The EU’s fifth sanctions package against Russia, which is being discussed today, is tougher than initially planned. In response to the atrocities in Bucha, the EU is now considering, among other things, a coal embargo. However, this would mean an imminent bottleneck for Germany, as a result of which some power plants would have to be shut down. This is according to a report by the Ministry of Economics on Tuesday.Till Hoppe has analyzed the sanctions package, which consists of six points.
Data retention has a turbulent legal history – for a decade and a half, law enforcement, and security agencies have insisted on its importance. However, many European member states have long since stopped practicing it. In its most recent decision, the European Court of Justice again explained why general data retention is inadmissible. Falk Steiner analyzes the loopholes that have opened up.
Lukas Scheid has taken a look at the proposal to reform the Industrial Emissions Directive, with which the EU Commission hopes for innovation, a level playing field for European industrial plants, and, above all, long-term investment security. However, voices fear that the EU has created yet another bureaucratic monster.
The first dossier of the Fit for 55 package, the report on the revision of the Market Stability Reserve, was adopted by a large majority in Parliament yesterday. The reform is intended to protect the European emissions trading system from price shocks. Read more in the News.
Daniela Schwarzer, Executive Director of the Open Society Foundations, a real advocate of the rule of law and democracy in Europe is today’s Europe.Table Profile. Her expertise on how Europe can keep up with systemic competition is always in demand.
The European Union is expected to impose sanctions on energy supplies from Russia for the first time. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen yesterday proposed an import ban on Russian coal. The Commission is also working on measures against oil imports from the country.
The EU ambassadors of the member states are to discuss the new sanctions package this morning, which consists of a total of six elements. It is significantly tougher than initially planned. The Commission and the member states are responding to the many dead civilians discovered over the weekend after the withdrawal of Russian troops from the suburbs of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, which caused an international uproar.
With a coal import ban, the EU is targeting the energy source for which it can find alternative suppliers quite easily. According to the German Federal Ministry of Economics, Russian hard coal has so far accounted for around 50 percent of German hard coal consumption. However, power plant operators and industrial customers such as the steel industry have already begun to change their supply contracts. A large proportion of power plants could therefore do without Russian coal altogether by early summer, the BMWK wrote in its latest energy security progress report.
According to the Commission, the embargo affects coal deliveries from Russia worth €4 billion. According to the Coal Importer Association, the USA, Colombia, and South Africa, in particular, are available as alternative suppliers. This is also technically unproblematic, since different qualities of hard coal can easily be mixed. At the same time, however, the liquid global market means that the EU’s coal import ban will not hit Russia’s president very hard.
Russia is likely to supply the coals that used to go to the EU to India and Turkey in the future, a trader told Europe.Table. He only expects a different distribution of fuel exports. For example, Europe could receive coal from Colombia and South Africa that were previously destined for India and Turkey. Russia has also shipped coal to China and Japan through the port of Wanino in the east of the country so far.
However, these minor difficulties make it easier for the German government to go along with the import ban. Berlin has so far resisted halting energy supplies from Russia. The traffic light coalition is largely agreed that the costs of a natural gas embargo would be too high. The picture is less clear when it comes to oil.
In 2021, Rosneft and others had covered about 35 percent of Germany’s oil consumption. By the middle of this year, the BMWK wants to halve these imports. The problem is that the large refineries in Leuna and Schwedt have so far been supplied with crude oil via pipelines from Russia. In order to be able to process oil from the Middle East, for example, deliveries have to be made via ports such as Rostock or Gdansk, as well as by truck and train.
In addition, the refinery in Schwedt belongs to Rosneft. The Kremlin-affiliated state-owned corporation is unlikely to voluntarily end its supply relationship with Russia. Economics Minister Robert Habeck is therefore working on ways to wrest control of the refinery from Rosneft.
At the EU level, support for an oil embargo against Russia is growing following the events in Bucha. Various approaches are being discussed, such as imposing high punitive tariffs on Russian oil deliveries, as recently recommended by an advisory body to the French government. According to von der Leyen, it is also being considered that customers in the EU pay into an escrow account for the deliveries. Under this approach, which has been tried and tested with Iran, the money would only be made available when Russia ends its war in Ukraine.
