The EU breathes a sigh of relief. The long-awaited agreement on the Northern Ireland Protocol was reached on Monday. According to the agreement, Great Britain will be able to ship goods to Northern Ireland more easily in the future. A label called “Not for EU” will also help –Till Hoppe reports that the label is intended to prevent goods from being shipped to Ireland without permission. But British Prime Minister Sunak still has to secure approval for the agreement.
Quarrel, quarrel and more quarrel: This sums up Serbian-Kosovar relations in recent years. Now, however, there is hope for an end to the ice age. The heads of government of both countries are expected to sign a ten-point plan by March. The EU is increasing the pressure, reports Stephan Israel.
At the energy ministers’ meeting in Stockholm, France wins new supporters for its nuclear initiatives. Germany wants to commit EU members to a higher gas savings target. And Luxembourg and Finland are pioneering the expansion of renewables. Read more in Manuel Berkel‘s Feature.
If you enjoy Europe.Table, please feel free to forward our briefing. If this mail was sent to you: Here you can try our briefing for free.
The reception of Ursula von der Leyen by King Charles once again stirred up the hardliners in London and Belfast on Monday – they sensed an undue politicization of the monarchy. But the excitement no longer prevented the deal between the EU Commission president and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, which had been in the offing for some time. In the afternoon, both announced that they had agreed on new rules for trade with Northern Ireland and spoke in unison of a “new chapter” in relations between the two sides.
The provisional political agreement aims to facilitate the import of goods from the UK into Northern Ireland – without opening a gateway into the EU single market. Then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson had agreed to keep Northern Ireland in the EU’s single market as part of the 2019 Brexit deal. This was to avoid a hard land border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, which could have led to new outbreaks of violence on the island.
To prevent that, Johnson accepted in the Northern Ireland Protocol that British goods would be inspected at Northern Ireland ports on import. But the customs border within the United Kingdom was a thorn in the flesh of unionists in Northern Ireland and Brexit hardliners among the ruling Tories. Johnson escalated the conflict with the EU last June and introduced a bill in Parliament that would have undermined the current agreement.
His successor Sunak, on the other hand, made efforts after taking office to defuse the dispute in cooperation with the EU Commission, thus ending a political crisis in Northern Ireland at the same time. Von der Leyen praised the “very constructive attitude” right from the start.
However, Sunak must now sell the deal within his party and within the Northern Ireland Democratic Unionist Party. DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson said “significant progress has been secured across a number of areas” but that there remain important issues. He said his party would now look at the agreement in detail.
To this end, the Northern Ireland Protocol is being absorbed into a new “Windsor Framework.” This allows both sides to highlight their successes. Sunak can argue to the hardliners that he has achieved substantial changes to the unloved protocol: “We have removed any sense of a border in the Irish Sea,” he said. Von der Leyen and her deputy in charge of the negotiations, Maroš Šefčovič, can point out that the Northern Ireland Protocol, as an integral part of the EU withdrawal agreement, will not be unraveled, and the integrity of the single market will be preserved.
This is what the agreement provides for:
The agreement is being greeted with relief in Brussels: “The compromise reached is pragmatic on the whole and offers cause for hope that the latent permanent debate can now finally be settled,” said David McAllister, co-chairman of the European Parliament’s contact group on the United Kingdom.
There is also hope in the industry: Reliable conditions for trade are a “basic prerequisite for both European and British industry to develop economic relations positively even after Brexit,” said Holger Kunze, head of the Brussels office of the mechanical engineering association VDMA. DIHK foreign trade chief Volker Treier said agreement on the protocol was “urgently needed to stop the negative trend in British business for the German economy.”
The topic on which the highest expectations of the energy industry are currently focused in the EU played only a minor role at the informal meeting of energy ministers yesterday. For “mid-March” Commissioner Kadri Simson again announced the legislative proposal for the reform of the electricity market, which, according to Contexte, could be postponed from March 14 to 16.
The only new, albeit somewhat nebulous, announcement by the energy commissioner is that household customers will be allowed to opt voluntarily for “low-risk supply contracts.” This could mean contracts with terms of more than two years, which are currently prohibited for consumer contracts in many EU countries. Eurelectric, for example, has lobbied for this in order to provide both customers and investors with more security over longer periods.
