Europe is to become the leading location for climate-friendly technologies: By 2030, 40 percent of the annual use of net-zero technologies is to be covered by domestic production. That is the goal of the Net-Zero Industrial Act (NZIA), which the Commission has now presented. The legislation is the centerpiece of Europe’s response to the US Inflation Reduction Act. But the reactions have been mixed. From the point of view of the industries concerned, the proposals are a step in the right direction – but they do not see them as a sufficient response to the IRA. Till Hoppe summarizes the most important points of the NZIA and the assessments of politicians, industry and environmental associations.
With a Spotify playlist, Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton yesterday announced which 16 commodities should be considered strategic for the EU. Read more about Breton’s music choices from David Guetta to Nirvana in today’s Apéro. Leonie Düngefeld took a look at the contents of the Critical Raw Materials Act in her analysis and spoke with experts. Above all, the strengthening of domestic mining and the weak requirements for the development of the circular economy are being criticized.
The dispute over e-fuels seems to be getting a little less contentious in the meantime: Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans and German Minister for Transport Volker Wissing are apparently in agreement not to tackle the legislative text for CO2 fleet limits and the combustion engine phase-out. That’s according to a letter from the Ministry for Transport to Timmermans’ office, obtained by Table.Media. Read what else is in the letter in the News.
A dispute over the treatment of the nuclear industry almost blew up the schedule. Several commissioners objected to including certain technologies, such as for small modular reactors, in the Net-Zero Industrial Act (NZIA). In the end, Austrian representative Johannes Hahn, among others, was content to put his objections on record.
The Commission could hardly afford to delay tabling the NZIA. After all, the legislation is supposed to be the centerpiece of Europe’s response to the US Inflation Reduction Act (see also the article below in this issue). With the NZIA, the Commission hopes to make Europe more attractive to manufacturers.
The proposals have been received with reluctance by the addressed industries and politicians. The plan is inadequate in its current form, criticized Giles Dickson, CEO of the Wind Europe association. “All right, we want to build 36 gigawatts of wind turbines in Europe every year. But how?” He said national governments have some new leeway to support green industries, but it’s unclear how they will use it. And financial support from the EU is also still pending, he said.
The European Heat Pump Association (EHPA) said the production target of 40 percent was not ambitious enough. Already today, 60 percent of the heat pumps sold in Europe come from local production. However, it was commendable that the Commission also wanted to address the problem of the shortage of skilled workers in the NZIA. By 2030, there will probably be a shortage of up to 500,000 workers in this sector.
Michael Bloss, climate policy spokesman for the Greens in the EU Parliament, also described the production targets as too low. In the solar industry, he said, at least 50 gigawatts were needed instead of the targeted 30 gigawatts – “that should be the absolute minimum”.
Environmental groups criticized the accelerated permitting procedures. These could be at the expense of environmental legislation, said Diego Marin, a consultant from the European Environmental Bureau. The goal, he said, is apparently to put pressure on the affected communities to say yes in the end.
Ralph Brinkhaus, rapporteur for the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, on the other hand, praised the parts of the proposal dealing with the acceleration of approvals and procedures. However, there is still a lot to be spelled out in the negotiations.
“After 18 months of work, it’s over with naivety, now it’s time for action,” Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton said yesterday at noon when he presented the Critical Raw Materials Act together with Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis. Europe.Table had already reported on the contents of the leaked draft last week.
Breton was referring to the enormous speed with which DG GROW has drafted the legislative package (consisting of a regulation and a communication) – and to the EU’s little active role in raw materials policy to date. Benchmarks for domestic mining (10 percent of annual demand by 2030), processing (40 percent) and recycling (15 percent), as well as a cap on dependence on individual third countries (70 percent), are now intended to boost the development of value chains in Europe.
The Commission is expanding the previous list of 30 critical raw materials to 34, with a particular focus on a smaller group. 16 raw materials are designated as strategic in the draft – due to their strategic importance, the ratio of future demand to current global production, and the difficulties in increasing their production; the concrete benchmarks for production capacities within the EU and for import diversification are to apply to them:
The Commission classifies as “critical” these and 18 other raw materials (including bauxite, hafnium, helium and other rare earths) that exceed certain thresholds for their economic importance and supply risk. For them, the objectives are to monitor and mitigate supply risk and to ensure their free movement in the EU internal market while ensuring a high level of environmental protection.