However, the Commission is not yet proposing an oil import ban. Instead, the new fifth sanctions package includes these additional measures:
Moreover, representatives of the US government announced that together with allies they would decide today to ban all new investments in Russia.
The EU and the USA, on the other hand, have decided not to impose a gas embargo. Instead, member states are first trying to fill gas storage facilities sufficiently for the coming winter. Parliament wants to negotiate quickly on the Commission’s proposal of March 23rd. On Tuesday, the plenary voted in favor of the urgency procedure in order to be able to quickly introduce Europe-wide minimum filling levels and certification procedures for storage operators. As early as Thursday, the Commission proposal is to be discussed at the first reading and referred to the Industry Committee, which will then enter into trialogue with the Commission and the Council. With Manuel Berkel and rtr
Since the landmark ruling in 2014 on mass and comprehensive data retention without any reason, as decided in 2006, the judges have had to deal with creative ideas from the member states time and again. Throughout Europe, legislators were not deterred from once again adopting variants of data retention – in Germany, most recently by the grand coalition of CDU, CSU, and SPD in 2015. At the end of 2016, the ECJ then specified once again in another ruling the extent to which data retention violates European law – which ultimately led to the obligation to implement it in Germany being suspended since 2017.
Since then, data retention in Germany has been on hold, and various court cases are still pending, including at the ECJ. But the overall state of affairs is unsatisfactory for everyone involved, from police to opponents. The coalition agreement between the SPD, the Greens, and the FDP states that “the data retention regulations will be designed in such a way that data can be stored in a legally secure manner, on an ad hoc basis and by judicial order.”
In essence, this means turning away from data retention and toward the so-called quick-freeze concept. This concept does not allow access to data that has previously been retained, but instead allows data to be stored from a defined date in the future if conditions are met. The FDP in particular had always been a strong advocate of this concept in the past. But with the new ruling by the European Court of Justice, the debate could once again take a new direction.
With their ruling, the judges now addressed questions referred by courts in Ireland and Denmark to clarify the compatibility of national regulations with European law. They also made it clear that the goal of solving serious crimes does not provide sufficient grounds for a blanket and warrantless data retention. Data retention is permissible if national security is threatened. But the Irish approach of making all serious crimes a matter of national security was met with clear resistance by the judges in Luxembourg.
A threat to national security permitting data retention would require specific circumstances. Thus, the ruling states, “Such a threat is distinguishable, by its nature, its seriousness, and the specific nature of the circumstances of which it is constituted, from the general and permanent risk of the occurrence of tensions or disturbances, even of a serious nature, that affect public security, or from that of serious criminal offenses being committed.” Public security and national security would have to be categorically separated. In the area of public security, general data retention would be incompatible with both the ePrivacy Directive and the guarantees of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights.
However, this does not apply to all forms of storage without proper reason: In yesterday’s decision, the judges once again specified their criteria under which the retention of IP addresses may be admissible after all (paragraph 73). This relates in particular to issues such as securing access to stored data and the requirements as to who is permitted to access this data and under what circumstances. In response to a Danish question submitted, for example, public prosecutors were denied the right to be sufficiently impartial to permit access to data.
According to the text of the ruling, data retention based on other criteria also remains possible: For the highest European court, data retention for specific individuals is just as permissible as data retention based on a specific location if, according to the ECJ, these are objectively “strategic locations” with a high volume of visitors (para. 81), such as train stations and airports, or if it can be assumed “on the basis of objective and non-discriminatory factors, that there exists, in one or more geographical areas, a situation characterized by a high risk of preparation for or commission of serious criminal offenses.”
Critics of data retention of all kinds see a problem above all in these geographical and technology-related exceptions to the rule ban. “IP retention would be an attack on the right to anonymity online and threatens to make our entire Internet usage traceable,” criticizes Pirate MEP Patrick Breyer. “The supposedly geographically targeted data retention also threatens to permanently record a large part of the population.” Breyer fears that the EU Commission could feel encouraged by yesterday’s ruling to make further plans for a new version.
For the long-delayed recast of the ePrivacy Directive as a regulation, which could also make some differences to the ECJ’s interpretation of the law, the unalterable parliamentary position is that data retention will not be negotiated in the trilogues underway there. However, there have been repeated attempts to introduce corresponding plans into the process – although the position of the coalition government in Berlin means that these have less chance than before. However, if there were to be a new regulation, the next lawsuits before the ECJ would be guaranteed.
