It’s an understatement to say that energy, climate and the environment dominate the political agenda in Europe. Thursday’s ENVI Committee vote on the Nature Restoration Act should be on the radar of just about everyone in the Brussels bubble.
But another, equally politically explosive appointment takes place today, Wednesday: the meeting of Deputy Permanent Representatives (Coreper) “with a view to reaching an agreement” on the adoption of the Renewable Energy Directive (RED). The item was placed on the meeting’s agenda.
The vote had initially been postponed. France had refused to confirm the trilogue agreement between Parliament and Council, painfully reached on March 30. Paris believes the text does not sufficiently support the use of hydrogen from nuclear power. The deadlock has held hostage another proposal on sustainable aviation fuels (ReFuel Aviation), which is now also on the Coreper agenda.
Has France now decided to be flexible? Apparently, Paris cannot necessarily count on like-minded states: In Brussels, sources close to the negotiations stress that the 16 countries of the nuclear alliance were not united in their opposition to the RED. France launched the alliance in February.
Some countries, even within the nuclear alliance, have different interests than France. It is particularly important to them to ensure national energy security as quickly as possible. And that is best achieved with renewable energies. In addition, some countries believe that France has already achieved “quite a bit”, the source said. It is not clear at this time what Paris’ goals are.
Negotiators will pave the way today for the Energy Council, which meets on June 19. “This council is the right time to break the deadlock“, said a diplomatic source.
Wishing you the most refreshing reading possible!
In Brussels, the dispute over the European Commission’s nature conservation package continues. After proposals for a new law on renaturation were rejected by both the Agriculture and Fisheries Committees, the vote in the lead Environment Committee is scheduled for Thursday – outcome uncertain.
Part two of the package and hardly less controversial is the Pesticides Regulation (SUR), which provides for a 50 percent reduction in chemical pesticides and a total ban in so-called sensitive areas. Here, too, there is the threat of a blockade in the European Parliament, especially by the EPP Group.
At the end of May, Green Deal Commissioner Frans Timmermans retaliated by threatening in the Environment Committee to withdraw the proposals for a new version of EU genetic engineering legislation announced for July 5 if the EPP did not abandon its blockade. Previously, some MEPs had called for the regulations to go hand in hand. They pointed out that new breeding methods could reduce the need for pesticides and thus contribute to achieving the goals.
At the same time, however, the deputy head of the Commission also appealed to the Green counterpart to compromise on their part on the issue of genetic engineering. “You all have to make a decision. Do you stay in your trenches? That means no pesticide regulation and no new genetic engineering law. Or can you move toward each other and make progress together?”, Timmermans asked MEPs.
Environmental and consumer advocates now fear horse trading and a weakening of standards on both sides. “Deregulation of EU GMO law would give agribusinesses greater control over the seed market, increasing pesticide use in the long term“, says a report published last week by consumer organization Foodwatch.
Study author Lars Neumeister speaks of “empty promises” by proponents of genetic engineering. After all, it was claimed as early as the 1980s that genomic modifications would make it possible to breed more resistant plants and thus reduce the use of pesticides. However, the opposite was the case. In fact, according to the Pesticide Atlas, increased use of genetically modified seeds was usually accompanied by a significant increase in pesticide use.
According to the report, in Brazil, for example, the use of herbicides (especially glyphosate) in soybean cultivation increased by 47 percent from 2009 to 2019, while 96 percent of soybean plants there are now genetically modified. The Heinrich Böll Foundation’s report states that this is because the breeding is primarily aimed at resistance to pesticides, which makes large-scale use possible in the first place.
Organizations such as Foodwatch now fear a similar development in Europe. SUR rapporteur Sarah Wiener (Greens/EFA) shares the criticism. It is clear that the revision of the genetic engineering rules is aimed at deregulation, the MEP said. From the Greens’ point of view, any new regulation could therefore only lead to worsening. “Because it is important to us that genetically modified products are always detectable and clearly labeled. These are precisely the regulations we are in danger of losing.” The Greens reject the revision. Nothing has changed in this regard, Wiener emphasizes.
Rather, pesticide reduction could be achieved by existing means, including agroecological farming methods and consistent implementation of integrated pest management. SUR and genetic engineering would have to remain separate. The fact that the Commission is getting involved in linking the two “reflects, in my opinion, first and foremost how great the political resistance to SUR is”, Wiener says.
Shadow rapporteur Jan Huitema (Renew) takes a completely different view. The objectives of the SUR could only be achieved if the New Genomic Techniques (NGTs) were available in the near future, says the Dutch MEP. “I am keen to continue the negotiations on the SUR in Parliament, but at the same time I expect the proposal for NGTs to be presented on July 5, as promised by the Commission”, he said. It would be important to discuss the two dossiers in parallel.
