The last official day of negotiations at the Climate Change Conference (COP26): many observers expect an extension. We must not settle for the lowest common denominator just before the end, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in Glasgow on Thursday, calling on the states to be more ambitious. The 1.5-degree target is not yet within reach and key issues remain unresolved. Jochen Flasbarth, the chief negotiator of the German delegation, is nevertheless confident and continues to believe in a quick agreement, as he says in an interview with Timo Landenberger and Lukas Scheid.
The new climate and energy aid guidelines are causing concern for German industry. The fear: Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager‘s plans to date could lead to hundreds of energy-intensive companies losing their entitlement to relief on electricity costs. However, as Till Hoppe reports, Vestager is apparently open to changes as the Commission begins its internal coordination process.
Little is leaking out of the coalition negotiations, and so there is eager speculation about who might get which ministerial post. The allocation won’t be easy – but the real challenge lies one level below: Especially the two parties that are new to government face the difficulty of finding the right personnel for the ministries. Falk Steiner analyses the reasons for the Greens’ and the FDP’s personnel problems and gives an overview of what options Green and Yellow have.
Mr. Flasbarth, until when have you booked your hotel?
Until Saturday. With an option to extend, but I don’t think we need it.
There is not much time left, however, and key questions are still unanswered. You have described the unresolved Paris rulebook as a “diplomatic ballast” that needs to go. However, it is still there.
This must not be misunderstood. These are essential issues for making the Paris Agreement applicable. The fact that they have not yet been resolved prevents us from concentrating on implementation. For me, the success of the climate conference, therefore, depended from the outset on resolving the rule book. And I am quite confident that it will still be resolved.
That is, what has not been achieved in the years since Paris and in two weeks since the start of the COP will now happen in a few hours?
At the COP in Madrid, the negotiations were very tangled, as there were very strict positions on the question of for how emission reductions in other countries are to be mutually accounted. No agreement could be reached on this in Madrid, and there are points where no compromise can be made. In the meantime, the general climate has changed. We have the impression that all countries want to reach a result here. Brazil too.
Keyword Brazil: The question is also to what extent carbon credits from the Kyoto Protocol can be transferred to the new regime.
In terms of the problem, this has a different quality to the future structure for crediting emission reductions. If you transfer credits from the past to the future, that means, at the same time, less climate ambition. We need to find a middle way here.
There is also still a need for clarification on climate financing.
The wish of the developing countries is that we should set out annually where we are on the way to the promised USD 100 billion. In 2023, we will reach that amount, and in 2025, it should grow to about 120 billion. But since we have not delivered by 2020, developing countries would rather have an update every year. I can well understand that, and we should comply with it.
The largest emitters, the US and China, have recently announced a surprising bilateral agreement on more climate protection. They had previously demanded more commitment from the countries, especially China. Is that enough now?
I have read the statement carefully and I have worked with the Chinese for a long time. With the agreement, they have substantial additional reductions in mind. Of course, we expect this to be formalized via an NDC update. But the announcement is already very specific in parts, especially on methane reductions, which can have a big impact. It’s also an exclamation point on forests and deforestation-free supply chains.
The third-largest emitter is the European Union, which likes to call itself a pioneer in climate protection. Can the EU live up to its self-assigned role at COP26?
The fact that the EU has raised its NDC from 40 percent reduction to 55 percent is a big step for the economic area. That is why it was also time for the US and China, as the largest emitters, to move to similar levels. They have now roughly done that.
With the ETS and the planned extension to buildings and transport, the EU is backing a market-based approach to decarbonization and is promoting the global application of CO2 pricing wherever possible. Successful?
The European ETS was already the blueprint for the Chinese emissions trading. In the US, it exists in some states and I have talked to a Russian colleague about the introduction of pilot projects for emissions trading. I think this is a very rational instrument in the area of industry and energy production, which has delivered very precise results, while in other areas we are still lagging quite behind.
To protect against carbon leakage, the EU is planning to introduce a border adjustment mechanism (CBAM). What are the reactions here?
There has been almost no discussion, particularly with colleagues from the emerging countries, in which this has not been mentioned. Because, of course, it is also seen as an instrument to keep products from other countries out of our markets. If this impression becomes entrenched, then we have a problem. We want to prevent carbon leakage and there is nothing wrong with wanting to protect industry. But an ideal world would be one in which there is no need for the CBAM because there are comparable standards. That’s why Olaf Scholz brought up the climate club.
The draft COP final declaration includes a clear call to accelerate the coal phase-out. Such a sector-related formulation is considered a novelty and is meeting with resistance in some quarters. How great are the chances of survival for the phrase?
