The wait is over and the nerves of the MEPs of Renaissance, the French branch of Renew, can calm down: French President Emmanuel Macron has finally decided who will lead the party into the European election campaign. It is the MEP and chairwoman of Renew, Valérie Hayer. This was reported by the newspaper “La Tribune Dimanche” yesterday, Sunday. The official launch of the election campaign will take place on March 9 at a rally in the city of Lille.
Hayer, 37, is the daughter of farmers – undoubtedly a significant political advantage for Macron at a time when farmers’ protests are spreading across the EU and particularly in France. Macron was met with whistles, boos and calls for his resignation from angry farmers on Saturday as he opened the agricultural fair. Several hundred farmers forced their way into one of the halls before the opening. This led to clashes with the security forces. The agricultural fair, the largest of its kind in the world, could only open after a delay of around one and a half hours.
The farmer protests are also occupying the 27 EU agriculture ministers. Today’s Agriculture Council is to discuss “rapid” and “structural responses to the current crisis” in the sector. Fittingly, farmers have once again announced their protest. Around 1,500 tractors are expected in Brussels – and certainly a lot of manure on the road.
Have a dung-free week!
Last Friday morning, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire dropped a bombshell. “I can no longer accept that things are dragging on like this,” he said about the work of the finance ministers on the capital markets union.
Eurogroup President Paschal Donohoe decided last year to draw up an agenda for the creation of the capital markets union with the finance ministers. Following extensive consultations, he prepared a draft joint statement with measures that the Commission and the member states should implement in the new political cycle.
Donohoe’s idea was to learn from the mistakes of the past. Progress should not continue to fail due to resistance from national interests. An important cause of the fragmentation of the EU capital market is differences in social security and tax law, where the EU has little authority to enforce harmonization. An important part of Donohoe’s draft opinion is an appeal to member states. They should see for themselves how they can restructure their systems in order to achieve greater capital market participation.
Le Maire is not satisfied with this. “Today’s statement is not enough. I am fed up with discussions, I am fed up with empty statements,” he complained and launched an appeal to drive forward the capital markets union as a project of those states that want an ambitious capital markets union. His proposal contains three points:
Even though official expressions of support for Le Maire’s proposal were rare at the finance ministers’ meeting in Ghent, it can be heard that Spain, the Netherlands and Italy, alongside France, are also interested in this approach. Particularly in the idea of centralized supervision.
Le Maire aims to build a capital markets union on a small scale. This should become so attractive that the other countries also want or need to join in so as not to miss the boat. This is a particular thorn in the side of the German government, which would like to retain its national market supervision.
In Ghent, Finance Minister Christian Lindner expressed his skepticism about the “multi-speed” capital markets union. The aim, he said, should be to move forward quickly and together with all 27 member states. However, whether this is possible with all 27 member states remains questionable given the very slow progress made in the past. It is not a quick solution for current investment needs.
In the run-up to the finance ministers’ meeting, for example, a high-ranking EU official explicitly warned against seeing the capital markets union as a solution for the green and digital transformation. “The timelines don’t fit together,” he said.
Last year, the EU Commission estimated that additional investments of €630 billion per year would be necessary from now on in order to manage the green transformation. In addition, defense spending must be increased, the new EU debt rules come into force and the Covid rescue package expires.
Mario Draghi, who is writing a report on the competitiveness of the EU for the European Commission, said on Saturday in Ghent that “we’ll have to invest an enormous amount in a relatively short time in Europe,” especially due to the international challenges.
For Lindner, it is clear that this money must come from the private sector, despite the delays in the capital markets union. “Our competitive disadvantage is not the lack of public money for subsidies, but our shortcoming is that we do not have as efficient a capital market as, for example, the United States of America,” he said.
However, Le Maire’s advance puts him in a difficult argumentative position. On the one hand, he is arguing against joint European financing based on the capital markets union. On the other hand, his skepticism towards Le Maire’s initiative for the rapid establishment of an integrated capital market makes him appear to be putting the brakes on precisely this issue.