However, Germany again urged caution in the electricity market reform. “No regret” measures include strengthening long-term contracts and easier opportunities for Contracts for Difference to remunerate renewables, he said. Such CfDs, however, should remain voluntary and favor new rather than existing generation facilities, said Economics State Secretary Sven Giegold. The priority for the Green in the reform of the market design is good investment conditions for renewable energies.
France, on the other hand, is setting a completely different priority – and doing so increasingly successfully. For today, France’s Energy Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher has scheduled a meeting on nuclear energy, which, according to Contexte, will be attended by representatives of twelve other member states (Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Sweden, Italy, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Croatia, Netherlands, Finland). “We need electricity from nuclear energy if we are to achieve our global and European climate goals,” Pannier-Runacher said yesterday before the start of the Council of Ministers.
European countries need to join forces on nuclear safety, supply chains, research and development, and securing expertise, she said. Elsewhere, she also mentioned waste disposal as an issue. New reactors need to be developed and a level playing field created for the decarbonization of the domestic industry as in the USA, Great Britain, China, South Korea, Japan and India.
What was surprising was the broad alliance of countries that rallied behind France. Earlier this month, Pannier-Runacher had already written a letter to the Commission in which she joined her colleagues from eight other EU countries in supporting hydrogen from nuclear energy. New additions at today’s meeting, along with the Swedish presidency, are Finland, Italy and the Netherlands. Only one European state with nuclear energy is missing from the list: Spain, which under the current government, is strongly backing renewable energies.
Open criticism came from Luxembourg’s Energy Minister Claude Turmes. The Green politician called the meeting on nuclear energy a waste of time. Renewables are cheaper and faster to build, he said. In this sense, Turmes was able to announce a success yesterday. Yesterday, Luxembourg and Finland were the first EU states ever to announce a project for the cross-border expansion of renewable energies – a mechanism from the 2018 Governance Regulation on the Energy Union.
Luxembourg is providing €40 million for the procurement of renewable energy for this purpose. In return, Finland will allow a tender for up to 400 megawatts (MW) of photovoltaics in its territory. The tender will be carried out by the European CINEA agency in the coming weeks. By the end of the year, the Commission hopes to have a second round with other EU countries.
The EU member states will have to resolve the question of whether to extend their voluntary 15 percent gas savings target much sooner. It expires at the end of March. The Commission considers a continuation of gas savings as a “no-regret option.” Not until the next regular Energy Council on March 28 will ministers discuss a proposal to extend the scheme, according to Simson.
Yesterday, Germany already exerted pressure. Giegold was clearly in favor of an extension and even a higher target for gas savings, as the EU had actually reduced its consumption of gas by more than 15 percent. However, much of this was due to mild weather and even at the height of the crisis, individual states such as Poland had spoken out against mandatory savings. Giegold promoted a higher savings target, arguing that it would prevent speculation on the gas market and dampen prices.
The pressure is enormous: Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vučić and Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti met in Brussels on Monday for a new round of the so-called Belgrade-Pristina dialogue. This time, the two adversaries were expected not just to talk, but to deliver. On the table: a ten-point plan that both sides should sign by March. After years of stalemate, the EU finally wants concrete steps toward normalization between the two countries and self-government for the Serb minority in Kosovo. The US is also pushing hard.
Before leaving for Brussels, Vučić and Kurti received mail. It came in the form of a joint letter from French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. This is also a first and is probably intended to signal that the unresolved conflict in the Balkans is now a matter for the bosses. For too long, the member states have looked the other way and left the problem to Brussels. The EU’s foreign affairs representative, Josep Borrell, and his special envoy, Miroslav Lajčák, have so far tried to mediate with little success.
Most recently, tensions between Belgrade and Pristina escalated over the Christmas holidays, triggered by an old dispute over the mutual recognition of license plates. In northern Kosovo, members of the Serb minority set up roadblocks and Belgrade threatened to send in troops. This also startled the international community – it demands an end to escalation every few months. “We believe it is now urgent to conclude the agreement and ensure its implementation,” Macron, Scholz and Meloni wrote in the joint letter.