We think it is very good and we hope that we can convince our partners to keep it in. Not only because of the statement on coal, but because it is important to move on the level of economic sectors in addition to the state level. We could even imagine embellishing the passage by including a temporal perspective.
Which one might that be?
The phrase from the “traffic light” exploratory paper is: ideally as early as 2030. But that would overburden other states that are even more dependent on coal. In any case, it has to be done before mid-century. Otherwise, it will be too late.
It also explicitly calls for a phase-out of fossil fuel financing. Almost simultaneously, the EU’s new list of eligible “projects of common interest” became public, which continues to drive investment in gas projects. How does this fit together?
I believe that we need gas as a transitional solution for the green transformation. But when it comes to new investments, they must only flow into infrastructures that are 1.5-degree-proof and thus H2-ready. Only for fossil natural gas will the utilization period be too short to map a business case.
While landmark decisions on global climate protection are being debated in Glasgow, the future German government is arguing about its own positions in Berlin. What role will the coalition negotiations play for the German delegation at the COP?
The position of the old Federal Government, in the “traffic light” and – apart from the AfD – generally across party lines are so close to each other for our international action that it does not matter. We see no limits at all here and are fully capable of acting.
Hardly any EU project is currently causing German industry as much concern as the new climate and energy aid guidelines (KUEBLL). The acting German Federal Minister of Economic Affairs, Peter Altmaier (CDU), is therefore still trying to influence the EU Commission in the last days and weeks in office. The European Parliament has also demanded changes in a resolution on the initiative of CSU MEP Markus Ferber.
The concern: Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager’s plans to date could result in hundreds of energy-intensive companies losing their entitlement to relief on electricity costs. And this is at a time when climate protection plans of the Fit for 55 package will foreseeably bring new burdens.
The interventions do not seem to be in vain. According to information from EU circles, the Commission began the internal coordination process on Thursday, in which other directorates-general can comment on DG Competition’s draft. After the two-week process, there should be a revised text. Vestager has signaled that she is still prepared to make changes to the points that are crucial for the industry, according to sources in the circles. The Commission did not want to comment on this.
The Commission uses the guidelines for European energy and environmental aid in assessing which national aid it will approve. The previous guidelines are valid until the end of the year, and the Commission presented a draft for the successor regulation in the summer. This reform is intended to feed into the EU’s green deal agenda. It should allow governments to pay out much higher subsidies to promote the transformation, taking into account new areas such as clean mobility or energy efficiency of buildings.
However, the draft also proposes to significantly tighten the conditions for the reduction of electricity levies. Altmaier and Co fear that many electricity-intensive companies would lose their entitlement to a reduced EEG levy as a result. This is because the list of industries eligible for subsidies is to be shortened and the requirements are to be tightened significantly.
Under the draft, companies would have to demonstrate a trade intensity of at least 20 percent and an electricity cost intensity of at least 10 percent. An alternative threshold is 80 percent for trade intensity and seven percent for electricity cost intensity. The values are thus much higher than before.
The new guidelines would “allow for much higher levels of state aid” if necessary to achieve the Green Deal targets, Vestager said last week. At the same time, conditions would have to be tightened “to avoid companies receiving more aid than they need”.
The Commission is also expected to take a more fundamental look at the role of state aid in the green and digital transformation next week. A statement on competition policy will then be on the college’s agenda, albeit with reservations. This is because the statement is also causing considerable internal debate.
In particular, the orientation of the instrument of “Important Projects of Common European Interest” (IPCEI), which was used to promote microelectronics and the battery cell industry, is controversial. Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton from France wants to use IPCEIs for an active industrial policy and allow governments to massively subsidize large semiconductor factories, for example. Vestager, on the other hand, defends the previous restriction, according to which only highly innovative technologies may be promoted.
In a joint letter, six member states now backed the competition commissioner. “Excessive and non-targeted use of the instrument would lead to a subsidy race and unfair competition in the EU,” wrote the representatives of the Netherlands, Ireland, Romania, and the northern European countries. Therefore, neither mass production nor commercial activities should be promoted via IPCEIs.
Altmaier is more on France’s side on this issue. He hopes to be able to persuade major chip manufacturers to locate in Germany by means of billions of euros in subsidies. It remains to be seen whether a “traffic light” coalition would take the same approach. The FDP is critical of such subsidies. Breton did, however, talk to Chancellor-designate Olaf Scholz over lunch on Thursday about supply chains and the planned “Chips Act” – and afterwards spoke of a “fruitful exchange“. The commissioner travels on to Saxony this Friday to meet representatives of chip manufacturers such as Infineon, Bosch, and Globalfoundry.