Corresponding court proceedings could then take years again and legal certainty could continue to be lacking – after a decade and a half in the meantime, during which data retention has always been declared indispensable by law enforcement and security authorities, but has long since ceased to take place in many member states.
Instead, it has made legal history on several occasions: First, the European Court of Justice defined stricter requirements for encroachment on fundamental rights than the German Federal Constitutional Court and other European courts, which also dealt with the matter. But also in view of the emerging availability of further masses of data, for example from vehicles and sensor systems, for which the ECJ began to develop its own case-based dogmatics in the protection of fundamental rights. Data retention in its various forms will remain relevant to legal scholars and domestic politicians for the foreseeable future, but its impact in practice remains questionable.
Promoting innovation, rewarding pioneers, and creating a level playing field for European industrial plants – with the proposal for the revision of the Industrial Emissions Directive (IED), the Commission hopes to provide “long-term investment security” for operators of industrial plants. Of a “significant reduction in harmful emissions from industrial plants and Europe’s largest livestock farms,” said Executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans. The new rules will “act as a guide for long-term investment,” including increasing Europe’s energy and resource independence, the Green Deal commissioner said.
From 2024 onwards, there will be stricter requirements for the use of “Best Available Techniques” (BAT) to avoid and reduce emissions. Which BAT limits apply will already be reviewed during the approval process for plants. The first BATs are to apply from 2027. This would give plant operators sufficient time to prepare for the changes, Timmermans said.
In addition, exemptions from the regulations are to be significantly reduced and granted through uniform methods. Plant operators will also have to submit transformation plans, with a view to the zero-pollutant target, the circular economy target, and the EU’s decarbonization target by 2050.
A new Innovation Center for Industrial Transformation and Emissions (INCITE) would help industry innovation leaders “identify solutions to curb pollution”. These companies would be subject to more flexible permitting requirements than those relying on conventional technologies.
According to the Commission, the IED effectively affects around 50,000 large industrial plants and intensive livestock farms in Europe to date. The revision is intended to expand the scope. Among them are cattle, pig, and poultry farms, which account for 60 percent of ammonia emissions and 43 percent of methane emissions from livestock in the EU, according to the commission. In this way, the Commission wants to save 265,000 metric tons of methane and 128,000 metric tons of ammonia emissions annually.
This could generate “positive effects for human health equivalent to at least €5.5 billion per year,” promised Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius. This transformation is to be financed by grants from the CAP.
The extraction of industrial minerals and metals for battery production is also to be covered by the directive. As these would increase in the future, production processes would have to be kept “as efficient as possible and the impact on the environment as low as possible”.
Jens Gieseke (EPP/CDU), a member of the Environment and Industry Committees, however, fears an expensive bureaucratic monster. According to its own impact assessment, the Commission expects its proposal to add €210 million in annual costs to the European economy, Gieseke says. “The inclusion of farms is expected to cost an additional €412 million a year, plus €370 million in additional bureaucratic costs for industry and €336 million for public institutions.” Instead of proposing €1.3 billion in additional costs through legislation, thought must be given to €1.3 billion in relief for industry and farms, the CDU member of parliament demands.
BusinessEurope Director-General, Markus J. Beyrer, also believes the IED is the wrong place for industrial change. “The proposal also takes up issues that are largely covered by other legislative proposals and are better addressed there.” As a result of the revision, the European economy will experience additional uncertainty, Beyrer said.
Also on Tuesday, the Commission presented proposals for tighter controls on fluorinated greenhouse gases (F-gases) and ozone-depleting substances (ODS). F-gases account for 2.5 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions, according to the commission. Its proposal aims to reduce emissions by an equivalent of 40 million metric tons of CO2 by 2030 and an equivalent of 310 million metric tons of CO2 by 2050.
In particular, the new regulation on ODS is intended to more tightly regulate their use in consumer products, preventing emissions “equivalent to 180 million metric tons of CO2 and 32,000 metric tons of ozone depletion potential” by 2050.