The original Franco-German plan was inspired by the 1972 Basic Treaty on relations between the then-Federal Republic of Germany and the GDR. Serbia would not have to explicitly recognize Kosovo, but both sides would have to commit themselves to good neighborly relations. Specifically, Belgrade would no longer be allowed to obstruct Kosovo’s accession to international organizations such as the UN or the Council of Europe. Both sides would have to accept each other’s national symbols, as well as passports, diplomas, car license plates or customs stamps.
Even this indirect recognition of Kosovo’s state independence is a big step for the Serbian president. Serbia still considers the province, formerly controlled by Belgrade, to be part of its territory until now. A radicalized opposition warns Vučić of a “betrayal,” a “national disaster.”
But the pressure on Albin Kurti is possibly even greater; he, too, would have to take a leap of faith for a deal. The EU and the US are demanding, more or less ultimately, that the head of government allow an association of ten Serb-populated municipalities with extensive self-government. This is precisely what Albin Kurti explicitly rejected in the elections two years ago. Kurti fears a scenario like that in Bosnia, where the Republika Srpska blocks the state as a whole and constantly threatens to secede. Kosovo’s prime minister, however, has recently signaled flexibility and also put Vučić on the spot.
But why this sudden rush, this pressure? Russia’s war against Ukraine plays a role. The Balkans are Europe’s open flank, which Moscow cleverly uses to stoke latent tensions and put additional pressure on the West. Most recently, Russian mercenaries from the so-called Wagner Group were spotted in southern Serbia on the border with Kosovo. The EU and the US want to close this flank. And this can only be done by normalizing relations between Belgrade and Pristina.
A few weeks ago, Thorsten Herdan celebrated in Chile. The occasion: the “Haru Oni” industrial plant, which produces climate-neutral fuel, produced its first liters of e-fuels. “It was very impressive,” Herdan says of HIF Global’s plant. To produce it, the plant uses electricity from a wind turbine, along with water and CO2. “These are still homeopathic quantities,” Herdan admits. The 56-year-old is head of HIF EMEA, HIF’s subsidiary for Europe, the Middle East and Africa – based in Berlin. The pilot plant, whose construction was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, produces about one tanker of e-fuels per month. Herdan believes that this should quickly increase. His job is to make sure that happens.
Another current task: the search for additional customers. The first customer for the “renewable hydrocarbons,” as he calls the climate-neutral fuel, has already been identified: Porsche AG. The carmaker has a stake in the parent company HIF. But Herdan also has other industries in mind, whether shipping, aviation or agriculture: “That’s currently one of the biggest challenges: finding customers and convincing them to give us long-term purchase agreements.” The long-term is important in order to be able to scale the business, he says.
Herdan himself has long been involved with energy and engines. A mechanical engineer by training, he moved from the German Engineering Federation (VDMA) to the German Federal Ministry of Economics in 2014. There, he headed the Energy Policy Department and played a leading role in developing the national hydrogen strategy. Last year, Herdan then became managing director at the e-fuels company HIF EMEA. For him, it’s the perfect job: “I’m driven to build something new.” For Herdan and his eight colleagues, there is a lot to build. Not only is the team soon to double in size, but above all, there are many new plants in the pipeline.
“Stage one includes 300 megawatts. That’s where we’re planning commercial operation for the end of 2026.” Subsequent expansion stages are expected to be much larger. He cannot yet say when or where he will open the first plant in Europe. “I believe we will build the first plants in the Middle East or Africa,” he says. Taking the circuitous route of converting it to hydrocarbons makes sense, he says, especially when there is no electricity or hydrogen pipeline nearby. “That’s where the European market doesn’t offer as much.” He is quick to add that he could envision a lot in the offshore sector in the medium term.
The e-fuels, which will soon be available in somewhat larger quantities, are particularly interesting for sectors in which the switch to electric drives is not yet in sight. The fact that the discussion about e-fuels in recent weeks and months has focused primarily on passenger cars therefore annoys him. “That’s a brutal narrowing of the debate,” Herdan says, “because it suggests that only passenger cars have combustion engines.” He doesn’t see e-cars as adversaries but thinks, “with the climate disaster on the horizon, we have to use all options.” Paul Meerkamp
The EU breathes a sigh of relief. The long-awaited agreement on the Northern Ireland Protocol was reached on Monday. According to the agreement, Great Britain will be able to ship goods to Northern Ireland more easily in the future. A label called “Not for EU” will also help –Till Hoppe reports that the label is intended to prevent goods from being shipped to Ireland without permission. But British Prime Minister Sunak still has to secure approval for the agreement.