Everyone is looking at the ministerial line-up. Naturally, because their appointments are complicated enough: Self-imposed requirements such as the female quota, but also power relations and regional proportionalities have to be taken into account. Other high-profile positions such as parliamentary state secretaries (who are called state ministers in the Federal Foreign Office and the Federal Chancellery for historical reasons), federal commissioners and parliamentary group chairmen are also delicate matters for each of the three parties and particularly complicated for the two smaller coalition partners with probably no more than five ministerial posts.
The last time the Greens were in government at the federal level was 16 years ago. Of the ministers at that time, only Renate Künast and Jürgen Trittin remain at the federal level at all. The ministers of the last black-yellow coalition from 2009 to 2013 are also no longer involved in the FDP.
But the biggest problem for the two new government parties lies below the ministerial level. Because changes in the colour of a ministry are usually accompanied by staff changes. There are enough candidates for Parliamentary State Secretaries from the established parliamentary parties. And the two “newcomers” in a future traffic light coalition should still be able to muster the majority of the civil servant state secretaries in the houses.
But this is only a small part of the usual changes. Most recently, the Federal Constitutional Court had repeatedly stated that not every political official may be replaced and temporarily retired in the event of a change of government – in higher functions, the life-tenure also applies and a civil servant is a state servant, not a party servant. However, loyalty should not be called into question. And that is precisely the issue in many places – especially when houses are to make a drastic political change of course.
The Chancellor’s Office will most likely see a change of staff in the future. Civil servants are only ever on loan there – they have a headquarters to which they can and, if necessary, must return to. It is safe to assume that new staff will come from the planning department of the Federal Ministry of Finance, among others. Even if Angela Merkel did not always go strictly by the party playbook: For her and her chancellor’s office chiefs, political proximity was always important in the immediate power apparatus. But this means that there are already just under a dozen pensions cases whose future use will be a problem.
While the SPD is facing a personnel castling from old to new houses, after 16 years of CDU/CSU government, actors loyal to the CDU and CSU or previous ministers are currently sitting at the administrative levers of power. What tasks will they be given in the future? In which houses?
Adopt almost all of them and hope for their loyalty, as Winfried Kretschmann once did in Baden-Württemberg? A federal ministry is even more politically charged than the state level. And is it even possible to change policy without also changing staff in key administrative positions? In the end, Yellow and Green face a dual problem: Getting rid of those loyal to the Union – and at the same time actually finding candidates for whom there should be vacancies.
There are several areas for the Greens in which recruitment seems generally possible. There are enough party-affiliated organizations, after all. Especially in the fields of environment, climate, transport, development cooperation and in consumer protection. Drawing on personnel from thematically profiled actors such as international organizations, think tanks like Agora Energiewende, or associations is a feasible option.
Moreover, the Greens have repeatedly occupied relevant ministries at the state level and have also been able to build up staff there, a reservoir from which they can also draw at the federal level – at least when it comes to lawyers who are always needed. However, in states with Green government participation, such as Baden-Württemberg, Schleswig-Holstein, Hesse and Berlin, fears are spreading that the federal level could now ‘drain’ the states – which would cause problems there.
But the Greens have always avoided some departments at the state level, which could now take its revenge. For example, except for small states, the finance portfolio has rarely been held by the Greens. In the larger state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, it has only been occupied for a few months. Even if Gerhard Schick, Sven-Christian Kindler, and Sven Giegold, three strong voices in the debates, are Green party members, this might not be enough for the complex matter of the European and international coordination of the finance ministry. A reason to prefer other houses for practical purposes? But the situation there is even more difficult in some cases. When it was recently rumoured that Green Party leader Robert Habeck wanted to become a federal interior minister, some in party circles began scratching their heads.
Strategically, that would be a clever move, according to Green politicians. After all, it would make a noticeable difference. But the house is so tied to the Union that there would be an enormous need for personnel. While Irene Mihalic and Konstantin von Notz, two high-profile Green politicians, would be available for the roles of Parliamentary State Secretaries, it would be somewhat more complicated for potential State Secretaries. And it would be even harder to find up to twelve department heads who would still be needed even after a remigration of the building department to another division and a reorganization of the department of home affairs.
These twelve department heads are currently followed by 23 sub-department heads – and their staffing is not easily adjustable. Politically, changes would have to follow here in many places. But at the same time, new heads of the house can neither do without the expertise nor do they have sufficient staff to bring to appropriate posts. The Greens could, for example, draw on staff from Amnesty International on asylum law. But with staff who do not come from the ministerial bureaucracy, there is always the risk that they will be played off professionally by the existing apparatus.
The FDP also faces problems: While the Liberals would have fewer problems than the Greens with bringing experts from associations or even companies into their ministries, they were until now involved in only four state governments. In 2009, they were briefly involved in government in half of the federal states, after which the Liberals lost a massive amount of power and influence. Not least the temporary departure from the Bundestag cost them personnel options: Who would have linked his ministerial career to an FDP party book at that time? In addition, an entire legislature of parliamentary group and MP staff was lost.