She announces herself from a taxi. Prof. Dr. Daniela Schwarzer is on her way from Charles de Gaulle Airport to downtown Paris. “At the moment, I’m still traveling far too little,” she says. If the pandemic allows it, she says, it will hopefully soon be more again. Since last year, the 49-year-old has been Executive Director of the Open Society Foundations in Europe and Eurasia. The world’s second-largest foundation is a global player in philanthropy that promotes the rule of law and democracy.
Schwarzer’s current assignment: She is to reorganize the Foundation’s various regional units in her area of responsibility and dovetail them with one another. Where does her passion for the international come from? The Hamburg native recounts London, where she spent part of her childhood: “It was there that I realized how exciting it is to immerse myself in another country and another language.” After studying political science in Tübingen and at the renowned Sciences Po Paris, she wrote as a France correspondent for the Financial Times Deutschland.
After that, her resume reads like a Who’s Who of think tanks: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, Marshall Fund, German Council on Foreign Relations. She was head of the latter until 2021. At the moment, Schwarzer is concerned with how the EU can hold its own on the world stage between the US and China. She published a book about this last year: “Final Call. Europe has to hurry up in order to keep up with the system competition. Her expertise on how this could be achieved is in great demand. Schwarzer repeatedly advises governments and the EU’s foreign affairs representative, Josep Borrell, and she teaches at various universities.
You can tell that she enjoys understanding different perspectives and building bridges. There is no lack of concepts on how to further strengthen the Union. However, there is often a lack of willingness to give up national competencies for European cooperation. She finds, “It’s not about giving up sovereignty, it’s about regaining it.” The nationalistic tendencies in many countries worry her. On the other hand, she is hopeful about examples of the EU learning something from its crises. With the COVID-19 reconstruction fund, for example, something “politically courageous” and “very correct in terms of content” has been set in motion.
“I think it’s remarkable that this agreement was possible so relatively quickly in the COVID-19 crisis,” she says. In the debt and banking crisis, the agreement process between the states was much rockier. Schwarzer pays her cab driver and gets out; the horns of Parisian city traffic can now be heard in the background. Is she optimistic that Europe will still be as influential internationally in 20 years as it is today? “Yes,” Schwarzer answers. “However, that will take a real amount of work and foresight.” Paul Meerkamp
The EU’s fifth sanctions package against Russia, which is being discussed today, is tougher than initially planned. In response to the atrocities in Bucha, the EU is now considering, among other things, a coal embargo. However, this would mean an imminent bottleneck for Germany, as a result of which some power plants would have to be shut down. This is according to a report by the Ministry of Economics on Tuesday.Till Hoppe has analyzed the sanctions package, which consists of six points.
Data retention has a turbulent legal history – for a decade and a half, law enforcement, and security agencies have insisted on its importance. However, many European member states have long since stopped practicing it. In its most recent decision, the European Court of Justice again explained why general data retention is inadmissible. Falk Steiner analyzes the loopholes that have opened up.
Lukas Scheid has taken a look at the proposal to reform the Industrial Emissions Directive, with which the EU Commission hopes for innovation, a level playing field for European industrial plants, and, above all, long-term investment security. However, voices fear that the EU has created yet another bureaucratic monster.
The first dossier of the Fit for 55 package, the report on the revision of the Market Stability Reserve, was adopted by a large majority in Parliament yesterday. The reform is intended to protect the European emissions trading system from price shocks. Read more in the News.
Daniela Schwarzer, Executive Director of the Open Society Foundations, a real advocate of the rule of law and democracy in Europe is today’s Europe.Table Profile. Her expertise on how Europe can keep up with systemic competition is always in demand.
The European Union is expected to impose sanctions on energy supplies from Russia for the first time. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen yesterday proposed an import ban on Russian coal. The Commission is also working on measures against oil imports from the country.
The EU ambassadors of the member states are to discuss the new sanctions package this morning, which consists of a total of six elements. It is significantly tougher than initially planned. The Commission and the member states are responding to the many dead civilians discovered over the weekend after the withdrawal of Russian troops from the suburbs of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, which caused an international uproar.
With a coal import ban, the EU is targeting the energy source for which it can find alternative suppliers quite easily. According to the German Federal Ministry of Economics, Russian hard coal has so far accounted for around 50 percent of German hard coal consumption. However, power plant operators and industrial customers such as the steel industry have already begun to change their supply contracts. A large proportion of power plants could therefore do without Russian coal altogether by early summer, the BMWK wrote in its latest energy security progress report.