The basic lines of the draft were predictable: Europe can no longer afford the “not in my backyard” mentality and must develop its own raw material deposits more. To this end, the draft provides for all kinds of measures: Exploring deposits, coordinating and sharing data, accelerating approval procedures.
A paradigm shift entirely in the interests of the mining industry: “The EU’s raw material potential is considerable, but we need more efficient permits to lift the EU’s treasure – a topic that is addressed in the CRM Act,” says Rolf Kuby, Chief Executive of the Euromines association.
Raw material projects marked as “strategic” are supposed to be in the “public interest” because they contribute to the security of supply. This means: they could also be approved in Natura 2000 protected areas (for the conservation of endangered habitats and species) and justify a deterioration in the quality of surface waters.
Tobias Kind-Rieper, a raw materials expert at WWF, warns of a softening of important environmental legislation: “If mining projects are placed above environmental law as a public interest, this could have dramatic effects on protected areas and on biodiversity hotspots in Europe, for example in Portugal and Sweden”.
Many raw material deposits in Europe are located in or near Natura 2000 protected areas. That’s why he also makes the following clear: Without mining projects in such protected areas, the goal of generating 10 percent of raw material requirements from domestic mining is unlikely to be achieved.
The majority of raw materials will continue to come from third countries. Here, the Commission is relying on strategic partnerships already agreed upon (with Canada, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Namibia) and on free trade agreements with chapters on critical raw materials (New Zealand, Chile, Australia). A global Critical Raw Materials Club is also to unite like-minded partners.
There is a strong focus on mitigating supply risks, which the Commission wants to achieve by means of stress tests of individual supply chains, strategic reserves in the member states and a platform for joint procurement of individual raw materials. It does not propose a European raw materials agency based on the model of the Japanese JOGMEC, as proposed by Germany and France, for example, but instead, a Critical Raw Materials Board with representatives from the member states, which would advise the Commission on the selection of strategic projects, among other things.
Instead of setting up a commodity fund, the Commission is pointing to public funds from the EU aid framework, the Invest-EU program and from the European Investment Bank (EIB), in addition to private funds.
Criticism was voiced above all for the targets for strengthening the circular economy: Although the goal exists of covering at least 15 percent of the EU’s demand for strategic raw materials with local recycling capacities by 2030, the targets for the member states are merely to strengthen collection and recycling and do not include any specific targets. However, the requirements for the member states are merely to strengthen collection and recycling and do not include any concrete target values.
When it comes to building a circular economy, the EU is leaving the member states too much on a long leash and is thus also jeopardizing the integrity of the single market, said Wolfgang Weber, CEO of the German Electrical and Digital Manufacturers’ Association (ZVEI). “We need an EU-wide, uniform market for secondary raw materials. Otherwise, the goal of obtaining 15 percent of critical raw materials from recycling by 2030 across Europe will be thwarted, and there is a risk of a large patchwork quilt,” he said.
“On important issues such as recycling, only imprecise wishes are formulated for the member states,” also said Michael Reckordt, raw materials policy officer at the NGO Powershift. He added that the draft is only really concrete with regard to permanent magnets. “It’s good that something is happening in this area, but that only concerns a small amount of raw materials and only one product.”
There is also an urgent need to set binding EU-wide recycling and recyclate use quotas for other products. In addition, there is a lack of measures to also reduce the demand for primary raw materials.
However, such targets must be formulated in a more differentiated manner, according to various sources. In the area of e-vehicles, for example, the target of 15 percent secondary raw materials by 2030 is already impossible to achieve in any case, as the service life of batteries is at least 15 years, said Hildegard Müller, president of the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA).
The Commission wants to drastically speed up approval procedures for mining, refining and recycling projects: Projects that have been labeled strategic by the Commission and the Critical Raw Materials Board are to be given the status of highest national importance and processed by the authorities as quickly as possible. For example, approval procedures for new mining projects are to take no longer than 24 months, and for processing and recycling projects as little as 12 months.