The state ministries are not a large reservoir either: In Schleswig-Holstein, for example, the FDP holds the Ministry of Social Affairs, Health, Youth, Family and Senior Citizens as well as the Ministry of Economics, Transport, Labor, Technology and Tourism (MWVATT). But these are small houses despite the long titles and broad responsibilities: In the entire MWVATT, a total of only 297 posts are budgeted for 2020. And in Saxony-Anhalt, the Liberals just won a government post in September: Lydia Hüskens is the only FDP Minister for Infrastructure and Digital Affairs there, and you can’t just go rustling from her house.
The most likely option for the Liberals to draw reinforcement is the Rhineland-Palatinate (since 2016 with FDP participation, Ministries of Justice and Economics, Agriculture and Transport) and North Rhine-Westphalia. NRW, with its staffed ministries, is likely to become important for FDP staffing needs: There are relevant personnel with FDP party papers in the Ministry of Economics, Digital and Innovation and in the Ministry of Children, Youth, Refugees and Integration. However, even the Liberals cannot fully draw on their resources.
To start filling a new position at all, there needs to be a vacancy first. If there were a demand for more positions primarily caused by political reasons, the future opposition would gleefully criticize it in the next federal budget. This is why both Green and Yellow coalition negotiation circles are aware of the problem but have not come with a solution for the time being.
And so Green and Yellow will follow a different approach: strategic redeployment. Those who hold key strategic positions with union party credentials must already mentally prepare themselves to be moved to non-political positions on the same level at the next opportunity.
Whenever a sub-divisional head or department head retires, available civil servants will move up. Even then, however, it is unlikely that the houses that have been in the hands of the CDU/CSU for such a long time will be greened or liberalized below the political level within a single legislative period. The recruitment and promotion policy in the federal ministries is too slow for that. And those who opposed the government under the old leadership are unlikely to have received recommendations that are essential for further promotions.
In Summer, the FDP already sensed that problems could arise here: Two months before the Federal elections, it tabled a minor interpellation to the incumbent federal government. Among other things, it asked in how many cases department heads had remained in the formal rank of ministerial assistant secretary instead of ministerial director – and thus were not political officials who could be replaced relatively easily. The reply stated, that the heads of a total of four Union-led ministerial departments, would resort to this form- of these, two department heads deliberately refused to be appointed to the higher rank, and apparently, there were never any plans for the other two in the first place.
And so, in the coming weeks and months, the Greens and the FDP will have to brood not only over their political plans, but also over job plans and implementation, staff recruitment, and other tools of the trade. The overall work of art of a traffic light coalition still has some work to do.
“We will lose the concept of digitalization,” predicts Julia Pohle. “The digital aspect will be automatically thought of in the future, will become a matter of course like the road or energy network.” Pohle talks a lot about the future, the future of our society in a digital world. She is a researcher in the Policy of Digitalization research group at the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB). There, she and a team of eight scientists are researching how digitization functions as a resource for political order-building, but also to what extent it is the subject of political decisions.
So we focus on the interaction,” says Pohle, “no other research team does that. It is important to consider this interaction in trade agreements such as the free trade agreement between the EU and Japan, which comes into force in February 2019.
Pohle and her team are working on various projects, with a particular focus on the analysis of political discourses on the topic of digitalization. In doing so, Pohle looks at how different countries position themselves in terms of communication policy in relation to digitization. This is enormously important, because “European cooperation is fundamental in terms of digital sovereignty”. The EU serves as a role model for other countries in this regard. For example, standards formulated in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) are adhered to by many companies worldwide. This phenomenon is also called the Brussels effect.
However, in other countries the prioritization of digital policy is different, the importance is often lower. Julia Pohle should know, as she completed her doctorate in communication science in Brussels and worked in Paris at UNESCO and as a guest researcher. So her career path has always been in the direction of science, “even though I wanted to be a speleologist when I was a child,” says Pohle with a smile.
But: “Achieving complete digital sovereignty is completely unrealistic,” says Pohle. Here, the saying “the way is the goal” applies. She explains how important it is to think about sustainability and digitalization together and advocates laying down the ground rules for artificial intelligence now. Pohle also believes that regulations to protect the privacy of citizens, such as the EU’s Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), are indispensable.
