Larry the Cat, the famous cat from Downing Street, gets a new roommate again: Rishi Sunak is expected to be appointed the new British prime minister today. Sunak has been a Brexit supporter from the very beginning; in summer, he attracted attention with a video clip in which he shoves stacks of EU laws into a paper shredder. EU Council President Charles Michel sent congratulations to London yesterday, recalling the importance of EU-UK cooperation.
The EU Commission wants to sharply tighten standards for clean air. A draft for the Air Quality Directive, which is available to Europe.Table, shows that the limit values for important air pollutants are set to be more than halved in some cases in 2030. If this draft is implemented, there is a threat of driving bans in many European inner cities and conurbations, as Markus Grabitz analyzes.
The EU and its member states want to take a more strategic approach to securing critical raw materials in the future. But only a few countries have a concrete strategy in place. Leonie Düngefeld took a closer look at what Germany, France, Austria and other countries have already defined or are still planning regarding raw materials.
The environment and climate ministers of the EU countries want to increase the EU climate target deposited with the UN. This should happen “as soon as possible” – but not before the upcoming world climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh. Read more in the News.
The EU Commission wants to tighten air pollution standards considerably. The draft air pollution directive, which the Commission plans to adopt on Wednesday and which is available to Europe.Table, stipulates that the limit values for important air pollutants are set to be more than halved in some cases in 2030. For the air pollutant nitrogen oxide, the permissible average annual value of 40 micrograms per cubic meter of air is set to be reduced to 20 micrograms. Nitrogen oxide is emitted in high doses by older diesel engines. The limit value for this air pollutant has been massively exceeded for years in Stuttgart and many other conurbations. This is why driving bans have been imposed.
In 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) adopted stricter guideline values for fine particles (PM 2.5 and 10), nitrogen oxide, ozone, sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide, for example. The Commission is now proposing that limit values in the EU should converge with the WHO guideline values by 2030. However, a 1:1 implementation, as demanded by parts of the Parliament and environmental organizations, is not envisaged. “There will be a commitment to reduce average exposure for particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide towards the levels in the WHO recommendation,” the document reads verbatim.
The limit values for fine particles (PM 2.5) are set to be reduced from 25 micrograms to ten micrograms in the future. The WHO calls for the value to be 5 micrograms. For fine particulate matter (PM 10), the limit value is set to be halved from 40 micrograms to 20 micrograms. The WHO is calling for the limit to be ten micrograms. Limit values for benzenes, nitrogen dioxides, carbon monoxides and heavy metals such as lead, arsenic, cadmium and nickel are also planned. The Commission proposes that the new limit values are reviewed again at the end of 2028 in light of the then-current state of scientific knowledge and, if necessary, tightened again.
In the review of air pollution control, it is not only the limit values that matter but also the specifications for the positioning of the measuring points. According to a brief analysis of the Commission’s proposal by Thomas Koch, head of the Institute for Piston Machines at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), the Commission does not want to change anything in the criteria for the measuring points. Furthermore, measurements could be taken directly at the roadside. As Annex IV of the proposal states, the measuring stations would have to be set up at a maximum distance of ten meters from the roadway. Measuring stations directly next to the roadway would also be permitted.
In the past year, for which all measurement results are available, more than a third of the environmental measuring stations near roads in Germany measured a higher annual mean nitrogen oxide value than 20 micrograms. The top performer was the measuring station on Landshuter Allee in Munich with an annual mean value of 49 micrograms. It is true that exposure to air pollutants is falling steadily as a result of fleet replacement. However, with the limit value for nitrogen dioxide halved, there is still a threat of nationwide driving bans in many of Germany’s inner cities in 2030, Koch continued.
In the past, the EU Commission had brought infringement proceedings against Germany and numerous other member states before the ECJ because the limit values had been massively violated for years. Lawsuits filed by Deutsche Umwelthilfe in German courts enforced route-related driving bans and the blanket driving ban in downtown Stuttgart for older diesel vehicles. According to Thomas Koch, new driving bans are imminent if the current proposal is implemented. Koch told Europe.Table, “The directive is worded in a way that reflects the Commission’s strategy to ensure further driving bans in inner cities.”
