After long negotiations and a short negotiation break last week, the EU ambassadors decided over the weekend on an expansion of the partial embargo on Russian oil. Another price cap has been put on all Russian oil products in addition to the price cap on crude oil agreed on in December. Eric Bonse explains why the agreement ended up more defensive than some member countries had called for.
The EU Parliament should also be more cautious, as the corruption case surrounding ex-Parliament President Eva Kaili shows. NGOs involved in the affair, according to the current state of the investigation, have received more than four million euros from the EU budget. Calls for stricter transparency rules for NGOs quickly followed. Markus Grabitz has the details.
After the United States shot down an alleged Chinese spy balloon on Saturday, EPP leader Manfred Weber calls for a united front of the “free world” against China. He said China’s behavior towards Western states is becoming “much more aggressive”. Read more about this in the News section.
Today’s profile will tell you all about one of the youngest MEPs in the EU Parliament. Swedish Liberal Emma Wiesner explains the four difficult negotiating phases as rapporteur in the EU Parliament.
The price cap that the 27 EU states agreed on over the weekend is 100 US dollars per barrel for fuels such as diesel, paraffin and petrol and 45 US dollars for heating oil. However, there is a transitional “wind-down period” of 55 days until 1 April. There is only an exemption for Croatia in the oil products embargo. The G7 countries have joined the measure. In international commodity trading, a barrel of diesel was recently sold to Europe for the equivalent of about 100 to 120 euros.
The price cap is to be imposed worldwide. This means that services important for the export of Russian oil products will only be provided with impunity if the price of the exported oil does not exceed the price cap. In this way, Western shipping companies can continue to ship Russian oil products to non-EU countries such as India. In addition, the regulation applies to other important services such as insurance, technical assistance as well as financing and brokering services.
“This decision will further curtail Russia’s revenues and limit its ability to wage war in Ukraine,” the EU Commission said. In early December, the EU and the G7 already imposed a cap on Russian crude oil of $60 per barrel.
Brussels’ declared goal is to drain President Vladimir Putin’s “war chest”. Russia already has to grant considerable price discounts to get rid of its crude oil outside Europe, said a Commission expert. It will be the same for diesel and heating oil in the future. “Prices are falling,” predicts the expert, “our system is very efficient.”
German experts are more skeptical. For example, Thomas Puls of the German Economic Institute points out that diesel is in short supply on the world market. If the EU no longer buys from Russia, the fuel will have to come from countries even further away, such as Saudi Arabia. However, the capacity of special vessels is limited, the routes are becoming longer and the transports more expensive, he added.
The Council also expressed reservations. The price of diesel must be closely monitored, said an EU diplomat. The end of China’s Covid measures could drive up demand and prices. In view of the new embargo, many EU countries have stocked up on diesel. Nevertheless, it was important to pursue a “wait and see” policy now, the diplomat said.
The situation regarding crude oil is also said to be far from easing. Setting the cap at a lower price or adjusting it automatically, as Poland and the Baltic States are calling for, could cause “chaos” on the markets. At its last meeting on Friday, the Permanent Representatives Committee (Coreper) decided against any changes to the price cap for crude oil. A revision is expected in March at the earliest, it was said. with dpa
NGOs involved in the corruption scandal surrounding Eva Kaili (formerly S&D) have received funding worth millions from the EU budget. According to investigations by the European Parliament’s Committee on Budgetary Control (CONT), whose funding records are available to Table.Media, two NGOs registered under the same address as the NGO “Fight Impunity” of the confessed prime suspect ex-MEP Piero Panzeri have received grants of around 4.5 million euros from EU funds since 2015.
The NGO “No Peace without Justice” alone received almost four million euros between 2015 and 2020. Secretary General Niccolo Figa-Talamanca was arrested alongside Kaili, her partner and Panzeri on 9 December and was held in remand in Belgium until Friday. As the Belgian business newspaper L’Echo reports, he has now been released from custody, but investigators continued to count him among the accused.
“No Peace without Justice” shares an office with “Fight Impunity” at 41 Rue Ducale in Brussels. “No Peace without Justice” is an Italian NGO known locally as “Comitato Non C’e Pace Senza Giustizia”. According to the EU’s Financial Transparency System, the Commission and the NGO had four contracts between 2015 and 2022. Funds amounting to 4.14 million euros were agreed upon. Of this amount, 3.79 million euros were used. Involved were the Service for Foreign Policy Instruments, the Directorates-General for European Neighborhood and Justice.