Hildegard Bentele (CDU) underlines the importance of fast approval procedures as a key location factor: they could “make a significant contribution to ensuring that competitive industry and its jobs remain in Europe“, says the MEP. “The EU member states urgently need to do their part here. It is good that we will now also make concrete progress in the mining sector”.
In Germany, the state mining offices are responsible for the procedures. Bernhard Cramer, chief mining officer in Saxony, believes that the targets are currently not feasible in his state: “From the opening of proceedings to approval, approval procedures for mining projects in our area of responsibility currently take between three and five years“, he said.
This does not include the period of application preparation from scoping to application submission, which takes another two years. “However, these empirical values only apply if there are no additional delays in the preparation and procedure”.
Franziska Brantner, Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs, praised the draft: “The Commission’s proposal takes up many of the Franco-German positions that we had communicated to the EU in advance”. She added that it was also gratifying that the Commission had also taken up a number of approaches from the German key points. “This gives us a tailwind for our national efforts“, she said.
In a consultation with his ministers in the Élysée Palace, President Emmanuel Macron had made the decision for this special path, which provides for pushing through a legislative project without a vote in parliament. The consultation was not only about raising the official retirement age from 62 to 64, but above all about the President’s future room for maneuver.
According to surveys, 70 percent of all French people are against the reform. All the unions voted together, which had not been the case for years, and had called a strike weeks ago. The streets of Paris were full of garbage, many trains across the country were canceled, refineries were blocked and power plants were on strike. Demonstrators protested pension reform several times across the country in recent weeks. On Thursday, the Senate voted overwhelmingly in favor (193 to 114), and the National Assembly was scheduled to vote in the afternoon. The stakes were high.
The mediation committee of the Senate and National Assembly had agreed on a compromise between the chambers on Wednesday, so Macron hoped until the very end that the conservative Republicans would help him win a majority for the reform in the National Assembly. He wanted to wave the reform through as quickly as possible so that calm could return. In any case, it is only a slimmed-down reform compared to the grand plans he had a few years ago.
Several scenarios loomed for the day of the decision. A vote in favor of the law, a vote against it, or constitutional paragraph 49.3. If too many Republicans defected, it was not certain that the reform would pass. With the decision to push the project through without an election, democratic legitimacy is now in question for critics and opposition politicians from the right and left, including left-wing politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
Macron threatened as a last resort to dissolve the National Assembly in the event of a defeat. According to the Constitution, he has the power to do so. In doing so, he primarily wanted to put pressure on the Republicans. If new elections were held, many of their seats would have been at risk. But Macron’s Renaissance party could only have lost. In the end, he played it safe and pulled the joker – accepting the law without voting on basis of constitutional paragraph 49.3.
This has weakened his position. Macron has already been heavily criticized before, but now he has lost all sympathy among many French people. Shortly after Élisabeth Borne’s appearance, a protesting group of young people set off from the Sorbonne in the direction of the National Assembly. No matter what happens in parliament, “the street can undo it and will”, said supporters of youth organizations at the protest.
Even before the decision was announced in the National Assembly, union boss Philippe Martinez of the CGT had announced further strikes: “A law that has been adopted is not yet a law that will be applied”, he said. Laurent Berger, head of the moderate CFDT, also stressed that in any case the “stop button” would not be pressed immediately.
Resistance is also stirring in the opposition parties. Opponents from the right and left want to introduce a motion of rejection or a motion of censure against the government, led by Marine Le Pen of the far-right Rassemblement National party. She spoke of a “political crisis” and “a total defeat for Macron”.
The opposition now has 24 hours to table the motion of no confidence. The vote could take place as early as next Monday. However, it is not very likely that enough votes will be gathered to pass the motion.
Luc Rémont, the new CEO of French energy group EDF, was prepared – and yet it was a difficult exercise. On Feb. 17, he had to announce a historic loss of €17.9 billion in 2022 and a debt of €64.5 billion that has doubled since 2018.