Quarrel, quarrel and more quarrel: This sums up Serbian-Kosovar relations in recent years. Now, however, there is hope for an end to the ice age. The heads of government of both countries are expected to sign a ten-point plan by March. The EU is increasing the pressure, reports Stephan Israel.
At the energy ministers’ meeting in Stockholm, France wins new supporters for its nuclear initiatives. Germany wants to commit EU members to a higher gas savings target. And Luxembourg and Finland are pioneering the expansion of renewables. Read more in Manuel Berkel‘s Feature.
If you enjoy Europe.Table, please feel free to forward our briefing. If this mail was sent to you: Here you can try our briefing for free.
The reception of Ursula von der Leyen by King Charles once again stirred up the hardliners in London and Belfast on Monday – they sensed an undue politicization of the monarchy. But the excitement no longer prevented the deal between the EU Commission president and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, which had been in the offing for some time. In the afternoon, both announced that they had agreed on new rules for trade with Northern Ireland and spoke in unison of a “new chapter” in relations between the two sides.
The provisional political agreement aims to facilitate the import of goods from the UK into Northern Ireland – without opening a gateway into the EU single market. Then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson had agreed to keep Northern Ireland in the EU’s single market as part of the 2019 Brexit deal. This was to avoid a hard land border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, which could have led to new outbreaks of violence on the island.
To prevent that, Johnson accepted in the Northern Ireland Protocol that British goods would be inspected at Northern Ireland ports on import. But the customs border within the United Kingdom was a thorn in the flesh of unionists in Northern Ireland and Brexit hardliners among the ruling Tories. Johnson escalated the conflict with the EU last June and introduced a bill in Parliament that would have undermined the current agreement.
His successor Sunak, on the other hand, made efforts after taking office to defuse the dispute in cooperation with the EU Commission, thus ending a political crisis in Northern Ireland at the same time. Von der Leyen praised the “very constructive attitude” right from the start.
However, Sunak must now sell the deal within his party and within the Northern Ireland Democratic Unionist Party. DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson said “significant progress has been secured across a number of areas” but that there remain important issues. He said his party would now look at the agreement in detail.
To this end, the Northern Ireland Protocol is being absorbed into a new “Windsor Framework.” This allows both sides to highlight their successes. Sunak can argue to the hardliners that he has achieved substantial changes to the unloved protocol: “We have removed any sense of a border in the Irish Sea,” he said. Von der Leyen and her deputy in charge of the negotiations, Maroš Šefčovič, can point out that the Northern Ireland Protocol, as an integral part of the EU withdrawal agreement, will not be unraveled, and the integrity of the single market will be preserved.
This is what the agreement provides for:
The agreement is being greeted with relief in Brussels: “The compromise reached is pragmatic on the whole and offers cause for hope that the latent permanent debate can now finally be settled,” said David McAllister, co-chairman of the European Parliament’s contact group on the United Kingdom.
There is also hope in the industry: Reliable conditions for trade are a “basic prerequisite for both European and British industry to develop economic relations positively even after Brexit,” said Holger Kunze, head of the Brussels office of the mechanical engineering association VDMA. DIHK foreign trade chief Volker Treier said agreement on the protocol was “urgently needed to stop the negative trend in British business for the German economy.”
The topic on which the highest expectations of the energy industry are currently focused in the EU played only a minor role at the informal meeting of energy ministers yesterday. For “mid-March” Commissioner Kadri Simson again announced the legislative proposal for the reform of the electricity market, which, according to Contexte, could be postponed from March 14 to 16.
The only new, albeit somewhat nebulous, announcement by the energy commissioner is that household customers will be allowed to opt voluntarily for “low-risk supply contracts.” This could mean contracts with terms of more than two years, which are currently prohibited for consumer contracts in many EU countries. Eurelectric, for example, has lobbied for this in order to provide both customers and investors with more security over longer periods.
