In an ideal world, the heads of state and government would send clear signals in favor of Ukraine at the EU summit on Thursday and Friday of this intensive week in Brussels. By saying yes to the start of accession talks, to the €5 billion for military support next year, to the €50 billion in economic aid and to the 12th package of sanctions against Russia.
This would not only be important for Ukraine but also good for the EU’s image as a geopolitical player, says a diplomat at the start of the intensive week. However, when it comes to Russian aggression against Ukraine, there is a problem with the “Hungarian hooligans.” He refers to the head of government Viktor Orbán, whose obstructionism in Brussels is now causing even diplomats to make undiplomatic statements.
Today, Monday, and tomorrow, Tuesday, the ministers at the Foreign Affairs Council and the General Affairs Council will try to find a way out of the Hungarian blockade. However, the situation at the start of the summit week has rarely been so challenging. Russia’s war is not the only conflict. The meeting of the foreign ministers begins today with a breakfast with Armenia’s chief diplomat Ararat Mirzoyan – also to signal solidarity with Azerbaijan.
Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba is present at the beginning of the Ukraine part. Diplomats explain that the issue of accession negotiations is a priority for Kyiv. The Middle East conflict and how the EU can bring more humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip are also on the agenda. Some member states want to discuss sanctions against Israeli settlers. According to diplomats, the settlers are a major problem because they make a two-state solution impossible and could provoke further regional escalation.
However, Austria, Hungary and the Czech Republic are against following the example of the USA and imposing visa sanctions against high-ranking representatives of the settlers. A Franco-German non-paper calling for further sanctions against Hamas’ financing and support structures is also likely to be an issue. So there is a lot to discuss.
Have a good start to this exciting EU week.
Minister of State, important decisions on the EU’s future will be made at the European Council at the end of the week; they concern enlargement and internal reforms. But Viktor Orbán could blow up the agenda …
It would not be the first time that Viktor Orbán tries to play games with the entire community for his purposes. His behavior is highly lacking in solidarity. The other 26 Member States agree that Russia’s attack on Europe’s peace order is a major threat. We know that the best way to counter Putin is to jointly put up a clear stop sign and to provide Ukraine with resolute support, financially, militarily and in humanitarian terms. It is very important to offer Ukraine a clear EU perspective and back it up with action. Only Orbán is undermining this course. This leads to anger and a lack of understanding in all 26 capitals. This is not how we work together in the EU. Consensus and cooperation are very important to us in the EU as a community of values.
The EU has committed to enlargement but has also emphasized the importance of internal reforms. Do the two go hand in hand, or should there be reforms first and then enlargement?
The accession of new members and the reform of the EU are going hand in hand. This was explicitly stated by the heads of state and government at the informal Council in Granada. This principle is to be reiterated at the upcoming European Council. We as the EU must remain capable of reform, just as we expect many reforms from the candidate countries. We have laid this down in the so-called Copenhagen criteria. We, the EU, must guarantee our willingness to accept new members.
What does that mean?
Our goal is a bigger and stronger Union. To achieve this, we must maintain and improve our ability to act. We need the Council to make decisions more quickly. We want that individual countries are no longer able to block the Community. We want fewer vetoes. But we also need to talk about protecting European values. How can we improve our rule of law instruments, making them more effective? Beyond that, however, it is also about institutional reforms. For example, how big should the European Parliament or the European Commission be in the future?
You are talking about more capability to act, previously there was talk of deepening. Deepening sounds more like a federal state. Strengthening the capability to act sounds like “carry on as before,” only “better.”
Deepening is a term that is no longer frequently used in the reform debate today. It dates back to the time of the last convention almost 20 years ago, for which I was rapporteur in the Bundestag. That was about going deeper. Today, instead of debating “more” or “less,” we are concentrating on the goal of a stronger, more capable EU.
And what does more capability to act mean?
We should first discuss our goals as a European Union: We want to be a geostrategic player who is perceived as powerful and can act confidently vis-à-vis China and Russia. We want to act with sovereignty, even if there is a change of government in the USA. We want to help climate neutrality achieve a global breakthrough. And then we have to ask ourselves what instruments we need to achieve this. This approach will take us further in the EU than repeating the buzzwords of the last 20 years.
In which areas does Germany advocate qualified majority voting?
We are striving to extend majority decisions in the common foreign and security policy, in tax policy and on technical issues relating to enlargement policy. We coordinated this with France at an early stage. Since then, we have continued our work in a Group of Friends of the Foreign Ministers. We are now eleven member states that have identified three specific areas that we want to get out of unanimity.
How should the departure from unanimity work in concrete terms?
For me, it is crucial that we use the flexibility of the Lisbon Treaty. The Lisbon Treaty allows individual policy areas to be transferred to decision-making with qualified majorities without amending the treaty. The keyword here is the so-called passerelle clause.