According to the Commission, the embargo affects coal deliveries from Russia worth €4 billion. According to the Coal Importer Association, the USA, Colombia, and South Africa, in particular, are available as alternative suppliers. This is also technically unproblematic, since different qualities of hard coal can easily be mixed. At the same time, however, the liquid global market means that the EU’s coal import ban will not hit Russia’s president very hard.
Russia is likely to supply the coals that used to go to the EU to India and Turkey in the future, a trader told Europe.Table. He only expects a different distribution of fuel exports. For example, Europe could receive coal from Colombia and South Africa that were previously destined for India and Turkey. Russia has also shipped coal to China and Japan through the port of Wanino in the east of the country so far.
However, these minor difficulties make it easier for the German government to go along with the import ban. Berlin has so far resisted halting energy supplies from Russia. The traffic light coalition is largely agreed that the costs of a natural gas embargo would be too high. The picture is less clear when it comes to oil.
In 2021, Rosneft and others had covered about 35 percent of Germany’s oil consumption. By the middle of this year, the BMWK wants to halve these imports. The problem is that the large refineries in Leuna and Schwedt have so far been supplied with crude oil via pipelines from Russia. In order to be able to process oil from the Middle East, for example, deliveries have to be made via ports such as Rostock or Gdansk, as well as by truck and train.
In addition, the refinery in Schwedt belongs to Rosneft. The Kremlin-affiliated state-owned corporation is unlikely to voluntarily end its supply relationship with Russia. Economics Minister Robert Habeck is therefore working on ways to wrest control of the refinery from Rosneft.
At the EU level, support for an oil embargo against Russia is growing following the events in Bucha. Various approaches are being discussed, such as imposing high punitive tariffs on Russian oil deliveries, as recently recommended by an advisory body to the French government. According to von der Leyen, it is also being considered that customers in the EU pay into an escrow account for the deliveries. Under this approach, which has been tried and tested with Iran, the money would only be made available when Russia ends its war in Ukraine.
However, the Commission is not yet proposing an oil import ban. Instead, the new fifth sanctions package includes these additional measures:
Moreover, representatives of the US government announced that together with allies they would decide today to ban all new investments in Russia.
The EU and the USA, on the other hand, have decided not to impose a gas embargo. Instead, member states are first trying to fill gas storage facilities sufficiently for the coming winter. Parliament wants to negotiate quickly on the Commission’s proposal of March 23rd. On Tuesday, the plenary voted in favor of the urgency procedure in order to be able to quickly introduce Europe-wide minimum filling levels and certification procedures for storage operators. As early as Thursday, the Commission proposal is to be discussed at the first reading and referred to the Industry Committee, which will then enter into trialogue with the Commission and the Council. With Manuel Berkel and rtr
Since the landmark ruling in 2014 on mass and comprehensive data retention without any reason, as decided in 2006, the judges have had to deal with creative ideas from the member states time and again. Throughout Europe, legislators were not deterred from once again adopting variants of data retention – in Germany, most recently by the grand coalition of CDU, CSU, and SPD in 2015. At the end of 2016, the ECJ then specified once again in another ruling the extent to which data retention violates European law – which ultimately led to the obligation to implement it in Germany being suspended since 2017.
Since then, data retention in Germany has been on hold, and various court cases are still pending, including at the ECJ. But the overall state of affairs is unsatisfactory for everyone involved, from police to opponents. The coalition agreement between the SPD, the Greens, and the FDP states that “the data retention regulations will be designed in such a way that data can be stored in a legally secure manner, on an ad hoc basis and by judicial order.”
In essence, this means turning away from data retention and toward the so-called quick-freeze concept. This concept does not allow access to data that has previously been retained, but instead allows data to be stored from a defined date in the future if conditions are met. The FDP in particular had always been a strong advocate of this concept in the past. But with the new ruling by the European Court of Justice, the debate could once again take a new direction.
With their ruling, the judges now addressed questions referred by courts in Ireland and Denmark to clarify the compatibility of national regulations with European law. They also made it clear that the goal of solving serious crimes does not provide sufficient grounds for a blanket and warrantless data retention. Data retention is permissible if national security is threatened. But the Irish approach of making all serious crimes a matter of national security was met with clear resistance by the judges in Luxembourg.
