundeswehr officers on the possible use of Taurus cruise missiles contradict Scholz’s statements on Taurus in some places but provide little new information. “A certain amount of damage was done, but the content of such a conversation was not surprising,” says Linas Kojala, Director of the Center for East European Studies in Vilnius.
It is now crucial to assess what other data could have been collected by Russia and how to ensure that this does not happen again. “And not just in Germany, but also in other NATO countries.” Lithuania, as well as the two other Baltic states Estonia and Latvia, have been confronted with the Russian information war for years.
It is still unclear how the officers’ conversation could have been overheard. Did a Russian intelligence service interfere in the Webex conference, secretly or simply unnoticed by telephone – and thus embarrass German counterintelligence and the Bundeswehr?
However, the gateway was probably not technical, but human error. After all: “Webex and similar systems are not secret protection IT, but are intended for non-secret conversations. There are separate solutions for this,” says Manuel Atug, information security expert. “If high-ranking members of the Bundeswehr don’t care about this and don’t use secure communication channels in tap-protected environments, it’s not a problem with the technology.” At the latest when participants are connected via telephone line, secure end-to-end encryption using state-of-the-art technology is impossible.
The Bundeswehr’s top personnel should also have known this. There is a good reason why they have special, secure and expensive communication systems for operations with a high level of secrecy – but they are not available everywhere and at all times. They also only make sense when used in secure environments, such as bug-proof rooms. These are available at many embassies around the world. Most other systems may only be used up to the lowest level of secrecy, if at all.
IT security experts are not surprised that secret content is still communicated via unsuitable systems. These are much easier to use. And Webex even presented “WebEx for Defense“, a solution for the US Department of Defense, in 2020. However, this is also subject to strict restrictions in terms of the environment and classification of the content that can be communicated via it.
In Germany, Cisco’s Webex is no more on the list of hardware and software approved by the Federal Office for Information Security for classified information than Microsoft Teams, Zoom or other manufacturers. “The fact that manufacturers like to claim that their systems are secure as a matter of course should not be used as an excuse,” says Atug. He demands: “The Bundeswehr also needs an information security turnaround – both technically and in people’s minds.” with Viktor Funk, Lisa-Martina Klein
Kadri Simson sounded almost pleading on Monday. “We cannot close our borders because we need solar panels”, said the Energy Commissioner ahead of the meeting of energy ministers in Brussels. “We need to support our industry, but we need all products to reach our very ambitious 2030 targets.”
With these words, the hopes of some European manufacturers that the Commission would protect them from Chinese modules at dumping prices have died. A letter that Simson sent to the Council Presidency last Thursday together with Industry Commissioner Thierry Breton bore the same signature.
On five pages, the paper lists measures to support the European solar industry. However, trade restrictions are not even mentioned. According to Breton and Simson, further discussions will only take place in the second half of the year. In plain language: not with this Commission.
Instead, Simson and Breton are passing the ball back to the member states – but also to those companies from the solar industry that had taken a stand against import restrictions on cheap modules. Just yesterday, Enpal, 1Komma5, EnBW and Vattenfall, among others, presented the new Solar Economy Europe (SEE) alliance and explicitly positioned themselves as the “exact opposite” of the more China-critical manufacturers’ association ESMC.
Simson and Breton want to encourage distributors to take responsibility voluntarily: “Wholesalers and distributors could commit to including a range of PV products manufactured in the EU in their portfolio.” A corresponding declaration with voluntary commitments could be signed at one of the next Council meetings – probably in May, according to industry sources. However, the letter is also aimed at the member states.
The EU member states could introduce “ambitious sustainability and resilience criteria” in auctions for solar installations, according to a commitment recommended by Simson and Breton. In doing so, the Commission is also backing Minister Robert Habeck (Greens), who would like to introduce resilience bonuses in a solar package to receive higher remuneration for electricity from European solar modules. The FDP rejects this because of the costs.
The Commissioners are actually only urging the member states to take the Net-Zero Industry Act seriously. The EU member states are under pressure to act because, according to the NZIA, they will have to take sustainability and resilience criteria into account for 30% of their state-tendered volumes from fall 2025. Unless the German government cites the significantly higher price of European modules, in which case it can reject the special funding. However, Germany would then not be supporting the main objective of this major industrial policy project.
“Our goal is to meet 40 percent of our demand from European production by 2030,” emphasized Commission Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič at a well-attended SolarPower Europe conference just a few kilometers away this afternoon. “This is important for our economic security, our know-how and the development of industrial capacities in Europe for this globally crucial sector.”