“The most important opportunity we have is to shape digitization in a way that does less harm than good. We only have a small window of opportunity to do that.” Currently, he said, policymakers are too busy repairing damage, such as regulating platform companies. “Rowing back is always harder than designing from the outset”. This is precisely why it is so important to take advantage of the opportunities that digitalization brings. Anouk Schlung
The last official day of negotiations at the Climate Change Conference (COP26): many observers expect an extension. We must not settle for the lowest common denominator just before the end, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in Glasgow on Thursday, calling on the states to be more ambitious. The 1.5-degree target is not yet within reach and key issues remain unresolved. Jochen Flasbarth, the chief negotiator of the German delegation, is nevertheless confident and continues to believe in a quick agreement, as he says in an interview with Timo Landenberger and Lukas Scheid.
The new climate and energy aid guidelines are causing concern for German industry. The fear: Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager‘s plans to date could lead to hundreds of energy-intensive companies losing their entitlement to relief on electricity costs. However, as Till Hoppe reports, Vestager is apparently open to changes as the Commission begins its internal coordination process.
Little is leaking out of the coalition negotiations, and so there is eager speculation about who might get which ministerial post. The allocation won’t be easy – but the real challenge lies one level below: Especially the two parties that are new to government face the difficulty of finding the right personnel for the ministries. Falk Steiner analyses the reasons for the Greens’ and the FDP’s personnel problems and gives an overview of what options Green and Yellow have.
Mr. Flasbarth, until when have you booked your hotel?
Until Saturday. With an option to extend, but I don’t think we need it.
There is not much time left, however, and key questions are still unanswered. You have described the unresolved Paris rulebook as a “diplomatic ballast” that needs to go. However, it is still there.
This must not be misunderstood. These are essential issues for making the Paris Agreement applicable. The fact that they have not yet been resolved prevents us from concentrating on implementation. For me, the success of the climate conference, therefore, depended from the outset on resolving the rule book. And I am quite confident that it will still be resolved.
That is, what has not been achieved in the years since Paris and in two weeks since the start of the COP will now happen in a few hours?
At the COP in Madrid, the negotiations were very tangled, as there were very strict positions on the question of for how emission reductions in other countries are to be mutually accounted. No agreement could be reached on this in Madrid, and there are points where no compromise can be made. In the meantime, the general climate has changed. We have the impression that all countries want to reach a result here. Brazil too.
Keyword Brazil: The question is also to what extent carbon credits from the Kyoto Protocol can be transferred to the new regime.
In terms of the problem, this has a different quality to the future structure for crediting emission reductions. If you transfer credits from the past to the future, that means, at the same time, less climate ambition. We need to find a middle way here.
There is also still a need for clarification on climate financing.
The wish of the developing countries is that we should set out annually where we are on the way to the promised USD 100 billion. In 2023, we will reach that amount, and in 2025, it should grow to about 120 billion. But since we have not delivered by 2020, developing countries would rather have an update every year. I can well understand that, and we should comply with it.
The largest emitters, the US and China, have recently announced a surprising bilateral agreement on more climate protection. They had previously demanded more commitment from the countries, especially China. Is that enough now?
I have read the statement carefully and I have worked with the Chinese for a long time. With the agreement, they have substantial additional reductions in mind. Of course, we expect this to be formalized via an NDC update. But the announcement is already very specific in parts, especially on methane reductions, which can have a big impact. It’s also an exclamation point on forests and deforestation-free supply chains.
The third-largest emitter is the European Union, which likes to call itself a pioneer in climate protection. Can the EU live up to its self-assigned role at COP26?
The fact that the EU has raised its NDC from 40 percent reduction to 55 percent is a big step for the economic area. That is why it was also time for the US and China, as the largest emitters, to move to similar levels. They have now roughly done that.
With the ETS and the planned extension to buildings and transport, the EU is backing a market-based approach to decarbonization and is promoting the global application of CO2 pricing wherever possible. Successful?
The European ETS was already the blueprint for the Chinese emissions trading. In the US, it exists in some states and I have talked to a Russian colleague about the introduction of pilot projects for emissions trading. I think this is a very rational instrument in the area of industry and energy production, which has delivered very precise results, while in other areas we are still lagging quite behind.
To protect against carbon leakage, the EU is planning to introduce a border adjustment mechanism (CBAM). What are the reactions here?
There has been almost no discussion, particularly with colleagues from the emerging countries, in which this has not been mentioned. Because, of course, it is also seen as an instrument to keep products from other countries out of our markets. If this impression becomes entrenched, then we have a problem. We want to prevent carbon leakage and there is nothing wrong with wanting to protect industry. But an ideal world would be one in which there is no need for the CBAM because there are comparable standards. That’s why Olaf Scholz brought up the climate club.
The draft COP final declaration includes a clear call to accelerate the coal phase-out. Such a sector-related formulation is considered a novelty and is meeting with resistance in some quarters. How great are the chances of survival for the phrase?