So is EDF a financial drag on the government in Paris? The group, which was fully nationalized last year, offers a very welcome political lever in the land of the yellow vests – especially to ease social tensions. One example? In 2022, the government decreed that the company would finance the electricity price brake to protect households and businesses from rising energy prices. The resulting cost to EDF is €8 billion, because the electricity price structure in France currently forces EDF to sell consumers electricity that is ten times cheaper than the cost of production.
The debt, astronomical as it may be, can remain manageable if – and only if – EDF manages to bring in new money. That is, by selling more and more expensive electricity. So Paris is turning to Brussels. And this is where the Brussels quartet comes in: taxonomy, hydrogen, electricity market reform, and the green industry, which goes by the cute acronym NZIA (Net-Zero Industry Act).
While Paris has won the battle over taxonomy, the outcome is still uncertain with regard to the definition of green hydrogen. Indeed, the question is whether hydrogen produced by nuclear energy counts as green because it is emission-free. This issue will be on the agenda in Brussels next Tuesday, where a technical trilogue on the revision of the Renewable Energy Directive will take place. The discussions are in preparation for the final trilogue, which is still scheduled for March 29.
Paris was able to get out of the way of the reform of the electricity market. Indeed, France managed to ensure that nuclear energy was not excluded from the regulation. As a reminder, in a draft, the EU Commission had initially limited its regulation of modernization costs only to new nuclear power plants. In the home stretch, and under pressure from Paris, the regulation was finally extended to cover the modernization costs that will be incurred by existing nuclear power plants.
The fact that at times almost half of France’s power plants were shut down for maintenance shows how important this point is. In Brussels, however, there is no doubt that Berlin will defend its critical position on nuclear power in the negotiations between the EU27 countries that are now beginning.
That leaves the green industry. France’s Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire didn’t even wait for the official presentation of the Commission’s NZIA legislative proposals yesterday (Thursday) to open hostilities. Speaking to the press in Paris last week, the Macron government’s German-speaking minister said, “We want nuclear energy to be included as clean energy in the Net-Zero Industry Act. There is no reason why solar panels and wind turbine blades should be included in it and not nuclear energy”.
And then he added: “No one should doubt France’s ability to defend its strategic interests”.
In the (unlikely) event that one might doubt France’s will to defend its nuclear industry, here is another quote from the speech of Agnès Pannier-Runacher, Minister for the Energy Transition, in the National Assembly this week: “Our country has a historic link with nuclear technology, which is due to a strong and ambitious political will: that of General de Gaulle and his successors”.
Whether the EDF energy group will be able to generate funds for debt reduction and investment in renewables and grids, as well as nuclear energy, depends on the outcome of this showdown.
“Today We Launch, TOGETHER, With My, Fellow, Colleague, VALDIS, Dom, Brov, Skis, The European, Critical, raw, Materials Act. Here It Is, The List, Of, Strategic, Metals, We Need: Bismuth, Cobalt and Manganese…” What looks like strange spelling and unorthodox punctuation is actually a new playlist by Commissioner Thierry Breton to make European legislation heard. On Thursday, he not only presented the Critical Raw Materials Act together with Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis, but also the matching soundtrack.
And, as befits a commissioner who wants to push digitization, the soundtrack for resilient commodity supply chains has become quite electronic. There are a total of 37 tracks on the list – and indeed, there is a song for all the coveted metals.
EDM chart toppers like “Titanium” by David Guetta and Sia are included, as is minimalist house music from Nicolas Jaar with “Materials”. The Platinum (sic!) Boys deliver old-school rustic rock ‘n’ roll with “Critical”, while Disclosure and Lorde pay homage to natural attractions with polished electro-pop on “Magnets“.
Ironically, heavy metal is almost completely missing from the list. At least two bands from the usually hard-playing grunge genre found their way in: Nirvana with “Lithium” and Jane’s Addiction with “Of Course”. In addition, there are classics by Santana (“Dom”) and Leonard Cohen (“Here It Is”).