Do you want majority decisions in all foreign policy?
That is our vision. Of course, we are also thinking about mechanisms that provide a safety net: If an issue in the core national interest of a Member State is severely affected, then it should be possible for us to deal with it at the highest level.
What happens next?
I see positive momentum. Many member states are not currently open to treaty changes. But they emphasize that the Lisbon Treaty is suitable for enlargement. I hear this repeatedly: “The Lisbon treaty is enlargement proof.” Then let’s make use of the existing opportunities! Our aim is for the Belgian Council Presidency to draw up a reform framework starting in January. This should define concrete objectives and an implementation schedule. Ultimately, we need unanimity in the European Council for the desired changes.
The Parliament is calling for a convention. That is also in the coalition agreement. Yet little is heard from Germany about this, why?
The coalition stands behind its agreement. A convention is and remains a good goal. I keep bringing up the convention, but I see little enthusiasm among my colleagues in the Council. That is why we are working on achieving EU reforms by other means.
Ukraine is already a candidate country. The German government and others want negotiations to begin. Orbán is against this …
26 EU member states are in favor of taking the next step on Ukraine’s path to the EU and opening accession talks. Ukraine is showing an enormous willingness to reform. I expect the European Council to take this decision this week.
Would it be a compromise to postpone the decision until the March Council?
No, I don’t see that. That would send the wrong signal to the Ukrainians. 26 member states are ready. The Commission has established that Ukraine has fulfilled the agreed criteria. The Commission proposes that the decision be taken now and that negotiations begin in March. That is the right way.
Is it possible to conduct accession negotiations with a country that is at war and has an unresolved border?
We are already making very concrete preparations for Ukraine’s accession. Amid Russia’s brutal war of aggression, Ukraine is undertaking impressive reform efforts. Take media law and judicial reforms. The prospect of accession is vital for the people of Ukraine. It gives them the hope of a life in the EU, a life in peace, freedom and security. Ukraine is deeply determined to implement the reforms demanded. Yes, we should conduct accession negotiations with Ukraine. Markus Grabitz
Political agreement on the AI Act has been reached. However, a lot of technical work is still needed in the coming weeks to clarify the details. It also remains to be seen how Germany will accept the compromise. Because the outcome of the most difficult points during the negotiations turned out differently than the German government would have liked.
These points were: the regulation of foundation models and general-purpose AI (GPAI) as well as real-time biometric identification (RBI) in public spaces.
“I am cautious about the results of the trilogue,” said Federal Digital Minister Volker Wissing in an initial reaction at the weekend. On the one hand, all GPAI systems were prevented from falling into the high-risk area. “On the other hand, I have always emphasized that the AI Act must enable innovation and that regulation must be proportionate. We will look closely at whether this has been achieved over the next few days,” he announced. However, the Ministries of Economic Affairs and Justice are in charge of the AI Act. And they were reluctant to comment. They want to examine the results first. The industry, on the other hand, is not holding back with criticism.
Around 100 people deliberated on the AI Act for over 36 hours over three days during the last trilogue. The most controversial point was biometric recognition, which took 20 hours of deliberation. While France, for example, wants to use mass surveillance systems with artificial intelligence (AI) at the Olympic Games, the coalition agreement had stipulated that biometric recognition in public spaces should be “excluded under European law.”
In fact, systems for biometric categorization fall under the applications prohibited by the AI Act. The Parliament had added some prohibitions to the Commission’s original list, such as emotion recognition. During the negotiations, some areas were then removed. Prohibited applications are now:
In the face of resistance from Parliament, the Member States were able to negotiate narrow exceptions to real-time biometric recognition for law enforcement purposes, subject to several safeguards. For example, a judge must approve the use in advance and can only do so for a defined list of criminal offenses (such as human trafficking, child abduction or terrorist threats). Subsequent recognition by AI may only be used for the targeted search for criminals.
In addition to the prohibited AI applications, there are also high-risk systems and those with minimal risk. The AI Act only regulates the handling of high-risk systems. The vast majority of harmless applications, on the other hand, do not fall within its scope. However, companies can voluntarily commit to additional codes of conduct for these AI systems.
As the AI Act does not regulate the technology but the applications, it was difficult to incorporate foundation models and GPAI into the structure of the law. This is because they are not developed for any specific application and can be used for both harmless and risky purposes. The negotiators spent more than seven hours discussing this issue. Germany, France and Italy wanted to remove foundation models from regulation altogether and rely solely on binding self-governance.
Result: AI systems for general purposes (GPAI) and the models on which they are based must comply with the transparency requirements originally proposed by Parliament. This includes the creation of technical documentation, compliance with copyright and the publication of detailed summaries of the training data. Deep fakes and other AI-generated content must be labeled as such, and users must be informed when biometric categorization or emotion recognition systems are used.