A threat to national security permitting data retention would require specific circumstances. Thus, the ruling states, “Such a threat is distinguishable, by its nature, its seriousness, and the specific nature of the circumstances of which it is constituted, from the general and permanent risk of the occurrence of tensions or disturbances, even of a serious nature, that affect public security, or from that of serious criminal offenses being committed.” Public security and national security would have to be categorically separated. In the area of public security, general data retention would be incompatible with both the ePrivacy Directive and the guarantees of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights.
However, this does not apply to all forms of storage without proper reason: In yesterday’s decision, the judges once again specified their criteria under which the retention of IP addresses may be admissible after all (paragraph 73). This relates in particular to issues such as securing access to stored data and the requirements as to who is permitted to access this data and under what circumstances. In response to a Danish question submitted, for example, public prosecutors were denied the right to be sufficiently impartial to permit access to data.
According to the text of the ruling, data retention based on other criteria also remains possible: For the highest European court, data retention for specific individuals is just as permissible as data retention based on a specific location if, according to the ECJ, these are objectively “strategic locations” with a high volume of visitors (para. 81), such as train stations and airports, or if it can be assumed “on the basis of objective and non-discriminatory factors, that there exists, in one or more geographical areas, a situation characterized by a high risk of preparation for or commission of serious criminal offenses.”
Critics of data retention of all kinds see a problem above all in these geographical and technology-related exceptions to the rule ban. “IP retention would be an attack on the right to anonymity online and threatens to make our entire Internet usage traceable,” criticizes Pirate MEP Patrick Breyer. “The supposedly geographically targeted data retention also threatens to permanently record a large part of the population.” Breyer fears that the EU Commission could feel encouraged by yesterday’s ruling to make further plans for a new version.
For the long-delayed recast of the ePrivacy Directive as a regulation, which could also make some differences to the ECJ’s interpretation of the law, the unalterable parliamentary position is that data retention will not be negotiated in the trilogues underway there. However, there have been repeated attempts to introduce corresponding plans into the process – although the position of the coalition government in Berlin means that these have less chance than before. However, if there were to be a new regulation, the next lawsuits before the ECJ would be guaranteed.
Corresponding court proceedings could then take years again and legal certainty could continue to be lacking – after a decade and a half in the meantime, during which data retention has always been declared indispensable by law enforcement and security authorities, but has long since ceased to take place in many member states.
Instead, it has made legal history on several occasions: First, the European Court of Justice defined stricter requirements for encroachment on fundamental rights than the German Federal Constitutional Court and other European courts, which also dealt with the matter. But also in view of the emerging availability of further masses of data, for example from vehicles and sensor systems, for which the ECJ began to develop its own case-based dogmatics in the protection of fundamental rights. Data retention in its various forms will remain relevant to legal scholars and domestic politicians for the foreseeable future, but its impact in practice remains questionable.
Promoting innovation, rewarding pioneers, and creating a level playing field for European industrial plants – with the proposal for the revision of the Industrial Emissions Directive (IED), the Commission hopes to provide “long-term investment security” for operators of industrial plants. Of a “significant reduction in harmful emissions from industrial plants and Europe’s largest livestock farms,” said Executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans. The new rules will “act as a guide for long-term investment,” including increasing Europe’s energy and resource independence, the Green Deal commissioner said.
From 2024 onwards, there will be stricter requirements for the use of “Best Available Techniques” (BAT) to avoid and reduce emissions. Which BAT limits apply will already be reviewed during the approval process for plants. The first BATs are to apply from 2027. This would give plant operators sufficient time to prepare for the changes, Timmermans said.
In addition, exemptions from the regulations are to be significantly reduced and granted through uniform methods. Plant operators will also have to submit transformation plans, with a view to the zero-pollutant target, the circular economy target, and the EU’s decarbonization target by 2050.
A new Innovation Center for Industrial Transformation and Emissions (INCITE) would help industry innovation leaders “identify solutions to curb pollution”. These companies would be subject to more flexible permitting requirements than those relying on conventional technologies.