Šefčovič does not believe that the recent increased emphasis on competitiveness will fundamentally change European economic policy: “We will not have an industrial deal without green elements. We will not have a competition to see who builds the best diesel engine.”
However, the Commission does not want to find fresh money for the solar industry during its remaining term of office. SolarPower Europe had called for a dedicated facility for manufacturers. Instead, the Commission wants to use guarantees from InvestEU, for example, to leverage private investment – and the Member States would already have the opportunity to spend more of their own funds through the TCTF framework.
In the long term, however, the aid framework must also allow subsidies for manufacturers’ running costs, demands SolarPower Europe President Aristotelis Chantavas. It can be seen as an admission that it will never be possible to produce more cheaply than the Chinese competition.
“China is pursuing a very aggressive industrial policy and sector strategy. China spends almost three to four times more on industry support and subsidies than we do in the Western world,” says Johan Lindahl, Secretary General of the European Solar Manufacturing Council (ESMC). The industry association represents the interests of the European PV manufacturing industry. Its best-known members include the German manufacturers Meyer Burger and Wackers.
According to estimates by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the People’s Republic spent 1.7% of its GDP on industrial support and subsidies in 2019. In France, according to the report “Red Ink: Estimating Chinese Industrial Policy Spending in Comparative Perspective”, it was only 0.5 percent in France and 0.4 percent in Germany. In its industrial strategy, China is focusing even more strongly on strategic sectors that produce green technologies such as PV, battery technology and electric vehicles.
In addition, the USA is currently granting generous tax rebates to manufacturers planning to set up solar power production projects as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. Washington has also introduced import duties on Chinese modules. This increases the cost of Chinese modules there. India is also working with subsidies, but to a lesser extent than China, as Lindahl explains. These and other developments have meant that the European market remains the most attractive for Chinese manufacturers. “This is why there is such an oversupply of modules flowing into Europe. This has led to a drop in prices and a very difficult situation for European module manufacturers,” says Lindahl.
Lindahl says that his organization has not campaigned for duties on the Chinese modules. This is because a possible anti-dumping investigation would take one to two years. By the time the investigation was completed, the industry would have disappeared. ESMC has instead advocated emergency measures, which are limited to the next two years. They would apply until the EU legal framework has been improved through the implementation of legislative packages such as the NZIA, the ban on goods produced by forced labor and the inclusion of photovoltaic modules and inverters, and incorporated into EU-wide ecodesign and energy label legislation.
A facility could be established at EU level in which modules produced in Europe are sold at market prices, explains Lindahl, “and then either the EU or the member states cover the difference between the market price and the current production costs.”
According to the ESMC Secretary-General, this compensation for the price difference between the market price and the production costs of the current stock would amount to €160 million. In order to keep the industry in Europe running at 40% capacity utilization, i.e. to cover personnel costs in 2025 and 2026, the association estimates that around €880 million will be needed by 2025. On the other hand, such a step would prevent the outflow of €560 million from the European Economic Area and thus reduce the trade imbalance with China, argues Lindahl.
In the magnificent Palace of Versailles, French MPs incorporated “the guaranteed freedom of women to exercise the right to voluntary abortion” into the French constitution. This was a historic breakthrough, as it made France the first country in the world to constitutionally protect women’s freedom to decide what happens to their bodies as they wish.
Because the constitution cannot be changed like a law, and a freedom “guaranteed” by the constitution acts like a bolt. Enshrining the freedom to have an abortion in the constitution means protecting French women from changes in the balance of political power. As elsewhere, a future government could have taken these freedoms away from women if only they had been enshrined in law. Poland and Hungary come to mind.
This is exactly what French Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti explained to the country’s press: “The constitution is not only written for the present, but first and foremost for the future”. He was referring – without naming them – to the far-right party Rassemblement National (RN), which continues to lead the polls. He said that the government wanted to prevent a future majority from undermining women’s freedom to decide what happens to their bodies. Marine Le Pen, leader of the RN parliamentary group, voted in favor of enshrining it in the constitution, even after some back and forth. Presumably because a broad majority of the French supported this initiative. Nevertheless, some RN MPs had positioned themselves as staunch opponents of abortion in the past.
Politically speaking, the timing of the move is excellent: the recording took place the day after the start of the RN election campaign. The new constitutional text will be officially announced on March 8, International Women’s Day, the day before the start of the Renaissance election campaign. Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and Valérie Hayer, the leading Renaissance candidate, will no doubt take this as an opportunity to fire a few arrows at their main political opponent in their speeches on Saturday.