We think it is very good and we hope that we can convince our partners to keep it in. Not only because of the statement on coal, but because it is important to move on the level of economic sectors in addition to the state level. We could even imagine embellishing the passage by including a temporal perspective.
Which one might that be?
The phrase from the “traffic light” exploratory paper is: ideally as early as 2030. But that would overburden other states that are even more dependent on coal. In any case, it has to be done before mid-century. Otherwise, it will be too late.
It also explicitly calls for a phase-out of fossil fuel financing. Almost simultaneously, the EU’s new list of eligible “projects of common interest” became public, which continues to drive investment in gas projects. How does this fit together?
I believe that we need gas as a transitional solution for the green transformation. But when it comes to new investments, they must only flow into infrastructures that are 1.5-degree-proof and thus H2-ready. Only for fossil natural gas will the utilization period be too short to map a business case.
While landmark decisions on global climate protection are being debated in Glasgow, the future German government is arguing about its own positions in Berlin. What role will the coalition negotiations play for the German delegation at the COP?
The position of the old Federal Government, in the “traffic light” and – apart from the AfD – generally across party lines are so close to each other for our international action that it does not matter. We see no limits at all here and are fully capable of acting.
Hardly any EU project is currently causing German industry as much concern as the new climate and energy aid guidelines (KUEBLL). The acting German Federal Minister of Economic Affairs, Peter Altmaier (CDU), is therefore still trying to influence the EU Commission in the last days and weeks in office. The European Parliament has also demanded changes in a resolution on the initiative of CSU MEP Markus Ferber.
The concern: Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager’s plans to date could result in hundreds of energy-intensive companies losing their entitlement to relief on electricity costs. And this is at a time when climate protection plans of the Fit for 55 package will foreseeably bring new burdens.
The interventions do not seem to be in vain. According to information from EU circles, the Commission began the internal coordination process on Thursday, in which other directorates-general can comment on DG Competition’s draft. After the two-week process, there should be a revised text. Vestager has signaled that she is still prepared to make changes to the points that are crucial for the industry, according to sources in the circles. The Commission did not want to comment on this.
The Commission uses the guidelines for European energy and environmental aid in assessing which national aid it will approve. The previous guidelines are valid until the end of the year, and the Commission presented a draft for the successor regulation in the summer. This reform is intended to feed into the EU’s green deal agenda. It should allow governments to pay out much higher subsidies to promote the transformation, taking into account new areas such as clean mobility or energy efficiency of buildings.
However, the draft also proposes to significantly tighten the conditions for the reduction of electricity levies. Altmaier and Co fear that many electricity-intensive companies would lose their entitlement to a reduced EEG levy as a result. This is because the list of industries eligible for subsidies is to be shortened and the requirements are to be tightened significantly.
Under the draft, companies would have to demonstrate a trade intensity of at least 20 percent and an electricity cost intensity of at least 10 percent. An alternative threshold is 80 percent for trade intensity and seven percent for electricity cost intensity. The values are thus much higher than before.
The new guidelines would “allow for much higher levels of state aid” if necessary to achieve the Green Deal targets, Vestager said last week. At the same time, conditions would have to be tightened “to avoid companies receiving more aid than they need”.
The Commission is also expected to take a more fundamental look at the role of state aid in the green and digital transformation next week. A statement on competition policy will then be on the college’s agenda, albeit with reservations. This is because the statement is also causing considerable internal debate.
In particular, the orientation of the instrument of “Important Projects of Common European Interest” (IPCEI), which was used to promote microelectronics and the battery cell industry, is controversial. Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton from France wants to use IPCEIs for an active industrial policy and allow governments to massively subsidize large semiconductor factories, for example. Vestager, on the other hand, defends the previous restriction, according to which only highly innovative technologies may be promoted.
In a joint letter, six member states now backed the competition commissioner. “Excessive and non-targeted use of the instrument would lead to a subsidy race and unfair competition in the EU,” wrote the representatives of the Netherlands, Ireland, Romania, and the northern European countries. Therefore, neither mass production nor commercial activities should be promoted via IPCEIs.
Altmaier is more on France’s side on this issue. He hopes to be able to persuade major chip manufacturers to locate in Germany by means of billions of euros in subsidies. It remains to be seen whether a “traffic light” coalition would take the same approach. The FDP is critical of such subsidies. Breton did, however, talk to Chancellor-designate Olaf Scholz over lunch on Thursday about supply chains and the planned “Chips Act” – and afterwards spoke of a “fruitful exchange“. The commissioner travels on to Saxony this Friday to meet representatives of chip manufacturers such as Infineon, Bosch, and Globalfoundry.
