The density of the meetings underlines the urgency and drama of the situation in Ukraine. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has convened the defense ministers for a virtual crisis meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council this afternoon. President Volodymyr Zelenskyi, who spoke to the heads of state and government at the special EU summit on Wednesday, will also be present: Ukraine urgently needs more air defense systems in view of the constant Russian bombardment, with the focus on the Patriots.
Olaf Scholz set a good example this week and announced that Germany would quickly deliver a complete unit. However, according to Foreign Minister Kuleba, Ukraine needs at least seven additional patriot systems to protect at least the most important cities and civilian infrastructure from Russian attacks. “We are working with our allies to ensure that they make some of their systems available to Ukraine,” said Jens Stoltenberg yesterday at the meeting of G7 foreign ministers in Capri.
It is astonishing that the allies are so reluctant to help Ukraine with this decidedly defensive weapon against Russian missile terror. According to the US defense contractor Raytheon, it has produced and delivered 240 launchers, with the American armed forces having the largest arsenal in stock. In addition to Germany, Spain, Greece, the Netherlands, Romania, Sweden and Poland also have the system in Europe. The NATO Secretary General is likely to repeat his urgent appeal today, while on Monday it will be the turn of the EU foreign and defense ministers to hold their crisis meeting. The usually reserved Jens Stoltenberg is now sounding increasingly alarmed: every day of delay means more death and destruction in Ukraine, said the Norwegian in Capri. And it is now more important to help Ukraine than to meet NATO’s defense requirements. In other words, self-defense is no longer an excuse for the allies. Europe is currently being defended in Ukraine. Have a good start to the weekend!
There was a whole series of EU legislative proposals in which Germany recently went against the majority of member states: In the case of the Supply Chain Directive, the Platform Work Directive and the Forced Labor Regulation, for example, the traffic light coalition abstained due to a lack of a common position, while the SPD, Greens and FDP only reached an agreement on others such as the Packaging Ordinance and carbon fleet limits for trucks at the last minute. The controversial projects were ultimately decided in the Council, if necessary without the consent of the Member State with the largest voting strength.
The accumulation of German abstentions is remarkable, as a new database shows. The German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) has recorded the voting behavior of national governments in more than 1,300 public votes in the EU Council since the Lisbon Treaty came into force at the end of 2009. The SWP’s EU Council Monitor is now available online here. The experts from the Table.Briefings Foundation have provided an initial evaluation of the data in advance.
The database currently records votes up to September 2023 – so the abstentions of recent weeks are not yet included. In future, the EU Council Monitor will be updated regularly.
The database shows that Germany has abstained from voting 34 times and voted against 28 times over the course of 13 years, i.e. on average twice a year. The number of no votes and abstentions increased towards the middle of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s term of office, with the highest figure being 14 such votes in 2013.
In the coalition agreement, the coalition government had resolved to improve European policy coordination. The SPD, Greens and FDP were initially able to implement this intention, at least in terms of voting behavior in the Council. In recent months, however, the political differences of opinion between the three coalition parties also reached Brussels.
A new analysis by SWP researchers Nicolai von Ondarza and Isabella Stürzer shows that Germany has been in the front midfield of EU countries over the entire period covered. For a long time, the UK was far ahead in terms of abstentions and no votes, but in 2020 the UK left the EU. Since then, Hungary and Poland have led this statistic, followed by Bulgaria and Austria. At the other end of the spectrum are Italy and France, which have only been outvoted by the other member states five times in the 13-plus years.
However, looking at the more than 1,300 votes in total, the SWP researchers note: “The outvoting of individual governments or even larger groups of governments remains rare.” On average, the member states achieved a consensus without dissenting votes in just under 83 percent of Council votes, although a qualified majority would have been sufficient. On the one hand, this shows that the compromises reached in the negotiations can generally be supported by all member states. In addition, national governments are reluctant to outvote larger groups of states.