Driving bans could apply not only to diesel and gasoline-powered vehicles. Battery-electric vehicles and cars with hybrid drives would also be affected. Stricter limits for particulate matter could lead to driving bans for EVs because they are significantly heavier than internal combustion engines, abrasion from tires and brakes, and thus fine particle emissions, are higher. The draft also provides for the first time “alarm thresholds for short-term measures in the event of peak particulate pollution (PM 10 and PM2.5),” the text says.
Pfullendorf CDU MEP Norbert Lins said, “The Commission’s proposal on air pollution control comes at a very bad time.” At present, he said, there are “more important things” to do than drastically tighten the limits. “The air in Europe is steadily improving.” Lins had pushed through an expert opinion in the European Parliament during the last legislative period to review the criteria for measuring stations. “I welcome the fact that the Commission wants to harmonize the standards for measuring points and ensure transparent transmission of data.”
Stricter and clear rules for national air quality plans also played an important role. For him, Lins added, it is important to find practicable solutions for better air in inner cities. “Possible solutions are incentives for lower-emission drives in traffic or filter solutions as an alternative. A diesel or driving ban is the wrong approach.”
With the Raw Materials Initiative, the European Commission formulated a strategy for the first time in 2008 – with the aim of securing the supply of non-energy raw materials in the EU. Since then, European raw materials policy has been based on three pillars, which are also reflected in national debates: diversifying sources of primary raw materials from third countries, strengthening domestic sources of supply, and strengthening resource efficiency and the circular economy.
In a comparison of the member states, the demand for raw materials varies depending on the size and structure of the industry. According to Eurostat data, Germany not only has the highest consumption of raw materials in the EU, but is also one of the largest consumers of various industrial metals such as copper and nickel in a global comparison. France, Poland and Italy follow in the EU ranking. Sweden, on the other hand, is primarily concerned with the mining of raw materials.
Various experts describe the German government’s first raw materials strategy of 2010 as unsuccessful: Little has changed since then in terms of the dependencies and vulnerabilities of supply chains. A new strategy followed in 2020, but it does not differ much from the first. It also remains unclear, says an analysis by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), “how a national German strategy relates to a common European approach.”
The German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs had originally announced that it would present a revised strategy. Minister Robert Habeck and the responsible Parliamentary State Secretary Franziska Brantner recently stated that they were instead working on key points in order to incorporate them into European raw materials legislation and the German circular economy strategy. Brantner also announced that participation in projects along the value chain could be strengthened by “a joint German-French, if possible European raw materials fund“.
The German Federal Environment Ministry has announced a circular economy strategy for 2024. It is not yet clear whether this will also include concrete and even sector-specific targets for reducing raw material consumption. Parliamentary State Secretary Bettina Hoffmann announced last week that the ministry would start a research project on this issue.
In January 2022, Philippe Varin, former chairman of the France Industrie association, presented a report to the French government. Three months earlier, he had been commissioned by the French Ministries of Industry and Ecological Change with a mission to secure the supply of mineral raw materials to industry. Varin was to work with French industry to assess the level of security of supply for metals, identify needs, and propose a working organization of private and public actors to make production chains of critical metals more resilient. Varin’s report focused mainly on metals for batteries (nickel, cobalt, lithium) and permanent magnets (rare earths).
The French government derived five strategic priorities from the report:
Austria, which is also one of the EU countries with a high demand for raw materials, translated the European strategy based on three pillars into a national paper in 2012. In 2019, the then federal government of ÖVP and FPÖ announced a broader process to develop a new strategy. In December 2021, then Austrian Agriculture Minister Elisabeth Köstinger (ÖVP) presented the Master Plan Raw Materials 2030, a package of measures related to the entire raw materials value chain. The leadership of the Ministry of Agriculture already caused irritation, and even more so the subsequent switch to the Ministry of Finance. A spokesman for the Ministry of Finance told Europe.Table that the following steps had already been implemented:
“The Raw Materials Master Plan 2030 is to be understood as part of a national industrial strategic orientation embedded in the international environment,” the spokesperson said. “We assume that there will be compatibility with an EU Raw Materials Act.”