According to CONT, the NGO “La Palabre”, which also has a mailbox at 41 Rue Ducale, received another 625,000 euros. This is not traceable in the Commission’s Financial Transparency System.
After the corruption scandal surfaced, the CONT committee launched an investigation into whether the suspicious NGOs received EU funds. CONT member Markus Pieper (CDU): “We don’t know what the NGOs suspected of involvement in gang-related corruption have done with EU taxpayers’ money”. Pieper said it was completely non-transparent where the money went. “It is scandalous that there are no record-keeping and reporting obligations for funds that NGOs receive from the Commission and its agencies.”
Pieper furthermore criticizes that an NGO not registered in the transparency register of the European Parliament and which is part of Panzeri’s network was repeatedly granted the right to speak in the Human Rights Committee DROI. There are said to be recordings of speeches made at meetings of the EP subcommittee on May 10, 2022 and 11 Dec. 11, 2020.
In Pieper’s view, the parliamentary officials of the Committee secretariats are responsible for checking the speakers. He calls for the appointment of a “transparency officer“. With it, the corruption case “could not have been brought to the parliament in this way”.
Pieper, who is currently working on a special study on the funding of NGOs on behalf of CONT and wants to expand the results into an EP initiative report, says: “If the existing rules had been applied consistently and the funding, as well as the organization of NGOs, had been disclosed beforehand, their staff would have never been allowed to talk and act under the roof of the European Parliament.”
Pieper is calling for consequences to be drawn from the corruption case for the way the parliament treats NGOs. There should be no access for unregistered lobbyists and NGOs, Pieper says. The conservative CDU/CSU group has compiled a catalog of criteria that NGOs must fulfill in order to be registered:
Pieper also demands that the Commission publish the contracts signed with NGOs and disclose transparently which political goals the NGO is pursuing according to the contract. The EU should get an NGO law, in which rights and duties are laid down similar to the statute of members of parliament or political parties.
At just before two on the night of December 17 to 18, 2022, sparkling wine was served in coffee cups: During the trilogue negotiations, Parliament, the Council and the Commission had agreed on the new rules for the European Emissions Trading System (ETS). Emma Wiesner from the liberal Renew Group helped negotiate on behalf of the Parliament. She was the shadow rapporteur for the ETS reform. Among other things, Wiesner campaigned for waste incineration plants to be covered by the ETS in the future.
The Parliament and the member states were at odds over a possible price cap for the new Emissions Trading Scheme for Buildings and Transport (ETS 2). Negotiators agreed in the trilogue on a price stability mechanism. “I was the one to come up with that name,” Wiesner says. “That’s a really good feeling.”
The mechanism in ETS 2 ensures that 20 million additional allowances are made available if the price per metric ton of carbon exceeds 45 euros. The aim is to make the new ETS more socially acceptable and prevent consumers from being overly burdened by the carbon price.
Wiesner has been involved in politics since she was 13. “I wanted to change the world for climate,” the 30-year-old says today. She became an engineer, studied energy technology and wrote the environmental program for her party’s student organization, the green-liberal Centerpartiet. She worked as an energy market analyst and for a Swedish battery start-up before running for a seat in the EU Parliament in 2019. Wiesner failed to make it directly into Parliament, but moved up in early 2021 to replace Fredrick Federley, a departed MEP.
The Sweden native represents green and market-liberal positions. As an engineer, she takes an optimistic view when it comes to environmentally friendly technologies. “I’m a nerd,” she says. She would rather find out which technology and which measure is the best, she says. In parliament, she has to negotiate compromises: “Sometimes that’s very frustrating.”
For the new ETS rules, she went through four negotiation phases, Wiesner says. First, around her own personal position. Then within the Renew Group: “It’s not as easy as you would think to get liberals from all over Europe to agree on something.” Hard negotiations with the other groups in the Parliament followed, and finally, together with the Council and the Commission, negotiated in a trilogue – as a team, Wiesner emphasizes. On that Saturday in December, she had pancakes with Mohammed Chahim and Michael Bloss at her home in the morning before the next round of negotiations started.
Regarding the outcome of the ETS trilogue, she says, “I’m proud, but I’m not satisfied.” This year, she plans to work to ensure that all products bear a carbon footprint in the future. “Thanks to ETS, the industry knows what it emits.” Wiesner wants this knowledge to reach consumers: “That is a fundamental and very powerful right.” Jana Hemmersmeier
After long negotiations and a short negotiation break last week, the EU ambassadors decided over the weekend on an expansion of the partial embargo on Russian oil. Another price cap has been put on all Russian oil products in addition to the price cap on crude oil agreed on in December. Eric Bonse explains why the agreement ended up more defensive than some member countries had called for.