If you like the concept of putting music to dry EU legislation, you might also like Breton’s playlists on the DMA, DSA, Chips Act or the Vaccine Task Force. It’s impossible not to like: Breton’s social media team has put a lot of effort into this. Fabian Peltsch and Corinna Visser
Europe is to become the leading location for climate-friendly technologies: By 2030, 40 percent of the annual use of net-zero technologies is to be covered by domestic production. That is the goal of the Net-Zero Industrial Act (NZIA), which the Commission has now presented. The legislation is the centerpiece of Europe’s response to the US Inflation Reduction Act. But the reactions have been mixed. From the point of view of the industries concerned, the proposals are a step in the right direction – but they do not see them as a sufficient response to the IRA. Till Hoppe summarizes the most important points of the NZIA and the assessments of politicians, industry and environmental associations.
With a Spotify playlist, Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton yesterday announced which 16 commodities should be considered strategic for the EU. Read more about Breton’s music choices from David Guetta to Nirvana in today’s Apéro. Leonie Düngefeld took a look at the contents of the Critical Raw Materials Act in her analysis and spoke with experts. Above all, the strengthening of domestic mining and the weak requirements for the development of the circular economy are being criticized.
The dispute over e-fuels seems to be getting a little less contentious in the meantime: Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans and German Minister for Transport Volker Wissing are apparently in agreement not to tackle the legislative text for CO2 fleet limits and the combustion engine phase-out. That’s according to a letter from the Ministry for Transport to Timmermans’ office, obtained by Table.Media. Read what else is in the letter in the News.
A dispute over the treatment of the nuclear industry almost blew up the schedule. Several commissioners objected to including certain technologies, such as for small modular reactors, in the Net-Zero Industrial Act (NZIA). In the end, Austrian representative Johannes Hahn, among others, was content to put his objections on record.
The Commission could hardly afford to delay tabling the NZIA. After all, the legislation is supposed to be the centerpiece of Europe’s response to the US Inflation Reduction Act (see also the article below in this issue). With the NZIA, the Commission hopes to make Europe more attractive to manufacturers.
The proposals have been received with reluctance by the addressed industries and politicians. The plan is inadequate in its current form, criticized Giles Dickson, CEO of the Wind Europe association. “All right, we want to build 36 gigawatts of wind turbines in Europe every year. But how?” He said national governments have some new leeway to support green industries, but it’s unclear how they will use it. And financial support from the EU is also still pending, he said.
The European Heat Pump Association (EHPA) said the production target of 40 percent was not ambitious enough. Already today, 60 percent of the heat pumps sold in Europe come from local production. However, it was commendable that the Commission also wanted to address the problem of the shortage of skilled workers in the NZIA. By 2030, there will probably be a shortage of up to 500,000 workers in this sector.
Michael Bloss, climate policy spokesman for the Greens in the EU Parliament, also described the production targets as too low. In the solar industry, he said, at least 50 gigawatts were needed instead of the targeted 30 gigawatts – “that should be the absolute minimum”.
Environmental groups criticized the accelerated permitting procedures. These could be at the expense of environmental legislation, said Diego Marin, a consultant from the European Environmental Bureau. The goal, he said, is apparently to put pressure on the affected communities to say yes in the end.
Ralph Brinkhaus, rapporteur for the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, on the other hand, praised the parts of the proposal dealing with the acceleration of approvals and procedures. However, there is still a lot to be spelled out in the negotiations.
“After 18 months of work, it’s over with naivety, now it’s time for action,” Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton said yesterday at noon when he presented the Critical Raw Materials Act together with Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis. Europe.Table had already reported on the contents of the leaked draft last week.
Breton was referring to the enormous speed with which DG GROW has drafted the legislative package (consisting of a regulation and a communication) – and to the EU’s little active role in raw materials policy to date. Benchmarks for domestic mining (10 percent of annual demand by 2030), processing (40 percent) and recycling (15 percent), as well as a cap on dependence on individual third countries (70 percent), are now intended to boost the development of value chains in Europe.
The Commission is expanding the previous list of 30 critical raw materials to 34, with a particular focus on a smaller group. 16 raw materials are designated as strategic in the draft – due to their strategic importance, the ratio of future demand to current global production, and the difficulties in increasing their production; the concrete benchmarks for production capacities within the EU and for import diversification are to apply to them:
The Commission classifies as “critical” these and 18 other raw materials (including bauxite, hafnium, helium and other rare earths) that exceed certain thresholds for their economic importance and supply risk. For them, the objectives are to monitor and mitigate supply risk and to ensure their free movement in the EU internal market while ensuring a high level of environmental protection.