However, Ondarza and Stürzer believe that the high consensus rate also shows “that majority decisions alone are not a solution to the EU’s difficulties in terms of its ability to act.” Even with qualified majority voting (QMV), negotiations in the Council can take a long time if the EU states are divided into large groups.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz in particular advocates extending majority decisions to areas such as foreign and security policy and tax policy, where unanimity is still required. Last year, the German government initiated a “Group of Friends for Qualified Majority Voting in Common Foreign and Security Policy,” to which ten other EU states belong.
In order to get skeptical governments on board, they want to initially restrict the introduction of QMV to limited policy areas, in particular decisions on sanctions, civil CSDP operations or statements on human rights issues. This is to be achieved without amending the EU treaties, with the help of bridging clauses. However, unanimity is again required to activate these.
Ondarza and Stürzer also warn: “Given the rather limited expansion (of QMV), the EU would ultimately not be substantially more capable of acting.” With a view to the possible accession of new member states, they also recommend a larger reform package that includes the extension of majority decisions to entire new policy areas. “This would give the EU a real boost in terms of its ability to act.”
To address the concerns of the smaller member states in particular, they recommend a “sovereignty safety net,” as proposed by a Franco-German group of experts. This would allow individual governments to transfer decisions to the highest level of heads of state and government if vital national interests are affected. The European Council would then have to reach a consensus.
After a discussion with Enrico Letta about his single market report, the capital markets union project was on the agenda for the second day of the special summit. The EU has been discussing the Capital Markets Union for ten years. The heads of government have often spoken out in favor of it in principle, but have held back in concrete terms.
This time, the new Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris was representative of this. Before the meeting on Thursday morning, he said “We want to see a capital markets union”, only to add immediately afterward, “But we want to see a capital markets union that respects the concerns of the member states.”
This is why Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron had insisted that the capital markets union be discussed in detail at the summit level. The discussion dragged on because the wording in the draft conclusions went too far for some heads of state and government and had to be renegotiated.
After the summit, however, Scholz was satisfied: “Very concrete things” had been decided, such as the harmonization of insolvency law, better harmonized supervision and the taxation of financial companies.
Specifically, the heads of government instructed the EU Commission and the finance ministers to prioritize the following points:
The most controversial point was the centralized market supervision. Ireland and Luxembourg are fighting tooth and nail against a transfer of competence in this area.
But other member states, especially smaller ones, are also suspicious. They suspect a French strategy behind the argument for centralized market surveillance. The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) is based in Paris. Strengthening ESMA would create new jobs in France. And because financial market players like to be physically close to their supervisory authorities, this should also strengthen the Paris financial center. Small countries such as Sweden, which already have well-developed national capital markets, fear that this strengthening of the Paris financial center would be at their expense.
EU diplomats also argue that the focus on centralized market supervision is misguided. Before you can regulate the capital markets, you first have to create the market. This is contradicted by supporters of centralized market supervision, who see it as a catalyst for the harmonization of markets, which would then inevitably attract more capital.
Due to the continuing substantial differences of opinion among the member states, the wording in the European Council’s conclusions is not easy to understand. This could make further work on this topic more difficult. Some EU diplomats thus assume that the decision taken by the finance ministers in March will remain the relevant guideline. Others argue that the summit has created a momentum that allows for more ambition.
The next step is for the EU Commission and the finance ministers to press ahead with the work. At their summit in June, the heads of state and government want to address the issue again. “Now we are staying on the ball and will not let the issue drop,” said Scholz. The special interests of some countries in supervisory or tax issues are “no longer worth anything” in view of the task of “mobilizing Europe’s incredible capital reserves so that they are invested in the growth of our companies.” Some smaller member states are likely to disagree with the Chancellor’s interpretation.
Despite disagreements and unclear wording, Enrico Letta described the decisions on the Capital Markets Union at the end of the long summit day as the “first decisive step” forward. Only if the EU could ensure that a greater proportion of European savings flowed into European companies could it guarantee its independence.