Last year, the Austrian Ministry for Climate Action also presented a draft circular economy strategy. This sets out specific targets for reducing resource consumption: domestic material consumption is supposed to be cut by 25 percent by 2030; by 2050, material consumption per capita per year is supposed to be 7 metric tons (a reduction of 56 percent compared with 2015).
The Netherlands has been pursuing such a goal for some time: By 2030, the government here wants to cut consumption of primary raw materials (minerals, fossil raw materials and metals) by half. This is set out in the circular economy strategy adopted in 2016.
The strategy is guided by three principles:
As the largest mining nation in the EU, Sweden’s 2013 minerals strategy sets a different priority: it aims above all to maintain and expand the competitiveness of the mining industry. Some Swedish mining companies are world leaders in their respective sectors and hold significant market shares.
The strategy is focused on five main objectives:
This results in eleven fields of action such as resource efficiency, promotion of investments or promotion of the local community.
At the end of July, amid the turmoil surrounding Boris Johnson’s resignation, then UK Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Kwasi Kwarteng unveiled the Raw Materials Strategy for the UK. Its goals: to build domestic capacity, work with international partners and make international markets more responsive, transparent and accountable.
Experts consider the strategy to be ambitious, but it now remains to be seen how things will proceed with a new government. Moreover, since the strategy was published directly before the summer break, interest groups have only been able to comment on it with a delay. Various civil society groups are trying to formulate a joint critique before COP27 in early November.
Until the end of February, Leslie Schübel was still living in Moscow, where she had just finished her German-Russian double master’s degree. Last September, the program’s new students were personally welcomed by the Russian foreign minister. “On February 24, I woke up and saw: Bombs over Kyiv. And I don’t know if anything has ever hit me so close,” the political scientist recalls.
Originally, she wanted to stay until the summer, but when – as a result of the sanctions – one bank card after another stopped working, she left for Berlin via Istanbul on Feb. 28.
Leslie Schübel has many friends in Russia. Some of them were repeatedly arrested during protests or left after Putin’s speech on partial mobilization to avoid being sent to the front. She has since broken off contact with others. She spent her semester abroad 6,000 kilometers further east, in Buryatia, a Buddhist region that belongs to Russia and from which a disproportionate number of men are now being sent to fight in Ukraine.
Leslie Schübel began learning Russian as a child at the Waldorf School. She spent a class trip in St. Petersburg, where she then also did voluntary service with the human rights organization Memorial, which was recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Later, she worked as an intern at the German Embassy in Moscow and at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, among others. She likes to use her vacations to travel east – this year, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are on the agenda.
The repression against liberal forces in Russia hurts Schübel. At the same time, she knows: The suffering of the Ukrainian people, who are currently being denied the right to their own statehood and identity by the Russian aggressor, is incomparably greater. Her personal emotional involvement is part of the analysis she needs for her work: “Having spent so much time in the country, knowing many people there and speaking their language, I know that Putin is instrumentalizing Russian identity,” says the 27-year-old, who is politically active for the Young European Federalists and socially involved in the Welcome Baby Bags project for mothers in emergency situations.
Her work in the Coordinating Team of the EU-Russia Expert Network on Foreign Policy (EUREN) is currently suspended, as are all cooperation programs between the EU and Russia. Leslie Schübel believes this is the right thing to do: “We have to send very clear signals to official positions of the Russian Federation – and at the same time listen to the few experts of the Russian opposition who dare to speak freely enough,” she emphasizes.