The situation in the Council of Finance Ministers is still unclear. Belgian Finance Minister Vincent van Peteghem, who chaired the meeting and was therefore expected to take a consensus-oriented position, spoke of the “need for more and better EU funding” at the press conference on Saturday. On the challenges of defense, green and digital transformation, and competitiveness, he said: “These European challenges need European funding.”
If it were up to Economic Affairs Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni, the EU would once again rely on the RRF method of joint European debt financing. “We can use this method for various common goals,” he said on Friday, emphasizing the positive growth effects of the RRF program.
Draghi is due to present his proposals on EU competitiveness and its financing in June. While strengthening the capital markets union is likely to be part of his proposals, he will also have to put forward ideas effective in the short term. A further political debate on European finances and debt is therefore inevitable.
Romania will have certainty by March 12 at the latest. That is the deadline for the announcement of an arbitration award that could have a significant impact on the national budget: The Canadian mining company Gabriel Resources has sued Romania for several billion US dollars in damages because the government withdrew its mining license for Europe’s largest opencast gold mine.
The ruling was made by an arbitration tribunal at the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) at the World Bank on the basis of a bilateral investment protection agreement between Romania and Canada. According to various sources, Gabriel Resources is demanding between $3.3 and $5.7 billion in compensation from the Romanian state. This makes the case one of the largest in the world.
This and similar investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) procedures are based on investment protection agreements: international treaties between states intended to protect companies’ investments abroad. The decisions of the arbitration tribunals are legally binding and cannot be challenged in national courts.
According to a UN report, the number of known ISDS cases directed against measures taken by states to protect the environment in particular has skyrocketed: from twelve cases before 2000 to 37 from 2000 to 2010 and 126 cases from 2011 to 2021.
Measures that have been challenged through lawsuits include the denial of permits for oil and gas exploration, the phasing out of coal-fired power plants, the denial of permits for large mines, the introduction of fracking bans and the tightening of laws to protect water supplies. Among the four ISDS lawsuits currently underway against Germany, for example, is one brought by the Swiss company Azienda Elettrica Ticinese (AET) due to the coal phase-out.
In his report, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Environment and Human Rights, David R. Boyd, describes ISDS procedures as the “main obstacle to urgent actions needed to address the planetary environmental and human rights crises.” They lead to a regulatory standstill: the mere possibility of costly ISID claims leads states to shy away from more ambitious regulation. For this reason, Denmark, for example, did not want to set an earlier date than 2050 for the end of its oil and gas production in the North Sea.
Some of the investor-state proceedings involve gigantic sums: in 2019, Pakistan was ordered by an arbitration tribunal to pay almost US$6 billion to an Australian investor who had been refused a license to mine copper and gold by the government. Australia itself was sued for as much as US$ 200 billion based on the free trade agreement with Singapore after the government refused a license for a coal mining project.
At the beginning of February, Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu spoke publicly of a defeat for Romania and a sum of US$ 2 billion in damages. However, these statements later turned out to be false. The outcome of the arbitration award remains to be seen – as well as what would happen if Romania were to lose.
The conflict over the mining project thus continues: Back in 1999, the Canadian mining company Gabriel Resources was granted a license to explore gold and silver deposits in the Roșia Montană region in north-western Romania. Roșia Montană was to become the largest open-cast gold mine in Europe.
However, the planned project raised considerable concerns: communities were to be resettled and archaeological sites from Roman times were also affected. In addition, the mining company planned to use highly toxic cyanide to extract the gold. In 2004, before Romania acceded to the EU, the EU Parliament expressed “deep concern” about environmental aspects, particularly with regard to the development of the Roșia Montană mine. This represented “a serious environmental threat to the entire region.”