However, Germany again urged caution in the electricity market reform. “No regret” measures include strengthening long-term contracts and easier opportunities for Contracts for Difference to remunerate renewables, he said. Such CfDs, however, should remain voluntary and favor new rather than existing generation facilities, said Economics State Secretary Sven Giegold. The priority for the Green in the reform of the market design is good investment conditions for renewable energies.
France, on the other hand, is setting a completely different priority – and doing so increasingly successfully. For today, France’s Energy Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher has scheduled a meeting on nuclear energy, which, according to Contexte, will be attended by representatives of twelve other member states (Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Sweden, Italy, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Croatia, Netherlands, Finland). “We need electricity from nuclear energy if we are to achieve our global and European climate goals,” Pannier-Runacher said yesterday before the start of the Council of Ministers.
European countries need to join forces on nuclear safety, supply chains, research and development, and securing expertise, she said. Elsewhere, she also mentioned waste disposal as an issue. New reactors need to be developed and a level playing field created for the decarbonization of the domestic industry as in the USA, Great Britain, China, South Korea, Japan and India.
What was surprising was the broad alliance of countries that rallied behind France. Earlier this month, Pannier-Runacher had already written a letter to the Commission in which she joined her colleagues from eight other EU countries in supporting hydrogen from nuclear energy. New additions at today’s meeting, along with the Swedish presidency, are Finland, Italy and the Netherlands. Only one European state with nuclear energy is missing from the list: Spain, which under the current government, is strongly backing renewable energies.
Open criticism came from Luxembourg’s Energy Minister Claude Turmes. The Green politician called the meeting on nuclear energy a waste of time. Renewables are cheaper and faster to build, he said. In this sense, Turmes was able to announce a success yesterday. Yesterday, Luxembourg and Finland were the first EU states ever to announce a project for the cross-border expansion of renewable energies – a mechanism from the 2018 Governance Regulation on the Energy Union.
Luxembourg is providing €40 million for the procurement of renewable energy for this purpose. In return, Finland will allow a tender for up to 400 megawatts (MW) of photovoltaics in its territory. The tender will be carried out by the European CINEA agency in the coming weeks. By the end of the year, the Commission hopes to have a second round with other EU countries.
The EU member states will have to resolve the question of whether to extend their voluntary 15 percent gas savings target much sooner. It expires at the end of March. The Commission considers a continuation of gas savings as a “no-regret option.” Not until the next regular Energy Council on March 28 will ministers discuss a proposal to extend the scheme, according to Simson.
Yesterday, Germany already exerted pressure. Giegold was clearly in favor of an extension and even a higher target for gas savings, as the EU had actually reduced its consumption of gas by more than 15 percent. However, much of this was due to mild weather and even at the height of the crisis, individual states such as Poland had spoken out against mandatory savings. Giegold promoted a higher savings target, arguing that it would prevent speculation on the gas market and dampen prices.
The pressure is enormous: Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vučić and Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti met in Brussels on Monday for a new round of the so-called Belgrade-Pristina dialogue. This time, the two adversaries were expected not just to talk, but to deliver. On the table: a ten-point plan that both sides should sign by March. After years of stalemate, the EU finally wants concrete steps toward normalization between the two countries and self-government for the Serb minority in Kosovo. The US is also pushing hard.
Before leaving for Brussels, Vučić and Kurti received mail. It came in the form of a joint letter from French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. This is also a first and is probably intended to signal that the unresolved conflict in the Balkans is now a matter for the bosses. For too long, the member states have looked the other way and left the problem to Brussels. The EU’s foreign affairs representative, Josep Borrell, and his special envoy, Miroslav Lajčák, have so far tried to mediate with little success.
Most recently, tensions between Belgrade and Pristina escalated over the Christmas holidays, triggered by an old dispute over the mutual recognition of license plates. In northern Kosovo, members of the Serb minority set up roadblocks and Belgrade threatened to send in troops. This also startled the international community – it demands an end to escalation every few months. “We believe it is now urgent to conclude the agreement and ensure its implementation,” Macron, Scholz and Meloni wrote in the joint letter.