From the EPP side, neither shadow rapporteur Alexander Bernhuber (ÖVP), nor Norbert Lins (CDU), Chairman of the Agriculture Committee, were willing to comment.
Technologically, a new era has begun with the new genome editing methods such as Crispr/Cas. “Classic mutation breeding is highly randomized and thus less targeted than the new breeding methods”, says Udo Hemmerling, deputy secretary general of the German Farmers’ Association (DBV). The possibilities, he adds, are completely different from those of 25 years ago. According to the DBV and Industrieverband Agrar (IVA), this includes:
The fact that in some regions the application of new genetic engineering is accompanied by increased pesticide use is due to “systematic local conditions”, says IVA Managing Director Martin May. “In Europe, use is declining. Yet the potential of new breeding technologies is not even being exploited here.” The IVA is therefore calling for modernization of the old genetic engineering regulation and, in particular, for the debureaucratization and acceleration of the approval process.
The Farmers’ Association is also insisting on a new version of the regulations as soon as possible. Udo Hemmerling criticizes Timmermans’ approach: “Such a threat of political counter-blockade seems completely excessive, even undemocratic.”
However, it seems increasingly unlikely that the Commission will actually present its proposals on July 5 due to the hardened fronts. The Agriculture Committee will vote on the pesticides regulation at its meeting on July 19, followed by the vote of the Environment Committee on Sept. 11 and the vote of the entire plenum on Oct. 11.
The EU ambassadors of the member states will make a new attempt today, Wednesday, to agree on the 11th sanctions package against Russia. Diplomats were cautiously optimistic in advance that an agreement could be reached. Germany and France were on track to accept the EU Commission’s proposal for an anti-circumvention mechanism, they said. However, an extra round of talks was not ruled out in view of various outstanding issues.
The 11th sanctions package is to enter into force before the EU summit at the end of June at the latest. The member states actually wanted to finalize the measures against circumvention of the current restrictions by the end of May, but two points of contention in particular have so far stood in the way of a quick agreement.
The EU Commission presented its proposals for the new measures at the beginning of May, which are intended to increase the effectiveness of the ten sanctions packages previously adopted. A year after the invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces, the EU, the US and their allies had noted that many of the goods affected by the export bans were reaching Russia via other routes.
According to a study, exports of mobile devices from Armenia, Kazakhstan or Turkey to Russia, for example, skyrocketed, as did exports of computers from Turkey and Kazakhstan. China, in turn, supplied many more semiconductors than before.
In order to curb circumvention, the Commission wants to put companies from Armenia, Uzbekistan and the United Arab Emirates on the sanctions list – they are suspected of forwarding listed goods to Russia. Secondly, the Commission wants to use a new instrument to gradually increase pressure on states that cannot explain the sudden increases in exports.
The German government objected to punitive measures also for third countries. The Ministry for Foreign Affairs in particular feared that this would strain diplomatic relations with important partners, according to reports in Berlin. The Commission has accommodated the concerns a bit and presented another adjusted proposal on Tuesday.
The proposal provides for a clearly graduated procedure. In a first step, the pressure on companies is to be increased and they are to be sanctioned in case of repetition. Only in the last instance, after warnings and diplomatic efforts, would sanctions against third countries be possible. The EU member states would have to unanimously approve the listing or sanctioning of companies or third countries in each case.
Previously, the German government had pushed in vain for a different approach, namely to oblige exporting companies to include a “no-Russia clause” in their supply contracts. This clause would have obliged customers in third countries not to forward the delivered goods to Russia. Berlin wanted to limit this obligation to certain goods, such as certain semiconductors, that are important to Russia’s military machinery and cannot be easily sourced from elsewhere.
According to reports, the “no-Russia clause” will now not be pursued as part of the 11th sanctions package. The idea of the “no-Russia clause” followed on from the announcement by German Minister for Economic Affairs Robert Habeck on the anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine that companies would be held more accountable via the extension of end-use declarations.
In German industry, the plans met with criticism from the outset. “A no-Russia clause in supply contracts of European companies would have little effect in practice, but would create a high administrative burden”, said Nikolas Keßels, deputy head of department for foreign trade policy at the BDI. “How, after all, are companies supposed to ensure that the contractual partner in a third country also adheres to it?”
Roland Stein, an expert on foreign trade law at the law firm Blomstein, also criticized the German government’s approach: “The idea of a no-Russia clause sounds charming, but in many cases it is very difficult to implement.”