Following massive protests in 2013 and 2014, the Romanian government halted the project. Romanian courts also ruled that Gabriel Resources had obtained several necessary permits unlawfully. In 2016, the company commissioned the law firm White & Case in Washington to file a complaint with the ICSID; Romania engaged the Swiss law firm Lalive, which specializes in cross-border disputes.
Critics describe the arbitration tribunals as “parallel justice” and criticize the transparency of the proceedings, in which public participation is usually not possible.
“In the arbitration proceedings, state decisions are called into question, which are at least partly in the public interest in this country,” says Christian Schliemann-Radbruch, an international law expert at the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR). “The responsibility of companies to respect the rights of the population, on the other hand, is rarely if ever addressed.”
Third parties whose rights are affected in the case in question also have little opportunity to intervene in the proceedings and assert their rights, he says. In the Roșia Montană case, Schliemann-Radbruch supported civil society organizations in submitting a statement. The arbitration ruling will show whether this will be taken into account or even have an influence on the ruling.
In his report, UN Special Rapporteur Boyd calls on states to withdraw from investment protection agreements. New treaties should then contain provisions that promote investment in climate protection, adaptation and resilience and protect the regulatory scope of states.
EU member states such as Germany have already withdrawn from the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT), which regulates investment protection for the energy sector. However, this includes a 20-year sunset clause.
However, Jörg Gundel, Professor of Public Law, International and European Law at the University of Bayreuth, argues that most of the lawsuits brought against the ECT were not brought by investors in conventional energy projects. Rather, most lawsuits have been filed by disappointed investors in renewable energy projects who have taken action against cuts to statutory subsidies in Spain and Italy, for example.
Investment protection could thus also intervene in favor of climate protection investments, says Gundel in a working paper for the German Council of Economic Experts: If states rely on private capital, without which climate protection measures cannot be implemented, such investments must also be protected.
The fact that European countries have so far mainly been affected by ISDS complaints in the energy sector could soon change, says Fabian Flues, trade and investment policy officer at the NGO Power Shift. He fears an increase in ISDS complaints in this sector as more mining projects are to be approved in Europe based on the Critical Raw Materials Act and local resistance is already being voiced. Due to the multi-stage approval process, the mining sector is very vulnerable.
On Wednesday, Yulia Navalnaya will speak in the European Parliament. Martin Schirdewan will be sitting in the front row to her left. The leader of the Left Group in the European Parliament has found clear words on the death of Alexej Navalny in a Russian prison camp. He described Navalny’s death as “political murder” in a statement with left-wing politician Dietmar Bartsch. Schirdewan spoke of “an announced political murder.”
Shirdevan’s voting behavior in the European Parliament in recent years has not been as clear as the condemnation and attribution of responsibility for the act of violence. He abstained when the European Parliament passed a resolution by a large majority on February 16, 2023, condemning the “deterioration of the inhuman imprisonment conditions of Alexey Navalny and other political prisoners in Russia.”
On 29 April 2021, Svirdevan voted against the European Parliament resolution calling for Navalny’s immediate release, emphasizing Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity and criticizing Russia’s attempts to destabilize the EU.
There are other examples: On January 21, 2021, Schirdewan voted against the European Parliament’s resolution a few days after Navalny was arrested by the Russian security authorities. With this resolution, the European Parliament protested against the fact that the Kremlin critic was arrested immediately after his return from Berlin where he had been treated at the Charité hospital. The resolution condemns the use of internationally banned nerve agents against people and calls on the EU and its member states to reconsider their cooperation with Russia.
On September 17, 2020, Shirdevan abstained when the European Parliament condemned the Kremlin’s poison attack on Navalny in its resolution. The resolution recalled that the use of chemical weapons is a crime under international law. It calls for an independent international investigation into the attack and calls on the EU and the Member States to find a common position on Russia and speak with one voice.