Everyone is looking at the ministerial line-up. Naturally, because their appointments are complicated enough: Self-imposed requirements such as the female quota, but also power relations and regional proportionalities have to be taken into account. Other high-profile positions such as parliamentary state secretaries (who are called state ministers in the Federal Foreign Office and the Federal Chancellery for historical reasons), federal commissioners and parliamentary group chairmen are also delicate matters for each of the three parties and particularly complicated for the two smaller coalition partners with probably no more than five ministerial posts.
The last time the Greens were in government at the federal level was 16 years ago. Of the ministers at that time, only Renate Künast and Jürgen Trittin remain at the federal level at all. The ministers of the last black-yellow coalition from 2009 to 2013 are also no longer involved in the FDP.
But the biggest problem for the two new government parties lies below the ministerial level. Because changes in the colour of a ministry are usually accompanied by staff changes. There are enough candidates for Parliamentary State Secretaries from the established parliamentary parties. And the two “newcomers” in a future traffic light coalition should still be able to muster the majority of the civil servant state secretaries in the houses.
But this is only a small part of the usual changes. Most recently, the Federal Constitutional Court had repeatedly stated that not every political official may be replaced and temporarily retired in the event of a change of government – in higher functions, the life-tenure also applies and a civil servant is a state servant, not a party servant. However, loyalty should not be called into question. And that is precisely the issue in many places – especially when houses are to make a drastic political change of course.
The Chancellor’s Office will most likely see a change of staff in the future. Civil servants are only ever on loan there – they have a headquarters to which they can and, if necessary, must return to. It is safe to assume that new staff will come from the planning department of the Federal Ministry of Finance, among others. Even if Angela Merkel did not always go strictly by the party playbook: For her and her chancellor’s office chiefs, political proximity was always important in the immediate power apparatus. But this means that there are already just under a dozen pensions cases whose future use will be a problem.
While the SPD is facing a personnel castling from old to new houses, after 16 years of CDU/CSU government, actors loyal to the CDU and CSU or previous ministers are currently sitting at the administrative levers of power. What tasks will they be given in the future? In which houses?
Adopt almost all of them and hope for their loyalty, as Winfried Kretschmann once did in Baden-Württemberg? A federal ministry is even more politically charged than the state level. And is it even possible to change policy without also changing staff in key administrative positions? In the end, Yellow and Green face a dual problem: Getting rid of those loyal to the Union – and at the same time actually finding candidates for whom there should be vacancies.
There are several areas for the Greens in which recruitment seems generally possible. There are enough party-affiliated organizations, after all. Especially in the fields of environment, climate, transport, development cooperation and in consumer protection. Drawing on personnel from thematically profiled actors such as international organizations, think tanks like Agora Energiewende, or associations is a feasible option.
Moreover, the Greens have repeatedly occupied relevant ministries at the state level and have also been able to build up staff there, a reservoir from which they can also draw at the federal level – at least when it comes to lawyers who are always needed. However, in states with Green government participation, such as Baden-Württemberg, Schleswig-Holstein, Hesse and Berlin, fears are spreading that the federal level could now ‘drain’ the states – which would cause problems there.
But the Greens have always avoided some departments at the state level, which could now take its revenge. For example, except for small states, the finance portfolio has rarely been held by the Greens. In the larger state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, it has only been occupied for a few months. Even if Gerhard Schick, Sven-Christian Kindler, and Sven Giegold, three strong voices in the debates, are Green party members, this might not be enough for the complex matter of the European and international coordination of the finance ministry. A reason to prefer other houses for practical purposes? But the situation there is even more difficult in some cases. When it was recently rumoured that Green Party leader Robert Habeck wanted to become a federal interior minister, some in party circles began scratching their heads.
Strategically, that would be a clever move, according to Green politicians. After all, it would make a noticeable difference. But the house is so tied to the Union that there would be an enormous need for personnel. While Irene Mihalic and Konstantin von Notz, two high-profile Green politicians, would be available for the roles of Parliamentary State Secretaries, it would be somewhat more complicated for potential State Secretaries. And it would be even harder to find up to twelve department heads who would still be needed even after a remigration of the building department to another division and a reorganization of the department of home affairs.
These twelve department heads are currently followed by 23 sub-department heads – and their staffing is not easily adjustable. Politically, changes would have to follow here in many places. But at the same time, new heads of the house can neither do without the expertise nor do they have sufficient staff to bring to appropriate posts. The Greens could, for example, draw on staff from Amnesty International on asylum law. But with staff who do not come from the ministerial bureaucracy, there is always the risk that they will be played off professionally by the existing apparatus.
The FDP also faces problems: While the Liberals would have fewer problems than the Greens with bringing experts from associations or even companies into their ministries, they were until now involved in only four state governments. In 2009, they were briefly involved in government in half of the federal states, after which the Liberals lost a massive amount of power and influence. Not least the temporary departure from the Bundestag cost them personnel options: Who would have linked his ministerial career to an FDP party book at that time? In addition, an entire legislature of parliamentary group and MP staff was lost.