Commercial, ostensibly freely accessible offers on the Internet are currently going through difficult times. The third-party advertising cookie problem is leading to massive upheaval. But the search for alternative financing models is not easy for providers either. The debate currently attracting the most public attention is ostensibly about meta. In reality, however, it is about the future of the entire advertising industry.
The question is: should providers be allowed to force users of a service to either pay the amount they have set for the service or, alternatively, agree to extensive data usage, including controversial tracking methods, if they want to continue using the service? Meta announced last year that it would give users in the EU a choice: Either they pay around €10 a month for ad-free use of Facebook and Instagram – or they have to give their mandatory consent for online advertising service providers to also use their data for tracking.
An opinion from the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) on “Pay or Okay” has been awaited for several weeks. The Hamburg data protection supervisory authority and the corresponding Norwegian and Dutch authorities had asked for it. What was not to be expected: the sharpness with which the representatives sitting on the highest body of data protection supervisory authorities in Europe are now entering the debate.
The statement from Anu Talus, the chair of the committee, sounds comparatively conciliatory.” controllers should bear in mind the need to prevent the fundamental right to data protection from being transformed into a feature that data subjects have to pay to enjoy. Individuals should be aware of the value and consequences of their decision.”
However, the opinion of the data protection supervisory authorities is tough. They argue in stages: They do not say outright no to Pay-or-Okay models. Instead, they argue that the “pay or consent to maximum data usage” logic significantly contradicts the European idea of informational self-determination, as set in the General Data Protection Regulation.
There needs to be “genuine freedom of choice” for consent to the processing of personal data. Even a design that makes it more difficult to refuse processing than to give consent undermines the General Data Protection Regulation requirements. According to the data protection supervisory authorities, essential services must also be accessible without consent obtained in this way. This is because the power imbalance between provider and user is so great with these services in particular that the requirements for effective consent as defined by the GDPR are lacking from the outset. They also consider those providers that enable participation in democratic discourse to be essential.
However, one concession in the EDPB’s assessment is noteworthy. It should be examined on a case-by-case basis whether a fee is appropriate at all and, if so, what amount is appropriate in the given circumstances, write the data protection experts. In this way, “the fundamental right to data protection from being transformed into a premium feature reserved for the wealthy.” Previously, individual data protection supervisory authorities and activists had called for an even more rigorous course of complete rejection.
The German Association of the Digital Economy (BVDW), which is intensively involved in the interests of the online advertising industry, is nevertheless not convinced by the argumentation of the supervisory authorities. Moritz Holzgraefe, Vice President of the BVDW, says: “The argument that the required decision in the ‘pay or consent’ model turns data protection into a ‘feature’ is completely unfounded.” User rights remain intact in all constellations. The fundamental right to data protection is a fundamental right, and an important one. “However, it does not exist in a vacuum, nor is it a kind of ‘super fundamental right.’ It must therefore be harmonized with other fundamental rights – such as private autonomy.”
The decisions of the European Data Protection Board are decisive for the decision-making practice of the data protection supervisory authorities. However, the European Court of Justice remains ultimately responsible for the binding interpretation of the law.
She does not have to worry about entering the European Parliament: Andrea Wechsler, who has no parliamentary experience to date, is leading the CDU list in Baden-Württemberg in the election on June 9. The fact that the lawyer, university teacher and SME politician is running for the prominent first place on the state list in the south-west is also thanks to sustained pressure from women in the CDU.
While the SPD, Greens and FDP have long had women running for promising places on their lists, the federal CDU did not adopt binding quotas until 2022. The European list in Baden-Württemberg was drawn up in spring 2023, at a time when the federal CDU quotas did not yet apply. For a long time, it therefore looked as if the south-west CDU wanted to run with only men in the promising positions, as it did last time and the time before last.
The four previous MEPs from the south-west – Rainer Wieland, the longest-serving Vice-President of the European Parliament, Daniel Caspary, head of the German group, internal market expert Andreas Schwab and Norbert Lins, head of the Agriculture Committee – actually all wanted to stay on. The South-West CDU almost got away with it.