The basic lines of the draft were predictable: Europe can no longer afford the “not in my backyard” mentality and must develop its own raw material deposits more. To this end, the draft provides for all kinds of measures: Exploring deposits, coordinating and sharing data, accelerating approval procedures.
A paradigm shift entirely in the interests of the mining industry: “The EU’s raw material potential is considerable, but we need more efficient permits to lift the EU’s treasure – a topic that is addressed in the CRM Act,” says Rolf Kuby, Chief Executive of the Euromines association.
Raw material projects marked as “strategic” are supposed to be in the “public interest” because they contribute to the security of supply. This means: they could also be approved in Natura 2000 protected areas (for the conservation of endangered habitats and species) and justify a deterioration in the quality of surface waters.
Tobias Kind-Rieper, a raw materials expert at WWF, warns of a softening of important environmental legislation: “If mining projects are placed above environmental law as a public interest, this could have dramatic effects on protected areas and on biodiversity hotspots in Europe, for example in Portugal and Sweden”.
Many raw material deposits in Europe are located in or near Natura 2000 protected areas. That’s why he also makes the following clear: Without mining projects in such protected areas, the goal of generating 10 percent of raw material requirements from domestic mining is unlikely to be achieved.
The majority of raw materials will continue to come from third countries. Here, the Commission is relying on strategic partnerships already agreed upon (with Canada, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Namibia) and on free trade agreements with chapters on critical raw materials (New Zealand, Chile, Australia). A global Critical Raw Materials Club is also to unite like-minded partners.
There is a strong focus on mitigating supply risks, which the Commission wants to achieve by means of stress tests of individual supply chains, strategic reserves in the member states and a platform for joint procurement of individual raw materials. It does not propose a European raw materials agency based on the model of the Japanese JOGMEC, as proposed by Germany and France, for example, but instead, a Critical Raw Materials Board with representatives from the member states, which would advise the Commission on the selection of strategic projects, among other things.
Instead of setting up a commodity fund, the Commission is pointing to public funds from the EU aid framework, the Invest-EU program and from the European Investment Bank (EIB), in addition to private funds.
Criticism was voiced above all for the targets for strengthening the circular economy: Although the goal exists of covering at least 15 percent of the EU’s demand for strategic raw materials with local recycling capacities by 2030, the targets for the member states are merely to strengthen collection and recycling and do not include any specific targets. However, the requirements for the member states are merely to strengthen collection and recycling and do not include any concrete target values.
When it comes to building a circular economy, the EU is leaving the member states too much on a long leash and is thus also jeopardizing the integrity of the single market, said Wolfgang Weber, CEO of the German Electrical and Digital Manufacturers’ Association (ZVEI). “We need an EU-wide, uniform market for secondary raw materials. Otherwise, the goal of obtaining 15 percent of critical raw materials from recycling by 2030 across Europe will be thwarted, and there is a risk of a large patchwork quilt,” he said.
“On important issues such as recycling, only imprecise wishes are formulated for the member states,” also said Michael Reckordt, raw materials policy officer at the NGO Powershift. He added that the draft is only really concrete with regard to permanent magnets. “It’s good that something is happening in this area, but that only concerns a small amount of raw materials and only one product.”
There is also an urgent need to set binding EU-wide recycling and recyclate use quotas for other products. In addition, there is a lack of measures to also reduce the demand for primary raw materials.
However, such targets must be formulated in a more differentiated manner, according to various sources. In the area of e-vehicles, for example, the target of 15 percent secondary raw materials by 2030 is already impossible to achieve in any case, as the service life of batteries is at least 15 years, said Hildegard Müller, president of the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA).
The Commission wants to drastically speed up approval procedures for mining, refining and recycling projects: Projects that have been labeled strategic by the Commission and the Critical Raw Materials Board are to be given the status of highest national importance and processed by the authorities as quickly as possible. For example, approval procedures for new mining projects are to take no longer than 24 months, and for processing and recycling projects as little as 12 months.