How does this voting behavior fit in with the firm condemnation of Navalny’s death? Table.media asked Schirdewan. Without receiving an answer by the editorial deadline. Markus Grabitz
The wait is over and the nerves of the MEPs of Renaissance, the French branch of Renew, can calm down: French President Emmanuel Macron has finally decided who will lead the party into the European election campaign. It is the MEP and chairwoman of Renew, Valérie Hayer. This was reported by the newspaper “La Tribune Dimanche” yesterday, Sunday. The official launch of the election campaign will take place on March 9 at a rally in the city of Lille.
Hayer, 37, is the daughter of farmers – undoubtedly a significant political advantage for Macron at a time when farmers’ protests are spreading across the EU and particularly in France. Macron was met with whistles, boos and calls for his resignation from angry farmers on Saturday as he opened the agricultural fair. Several hundred farmers forced their way into one of the halls before the opening. This led to clashes with the security forces. The agricultural fair, the largest of its kind in the world, could only open after a delay of around one and a half hours.
The farmer protests are also occupying the 27 EU agriculture ministers. Today’s Agriculture Council is to discuss “rapid” and “structural responses to the current crisis” in the sector. Fittingly, farmers have once again announced their protest. Around 1,500 tractors are expected in Brussels – and certainly a lot of manure on the road.
Have a dung-free week!
Last Friday morning, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire dropped a bombshell. “I can no longer accept that things are dragging on like this,” he said about the work of the finance ministers on the capital markets union.
Eurogroup President Paschal Donohoe decided last year to draw up an agenda for the creation of the capital markets union with the finance ministers. Following extensive consultations, he prepared a draft joint statement with measures that the Commission and the member states should implement in the new political cycle.
Donohoe’s idea was to learn from the mistakes of the past. Progress should not continue to fail due to resistance from national interests. An important cause of the fragmentation of the EU capital market is differences in social security and tax law, where the EU has little authority to enforce harmonization. An important part of Donohoe’s draft opinion is an appeal to member states. They should see for themselves how they can restructure their systems in order to achieve greater capital market participation.
Le Maire is not satisfied with this. “Today’s statement is not enough. I am fed up with discussions, I am fed up with empty statements,” he complained and launched an appeal to drive forward the capital markets union as a project of those states that want an ambitious capital markets union. His proposal contains three points:
Even though official expressions of support for Le Maire’s proposal were rare at the finance ministers’ meeting in Ghent, it can be heard that Spain, the Netherlands and Italy, alongside France, are also interested in this approach. Particularly in the idea of centralized supervision.
Le Maire aims to build a capital markets union on a small scale. This should become so attractive that the other countries also want or need to join in so as not to miss the boat. This is a particular thorn in the side of the German government, which would like to retain its national market supervision.
In Ghent, Finance Minister Christian Lindner expressed his skepticism about the “multi-speed” capital markets union. The aim, he said, should be to move forward quickly and together with all 27 member states. However, whether this is possible with all 27 member states remains questionable given the very slow progress made in the past. It is not a quick solution for current investment needs.
In the run-up to the finance ministers’ meeting, for example, a high-ranking EU official explicitly warned against seeing the capital markets union as a solution for the green and digital transformation. “The timelines don’t fit together,” he said.
Last year, the EU Commission estimated that additional investments of €630 billion per year would be necessary from now on in order to manage the green transformation. In addition, defense spending must be increased, the new EU debt rules come into force and the Covid rescue package expires.
Mario Draghi, who is writing a report on the competitiveness of the EU for the European Commission, said on Saturday in Ghent that “we’ll have to invest an enormous amount in a relatively short time in Europe,” especially due to the international challenges.
For Lindner, it is clear that this money must come from the private sector, despite the delays in the capital markets union. “Our competitive disadvantage is not the lack of public money for subsidies, but our shortcoming is that we do not have as efficient a capital market as, for example, the United States of America,” he said.
However, Le Maire’s advance puts him in a difficult argumentative position. On the one hand, he is arguing against joint European financing based on the capital markets union. On the other hand, his skepticism towards Le Maire’s initiative for the rapid establishment of an integrated capital market makes him appear to be putting the brakes on precisely this issue.