Stricter requirements apply to GPAI models with high systemic risk. If these models meet certain criteria (such as computing power), they must perform model assessments, assess and mitigate systemic risks, perform attack tests, report to the Commission on serious incidents, ensure cybersecurity and report on their energy efficiency. Until harmonized EU standards are published, they will have to rely on codes of conduct.
The national market surveillance authorities are responsible for monitoring. However, the Commission is to set up a new European AI Office to ensure coordination at the European level. Non-compliance with the regulations can lead to fines of between €35 million or seven percent of global turnover and €7.5 million or 1.5 percent of turnover, depending on the infringement and the size of the company.
Now that the fully drafted text has been completed and translated, the Council and Parliament still need to formally adopt it. The rules of the AI Act will take effect two years after it comes into force. There are shorter transitional periods for prohibited practices (six months) and for the requirements for high-risk AI systems and high-performance AI models (one year).
Reactions to the political agreement in the trilogue on the AI Act were very mixed. NGOs see dangerous loopholes in the regulation. “The AI Act alone will not be enough,” said Angela Müller, Head of Policy & Advocacy at AlgorithmWatch. “It is just one piece of the puzzle among many that we will need to protect people and societies from the fundamental impact that AI systems can have on our rights, our democracy and the distribution of power in society.”
Legal scholar Philipp Hacker from the New European School of Digital Studies also sees a need to catch up. In terms of content, the AI Act offers “a reasonable balance in many respects between enabling innovation and protecting fundamental rights and public safety.” The rules for foundation models (FMs) are a step in the right direction but do not go far enough. “The minimum standards are actually extremely toothless.” However, regulation of FMs is necessary so that the regulatory burden does not fall on the providers. “FM regulation is efficient, self-regulation is inefficient and dangerous in this area,” says Hacker.
Above all, however, he says the political deal on the AI Act should have been accompanied by the announcement of massive investments worth billions of euros to strengthen the EU’s attractiveness as a future center for AI innovation and deployment. “This is the only way we can secure strategic independence in a key technology of the 21st century and prevent the same geostrategic dependencies that have brought Europe to the brink of chaos in oil and gas supply.”
Iris Plöger, member of the BDI Executive Board, fears for other reasons that Europe is in danger of “falling behind in a central key technology” with the AI Act. The goal of choosing a secure and confidence-building legal framework based on a risk-based approach has been partially missed. With the comprehensive regulation of basic AI models and AI applications, the AI Act jeopardizes the ability to compete and innovate on both the manufacturer and user side. Companies need legal certainty in the form of practical and forward-looking regulation. However, the two-tiered approach based on “immature criteria” has the opposite effect.
The CCIA misses important details in the compromise. “Without significant improvements on a technical level in the coming weeks, the AI Act will be a missed opportunity for Europe,” judges the association, which represents the interests of major American tech companies in Europe. The political agreement marks “the beginning of the important and necessary technical work on crucial details of the AI law that are still missing,” said Daniel Friedlaender, Head of CCIA Europe. The CCIA will support the European institutions in this area, the association announced. The lobbying around the AI Act thus continues.
Nadia Calviño, the Spanish Minister for Economic Affairs, will become the new President of the European Investment Bank (EIB). This was agreed by the EU finance ministers at their most recent meeting in Brussels. Calviño, who succeeds the German Werner Hoyer, is the first woman to hold the top position in the 65-year history of the EU’s main bank. The selection process was moderated by Belgian Finance Minister Vincent Van Peteghem, currently Chairman of the EIB Board of Governors. The appointment still has to be formally confirmed but is considered a formality. Calviño is due to take up the new post on January 1, 2024. Her mandate will run for six years and can be renewed.
Following the meeting, the Madrid head of department said: “I am grateful and honored to get the support of my fellow finance ministers to be at the helm of the European Investment Bank.” The EIB will “play an increasingly important role in financing the reconstruction of Ukraine and the green transition, and also support the role of Europe in the world.” Calviño intends to prepare a report on the Bank’s priorities soon, which will be discussed by the finance ministers in February.
Born in La Coruña, the 55-year-old, who is independent, is considered to have excellent connections on the European stage. Before joining Pedro Sánchez’s government in 2018, she was Director General for Budget at the European Commission. She joined the Commission in 2006 as Deputy Director-General for Competition. This made Calviño one of the most influential Spanish women in the EU’s executive body. She holds a degree in economics from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and in law from the National Distance Learning University UNED.
Before moving to Brussels, she held various positions in the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Finance from 1998, in the areas of foreign trade, macroeconomic analysis and forecasting, economic policy and competition. Calviño often emphasizes that her profile is more technical than political. However, she has recently gained political weight. She has benefited from Spain’s economic situation in particular. The EU’s fourth-largest economy has now made up for the severe slump caused by the coronavirus pandemic, with Brussels expecting growth of around two percent for the coming year – significantly more than for the eurozone.