Hildegard Bentele (CDU) underlines the importance of fast approval procedures as a key location factor: they could “make a significant contribution to ensuring that competitive industry and its jobs remain in Europe“, says the MEP. “The EU member states urgently need to do their part here. It is good that we will now also make concrete progress in the mining sector”.
In Germany, the state mining offices are responsible for the procedures. Bernhard Cramer, chief mining officer in Saxony, believes that the targets are currently not feasible in his state: “From the opening of proceedings to approval, approval procedures for mining projects in our area of responsibility currently take between three and five years“, he said.
This does not include the period of application preparation from scoping to application submission, which takes another two years. “However, these empirical values only apply if there are no additional delays in the preparation and procedure”.
Franziska Brantner, Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs, praised the draft: “The Commission’s proposal takes up many of the Franco-German positions that we had communicated to the EU in advance”. She added that it was also gratifying that the Commission had also taken up a number of approaches from the German key points. “This gives us a tailwind for our national efforts“, she said.
In a consultation with his ministers in the Élysée Palace, President Emmanuel Macron had made the decision for this special path, which provides for pushing through a legislative project without a vote in parliament. The consultation was not only about raising the official retirement age from 62 to 64, but above all about the President’s future room for maneuver.
According to surveys, 70 percent of all French people are against the reform. All the unions voted together, which had not been the case for years, and had called a strike weeks ago. The streets of Paris were full of garbage, many trains across the country were canceled, refineries were blocked and power plants were on strike. Demonstrators protested pension reform several times across the country in recent weeks. On Thursday, the Senate voted overwhelmingly in favor (193 to 114), and the National Assembly was scheduled to vote in the afternoon. The stakes were high.
The mediation committee of the Senate and National Assembly had agreed on a compromise between the chambers on Wednesday, so Macron hoped until the very end that the conservative Republicans would help him win a majority for the reform in the National Assembly. He wanted to wave the reform through as quickly as possible so that calm could return. In any case, it is only a slimmed-down reform compared to the grand plans he had a few years ago.
Several scenarios loomed for the day of the decision. A vote in favor of the law, a vote against it, or constitutional paragraph 49.3. If too many Republicans defected, it was not certain that the reform would pass. With the decision to push the project through without an election, democratic legitimacy is now in question for critics and opposition politicians from the right and left, including left-wing politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
Macron threatened as a last resort to dissolve the National Assembly in the event of a defeat. According to the Constitution, he has the power to do so. In doing so, he primarily wanted to put pressure on the Republicans. If new elections were held, many of their seats would have been at risk. But Macron’s Renaissance party could only have lost. In the end, he played it safe and pulled the joker – accepting the law without voting on basis of constitutional paragraph 49.3.
This has weakened his position. Macron has already been heavily criticized before, but now he has lost all sympathy among many French people. Shortly after Élisabeth Borne’s appearance, a protesting group of young people set off from the Sorbonne in the direction of the National Assembly. No matter what happens in parliament, “the street can undo it and will”, said supporters of youth organizations at the protest.
Even before the decision was announced in the National Assembly, union boss Philippe Martinez of the CGT had announced further strikes: “A law that has been adopted is not yet a law that will be applied”, he said. Laurent Berger, head of the moderate CFDT, also stressed that in any case the “stop button” would not be pressed immediately.
Resistance is also stirring in the opposition parties. Opponents from the right and left want to introduce a motion of rejection or a motion of censure against the government, led by Marine Le Pen of the far-right Rassemblement National party. She spoke of a “political crisis” and “a total defeat for Macron”.
The opposition now has 24 hours to table the motion of no confidence. The vote could take place as early as next Monday. However, it is not very likely that enough votes will be gathered to pass the motion.
Luc Rémont, the new CEO of French energy group EDF, was prepared – and yet it was a difficult exercise. On Feb. 17, he had to announce a historic loss of €17.9 billion in 2022 and a debt of €64.5 billion that has doubled since 2018.