The situation in the Council of Finance Ministers is still unclear. Belgian Finance Minister Vincent van Peteghem, who chaired the meeting and was therefore expected to take a consensus-oriented position, spoke of the “need for more and better EU funding” at the press conference on Saturday. On the challenges of defense, green and digital transformation, and competitiveness, he said: “These European challenges need European funding.”
If it were up to Economic Affairs Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni, the EU would once again rely on the RRF method of joint European debt financing. “We can use this method for various common goals,” he said on Friday, emphasizing the positive growth effects of the RRF program.
Draghi is due to present his proposals on EU competitiveness and its financing in June. While strengthening the capital markets union is likely to be part of his proposals, he will also have to put forward ideas effective in the short term. A further political debate on European finances and debt is therefore inevitable.
Romania will have certainty by March 12 at the latest. That is the deadline for the announcement of an arbitration award that could have a significant impact on the national budget: The Canadian mining company Gabriel Resources has sued Romania for several billion US dollars in damages because the government withdrew its mining license for Europe’s largest opencast gold mine.
The ruling was made by an arbitration tribunal at the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) at the World Bank on the basis of a bilateral investment protection agreement between Romania and Canada. According to various sources, Gabriel Resources is demanding between $3.3 and $5.7 billion in compensation from the Romanian state. This makes the case one of the largest in the world.
This and similar investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) procedures are based on investment protection agreements: international treaties between states intended to protect companies’ investments abroad. The decisions of the arbitration tribunals are legally binding and cannot be challenged in national courts.
According to a UN report, the number of known ISDS cases directed against measures taken by states to protect the environment in particular has skyrocketed: from twelve cases before 2000 to 37 from 2000 to 2010 and 126 cases from 2011 to 2021.
Measures that have been challenged through lawsuits include the denial of permits for oil and gas exploration, the phasing out of coal-fired power plants, the denial of permits for large mines, the introduction of fracking bans and the tightening of laws to protect water supplies. Among the four ISDS lawsuits currently underway against Germany, for example, is one brought by the Swiss company Azienda Elettrica Ticinese (AET) due to the coal phase-out.
In his report, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Environment and Human Rights, David R. Boyd, describes ISDS procedures as the “main obstacle to urgent actions needed to address the planetary environmental and human rights crises.” They lead to a regulatory standstill: the mere possibility of costly ISID claims leads states to shy away from more ambitious regulation. For this reason, Denmark, for example, did not want to set an earlier date than 2050 for the end of its oil and gas production in the North Sea.
Some of the investor-state proceedings involve gigantic sums: in 2019, Pakistan was ordered by an arbitration tribunal to pay almost US$6 billion to an Australian investor who had been refused a license to mine copper and gold by the government. Australia itself was sued for as much as US$ 200 billion based on the free trade agreement with Singapore after the government refused a license for a coal mining project.
At the beginning of February, Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu spoke publicly of a defeat for Romania and a sum of US$ 2 billion in damages. However, these statements later turned out to be false. The outcome of the arbitration award remains to be seen – as well as what would happen if Romania were to lose.
The conflict over the mining project thus continues: Back in 1999, the Canadian mining company Gabriel Resources was granted a license to explore gold and silver deposits in the Roșia Montană region in north-western Romania. Roșia Montană was to become the largest open-cast gold mine in Europe.
However, the planned project raised considerable concerns: communities were to be resettled and archaeological sites from Roman times were also affected. In addition, the mining company planned to use highly toxic cyanide to extract the gold. In 2004, before Romania acceded to the EU, the EU Parliament expressed “deep concern” about environmental aspects, particularly with regard to the development of the Roșia Montană mine. This represented “a serious environmental threat to the entire region.”