But then Wieland, who has been a member of parliament since 1997 and is 67, was prepared to give up his first place on the list, which is reserved for the North Württemberg district, to Wechsler without a fight. Wieland is now running in fifth place on the state list in the southwest.
Wechsler and Wieland are campaigning together. For example in the “EU and you” format. Wechsler is breaking new ground. She appeals to younger voters with short videos. Personally, she does not believe in TikTok. She has banned her two children from using TikTok. Nevertheless, she uses the platform to address target groups that the CDU cannot reach using traditional methods. In the election campaign, she is one of the very few CDU politicians present on the controversial Chinese platform.
Not being in the European Parliament helps in this case. The parliamentary administration has banned the use of TikTok on parliamentary devices. In the short videos, Wechsler explains the EU’s policy: what the Commission’s investigation into TikTok is all about. That the abolition of roaming charges is a great success of EU regulation. And what Europe is doing to ensure that men and women receive equal pay. Will she reach 16-year-old first-time voters? Hard to say. But she’s trying.
Andrea Wechsler grew up in Bavaria and now lives in Ludwigsburg with her husband and two children. She ran unsuccessfully for the state parliament in the last state election in the south-west. Thanks to her promising position on the list, she will be able to leap into professional politics this time.
She has a strong economic policy profile, studied law and has been a Professor of Private Commercial Law at Pforzheim University since 2013. Wechsler has long been involved in the CDU’s Mittelstands- und Wirtschaftsunion (MIT). Before joining the university, she worked as a management consultant, including for McKinsey. She currently heads a center for business start-ups.
This would suggest she is aiming to work on the Industry or Economic Committee in the European Parliament. Especially as there is a vacancy in the parliamentary group: Markus Pieper, who has represented SME policy in the European Parliament for several terms, is leaving the European Parliament. Wechsler does not want to go so far as to express her wishes. “As a new member, I won’t make any demands, but will wait and see what topics the parliamentary group proposes to me.” Markus Grabitz
The density of the meetings underlines the urgency and drama of the situation in Ukraine. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has convened the defense ministers for a virtual crisis meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council this afternoon. President Volodymyr Zelenskyi, who spoke to the heads of state and government at the special EU summit on Wednesday, will also be present: Ukraine urgently needs more air defense systems in view of the constant Russian bombardment, with the focus on the Patriots.
Olaf Scholz set a good example this week and announced that Germany would quickly deliver a complete unit. However, according to Foreign Minister Kuleba, Ukraine needs at least seven additional patriot systems to protect at least the most important cities and civilian infrastructure from Russian attacks. “We are working with our allies to ensure that they make some of their systems available to Ukraine,” said Jens Stoltenberg yesterday at the meeting of G7 foreign ministers in Capri.
It is astonishing that the allies are so reluctant to help Ukraine with this decidedly defensive weapon against Russian missile terror. According to the US defense contractor Raytheon, it has produced and delivered 240 launchers, with the American armed forces having the largest arsenal in stock. In addition to Germany, Spain, Greece, the Netherlands, Romania, Sweden and Poland also have the system in Europe. The NATO Secretary General is likely to repeat his urgent appeal today, while on Monday it will be the turn of the EU foreign and defense ministers to hold their crisis meeting. The usually reserved Jens Stoltenberg is now sounding increasingly alarmed: every day of delay means more death and destruction in Ukraine, said the Norwegian in Capri. And it is now more important to help Ukraine than to meet NATO’s defense requirements. In other words, self-defense is no longer an excuse for the allies. Europe is currently being defended in Ukraine. Have a good start to the weekend!
There was a whole series of EU legislative proposals in which Germany recently went against the majority of member states: In the case of the Supply Chain Directive, the Platform Work Directive and the Forced Labor Regulation, for example, the traffic light coalition abstained due to a lack of a common position, while the SPD, Greens and FDP only reached an agreement on others such as the Packaging Ordinance and carbon fleet limits for trucks at the last minute. The controversial projects were ultimately decided in the Council, if necessary without the consent of the Member State with the largest voting strength.