With the EIB, the Spaniard is taking over the world’s largest multilateral financial institution. The bank’s main focus is on climate protection. Hoyer, who is stepping down on December 31 after twelve years in office, has transformed the EIB into a genuine “climate bank”: Last year, it granted more than half of its loans for climate protection and environmentally friendly energy projects. The EIB has also recently been heavily involved in supporting Ukraine. Calviño’s closest rival in the selection process was the Danish EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who was released from her duties by the Commission during her candidacy. According to her own statements, she will now return to the Brussels authority. cr
German decision-makers are more concerned about the growing number of nationalist governments in the EU than other political developments in Europe. Around 70 percent of them agree with the statement that they worry about the increasing number. In comparison: 28 percent are concerned about the effects of demographics on the labor market and a possible postponement of the retirement age. This issue is therefore in second place.
These are the results from an exclusive survey conducted by digital media company Table.Media, in which more than 3,000 high-ranking stakeholders participated. They are registered in the Transparency Register of the German Bundestag and mainly come from companies, associations and non-governmental organizations or from science and administration. They are spread across sectors such as automotive and energy production, the construction and digital industries as well as trade unions and environmental associations.
The survey also shows that an overwhelming majority of 91 percent of decision-makers consider migration policy to be decisive in the upcoming federal election. 91 percent attribute a rather high or high influence to it. Only 0.4 percent believe that it will hardly have any influence.
This means that the efforts of the coalition government to ensure that Brussels revives the refugee agreement between Turkey and the EU are likely to become more relevant. The German government is currently following the progress of the talks very closely. According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), around 38,500 migrants had arrived from Turkey to Greece and thus to the EU by the beginning of November. In the previous year, there were around 18,700 people in total.
Since 2016, Ankara has received billions from the EU to accommodate people whose asylum applications have been rejected in Greece and who are therefore staying in Turkey. However, this pact is currently crumbling. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government has refused to take back migrants from Greece since the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.
However, the key figures in Germany are skeptical that Berlin will prevail with its ideas in Brussels. Only a minority of 23 percent believe that the German government has a rather high or high level of competence when it comes to a “coherent European policy to represent Germany’s interests in Europe.” 33 percent are neutral on this issue. Above all, however: 44 percent rate the knowledge of the traffic light as rather low or simply low. löh
No matter what situation he finds himself in, Gunther Kegel assesses it from the perspective of an engineer. “That’s not always the smartest strategy when it comes to partnership issues,” says the 62-year-old electrical engineer. Perhaps it is this focus that has brought Kegel to where he is today. After all, Kegel has now been President of the German Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers’ Association (ZVEI) for three years. In this role, he represents the interests of the German high-tech sector, both nationally and internationally. In May, he was re-elected for a three-year term.
Kegel was born in Biedenkopf by the Lahn River in 1960 and grew up in Marburg, in the heart of Hesse. After graduating from high school, he first spent a year in the German army and later went to Darmstadt to study electrical engineering. He comes from a family of engineers, so the decision to study this subject was obvious. “My great-grandfather was one of the first graduate engineers in Germany.” The subject area of his studies was very “hip and nerdy” back then, similar to the zeitgeist of today’s smartphone software.
In 1985, Kegel became a research assistant at the Institute for Control Engineering, where he also completed his Ph.D. In 1989, the engineer then joined his current employer, Pepperl + Fuchs SE. He has now been working for the manufacturer of electronic sensors for 34 years – 28 of them as CEO of the Mannheim-based company. Kegel was also elected President of the ZVEI in 2020.
A major concern of the association is the path towards an All-Electric Society, i.e. towards an electrified and digitalized society. “When I close my eyes, I see this society very clearly before my eyes,” says Kegel, “and in a form that is not exclusive, not exclusionary.” This means that the All-Electric Society also includes energy sources such as green hydrogen, for example. And also includes the sustainable technologies that will come in the future, says Kegel. He believes that we need to use energy much more efficiently than we do today. “We lose around 75 percent of the energy that we extract from fossil materials from the earth, for example,” says Kegel. “Electrification can dramatically increase this efficiency.”
With this All-Electric Society, however, Kegel believes that we are still nowhere near the pace at which we should be to achieve our sustainable goals. Especially in a European comparison, smaller countries are ahead of Germany in terms of supply from renewable energies.
Despite the high demands, the engineer remains optimistic. As an association, they are in weekly contact with politicians. No wrong paths must be taken – proposals that sound good politically but miss the reality of our economy. This is another reason why the association has intensified its communication with politicians in recent years.
In addition to his profession, Kegel is an enthusiastic alpinist. Whether skiing or hiking, he can relay up there in the mountains. A balance to his technical profession. “Twenty kilometers behind Basel, when I see the mountains, it’s cinema time,” says Kegel, “I can switch off very quickly.” Dayan Djajadisastra
In an ideal world, the heads of state and government would send clear signals in favor of Ukraine at the EU summit on Thursday and Friday of this intensive week in Brussels. By saying yes to the start of accession talks, to the €5 billion for military support next year, to the €50 billion in economic aid and to the 12th package of sanctions against Russia.