Following massive protests in 2013 and 2014, the Romanian government halted the project. Romanian courts also ruled that Gabriel Resources had obtained several necessary permits unlawfully. In 2016, the company commissioned the law firm White & Case in Washington to file a complaint with the ICSID; Romania engaged the Swiss law firm Lalive, which specializes in cross-border disputes.
Critics describe the arbitration tribunals as “parallel justice” and criticize the transparency of the proceedings, in which public participation is usually not possible.
“In the arbitration proceedings, state decisions are called into question, which are at least partly in the public interest in this country,” says Christian Schliemann-Radbruch, an international law expert at the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR). “The responsibility of companies to respect the rights of the population, on the other hand, is rarely if ever addressed.”
Third parties whose rights are affected in the case in question also have little opportunity to intervene in the proceedings and assert their rights, he says. In the Roșia Montană case, Schliemann-Radbruch supported civil society organizations in submitting a statement. The arbitration ruling will show whether this will be taken into account or even have an influence on the ruling.
In his report, UN Special Rapporteur Boyd calls on states to withdraw from investment protection agreements. New treaties should then contain provisions that promote investment in climate protection, adaptation and resilience and protect the regulatory scope of states.
EU member states such as Germany have already withdrawn from the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT), which regulates investment protection for the energy sector. However, this includes a 20-year sunset clause.
However, Jörg Gundel, Professor of Public Law, International and European Law at the University of Bayreuth, argues that most of the lawsuits brought against the ECT were not brought by investors in conventional energy projects. Rather, most lawsuits have been filed by disappointed investors in renewable energy projects who have taken action against cuts to statutory subsidies in Spain and Italy, for example.
Investment protection could thus also intervene in favor of climate protection investments, says Gundel in a working paper for the German Council of Economic Experts: If states rely on private capital, without which climate protection measures cannot be implemented, such investments must also be protected.
The fact that European countries have so far mainly been affected by ISDS complaints in the energy sector could soon change, says Fabian Flues, trade and investment policy officer at the NGO Power Shift. He fears an increase in ISDS complaints in this sector as more mining projects are to be approved in Europe based on the Critical Raw Materials Act and local resistance is already being voiced. Due to the multi-stage approval process, the mining sector is very vulnerable.
On Wednesday, Yulia Navalnaya will speak in the European Parliament. Martin Schirdewan will be sitting in the front row to her left. The leader of the Left Group in the European Parliament has found clear words on the death of Alexej Navalny in a Russian prison camp. He described Navalny’s death as “political murder” in a statement with left-wing politician Dietmar Bartsch. Schirdewan spoke of “an announced political murder.”
Shirdevan’s voting behavior in the European Parliament in recent years has not been as clear as the condemnation and attribution of responsibility for the act of violence. He abstained when the European Parliament passed a resolution by a large majority on February 16, 2023, condemning the “deterioration of the inhuman imprisonment conditions of Alexey Navalny and other political prisoners in Russia.”
On 29 April 2021, Svirdevan voted against the European Parliament resolution calling for Navalny’s immediate release, emphasizing Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity and criticizing Russia’s attempts to destabilize the EU.
There are other examples: On January 21, 2021, Schirdewan voted against the European Parliament’s resolution a few days after Navalny was arrested by the Russian security authorities. With this resolution, the European Parliament protested against the fact that the Kremlin critic was arrested immediately after his return from Berlin where he had been treated at the Charité hospital. The resolution condemns the use of internationally banned nerve agents against people and calls on the EU and its member states to reconsider their cooperation with Russia.
On September 17, 2020, Shirdevan abstained when the European Parliament condemned the Kremlin’s poison attack on Navalny in its resolution. The resolution recalled that the use of chemical weapons is a crime under international law. It calls for an independent international investigation into the attack and calls on the EU and the Member States to find a common position on Russia and speak with one voice.
How does this voting behavior fit in with the firm condemnation of Navalny’s death? Table.media asked Schirdewan. Without receiving an answer by the editorial deadline. Markus Grabitz