The accumulation of German abstentions is remarkable, as a new database shows. The German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) has recorded the voting behavior of national governments in more than 1,300 public votes in the EU Council since the Lisbon Treaty came into force at the end of 2009. The SWP’s EU Council Monitor is now available online here. The experts from the Table.Briefings Foundation have provided an initial evaluation of the data in advance.
The database currently records votes up to September 2023 – so the abstentions of recent weeks are not yet included. In future, the EU Council Monitor will be updated regularly.
The database shows that Germany has abstained from voting 34 times and voted against 28 times over the course of 13 years, i.e. on average twice a year. The number of no votes and abstentions increased towards the middle of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s term of office, with the highest figure being 14 such votes in 2013.
In the coalition agreement, the coalition government had resolved to improve European policy coordination. The SPD, Greens and FDP were initially able to implement this intention, at least in terms of voting behavior in the Council. In recent months, however, the political differences of opinion between the three coalition parties also reached Brussels.
A new analysis by SWP researchers Nicolai von Ondarza and Isabella Stürzer shows that Germany has been in the front midfield of EU countries over the entire period covered. For a long time, the UK was far ahead in terms of abstentions and no votes, but in 2020 the UK left the EU. Since then, Hungary and Poland have led this statistic, followed by Bulgaria and Austria. At the other end of the spectrum are Italy and France, which have only been outvoted by the other member states five times in the 13-plus years.
However, looking at the more than 1,300 votes in total, the SWP researchers note: “The outvoting of individual governments or even larger groups of governments remains rare.” On average, the member states achieved a consensus without dissenting votes in just under 83 percent of Council votes, although a qualified majority would have been sufficient. On the one hand, this shows that the compromises reached in the negotiations can generally be supported by all member states. In addition, national governments are reluctant to outvote larger groups of states.
However, Ondarza and Stürzer believe that the high consensus rate also shows “that majority decisions alone are not a solution to the EU’s difficulties in terms of its ability to act.” Even with qualified majority voting (QMV), negotiations in the Council can take a long time if the EU states are divided into large groups.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz in particular advocates extending majority decisions to areas such as foreign and security policy and tax policy, where unanimity is still required. Last year, the German government initiated a “Group of Friends for Qualified Majority Voting in Common Foreign and Security Policy,” to which ten other EU states belong.
In order to get skeptical governments on board, they want to initially restrict the introduction of QMV to limited policy areas, in particular decisions on sanctions, civil CSDP operations or statements on human rights issues. This is to be achieved without amending the EU treaties, with the help of bridging clauses. However, unanimity is again required to activate these.
Ondarza and Stürzer also warn: “Given the rather limited expansion (of QMV), the EU would ultimately not be substantially more capable of acting.” With a view to the possible accession of new member states, they also recommend a larger reform package that includes the extension of majority decisions to entire new policy areas. “This would give the EU a real boost in terms of its ability to act.”
To address the concerns of the smaller member states in particular, they recommend a “sovereignty safety net,” as proposed by a Franco-German group of experts. This would allow individual governments to transfer decisions to the highest level of heads of state and government if vital national interests are affected. The European Council would then have to reach a consensus.
After a discussion with Enrico Letta about his single market report, the capital markets union project was on the agenda for the second day of the special summit. The EU has been discussing the Capital Markets Union for ten years. The heads of government have often spoken out in favor of it in principle, but have held back in concrete terms.
This time, the new Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris was representative of this. Before the meeting on Thursday morning, he said “We want to see a capital markets union”, only to add immediately afterward, “But we want to see a capital markets union that respects the concerns of the member states.”
This is why Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron had insisted that the capital markets union be discussed in detail at the summit level. The discussion dragged on because the wording in the draft conclusions went too far for some heads of state and government and had to be renegotiated.
After the summit, however, Scholz was satisfied: “Very concrete things” had been decided, such as the harmonization of insolvency law, better harmonized supervision and the taxation of financial companies.