This would not only be important for Ukraine but also good for the EU’s image as a geopolitical player, says a diplomat at the start of the intensive week. However, when it comes to Russian aggression against Ukraine, there is a problem with the “Hungarian hooligans.” He refers to the head of government Viktor Orbán, whose obstructionism in Brussels is now causing even diplomats to make undiplomatic statements.
Today, Monday, and tomorrow, Tuesday, the ministers at the Foreign Affairs Council and the General Affairs Council will try to find a way out of the Hungarian blockade. However, the situation at the start of the summit week has rarely been so challenging. Russia’s war is not the only conflict. The meeting of the foreign ministers begins today with a breakfast with Armenia’s chief diplomat Ararat Mirzoyan – also to signal solidarity with Azerbaijan.
Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba is present at the beginning of the Ukraine part. Diplomats explain that the issue of accession negotiations is a priority for Kyiv. The Middle East conflict and how the EU can bring more humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip are also on the agenda. Some member states want to discuss sanctions against Israeli settlers. According to diplomats, the settlers are a major problem because they make a two-state solution impossible and could provoke further regional escalation.
However, Austria, Hungary and the Czech Republic are against following the example of the USA and imposing visa sanctions against high-ranking representatives of the settlers. A Franco-German non-paper calling for further sanctions against Hamas’ financing and support structures is also likely to be an issue. So there is a lot to discuss.
Have a good start to this exciting EU week.
Minister of State, important decisions on the EU’s future will be made at the European Council at the end of the week; they concern enlargement and internal reforms. But Viktor Orbán could blow up the agenda …
It would not be the first time that Viktor Orbán tries to play games with the entire community for his purposes. His behavior is highly lacking in solidarity. The other 26 Member States agree that Russia’s attack on Europe’s peace order is a major threat. We know that the best way to counter Putin is to jointly put up a clear stop sign and to provide Ukraine with resolute support, financially, militarily and in humanitarian terms. It is very important to offer Ukraine a clear EU perspective and back it up with action. Only Orbán is undermining this course. This leads to anger and a lack of understanding in all 26 capitals. This is not how we work together in the EU. Consensus and cooperation are very important to us in the EU as a community of values.
The EU has committed to enlargement but has also emphasized the importance of internal reforms. Do the two go hand in hand, or should there be reforms first and then enlargement?
The accession of new members and the reform of the EU are going hand in hand. This was explicitly stated by the heads of state and government at the informal Council in Granada. This principle is to be reiterated at the upcoming European Council. We as the EU must remain capable of reform, just as we expect many reforms from the candidate countries. We have laid this down in the so-called Copenhagen criteria. We, the EU, must guarantee our willingness to accept new members.
What does that mean?
Our goal is a bigger and stronger Union. To achieve this, we must maintain and improve our ability to act. We need the Council to make decisions more quickly. We want that individual countries are no longer able to block the Community. We want fewer vetoes. But we also need to talk about protecting European values. How can we improve our rule of law instruments, making them more effective? Beyond that, however, it is also about institutional reforms. For example, how big should the European Parliament or the European Commission be in the future?
You are talking about more capability to act, previously there was talk of deepening. Deepening sounds more like a federal state. Strengthening the capability to act sounds like “carry on as before,” only “better.”
Deepening is a term that is no longer frequently used in the reform debate today. It dates back to the time of the last convention almost 20 years ago, for which I was rapporteur in the Bundestag. That was about going deeper. Today, instead of debating “more” or “less,” we are concentrating on the goal of a stronger, more capable EU.
And what does more capability to act mean?
We should first discuss our goals as a European Union: We want to be a geostrategic player who is perceived as powerful and can act confidently vis-à-vis China and Russia. We want to act with sovereignty, even if there is a change of government in the USA. We want to help climate neutrality achieve a global breakthrough. And then we have to ask ourselves what instruments we need to achieve this. This approach will take us further in the EU than repeating the buzzwords of the last 20 years.
In which areas does Germany advocate qualified majority voting?
We are striving to extend majority decisions in the common foreign and security policy, in tax policy and on technical issues relating to enlargement policy. We coordinated this with France at an early stage. Since then, we have continued our work in a Group of Friends of the Foreign Ministers. We are now eleven member states that have identified three specific areas that we want to get out of unanimity.
How should the departure from unanimity work in concrete terms?
For me, it is crucial that we use the flexibility of the Lisbon Treaty. The Lisbon Treaty allows individual policy areas to be transferred to decision-making with qualified majorities without amending the treaty. The keyword here is the so-called passerelle clause.