But Keßels also believes that the Commission’s proposed blacklist for entire states is the wrong approach: “The grid would be far too rough and the diplomatic collateral damage potentially enormous”, he warns. A blacklist for sanctions evaders among companies would make more sense, he says. “In this way, economic actors who become conspicuous could first be placed on a suspect list, if the indications substantiate, on an entity list, and, as a final stage, on a blockade list.”
European companies would then no longer be allowed to trade with the players on the list. “The US is already following this pattern, and the EU should follow suit”, Keßels urges. Till Hoppe and Stephan Israel
Germany will not have a National Security Council in the future either. Is that regrettable – or is the Federal Chancellery the right place anyway to coordinate the necessary coordination with the line ministries and the federal states in crisis situations?
Action by the state as a whole must be coordinated across departments and with due regard for the federal system of the Federal Republic. The logical and constitutionally indisputable place for this is the Federal Chancellery, which is also the organizational framework for cabinet meetings and decisions. For the same reasons, the National Security Council is also assigned to the head of government in other countries. In Germany, a Federal Security Council would be nothing more, both legally and organizationally, than a cabinet committee with a powerful substructure for situation assessment and evaluation, which prepares the cabinet’s decisions.
Where does that leave the intelligence services?
The Federal Intelligence Service (German: Bundesnachrichtendienst, BND) and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (German: Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz) have always been at the core of the decision-making processes on all issues of internal and external security, defense, foreign policy and security policy with their capacities for situation assessment and situation evaluation. This would necessarily remain so in an expanded structure if they were not accentuated even further.
The British government presented a new security strategy in March. You headed the BND Resident Office in London for a long time. What can Germany learn from the UK in terms of security and defense?
The political will and the administrative ability to understand national security issues as a task for the whole state, across party lines, and to treat them as such. National security should by no means be a matter of negotiation in the free play of forces between party-politically influenced independent departments and their ministers, moderated only by a general directive authority of the chancellor. It would be good if the security policy “teenage years” of the Federal Republic of Germany once stated by Wolfgang Schmidt, the head of the Federal Chancellery, could be overcome as quickly as possible here.
The British security strategy also deals with investments in new armaments projects, for example in cooperation with French arms manufacturers. Is Germany too pacifist to conduct strategic debates on national security interests with a military-industrial perspective?
In terms of defense capability and the associated need for powerful weapons and armaments, there is no doubt that this is the case. In the context of the turn of the millennium, this realization has almost become common knowledge, at least in a verbal departure from security policy based on the Pippi Longstocking principle: “I’ll make the world as I like it.” New trade-offs seem to be developing here, enabling more sustainable cooperation with allies and partners in development and production, but also in the transfer of weapons.
The triad of the German security strategy is probably defense/resilience/sustainability. What are you missing here? Is this the right focus?
I would definitely add talkability as a fourth category. He who talks does not shoot, but you must be able to do so with a chance of success in the context of self-defense or emergency aid mandated by international law if no peaceful approach to averting the attack can be found.
How feminist should Germany’s future security and defense policy be?
Effective foreign, security and defense policy must have a holistic orientation and be geared to overcoming the causes of conflict, especially discrimination and violence of all kinds. In this general framework alone, one-half of the world’s population is just as important as the other. From this general maxim of justice, politics must be feminist in its orientation, not least in the effort to counteract grave injustices with often destabilizing consequences.
You can read a longer version of the interview with Gerhard Conrad in German in our Security.Table briefing.
Lena Düpont spent a few weeks in the Czech Republic in 2004 with a student program. She still remembers the atmosphere shortly after the country joined the EU. “On the ground, we discussed a lot about what it meant for people to become part of a community that I took for granted.” Her time in the Czech Republic, she says, was instrumental in politicizing Düpont at the time – she recognized the value of the European Union in terms of peace, freedom and stability.
In the meantime, the 36-year-old sits as an MEP for the EPP Group in the EU Parliament and actively shapes European policy. Although she has been working in Brussels for three years, it is always a special moment for her when she walks to her workplace, the Parliament, in the morning, says the CDU politician. She particularly enjoys these few minutes of peace and quiet. “That’s when you can really take a breath before the hustle and bustle starts.” As a member of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) and the CDU/CSU group’s spokesperson on home affairs and migration policy, she is currently primarily concerned with Europe’s asylum and migration policy.
Last week, the interior ministers of the member states agreed on a reform of the EU asylum system. In particular, it provides for a much tougher approach to migrants with no prospects of staying. The next step in implementing the plans is now negotiations with the European Parliament, which has a say in the matter. Lena Düpont welcomes the decision: “The agreement on orderly asylum procedures while maintaining humanitarian standards is years overdue”, she let it be known after the agreement.
She is firmly convinced that the bill will be passed before the end of this legislative term, before the next EU elections in 2024. The CDU politician says that the issue is in part highly partisan and emotionally charged. In recent years, she says, people have only shimmied from emergency solution to emergency solution in migration policy. “We finally need an answer for people who seek protection with us, but also for the people who end up taking them in.”