Specifically, the heads of government instructed the EU Commission and the finance ministers to prioritize the following points:
The most controversial point was the centralized market supervision. Ireland and Luxembourg are fighting tooth and nail against a transfer of competence in this area.
But other member states, especially smaller ones, are also suspicious. They suspect a French strategy behind the argument for centralized market surveillance. The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) is based in Paris. Strengthening ESMA would create new jobs in France. And because financial market players like to be physically close to their supervisory authorities, this should also strengthen the Paris financial center. Small countries such as Sweden, which already have well-developed national capital markets, fear that this strengthening of the Paris financial center would be at their expense.
EU diplomats also argue that the focus on centralized market supervision is misguided. Before you can regulate the capital markets, you first have to create the market. This is contradicted by supporters of centralized market supervision, who see it as a catalyst for the harmonization of markets, which would then inevitably attract more capital.
Due to the continuing substantial differences of opinion among the member states, the wording in the European Council’s conclusions is not easy to understand. This could make further work on this topic more difficult. Some EU diplomats thus assume that the decision taken by the finance ministers in March will remain the relevant guideline. Others argue that the summit has created a momentum that allows for more ambition.
The next step is for the EU Commission and the finance ministers to press ahead with the work. At their summit in June, the heads of state and government want to address the issue again. “Now we are staying on the ball and will not let the issue drop,” said Scholz. The special interests of some countries in supervisory or tax issues are “no longer worth anything” in view of the task of “mobilizing Europe’s incredible capital reserves so that they are invested in the growth of our companies.” Some smaller member states are likely to disagree with the Chancellor’s interpretation.
Despite disagreements and unclear wording, Enrico Letta described the decisions on the Capital Markets Union at the end of the long summit day as the “first decisive step” forward. Only if the EU could ensure that a greater proportion of European savings flowed into European companies could it guarantee its independence.
Commercial, ostensibly freely accessible offers on the Internet are currently going through difficult times. The third-party advertising cookie problem is leading to massive upheaval. But the search for alternative financing models is not easy for providers either. The debate currently attracting the most public attention is ostensibly about meta. In reality, however, it is about the future of the entire advertising industry.
The question is: should providers be allowed to force users of a service to either pay the amount they have set for the service or, alternatively, agree to extensive data usage, including controversial tracking methods, if they want to continue using the service? Meta announced last year that it would give users in the EU a choice: Either they pay around €10 a month for ad-free use of Facebook and Instagram – or they have to give their mandatory consent for online advertising service providers to also use their data for tracking.
An opinion from the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) on “Pay or Okay” has been awaited for several weeks. The Hamburg data protection supervisory authority and the corresponding Norwegian and Dutch authorities had asked for it. What was not to be expected: the sharpness with which the representatives sitting on the highest body of data protection supervisory authorities in Europe are now entering the debate.
The statement from Anu Talus, the chair of the committee, sounds comparatively conciliatory.” controllers should bear in mind the need to prevent the fundamental right to data protection from being transformed into a feature that data subjects have to pay to enjoy. Individuals should be aware of the value and consequences of their decision.”
However, the opinion of the data protection supervisory authorities is tough. They argue in stages: They do not say outright no to Pay-or-Okay models. Instead, they argue that the “pay or consent to maximum data usage” logic significantly contradicts the European idea of informational self-determination, as set in the General Data Protection Regulation.
There needs to be “genuine freedom of choice” for consent to the processing of personal data. Even a design that makes it more difficult to refuse processing than to give consent undermines the General Data Protection Regulation requirements. According to the data protection supervisory authorities, essential services must also be accessible without consent obtained in this way. This is because the power imbalance between provider and user is so great with these services in particular that the requirements for effective consent as defined by the GDPR are lacking from the outset. They also consider those providers that enable participation in democratic discourse to be essential.