Do you want majority decisions in all foreign policy?
That is our vision. Of course, we are also thinking about mechanisms that provide a safety net: If an issue in the core national interest of a Member State is severely affected, then it should be possible for us to deal with it at the highest level.
What happens next?
I see positive momentum. Many member states are not currently open to treaty changes. But they emphasize that the Lisbon Treaty is suitable for enlargement. I hear this repeatedly: “The Lisbon treaty is enlargement proof.” Then let’s make use of the existing opportunities! Our aim is for the Belgian Council Presidency to draw up a reform framework starting in January. This should define concrete objectives and an implementation schedule. Ultimately, we need unanimity in the European Council for the desired changes.
The Parliament is calling for a convention. That is also in the coalition agreement. Yet little is heard from Germany about this, why?
The coalition stands behind its agreement. A convention is and remains a good goal. I keep bringing up the convention, but I see little enthusiasm among my colleagues in the Council. That is why we are working on achieving EU reforms by other means.
Ukraine is already a candidate country. The German government and others want negotiations to begin. Orbán is against this …
26 EU member states are in favor of taking the next step on Ukraine’s path to the EU and opening accession talks. Ukraine is showing an enormous willingness to reform. I expect the European Council to take this decision this week.
Would it be a compromise to postpone the decision until the March Council?
No, I don’t see that. That would send the wrong signal to the Ukrainians. 26 member states are ready. The Commission has established that Ukraine has fulfilled the agreed criteria. The Commission proposes that the decision be taken now and that negotiations begin in March. That is the right way.
Is it possible to conduct accession negotiations with a country that is at war and has an unresolved border?
We are already making very concrete preparations for Ukraine’s accession. Amid Russia’s brutal war of aggression, Ukraine is undertaking impressive reform efforts. Take media law and judicial reforms. The prospect of accession is vital for the people of Ukraine. It gives them the hope of a life in the EU, a life in peace, freedom and security. Ukraine is deeply determined to implement the reforms demanded. Yes, we should conduct accession negotiations with Ukraine. Markus Grabitz
Political agreement on the AI Act has been reached. However, a lot of technical work is still needed in the coming weeks to clarify the details. It also remains to be seen how Germany will accept the compromise. Because the outcome of the most difficult points during the negotiations turned out differently than the German government would have liked.
These points were: the regulation of foundation models and general-purpose AI (GPAI) as well as real-time biometric identification (RBI) in public spaces.
“I am cautious about the results of the trilogue,” said Federal Digital Minister Volker Wissing in an initial reaction at the weekend. On the one hand, all GPAI systems were prevented from falling into the high-risk area. “On the other hand, I have always emphasized that the AI Act must enable innovation and that regulation must be proportionate. We will look closely at whether this has been achieved over the next few days,” he announced. However, the Ministries of Economic Affairs and Justice are in charge of the AI Act. And they were reluctant to comment. They want to examine the results first. The industry, on the other hand, is not holding back with criticism.
Around 100 people deliberated on the AI Act for over 36 hours over three days during the last trilogue. The most controversial point was biometric recognition, which took 20 hours of deliberation. While France, for example, wants to use mass surveillance systems with artificial intelligence (AI) at the Olympic Games, the coalition agreement had stipulated that biometric recognition in public spaces should be “excluded under European law.”
In fact, systems for biometric categorization fall under the applications prohibited by the AI Act. The Parliament had added some prohibitions to the Commission’s original list, such as emotion recognition. During the negotiations, some areas were then removed. Prohibited applications are now:
In the face of resistance from Parliament, the Member States were able to negotiate narrow exceptions to real-time biometric recognition for law enforcement purposes, subject to several safeguards. For example, a judge must approve the use in advance and can only do so for a defined list of criminal offenses (such as human trafficking, child abduction or terrorist threats). Subsequent recognition by AI may only be used for the targeted search for criminals.
In addition to the prohibited AI applications, there are also high-risk systems and those with minimal risk. The AI Act only regulates the handling of high-risk systems. The vast majority of harmless applications, on the other hand, do not fall within its scope. However, companies can voluntarily commit to additional codes of conduct for these AI systems.
As the AI Act does not regulate the technology but the applications, it was difficult to incorporate foundation models and GPAI into the structure of the law. This is because they are not developed for any specific application and can be used for both harmless and risky purposes. The negotiators spent more than seven hours discussing this issue. Germany, France and Italy wanted to remove foundation models from regulation altogether and rely solely on binding self-governance.
Result: AI systems for general purposes (GPAI) and the models on which they are based must comply with the transparency requirements originally proposed by Parliament. This includes the creation of technical documentation, compliance with copyright and the publication of detailed summaries of the training data. Deep fakes and other AI-generated content must be labeled as such, and users must be informed when biometric categorization or emotion recognition systems are used.