According to the Commission, the IED effectively affects around 50,000 large industrial plants and intensive livestock farms in Europe to date. The revision is intended to expand the scope. Among them are cattle, pig, and poultry farms, which account for 60 percent of ammonia emissions and 43 percent of methane emissions from livestock in the EU, according to the commission. In this way, the Commission wants to save 265,000 metric tons of methane and 128,000 metric tons of ammonia emissions annually.
This could generate “positive effects for human health equivalent to at least €5.5 billion per year,” promised Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius. This transformation is to be financed by grants from the CAP.
The extraction of industrial minerals and metals for battery production is also to be covered by the directive. As these would increase in the future, production processes would have to be kept “as efficient as possible and the impact on the environment as low as possible”.
Jens Gieseke (EPP/CDU), a member of the Environment and Industry Committees, however, fears an expensive bureaucratic monster. According to its own impact assessment, the Commission expects its proposal to add €210 million in annual costs to the European economy, Gieseke says. “The inclusion of farms is expected to cost an additional €412 million a year, plus €370 million in additional bureaucratic costs for industry and €336 million for public institutions.” Instead of proposing €1.3 billion in additional costs through legislation, thought must be given to €1.3 billion in relief for industry and farms, the CDU member of parliament demands.
BusinessEurope Director-General, Markus J. Beyrer, also believes the IED is the wrong place for industrial change. “The proposal also takes up issues that are largely covered by other legislative proposals and are better addressed there.” As a result of the revision, the European economy will experience additional uncertainty, Beyrer said.
Also on Tuesday, the Commission presented proposals for tighter controls on fluorinated greenhouse gases (F-gases) and ozone-depleting substances (ODS). F-gases account for 2.5 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions, according to the commission. Its proposal aims to reduce emissions by an equivalent of 40 million metric tons of CO2 by 2030 and an equivalent of 310 million metric tons of CO2 by 2050.
In particular, the new regulation on ODS is intended to more tightly regulate their use in consumer products, preventing emissions “equivalent to 180 million metric tons of CO2 and 32,000 metric tons of ozone depletion potential” by 2050.
She announces herself from a taxi. Prof. Dr. Daniela Schwarzer is on her way from Charles de Gaulle Airport to downtown Paris. “At the moment, I’m still traveling far too little,” she says. If the pandemic allows it, she says, it will hopefully soon be more again. Since last year, the 49-year-old has been Executive Director of the Open Society Foundations in Europe and Eurasia. The world’s second-largest foundation is a global player in philanthropy that promotes the rule of law and democracy.
Schwarzer’s current assignment: She is to reorganize the Foundation’s various regional units in her area of responsibility and dovetail them with one another. Where does her passion for the international come from? The Hamburg native recounts London, where she spent part of her childhood: “It was there that I realized how exciting it is to immerse myself in another country and another language.” After studying political science in Tübingen and at the renowned Sciences Po Paris, she wrote as a France correspondent for the Financial Times Deutschland.
After that, her resume reads like a Who’s Who of think tanks: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, Marshall Fund, German Council on Foreign Relations. She was head of the latter until 2021. At the moment, Schwarzer is concerned with how the EU can hold its own on the world stage between the US and China. She published a book about this last year: “Final Call. Europe has to hurry up in order to keep up with the system competition. Her expertise on how this could be achieved is in great demand. Schwarzer repeatedly advises governments and the EU’s foreign affairs representative, Josep Borrell, and she teaches at various universities.
You can tell that she enjoys understanding different perspectives and building bridges. There is no lack of concepts on how to further strengthen the Union. However, there is often a lack of willingness to give up national competencies for European cooperation. She finds, “It’s not about giving up sovereignty, it’s about regaining it.” The nationalistic tendencies in many countries worry her. On the other hand, she is hopeful about examples of the EU learning something from its crises. With the COVID-19 reconstruction fund, for example, something “politically courageous” and “very correct in terms of content” has been set in motion.
“I think it’s remarkable that this agreement was possible so relatively quickly in the COVID-19 crisis,” she says. In the debt and banking crisis, the agreement process between the states was much rockier. Schwarzer pays her cab driver and gets out; the horns of Parisian city traffic can now be heard in the background. Is she optimistic that Europe will still be as influential internationally in 20 years as it is today? “Yes,” Schwarzer answers. “However, that will take a real amount of work and foresight.” Paul Meerkamp