However, one concession in the EDPB’s assessment is noteworthy. It should be examined on a case-by-case basis whether a fee is appropriate at all and, if so, what amount is appropriate in the given circumstances, write the data protection experts. In this way, “the fundamental right to data protection from being transformed into a premium feature reserved for the wealthy.” Previously, individual data protection supervisory authorities and activists had called for an even more rigorous course of complete rejection.
The German Association of the Digital Economy (BVDW), which is intensively involved in the interests of the online advertising industry, is nevertheless not convinced by the argumentation of the supervisory authorities. Moritz Holzgraefe, Vice President of the BVDW, says: “The argument that the required decision in the ‘pay or consent’ model turns data protection into a ‘feature’ is completely unfounded.” User rights remain intact in all constellations. The fundamental right to data protection is a fundamental right, and an important one. “However, it does not exist in a vacuum, nor is it a kind of ‘super fundamental right.’ It must therefore be harmonized with other fundamental rights – such as private autonomy.”
The decisions of the European Data Protection Board are decisive for the decision-making practice of the data protection supervisory authorities. However, the European Court of Justice remains ultimately responsible for the binding interpretation of the law.
She does not have to worry about entering the European Parliament: Andrea Wechsler, who has no parliamentary experience to date, is leading the CDU list in Baden-Württemberg in the election on June 9. The fact that the lawyer, university teacher and SME politician is running for the prominent first place on the state list in the south-west is also thanks to sustained pressure from women in the CDU.
While the SPD, Greens and FDP have long had women running for promising places on their lists, the federal CDU did not adopt binding quotas until 2022. The European list in Baden-Württemberg was drawn up in spring 2023, at a time when the federal CDU quotas did not yet apply. For a long time, it therefore looked as if the south-west CDU wanted to run with only men in the promising positions, as it did last time and the time before last.
The four previous MEPs from the south-west – Rainer Wieland, the longest-serving Vice-President of the European Parliament, Daniel Caspary, head of the German group, internal market expert Andreas Schwab and Norbert Lins, head of the Agriculture Committee – actually all wanted to stay on. The South-West CDU almost got away with it.
But then Wieland, who has been a member of parliament since 1997 and is 67, was prepared to give up his first place on the list, which is reserved for the North Württemberg district, to Wechsler without a fight. Wieland is now running in fifth place on the state list in the southwest.
Wechsler and Wieland are campaigning together. For example in the “EU and you” format. Wechsler is breaking new ground. She appeals to younger voters with short videos. Personally, she does not believe in TikTok. She has banned her two children from using TikTok. Nevertheless, she uses the platform to address target groups that the CDU cannot reach using traditional methods. In the election campaign, she is one of the very few CDU politicians present on the controversial Chinese platform.
Not being in the European Parliament helps in this case. The parliamentary administration has banned the use of TikTok on parliamentary devices. In the short videos, Wechsler explains the EU’s policy: what the Commission’s investigation into TikTok is all about. That the abolition of roaming charges is a great success of EU regulation. And what Europe is doing to ensure that men and women receive equal pay. Will she reach 16-year-old first-time voters? Hard to say. But she’s trying.
Andrea Wechsler grew up in Bavaria and now lives in Ludwigsburg with her husband and two children. She ran unsuccessfully for the state parliament in the last state election in the south-west. Thanks to her promising position on the list, she will be able to leap into professional politics this time.
She has a strong economic policy profile, studied law and has been a Professor of Private Commercial Law at Pforzheim University since 2013. Wechsler has long been involved in the CDU’s Mittelstands- und Wirtschaftsunion (MIT). Before joining the university, she worked as a management consultant, including for McKinsey. She currently heads a center for business start-ups.
This would suggest she is aiming to work on the Industry or Economic Committee in the European Parliament. Especially as there is a vacancy in the parliamentary group: Markus Pieper, who has represented SME policy in the European Parliament for several terms, is leaving the European Parliament. Wechsler does not want to go so far as to express her wishes. “As a new member, I won’t make any demands, but will wait and see what topics the parliamentary group proposes to me.” Markus Grabitz