The original Franco-German plan was inspired by the 1972 Basic Treaty on relations between the then-Federal Republic of Germany and the GDR. Serbia would not have to explicitly recognize Kosovo, but both sides would have to commit themselves to good neighborly relations. Specifically, Belgrade would no longer be allowed to obstruct Kosovo’s accession to international organizations such as the UN or the Council of Europe. Both sides would have to accept each other’s national symbols, as well as passports, diplomas, car license plates or customs stamps.
Even this indirect recognition of Kosovo’s state independence is a big step for the Serbian president. Serbia still considers the province, formerly controlled by Belgrade, to be part of its territory until now. A radicalized opposition warns Vučić of a “betrayal,” a “national disaster.”
But the pressure on Albin Kurti is possibly even greater; he, too, would have to take a leap of faith for a deal. The EU and the US are demanding, more or less ultimately, that the head of government allow an association of ten Serb-populated municipalities with extensive self-government. This is precisely what Albin Kurti explicitly rejected in the elections two years ago. Kurti fears a scenario like that in Bosnia, where the Republika Srpska blocks the state as a whole and constantly threatens to secede. Kosovo’s prime minister, however, has recently signaled flexibility and also put Vučić on the spot.
But why this sudden rush, this pressure? Russia’s war against Ukraine plays a role. The Balkans are Europe’s open flank, which Moscow cleverly uses to stoke latent tensions and put additional pressure on the West. Most recently, Russian mercenaries from the so-called Wagner Group were spotted in southern Serbia on the border with Kosovo. The EU and the US want to close this flank. And this can only be done by normalizing relations between Belgrade and Pristina.
A few weeks ago, Thorsten Herdan celebrated in Chile. The occasion: the “Haru Oni” industrial plant, which produces climate-neutral fuel, produced its first liters of e-fuels. “It was very impressive,” Herdan says of HIF Global’s plant. To produce it, the plant uses electricity from a wind turbine, along with water and CO2. “These are still homeopathic quantities,” Herdan admits. The 56-year-old is head of HIF EMEA, HIF’s subsidiary for Europe, the Middle East and Africa – based in Berlin. The pilot plant, whose construction was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, produces about one tanker of e-fuels per month. Herdan believes that this should quickly increase. His job is to make sure that happens.
Another current task: the search for additional customers. The first customer for the “renewable hydrocarbons,” as he calls the climate-neutral fuel, has already been identified: Porsche AG. The carmaker has a stake in the parent company HIF. But Herdan also has other industries in mind, whether shipping, aviation or agriculture: “That’s currently one of the biggest challenges: finding customers and convincing them to give us long-term purchase agreements.” The long-term is important in order to be able to scale the business, he says.
Herdan himself has long been involved with energy and engines. A mechanical engineer by training, he moved from the German Engineering Federation (VDMA) to the German Federal Ministry of Economics in 2014. There, he headed the Energy Policy Department and played a leading role in developing the national hydrogen strategy. Last year, Herdan then became managing director at the e-fuels company HIF EMEA. For him, it’s the perfect job: “I’m driven to build something new.” For Herdan and his eight colleagues, there is a lot to build. Not only is the team soon to double in size, but above all, there are many new plants in the pipeline.
“Stage one includes 300 megawatts. That’s where we’re planning commercial operation for the end of 2026.” Subsequent expansion stages are expected to be much larger. He cannot yet say when or where he will open the first plant in Europe. “I believe we will build the first plants in the Middle East or Africa,” he says. Taking the circuitous route of converting it to hydrocarbons makes sense, he says, especially when there is no electricity or hydrogen pipeline nearby. “That’s where the European market doesn’t offer as much.” He is quick to add that he could envision a lot in the offshore sector in the medium term.
The e-fuels, which will soon be available in somewhat larger quantities, are particularly interesting for sectors in which the switch to electric drives is not yet in sight. The fact that the discussion about e-fuels in recent weeks and months has focused primarily on passenger cars therefore annoys him. “That’s a brutal narrowing of the debate,” Herdan says, “because it suggests that only passenger cars have combustion engines.” He doesn’t see e-cars as adversaries but thinks, “with the climate disaster on the horizon, we have to use all options.” Paul Meerkamp