The EU Parliament should also be more cautious, as the corruption case surrounding ex-Parliament President Eva Kaili shows. NGOs involved in the affair, according to the current state of the investigation, have received more than four million euros from the EU budget. Calls for stricter transparency rules for NGOs quickly followed. Markus Grabitz has the details.
After the United States shot down an alleged Chinese spy balloon on Saturday, EPP leader Manfred Weber calls for a united front of the “free world” against China. He said China’s behavior towards Western states is becoming “much more aggressive”. Read more about this in the News section.
Today’s profile will tell you all about one of the youngest MEPs in the EU Parliament. Swedish Liberal Emma Wiesner explains the four difficult negotiating phases as rapporteur in the EU Parliament.
The price cap that the 27 EU states agreed on over the weekend is 100 US dollars per barrel for fuels such as diesel, paraffin and petrol and 45 US dollars for heating oil. However, there is a transitional “wind-down period” of 55 days until 1 April. There is only an exemption for Croatia in the oil products embargo. The G7 countries have joined the measure. In international commodity trading, a barrel of diesel was recently sold to Europe for the equivalent of about 100 to 120 euros.
The price cap is to be imposed worldwide. This means that services important for the export of Russian oil products will only be provided with impunity if the price of the exported oil does not exceed the price cap. In this way, Western shipping companies can continue to ship Russian oil products to non-EU countries such as India. In addition, the regulation applies to other important services such as insurance, technical assistance as well as financing and brokering services.
“This decision will further curtail Russia’s revenues and limit its ability to wage war in Ukraine,” the EU Commission said. In early December, the EU and the G7 already imposed a cap on Russian crude oil of $60 per barrel.
Brussels’ declared goal is to drain President Vladimir Putin’s “war chest”. Russia already has to grant considerable price discounts to get rid of its crude oil outside Europe, said a Commission expert. It will be the same for diesel and heating oil in the future. “Prices are falling,” predicts the expert, “our system is very efficient.”
German experts are more skeptical. For example, Thomas Puls of the German Economic Institute points out that diesel is in short supply on the world market. If the EU no longer buys from Russia, the fuel will have to come from countries even further away, such as Saudi Arabia. However, the capacity of special vessels is limited, the routes are becoming longer and the transports more expensive, he added.
The Council also expressed reservations. The price of diesel must be closely monitored, said an EU diplomat. The end of China’s Covid measures could drive up demand and prices. In view of the new embargo, many EU countries have stocked up on diesel. Nevertheless, it was important to pursue a “wait and see” policy now, the diplomat said.
The situation regarding crude oil is also said to be far from easing. Setting the cap at a lower price or adjusting it automatically, as Poland and the Baltic States are calling for, could cause “chaos” on the markets. At its last meeting on Friday, the Permanent Representatives Committee (Coreper) decided against any changes to the price cap for crude oil. A revision is expected in March at the earliest, it was said. with dpa
NGOs involved in the corruption scandal surrounding Eva Kaili (formerly S&D) have received funding worth millions from the EU budget. According to investigations by the European Parliament’s Committee on Budgetary Control (CONT), whose funding records are available to Table.Media, two NGOs registered under the same address as the NGO “Fight Impunity” of the confessed prime suspect ex-MEP Piero Panzeri have received grants of around 4.5 million euros from EU funds since 2015.
The NGO “No Peace without Justice” alone received almost four million euros between 2015 and 2020. Secretary General Niccolo Figa-Talamanca was arrested alongside Kaili, her partner and Panzeri on 9 December and was held in remand in Belgium until Friday. As the Belgian business newspaper L’Echo reports, he has now been released from custody, but investigators continued to count him among the accused.
“No Peace without Justice” shares an office with “Fight Impunity” at 41 Rue Ducale in Brussels. “No Peace without Justice” is an Italian NGO known locally as “Comitato Non C’e Pace Senza Giustizia”. According to the EU’s Financial Transparency System, the Commission and the NGO had four contracts between 2015 and 2022. Funds amounting to 4.14 million euros were agreed upon. Of this amount, 3.79 million euros were used. Involved were the Service for Foreign Policy Instruments, the Directorates-General for European Neighborhood and Justice.