Stricter requirements apply to GPAI models with high systemic risk. If these models meet certain criteria (such as computing power), they must perform model assessments, assess and mitigate systemic risks, perform attack tests, report to the Commission on serious incidents, ensure cybersecurity and report on their energy efficiency. Until harmonized EU standards are published, they will have to rely on codes of conduct.
The national market surveillance authorities are responsible for monitoring. However, the Commission is to set up a new European AI Office to ensure coordination at the European level. Non-compliance with the regulations can lead to fines of between €35 million or seven percent of global turnover and €7.5 million or 1.5 percent of turnover, depending on the infringement and the size of the company.
Now that the fully drafted text has been completed and translated, the Council and Parliament still need to formally adopt it. The rules of the AI Act will take effect two years after it comes into force. There are shorter transitional periods for prohibited practices (six months) and for the requirements for high-risk AI systems and high-performance AI models (one year).
Reactions to the political agreement in the trilogue on the AI Act were very mixed. NGOs see dangerous loopholes in the regulation. “The AI Act alone will not be enough,” said Angela Müller, Head of Policy & Advocacy at AlgorithmWatch. “It is just one piece of the puzzle among many that we will need to protect people and societies from the fundamental impact that AI systems can have on our rights, our democracy and the distribution of power in society.”
Legal scholar Philipp Hacker from the New European School of Digital Studies also sees a need to catch up. In terms of content, the AI Act offers “a reasonable balance in many respects between enabling innovation and protecting fundamental rights and public safety.” The rules for foundation models (FMs) are a step in the right direction but do not go far enough. “The minimum standards are actually extremely toothless.” However, regulation of FMs is necessary so that the regulatory burden does not fall on the providers. “FM regulation is efficient, self-regulation is inefficient and dangerous in this area,” says Hacker.
Above all, however, he says the political deal on the AI Act should have been accompanied by the announcement of massive investments worth billions of euros to strengthen the EU’s attractiveness as a future center for AI innovation and deployment. “This is the only way we can secure strategic independence in a key technology of the 21st century and prevent the same geostrategic dependencies that have brought Europe to the brink of chaos in oil and gas supply.”
Iris Plöger, member of the BDI Executive Board, fears for other reasons that Europe is in danger of “falling behind in a central key technology” with the AI Act. The goal of choosing a secure and confidence-building legal framework based on a risk-based approach has been partially missed. With the comprehensive regulation of basic AI models and AI applications, the AI Act jeopardizes the ability to compete and innovate on both the manufacturer and user side. Companies need legal certainty in the form of practical and forward-looking regulation. However, the two-tiered approach based on “immature criteria” has the opposite effect.
The CCIA misses important details in the compromise. “Without significant improvements on a technical level in the coming weeks, the AI Act will be a missed opportunity for Europe,” judges the association, which represents the interests of major American tech companies in Europe. The political agreement marks “the beginning of the important and necessary technical work on crucial details of the AI law that are still missing,” said Daniel Friedlaender, Head of CCIA Europe. The CCIA will support the European institutions in this area, the association announced. The lobbying around the AI Act thus continues.
Nadia Calviño, the Spanish Minister for Economic Affairs, will become the new President of the European Investment Bank (EIB). This was agreed by the EU finance ministers at their most recent meeting in Brussels. Calviño, who succeeds the German Werner Hoyer, is the first woman to hold the top position in the 65-year history of the EU’s main bank. The selection process was moderated by Belgian Finance Minister Vincent Van Peteghem, currently Chairman of the EIB Board of Governors. The appointment still has to be formally confirmed but is considered a formality. Calviño is due to take up the new post on January 1, 2024. Her mandate will run for six years and can be renewed.
Following the meeting, the Madrid head of department said: “I am grateful and honored to get the support of my fellow finance ministers to be at the helm of the European Investment Bank.” The EIB will “play an increasingly important role in financing the reconstruction of Ukraine and the green transition, and also support the role of Europe in the world.” Calviño intends to prepare a report on the Bank’s priorities soon, which will be discussed by the finance ministers in February.
Born in La Coruña, the 55-year-old, who is independent, is considered to have excellent connections on the European stage. Before joining Pedro Sánchez’s government in 2018, she was Director General for Budget at the European Commission. She joined the Commission in 2006 as Deputy Director-General for Competition. This made Calviño one of the most influential Spanish women in the EU’s executive body. She holds a degree in economics from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and in law from the National Distance Learning University UNED.
Before moving to Brussels, she held various positions in the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Finance from 1998, in the areas of foreign trade, macroeconomic analysis and forecasting, economic policy and competition. Calviño often emphasizes that her profile is more technical than political. However, she has recently gained political weight. She has benefited from Spain’s economic situation in particular. The EU’s fourth-largest economy has now made up for the severe slump caused by the coronavirus pandemic, with Brussels expecting growth of around two percent for the coming year – significantly more than for the eurozone.