So is EDF a financial drag on the government in Paris? The group, which was fully nationalized last year, offers a very welcome political lever in the land of the yellow vests – especially to ease social tensions. One example? In 2022, the government decreed that the company would finance the electricity price brake to protect households and businesses from rising energy prices. The resulting cost to EDF is €8 billion, because the electricity price structure in France currently forces EDF to sell consumers electricity that is ten times cheaper than the cost of production.
The debt, astronomical as it may be, can remain manageable if – and only if – EDF manages to bring in new money. That is, by selling more and more expensive electricity. So Paris is turning to Brussels. And this is where the Brussels quartet comes in: taxonomy, hydrogen, electricity market reform, and the green industry, which goes by the cute acronym NZIA (Net-Zero Industry Act).
While Paris has won the battle over taxonomy, the outcome is still uncertain with regard to the definition of green hydrogen. Indeed, the question is whether hydrogen produced by nuclear energy counts as green because it is emission-free. This issue will be on the agenda in Brussels next Tuesday, where a technical trilogue on the revision of the Renewable Energy Directive will take place. The discussions are in preparation for the final trilogue, which is still scheduled for March 29.
Paris was able to get out of the way of the reform of the electricity market. Indeed, France managed to ensure that nuclear energy was not excluded from the regulation. As a reminder, in a draft, the EU Commission had initially limited its regulation of modernization costs only to new nuclear power plants. In the home stretch, and under pressure from Paris, the regulation was finally extended to cover the modernization costs that will be incurred by existing nuclear power plants.
The fact that at times almost half of France’s power plants were shut down for maintenance shows how important this point is. In Brussels, however, there is no doubt that Berlin will defend its critical position on nuclear power in the negotiations between the EU27 countries that are now beginning.
That leaves the green industry. France’s Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire didn’t even wait for the official presentation of the Commission’s NZIA legislative proposals yesterday (Thursday) to open hostilities. Speaking to the press in Paris last week, the Macron government’s German-speaking minister said, “We want nuclear energy to be included as clean energy in the Net-Zero Industry Act. There is no reason why solar panels and wind turbine blades should be included in it and not nuclear energy”.
And then he added: “No one should doubt France’s ability to defend its strategic interests”.
In the (unlikely) event that one might doubt France’s will to defend its nuclear industry, here is another quote from the speech of Agnès Pannier-Runacher, Minister for the Energy Transition, in the National Assembly this week: “Our country has a historic link with nuclear technology, which is due to a strong and ambitious political will: that of General de Gaulle and his successors”.
Whether the EDF energy group will be able to generate funds for debt reduction and investment in renewables and grids, as well as nuclear energy, depends on the outcome of this showdown.
“Today We Launch, TOGETHER, With My, Fellow, Colleague, VALDIS, Dom, Brov, Skis, The European, Critical, raw, Materials Act. Here It Is, The List, Of, Strategic, Metals, We Need: Bismuth, Cobalt and Manganese…” What looks like strange spelling and unorthodox punctuation is actually a new playlist by Commissioner Thierry Breton to make European legislation heard. On Thursday, he not only presented the Critical Raw Materials Act together with Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis, but also the matching soundtrack.
And, as befits a commissioner who wants to push digitization, the soundtrack for resilient commodity supply chains has become quite electronic. There are a total of 37 tracks on the list – and indeed, there is a song for all the coveted metals.
EDM chart toppers like “Titanium” by David Guetta and Sia are included, as is minimalist house music from Nicolas Jaar with “Materials”. The Platinum (sic!) Boys deliver old-school rustic rock ‘n’ roll with “Critical”, while Disclosure and Lorde pay homage to natural attractions with polished electro-pop on “Magnets“.
Ironically, heavy metal is almost completely missing from the list. At least two bands from the usually hard-playing grunge genre found their way in: Nirvana with “Lithium” and Jane’s Addiction with “Of Course”. In addition, there are classics by Santana (“Dom”) and Leonard Cohen (“Here It Is”).
If you like the concept of putting music to dry EU legislation, you might also like Breton’s playlists on the DMA, DSA, Chips Act or the Vaccine Task Force. It’s impossible not to like: Breton’s social media team has put a lot of effort into this. Fabian Peltsch and Corinna Visser