They will certainly not fail to refer to Simone Veil, a major figure in the Centre Party, former President of the European Parliament and former French Minister of Health, who legalized abortion in France in 1975. However, they will probably fail to mention the long, 18-month road to constitutional change, fraught with obstacles. The length of this path can be explained in part by Emmanuel Macron’s hesitation. They will certainly also fail to mention that the constitutional amendment is mainly due to the tenacity of Senator Mélanie Vogel (Greens), Terry Reintke‘s partner, who pushed the project forward.
However, the freedom of women in Europe to decide about their own bodies is far from complete. The next step would be to enshrine it in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. A charter which, it should be remembered, is legally binding and can protect women in the EU even better. Claire Stam
In the middle of the week, the Christian Democratic Party (EPP) family will meet for its two-day congress in Bucharest. The strongest European force with Manfred Weber (CSU) at the head of the parliamentary group and the party is going into the election campaign with a lot of tailwinds. The EPP is doing well in the polls. The manifesto with which the EPP candidates are entering the European election campaign will be adopted on Wednesday afternoon. The paper is around 15 pages long and is so broadly worded that it covers the ideological spectrum of all member parties from 44 countries. In other words, it contains virtually no rough edges.
On Thursday, Ursula von der Leyen will officially be put on the shield. The delegates will vote on whether she will be the lead candidate for a second term as Commission President. This is in contrast to the socialist party family, where there was no formal vote on the lead candidate at the weekend. Instead, Nicolas Schmit was acclaimed.
If all is not mistaken, the vote is likely to be a high point in von der Leyen’s party career. She has always struggled with extremely meager voting results at her CDU’s federal party conferences. In 2018, she only received 57% as deputy to party leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer. That should change in Bucharest. In 2018, the delegates elected Manfred Weber as their lead candidate with almost 80%. Unlike Weber in Helsinki, however, von der Leyen has no rival candidate this time: She can therefore expect approval well above the 80 percent mark.
Wishing you a successful day.
The Taurus leak did not make any major waves at the headquarters of NATO and the EU on Monday. However, the fact that senior German military officials are communicating via unsecured channels is causing diplomats to frown. Germany is the number one target of Russian disinformation and influence peddling, something that has apparently still not been recognized in Berlin, people in Brussels wonder. The accusation of dilettantism is in the air.
Officially, the allies largely kept a low profile on Monday. It was up to Germany to investigate the affair and they had “Chancellor Scholz’s word on the matter”, said the British Prime Minister’s spokesman Rishi Sunak. Former Defence Secretary Ben Wallace added that the revelation showed that Germany was “neither safe nor reliable“.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had already caused irritation in both London and Paris last week when he justified his no vote for German Taurus cruise missiles for Ukraine. He spoke about the cooperation between France and the United Kingdom with Kyiv on their Scalp and Storm Shadow systems and that both countries may have stationed soldiers in Ukraine for this purpose. He was criticized for this because the information is classified as secret.
On Monday, the Chancellor reiterated his rejection: “It is unacceptable to deliver a weapon system that reaches very far and then not think about how control over the weapon system can take place,” he argued in Sindelfingen. “And if you want to have control and it only works if German soldiers are involved, that is completely out of the question.” There was nothing to shake about this statement: “I am the Chancellor, and that is why it applies.”
However, Green Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock immediately contradicted Scholz. She pointed out that Germany had promised to do everything in its power to defend Ukraine and had to put everything to the test: “And from my point of view, the facts are very, very clear.”
The statements from the recording of a conversation between Bundeswehr officers on the possible use of Taurus cruise missiles contradict Scholz’s statements on Taurus in some places but provide little new information. “A certain amount of damage was done, but the content of such a conversation was not surprising,” says Linas Kojala, Director of the Center for East European Studies in Vilnius.
It is now crucial to assess what other data could have been collected by Russia and how to ensure that this does not happen again. “And not just in Germany, but also in other NATO countries.” Lithuania, as well as the two other Baltic states Estonia and Latvia, have been confronted with the Russian information war for years.
It is still unclear how the officers’ conversation could have been overheard. Did a Russian intelligence service interfere in the Webex conference, secretly or simply unnoticed by telephone – and thus embarrass German counterintelligence and the Bundeswehr?