The goal, she said, is to maintain communication with Russia and other “difficult partners” such as China without fueling propaganda and misinformation. Janna Degener-Storr
Larry the Cat, the famous cat from Downing Street, gets a new roommate again: Rishi Sunak is expected to be appointed the new British prime minister today. Sunak has been a Brexit supporter from the very beginning; in summer, he attracted attention with a video clip in which he shoves stacks of EU laws into a paper shredder. EU Council President Charles Michel sent congratulations to London yesterday, recalling the importance of EU-UK cooperation.
The EU Commission wants to sharply tighten standards for clean air. A draft for the Air Quality Directive, which is available to Europe.Table, shows that the limit values for important air pollutants are set to be more than halved in some cases in 2030. If this draft is implemented, there is a threat of driving bans in many European inner cities and conurbations, as Markus Grabitz analyzes.
The EU and its member states want to take a more strategic approach to securing critical raw materials in the future. But only a few countries have a concrete strategy in place. Leonie Düngefeld took a closer look at what Germany, France, Austria and other countries have already defined or are still planning regarding raw materials.
The environment and climate ministers of the EU countries want to increase the EU climate target deposited with the UN. This should happen “as soon as possible” – but not before the upcoming world climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh. Read more in the News.
The EU Commission wants to tighten air pollution standards considerably. The draft air pollution directive, which the Commission plans to adopt on Wednesday and which is available to Europe.Table, stipulates that the limit values for important air pollutants are set to be more than halved in some cases in 2030. For the air pollutant nitrogen oxide, the permissible average annual value of 40 micrograms per cubic meter of air is set to be reduced to 20 micrograms. Nitrogen oxide is emitted in high doses by older diesel engines. The limit value for this air pollutant has been massively exceeded for years in Stuttgart and many other conurbations. This is why driving bans have been imposed.
In 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) adopted stricter guideline values for fine particles (PM 2.5 and 10), nitrogen oxide, ozone, sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide, for example. The Commission is now proposing that limit values in the EU should converge with the WHO guideline values by 2030. However, a 1:1 implementation, as demanded by parts of the Parliament and environmental organizations, is not envisaged. “There will be a commitment to reduce average exposure for particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide towards the levels in the WHO recommendation,” the document reads verbatim.
The limit values for fine particles (PM 2.5) are set to be reduced from 25 micrograms to ten micrograms in the future. The WHO calls for the value to be 5 micrograms. For fine particulate matter (PM 10), the limit value is set to be halved from 40 micrograms to 20 micrograms. The WHO is calling for the limit to be ten micrograms. Limit values for benzenes, nitrogen dioxides, carbon monoxides and heavy metals such as lead, arsenic, cadmium and nickel are also planned. The Commission proposes that the new limit values are reviewed again at the end of 2028 in light of the then-current state of scientific knowledge and, if necessary, tightened again.
In the review of air pollution control, it is not only the limit values that matter but also the specifications for the positioning of the measuring points. According to a brief analysis of the Commission’s proposal by Thomas Koch, head of the Institute for Piston Machines at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), the Commission does not want to change anything in the criteria for the measuring points. Furthermore, measurements could be taken directly at the roadside. As Annex IV of the proposal states, the measuring stations would have to be set up at a maximum distance of ten meters from the roadway. Measuring stations directly next to the roadway would also be permitted.
In the past year, for which all measurement results are available, more than a third of the environmental measuring stations near roads in Germany measured a higher annual mean nitrogen oxide value than 20 micrograms. The top performer was the measuring station on Landshuter Allee in Munich with an annual mean value of 49 micrograms. It is true that exposure to air pollutants is falling steadily as a result of fleet replacement. However, with the limit value for nitrogen dioxide halved, there is still a threat of nationwide driving bans in many of Germany’s inner cities in 2030, Koch continued.
In the past, the EU Commission had brought infringement proceedings against Germany and numerous other member states before the ECJ because the limit values had been massively violated for years. Lawsuits filed by Deutsche Umwelthilfe in German courts enforced route-related driving bans and the blanket driving ban in downtown Stuttgart for older diesel vehicles. According to Thomas Koch, new driving bans are imminent if the current proposal is implemented. Koch told Europe.Table, “The directive is worded in a way that reflects the Commission’s strategy to ensure further driving bans in inner cities.”