According to CONT, the NGO “La Palabre”, which also has a mailbox at 41 Rue Ducale, received another 625,000 euros. This is not traceable in the Commission’s Financial Transparency System.
After the corruption scandal surfaced, the CONT committee launched an investigation into whether the suspicious NGOs received EU funds. CONT member Markus Pieper (CDU): “We don’t know what the NGOs suspected of involvement in gang-related corruption have done with EU taxpayers’ money”. Pieper said it was completely non-transparent where the money went. “It is scandalous that there are no record-keeping and reporting obligations for funds that NGOs receive from the Commission and its agencies.”
Pieper furthermore criticizes that an NGO not registered in the transparency register of the European Parliament and which is part of Panzeri’s network was repeatedly granted the right to speak in the Human Rights Committee DROI. There are said to be recordings of speeches made at meetings of the EP subcommittee on May 10, 2022 and 11 Dec. 11, 2020.
In Pieper’s view, the parliamentary officials of the Committee secretariats are responsible for checking the speakers. He calls for the appointment of a “transparency officer“. With it, the corruption case “could not have been brought to the parliament in this way”.
Pieper, who is currently working on a special study on the funding of NGOs on behalf of CONT and wants to expand the results into an EP initiative report, says: “If the existing rules had been applied consistently and the funding, as well as the organization of NGOs, had been disclosed beforehand, their staff would have never been allowed to talk and act under the roof of the European Parliament.”
Pieper is calling for consequences to be drawn from the corruption case for the way the parliament treats NGOs. There should be no access for unregistered lobbyists and NGOs, Pieper says. The conservative CDU/CSU group has compiled a catalog of criteria that NGOs must fulfill in order to be registered:
Pieper also demands that the Commission publish the contracts signed with NGOs and disclose transparently which political goals the NGO is pursuing according to the contract. The EU should get an NGO law, in which rights and duties are laid down similar to the statute of members of parliament or political parties.
At just before two on the night of December 17 to 18, 2022, sparkling wine was served in coffee cups: During the trilogue negotiations, Parliament, the Council and the Commission had agreed on the new rules for the European Emissions Trading System (ETS). Emma Wiesner from the liberal Renew Group helped negotiate on behalf of the Parliament. She was the shadow rapporteur for the ETS reform. Among other things, Wiesner campaigned for waste incineration plants to be covered by the ETS in the future.
The Parliament and the member states were at odds over a possible price cap for the new Emissions Trading Scheme for Buildings and Transport (ETS 2). Negotiators agreed in the trilogue on a price stability mechanism. “I was the one to come up with that name,” Wiesner says. “That’s a really good feeling.”
The mechanism in ETS 2 ensures that 20 million additional allowances are made available if the price per metric ton of carbon exceeds 45 euros. The aim is to make the new ETS more socially acceptable and prevent consumers from being overly burdened by the carbon price.
Wiesner has been involved in politics since she was 13. “I wanted to change the world for climate,” the 30-year-old says today. She became an engineer, studied energy technology and wrote the environmental program for her party’s student organization, the green-liberal Centerpartiet. She worked as an energy market analyst and for a Swedish battery start-up before running for a seat in the EU Parliament in 2019. Wiesner failed to make it directly into Parliament, but moved up in early 2021 to replace Fredrick Federley, a departed MEP.
The Sweden native represents green and market-liberal positions. As an engineer, she takes an optimistic view when it comes to environmentally friendly technologies. “I’m a nerd,” she says. She would rather find out which technology and which measure is the best, she says. In parliament, she has to negotiate compromises: “Sometimes that’s very frustrating.”
For the new ETS rules, she went through four negotiation phases, Wiesner says. First, around her own personal position. Then within the Renew Group: “It’s not as easy as you would think to get liberals from all over Europe to agree on something.” Hard negotiations with the other groups in the Parliament followed, and finally, together with the Council and the Commission, negotiated in a trilogue – as a team, Wiesner emphasizes. On that Saturday in December, she had pancakes with Mohammed Chahim and Michael Bloss at her home in the morning before the next round of negotiations started.
Regarding the outcome of the ETS trilogue, she says, “I’m proud, but I’m not satisfied.” This year, she plans to work to ensure that all products bear a carbon footprint in the future. “Thanks to ETS, the industry knows what it emits.” Wiesner wants this knowledge to reach consumers: “That is a fundamental and very powerful right.” Jana Hemmersmeier