However, the gateway was probably not technical, but human error. After all: “Webex and similar systems are not secret protection IT, but are intended for non-secret conversations. There are separate solutions for this,” says Manuel Atug, information security expert. “If high-ranking members of the Bundeswehr don’t care about this and don’t use secure communication channels in tap-protected environments, it’s not a problem with the technology.” At the latest when participants are connected via telephone line, secure end-to-end encryption using state-of-the-art technology is impossible.
The Bundeswehr’s top personnel should also have known this. There is a good reason why they have special, secure and expensive communication systems for operations with a high level of secrecy – but they are not available everywhere and at all times. They also only make sense when used in secure environments, such as bug-proof rooms. These are available at many embassies around the world. Most other systems may only be used up to the lowest level of secrecy, if at all.
IT security experts are not surprised that secret content is still communicated via unsuitable systems. These are much easier to use. And Webex even presented “WebEx for Defense“, a solution for the US Department of Defense, in 2020. However, this is also subject to strict restrictions in terms of the environment and classification of the content that can be communicated via it.
In Germany, Cisco’s Webex is no more on the list of hardware and software approved by the Federal Office for Information Security for classified information than Microsoft Teams, Zoom or other manufacturers. “The fact that manufacturers like to claim that their systems are secure as a matter of course should not be used as an excuse,” says Atug. He demands: “The Bundeswehr also needs an information security turnaround – both technically and in people’s minds.” with Viktor Funk, Lisa-Martina Klein
Kadri Simson sounded almost pleading on Monday. “We cannot close our borders because we need solar panels”, said the Energy Commissioner ahead of the meeting of energy ministers in Brussels. “We need to support our industry, but we need all products to reach our very ambitious 2030 targets.”
With these words, the hopes of some European manufacturers that the Commission would protect them from Chinese modules at dumping prices have died. A letter that Simson sent to the Council Presidency last Thursday together with Industry Commissioner Thierry Breton bore the same signature.
On five pages, the paper lists measures to support the European solar industry. However, trade restrictions are not even mentioned. According to Breton and Simson, further discussions will only take place in the second half of the year. In plain language: not with this Commission.
Instead, Simson and Breton are passing the ball back to the member states – but also to those companies from the solar industry that had taken a stand against import restrictions on cheap modules. Just yesterday, Enpal, 1Komma5, EnBW and Vattenfall, among others, presented the new Solar Economy Europe (SEE) alliance and explicitly positioned themselves as the “exact opposite” of the more China-critical manufacturers’ association ESMC.
Simson and Breton want to encourage distributors to take responsibility voluntarily: “Wholesalers and distributors could commit to including a range of PV products manufactured in the EU in their portfolio.” A corresponding declaration with voluntary commitments could be signed at one of the next Council meetings – probably in May, according to industry sources. However, the letter is also aimed at the member states.
The EU member states could introduce “ambitious sustainability and resilience criteria” in auctions for solar installations, according to a commitment recommended by Simson and Breton. In doing so, the Commission is also backing Minister Robert Habeck (Greens), who would like to introduce resilience bonuses in a solar package to receive higher remuneration for electricity from European solar modules. The FDP rejects this because of the costs.
The Commissioners are actually only urging the member states to take the Net-Zero Industry Act seriously. The EU member states are under pressure to act because, according to the NZIA, they will have to take sustainability and resilience criteria into account for 30% of their state-tendered volumes from fall 2025. Unless the German government cites the significantly higher price of European modules, in which case it can reject the special funding. However, Germany would then not be supporting the main objective of this major industrial policy project.
“Our goal is to meet 40 percent of our demand from European production by 2030,” emphasized Commission Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič at a well-attended SolarPower Europe conference just a few kilometers away this afternoon. “This is important for our economic security, our know-how and the development of industrial capacities in Europe for this globally crucial sector.”
Šefčovič does not believe that the recent increased emphasis on competitiveness will fundamentally change European economic policy: “We will not have an industrial deal without green elements. We will not have a competition to see who builds the best diesel engine.”
However, the Commission does not want to find fresh money for the solar industry during its remaining term of office. SolarPower Europe had called for a dedicated facility for manufacturers. Instead, the Commission wants to use guarantees from InvestEU, for example, to leverage private investment – and the Member States would already have the opportunity to spend more of their own funds through the TCTF framework.
In the long term, however, the aid framework must also allow subsidies for manufacturers’ running costs, demands SolarPower Europe President Aristotelis Chantavas. It can be seen as an admission that it will never be possible to produce more cheaply than the Chinese competition.