Driving bans could apply not only to diesel and gasoline-powered vehicles. Battery-electric vehicles and cars with hybrid drives would also be affected. Stricter limits for particulate matter could lead to driving bans for EVs because they are significantly heavier than internal combustion engines, abrasion from tires and brakes, and thus fine particle emissions, are higher. The draft also provides for the first time “alarm thresholds for short-term measures in the event of peak particulate pollution (PM 10 and PM2.5),” the text says.
Pfullendorf CDU MEP Norbert Lins said, “The Commission’s proposal on air pollution control comes at a very bad time.” At present, he said, there are “more important things” to do than drastically tighten the limits. “The air in Europe is steadily improving.” Lins had pushed through an expert opinion in the European Parliament during the last legislative period to review the criteria for measuring stations. “I welcome the fact that the Commission wants to harmonize the standards for measuring points and ensure transparent transmission of data.”
Stricter and clear rules for national air quality plans also played an important role. For him, Lins added, it is important to find practicable solutions for better air in inner cities. “Possible solutions are incentives for lower-emission drives in traffic or filter solutions as an alternative. A diesel or driving ban is the wrong approach.”
With the Raw Materials Initiative, the European Commission formulated a strategy for the first time in 2008 – with the aim of securing the supply of non-energy raw materials in the EU. Since then, European raw materials policy has been based on three pillars, which are also reflected in national debates: diversifying sources of primary raw materials from third countries, strengthening domestic sources of supply, and strengthening resource efficiency and the circular economy.
In a comparison of the member states, the demand for raw materials varies depending on the size and structure of the industry. According to Eurostat data, Germany not only has the highest consumption of raw materials in the EU, but is also one of the largest consumers of various industrial metals such as copper and nickel in a global comparison. France, Poland and Italy follow in the EU ranking. Sweden, on the other hand, is primarily concerned with the mining of raw materials.
Various experts describe the German government’s first raw materials strategy of 2010 as unsuccessful: Little has changed since then in terms of the dependencies and vulnerabilities of supply chains. A new strategy followed in 2020, but it does not differ much from the first. It also remains unclear, says an analysis by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), “how a national German strategy relates to a common European approach.”
The German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs had originally announced that it would present a revised strategy. Minister Robert Habeck and the responsible Parliamentary State Secretary Franziska Brantner recently stated that they were instead working on key points in order to incorporate them into European raw materials legislation and the German circular economy strategy. Brantner also announced that participation in projects along the value chain could be strengthened by “a joint German-French, if possible European raw materials fund“.
The German Federal Environment Ministry has announced a circular economy strategy for 2024. It is not yet clear whether this will also include concrete and even sector-specific targets for reducing raw material consumption. Parliamentary State Secretary Bettina Hoffmann announced last week that the ministry would start a research project on this issue.
In January 2022, Philippe Varin, former chairman of the France Industrie association, presented a report to the French government. Three months earlier, he had been commissioned by the French Ministries of Industry and Ecological Change with a mission to secure the supply of mineral raw materials to industry. Varin was to work with French industry to assess the level of security of supply for metals, identify needs, and propose a working organization of private and public actors to make production chains of critical metals more resilient. Varin’s report focused mainly on metals for batteries (nickel, cobalt, lithium) and permanent magnets (rare earths).
The French government derived five strategic priorities from the report:
Austria, which is also one of the EU countries with a high demand for raw materials, translated the European strategy based on three pillars into a national paper in 2012. In 2019, the then federal government of ÖVP and FPÖ announced a broader process to develop a new strategy. In December 2021, then Austrian Agriculture Minister Elisabeth Köstinger (ÖVP) presented the Master Plan Raw Materials 2030, a package of measures related to the entire raw materials value chain. The leadership of the Ministry of Agriculture already caused irritation, and even more so the subsequent switch to the Ministry of Finance. A spokesman for the Ministry of Finance told Europe.Table that the following steps had already been implemented:
“The Raw Materials Master Plan 2030 is to be understood as part of a national industrial strategic orientation embedded in the international environment,” the spokesperson said. “We assume that there will be compatibility with an EU Raw Materials Act.”