With the EIB, the Spaniard is taking over the world’s largest multilateral financial institution. The bank’s main focus is on climate protection. Hoyer, who is stepping down on December 31 after twelve years in office, has transformed the EIB into a genuine “climate bank”: Last year, it granted more than half of its loans for climate protection and environmentally friendly energy projects. The EIB has also recently been heavily involved in supporting Ukraine. Calviño’s closest rival in the selection process was the Danish EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who was released from her duties by the Commission during her candidacy. According to her own statements, she will now return to the Brussels authority. cr
German decision-makers are more concerned about the growing number of nationalist governments in the EU than other political developments in Europe. Around 70 percent of them agree with the statement that they worry about the increasing number. In comparison: 28 percent are concerned about the effects of demographics on the labor market and a possible postponement of the retirement age. This issue is therefore in second place.
These are the results from an exclusive survey conducted by digital media company Table.Media, in which more than 3,000 high-ranking stakeholders participated. They are registered in the Transparency Register of the German Bundestag and mainly come from companies, associations and non-governmental organizations or from science and administration. They are spread across sectors such as automotive and energy production, the construction and digital industries as well as trade unions and environmental associations.
The survey also shows that an overwhelming majority of 91 percent of decision-makers consider migration policy to be decisive in the upcoming federal election. 91 percent attribute a rather high or high influence to it. Only 0.4 percent believe that it will hardly have any influence.
This means that the efforts of the coalition government to ensure that Brussels revives the refugee agreement between Turkey and the EU are likely to become more relevant. The German government is currently following the progress of the talks very closely. According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), around 38,500 migrants had arrived from Turkey to Greece and thus to the EU by the beginning of November. In the previous year, there were around 18,700 people in total.
Since 2016, Ankara has received billions from the EU to accommodate people whose asylum applications have been rejected in Greece and who are therefore staying in Turkey. However, this pact is currently crumbling. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government has refused to take back migrants from Greece since the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.
However, the key figures in Germany are skeptical that Berlin will prevail with its ideas in Brussels. Only a minority of 23 percent believe that the German government has a rather high or high level of competence when it comes to a “coherent European policy to represent Germany’s interests in Europe.” 33 percent are neutral on this issue. Above all, however: 44 percent rate the knowledge of the traffic light as rather low or simply low. löh
No matter what situation he finds himself in, Gunther Kegel assesses it from the perspective of an engineer. “That’s not always the smartest strategy when it comes to partnership issues,” says the 62-year-old electrical engineer. Perhaps it is this focus that has brought Kegel to where he is today. After all, Kegel has now been President of the German Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers’ Association (ZVEI) for three years. In this role, he represents the interests of the German high-tech sector, both nationally and internationally. In May, he was re-elected for a three-year term.
Kegel was born in Biedenkopf by the Lahn River in 1960 and grew up in Marburg, in the heart of Hesse. After graduating from high school, he first spent a year in the German army and later went to Darmstadt to study electrical engineering. He comes from a family of engineers, so the decision to study this subject was obvious. “My great-grandfather was one of the first graduate engineers in Germany.” The subject area of his studies was very “hip and nerdy” back then, similar to the zeitgeist of today’s smartphone software.
In 1985, Kegel became a research assistant at the Institute for Control Engineering, where he also completed his Ph.D. In 1989, the engineer then joined his current employer, Pepperl + Fuchs SE. He has now been working for the manufacturer of electronic sensors for 34 years – 28 of them as CEO of the Mannheim-based company. Kegel was also elected President of the ZVEI in 2020.
A major concern of the association is the path towards an All-Electric Society, i.e. towards an electrified and digitalized society. “When I close my eyes, I see this society very clearly before my eyes,” says Kegel, “and in a form that is not exclusive, not exclusionary.” This means that the All-Electric Society also includes energy sources such as green hydrogen, for example. And also includes the sustainable technologies that will come in the future, says Kegel. He believes that we need to use energy much more efficiently than we do today. “We lose around 75 percent of the energy that we extract from fossil materials from the earth, for example,” says Kegel. “Electrification can dramatically increase this efficiency.”
With this All-Electric Society, however, Kegel believes that we are still nowhere near the pace at which we should be to achieve our sustainable goals. Especially in a European comparison, smaller countries are ahead of Germany in terms of supply from renewable energies.
Despite the high demands, the engineer remains optimistic. As an association, they are in weekly contact with politicians. No wrong paths must be taken – proposals that sound good politically but miss the reality of our economy. This is another reason why the association has intensified its communication with politicians in recent years.
In addition to his profession, Kegel is an enthusiastic alpinist. Whether skiing or hiking, he can relay up there in the mountains. A balance to his technical profession. “Twenty kilometers behind Basel, when I see the mountains, it’s cinema time,” says Kegel, “I can switch off very quickly.” Dayan Djajadisastra