“China is pursuing a very aggressive industrial policy and sector strategy. China spends almost three to four times more on industry support and subsidies than we do in the Western world,” says Johan Lindahl, Secretary General of the European Solar Manufacturing Council (ESMC). The industry association represents the interests of the European PV manufacturing industry. Its best-known members include the German manufacturers Meyer Burger and Wackers.
According to estimates by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the People’s Republic spent 1.7% of its GDP on industrial support and subsidies in 2019. In France, according to the report “Red Ink: Estimating Chinese Industrial Policy Spending in Comparative Perspective”, it was only 0.5 percent in France and 0.4 percent in Germany. In its industrial strategy, China is focusing even more strongly on strategic sectors that produce green technologies such as PV, battery technology and electric vehicles.
In addition, the USA is currently granting generous tax rebates to manufacturers planning to set up solar power production projects as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. Washington has also introduced import duties on Chinese modules. This increases the cost of Chinese modules there. India is also working with subsidies, but to a lesser extent than China, as Lindahl explains. These and other developments have meant that the European market remains the most attractive for Chinese manufacturers. “This is why there is such an oversupply of modules flowing into Europe. This has led to a drop in prices and a very difficult situation for European module manufacturers,” says Lindahl.
Lindahl says that his organization has not campaigned for duties on the Chinese modules. This is because a possible anti-dumping investigation would take one to two years. By the time the investigation was completed, the industry would have disappeared. ESMC has instead advocated emergency measures, which are limited to the next two years. They would apply until the EU legal framework has been improved through the implementation of legislative packages such as the NZIA, the ban on goods produced by forced labor and the inclusion of photovoltaic modules and inverters, and incorporated into EU-wide ecodesign and energy label legislation.
A facility could be established at EU level in which modules produced in Europe are sold at market prices, explains Lindahl, “and then either the EU or the member states cover the difference between the market price and the current production costs.”
According to the ESMC Secretary-General, this compensation for the price difference between the market price and the production costs of the current stock would amount to €160 million. In order to keep the industry in Europe running at 40% capacity utilization, i.e. to cover personnel costs in 2025 and 2026, the association estimates that around €880 million will be needed by 2025. On the other hand, such a step would prevent the outflow of €560 million from the European Economic Area and thus reduce the trade imbalance with China, argues Lindahl.
In the magnificent Palace of Versailles, French MPs incorporated “the guaranteed freedom of women to exercise the right to voluntary abortion” into the French constitution. This was a historic breakthrough, as it made France the first country in the world to constitutionally protect women’s freedom to decide what happens to their bodies as they wish.
Because the constitution cannot be changed like a law, and a freedom “guaranteed” by the constitution acts like a bolt. Enshrining the freedom to have an abortion in the constitution means protecting French women from changes in the balance of political power. As elsewhere, a future government could have taken these freedoms away from women if only they had been enshrined in law. Poland and Hungary come to mind.
This is exactly what French Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti explained to the country’s press: “The constitution is not only written for the present, but first and foremost for the future”. He was referring – without naming them – to the far-right party Rassemblement National (RN), which continues to lead the polls. He said that the government wanted to prevent a future majority from undermining women’s freedom to decide what happens to their bodies. Marine Le Pen, leader of the RN parliamentary group, voted in favor of enshrining it in the constitution, even after some back and forth. Presumably because a broad majority of the French supported this initiative. Nevertheless, some RN MPs had positioned themselves as staunch opponents of abortion in the past.
Politically speaking, the timing of the move is excellent: the recording took place the day after the start of the RN election campaign. The new constitutional text will be officially announced on March 8, International Women’s Day, the day before the start of the Renaissance election campaign. Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and Valérie Hayer, the leading Renaissance candidate, will no doubt take this as an opportunity to fire a few arrows at their main political opponent in their speeches on Saturday.
They will certainly not fail to refer to Simone Veil, a major figure in the Centre Party, former President of the European Parliament and former French Minister of Health, who legalized abortion in France in 1975. However, they will probably fail to mention the long, 18-month road to constitutional change, fraught with obstacles. The length of this path can be explained in part by Emmanuel Macron’s hesitation. They will certainly also fail to mention that the constitutional amendment is mainly due to the tenacity of Senator Mélanie Vogel (Greens), Terry Reintke‘s partner, who pushed the project forward.
However, the freedom of women in Europe to decide about their own bodies is far from complete. The next step would be to enshrine it in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. A charter which, it should be remembered, is legally binding and can protect women in the EU even better. Claire Stam