Last year, the Austrian Ministry for Climate Action also presented a draft circular economy strategy. This sets out specific targets for reducing resource consumption: domestic material consumption is supposed to be cut by 25 percent by 2030; by 2050, material consumption per capita per year is supposed to be 7 metric tons (a reduction of 56 percent compared with 2015).
The Netherlands has been pursuing such a goal for some time: By 2030, the government here wants to cut consumption of primary raw materials (minerals, fossil raw materials and metals) by half. This is set out in the circular economy strategy adopted in 2016.
The strategy is guided by three principles:
As the largest mining nation in the EU, Sweden’s 2013 minerals strategy sets a different priority: it aims above all to maintain and expand the competitiveness of the mining industry. Some Swedish mining companies are world leaders in their respective sectors and hold significant market shares.
The strategy is focused on five main objectives:
This results in eleven fields of action such as resource efficiency, promotion of investments or promotion of the local community.
At the end of July, amid the turmoil surrounding Boris Johnson’s resignation, then UK Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Kwasi Kwarteng unveiled the Raw Materials Strategy for the UK. Its goals: to build domestic capacity, work with international partners and make international markets more responsive, transparent and accountable.
Experts consider the strategy to be ambitious, but it now remains to be seen how things will proceed with a new government. Moreover, since the strategy was published directly before the summer break, interest groups have only been able to comment on it with a delay. Various civil society groups are trying to formulate a joint critique before COP27 in early November.
Until the end of February, Leslie Schübel was still living in Moscow, where she had just finished her German-Russian double master’s degree. Last September, the program’s new students were personally welcomed by the Russian foreign minister. “On February 24, I woke up and saw: Bombs over Kyiv. And I don’t know if anything has ever hit me so close,” the political scientist recalls.
Originally, she wanted to stay until the summer, but when – as a result of the sanctions – one bank card after another stopped working, she left for Berlin via Istanbul on Feb. 28.
Leslie Schübel has many friends in Russia. Some of them were repeatedly arrested during protests or left after Putin’s speech on partial mobilization to avoid being sent to the front. She has since broken off contact with others. She spent her semester abroad 6,000 kilometers further east, in Buryatia, a Buddhist region that belongs to Russia and from which a disproportionate number of men are now being sent to fight in Ukraine.
Leslie Schübel began learning Russian as a child at the Waldorf School. She spent a class trip in St. Petersburg, where she then also did voluntary service with the human rights organization Memorial, which was recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Later, she worked as an intern at the German Embassy in Moscow and at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, among others. She likes to use her vacations to travel east – this year, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are on the agenda.
The repression against liberal forces in Russia hurts Schübel. At the same time, she knows: The suffering of the Ukrainian people, who are currently being denied the right to their own statehood and identity by the Russian aggressor, is incomparably greater. Her personal emotional involvement is part of the analysis she needs for her work: “Having spent so much time in the country, knowing many people there and speaking their language, I know that Putin is instrumentalizing Russian identity,” says the 27-year-old, who is politically active for the Young European Federalists and socially involved in the Welcome Baby Bags project for mothers in emergency situations.
Her work in the Coordinating Team of the EU-Russia Expert Network on Foreign Policy (EUREN) is currently suspended, as are all cooperation programs between the EU and Russia. Leslie Schübel believes this is the right thing to do: “We have to send very clear signals to official positions of the Russian Federation – and at the same time listen to the few experts of the Russian opposition who dare to speak freely enough,” she emphasizes.
The goal, she said, is to maintain communication with Russia and other “difficult partners” such as China without fueling propaganda and misinformation. Janna Degener-Storr