The state ministries are not a large reservoir either: In Schleswig-Holstein, for example, the FDP holds the Ministry of Social Affairs, Health, Youth, Family and Senior Citizens as well as the Ministry of Economics, Transport, Labor, Technology and Tourism (MWVATT). But these are small houses despite the long titles and broad responsibilities: In the entire MWVATT, a total of only 297 posts are budgeted for 2020. And in Saxony-Anhalt, the Liberals just won a government post in September: Lydia Hüskens is the only FDP Minister for Infrastructure and Digital Affairs there, and you can’t just go rustling from her house.
The most likely option for the Liberals to draw reinforcement is the Rhineland-Palatinate (since 2016 with FDP participation, Ministries of Justice and Economics, Agriculture and Transport) and North Rhine-Westphalia. NRW, with its staffed ministries, is likely to become important for FDP staffing needs: There are relevant personnel with FDP party papers in the Ministry of Economics, Digital and Innovation and in the Ministry of Children, Youth, Refugees and Integration. However, even the Liberals cannot fully draw on their resources.
To start filling a new position at all, there needs to be a vacancy first. If there were a demand for more positions primarily caused by political reasons, the future opposition would gleefully criticize it in the next federal budget. This is why both Green and Yellow coalition negotiation circles are aware of the problem but have not come with a solution for the time being.
And so Green and Yellow will follow a different approach: strategic redeployment. Those who hold key strategic positions with union party credentials must already mentally prepare themselves to be moved to non-political positions on the same level at the next opportunity.
Whenever a sub-divisional head or department head retires, available civil servants will move up. Even then, however, it is unlikely that the houses that have been in the hands of the CDU/CSU for such a long time will be greened or liberalized below the political level within a single legislative period. The recruitment and promotion policy in the federal ministries is too slow for that. And those who opposed the government under the old leadership are unlikely to have received recommendations that are essential for further promotions.
In Summer, the FDP already sensed that problems could arise here: Two months before the Federal elections, it tabled a minor interpellation to the incumbent federal government. Among other things, it asked in how many cases department heads had remained in the formal rank of ministerial assistant secretary instead of ministerial director – and thus were not political officials who could be replaced relatively easily. The reply stated, that the heads of a total of four Union-led ministerial departments, would resort to this form- of these, two department heads deliberately refused to be appointed to the higher rank, and apparently, there were never any plans for the other two in the first place.
And so, in the coming weeks and months, the Greens and the FDP will have to brood not only over their political plans, but also over job plans and implementation, staff recruitment, and other tools of the trade. The overall work of art of a traffic light coalition still has some work to do.
“We will lose the concept of digitalization,” predicts Julia Pohle. “The digital aspect will be automatically thought of in the future, will become a matter of course like the road or energy network.” Pohle talks a lot about the future, the future of our society in a digital world. She is a researcher in the Policy of Digitalization research group at the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB). There, she and a team of eight scientists are researching how digitization functions as a resource for political order-building, but also to what extent it is the subject of political decisions.
So we focus on the interaction,” says Pohle, “no other research team does that. It is important to consider this interaction in trade agreements such as the free trade agreement between the EU and Japan, which comes into force in February 2019.
Pohle and her team are working on various projects, with a particular focus on the analysis of political discourses on the topic of digitalization. In doing so, Pohle looks at how different countries position themselves in terms of communication policy in relation to digitization. This is enormously important, because “European cooperation is fundamental in terms of digital sovereignty”. The EU serves as a role model for other countries in this regard. For example, standards formulated in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) are adhered to by many companies worldwide. This phenomenon is also called the Brussels effect.
However, in other countries the prioritization of digital policy is different, the importance is often lower. Julia Pohle should know, as she completed her doctorate in communication science in Brussels and worked in Paris at UNESCO and as a guest researcher. So her career path has always been in the direction of science, “even though I wanted to be a speleologist when I was a child,” says Pohle with a smile.
But: “Achieving complete digital sovereignty is completely unrealistic,” says Pohle. Here, the saying “the way is the goal” applies. She explains how important it is to think about sustainability and digitalization together and advocates laying down the ground rules for artificial intelligence now. Pohle also believes that regulations to protect the privacy of citizens, such as the EU’s Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), are indispensable.
“The most important opportunity we have is to shape digitization in a way that does less harm than good. We only have a small window of opportunity to do that.” Currently, he said, policymakers are too busy repairing damage, such as regulating platform companies. “Rowing back is always harder than designing from the outset”. This is precisely why it is so important to take advantage of the opportunities that digitalization brings. Anouk Schlung