According to the politician, the reform could above all better clarify issues relating to the distribution of refugees among the individual EU states. “In this way, the states at the external borders of the EU in particular will be relieved”, says Düpont. “At the same time, the migration pact also provides for instruments to improve repatriation procedures.”
After graduating from school, Düpont first studied political science and journalism at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. In 2009, she started her career in Brussels as office manager for then MEP Renate Sommer. “That was on the same day that the Lisbon Treaty came into force”, Düpont recalls.
In 2011, she turned her back on Brussels for a while and went to Berlin to work in the Bundestag. “It was exciting to compare the work of both parliaments”, says Düpont. For a long time, she worked in the engine room of politics, without an active office – until the Brexit referendum. A caesura for the politician. She realized that the EU community and its values could no longer be taken for granted. “And then it’s just no longer enough to be there in the second row of politics and grumble from the sidelines”, Düpont says of her decision to run in the 2019 European elections. As an elected Member of Parliament, she is now helping to shape policy in Brussels.
Away from her desk in Brussels, Düpont spends a lot of time in her constituency in Lower Saxony. This is also where her hometown of Gifhorn is located. “I like Brussels and its European flair”, says Düpont, “but I draw most of my strength from my home country”. Dayan Djajadisastra with material from dpa
It’s an understatement to say that energy, climate and the environment dominate the political agenda in Europe. Thursday’s ENVI Committee vote on the Nature Restoration Act should be on the radar of just about everyone in the Brussels bubble.
But another, equally politically explosive appointment takes place today, Wednesday: the meeting of Deputy Permanent Representatives (Coreper) “with a view to reaching an agreement” on the adoption of the Renewable Energy Directive (RED). The item was placed on the meeting’s agenda.
The vote had initially been postponed. France had refused to confirm the trilogue agreement between Parliament and Council, painfully reached on March 30. Paris believes the text does not sufficiently support the use of hydrogen from nuclear power. The deadlock has held hostage another proposal on sustainable aviation fuels (ReFuel Aviation), which is now also on the Coreper agenda.
Has France now decided to be flexible? Apparently, Paris cannot necessarily count on like-minded states: In Brussels, sources close to the negotiations stress that the 16 countries of the nuclear alliance were not united in their opposition to the RED. France launched the alliance in February.
Some countries, even within the nuclear alliance, have different interests than France. It is particularly important to them to ensure national energy security as quickly as possible. And that is best achieved with renewable energies. In addition, some countries believe that France has already achieved “quite a bit”, the source said. It is not clear at this time what Paris’ goals are.
Negotiators will pave the way today for the Energy Council, which meets on June 19. “This council is the right time to break the deadlock“, said a diplomatic source.
Wishing you the most refreshing reading possible!
In Brussels, the dispute over the European Commission’s nature conservation package continues. After proposals for a new law on renaturation were rejected by both the Agriculture and Fisheries Committees, the vote in the lead Environment Committee is scheduled for Thursday – outcome uncertain.
Part two of the package and hardly less controversial is the Pesticides Regulation (SUR), which provides for a 50 percent reduction in chemical pesticides and a total ban in so-called sensitive areas. Here, too, there is the threat of a blockade in the European Parliament, especially by the EPP Group.
At the end of May, Green Deal Commissioner Frans Timmermans retaliated by threatening in the Environment Committee to withdraw the proposals for a new version of EU genetic engineering legislation announced for July 5 if the EPP did not abandon its blockade. Previously, some MEPs had called for the regulations to go hand in hand. They pointed out that new breeding methods could reduce the need for pesticides and thus contribute to achieving the goals.
At the same time, however, the deputy head of the Commission also appealed to the Green counterpart to compromise on their part on the issue of genetic engineering. “You all have to make a decision. Do you stay in your trenches? That means no pesticide regulation and no new genetic engineering law. Or can you move toward each other and make progress together?”, Timmermans asked MEPs.
Environmental and consumer advocates now fear horse trading and a weakening of standards on both sides. “Deregulation of EU GMO law would give agribusinesses greater control over the seed market, increasing pesticide use in the long term“, says a report published last week by consumer organization Foodwatch.
Study author Lars Neumeister speaks of “empty promises” by proponents of genetic engineering. After all, it was claimed as early as the 1980s that genomic modifications would make it possible to breed more resistant plants and thus reduce the use of pesticides. However, the opposite was the case. In fact, according to the Pesticide Atlas, increased use of genetically modified seeds was usually accompanied by a significant increase in pesticide use.
According to the report, in Brazil, for example, the use of herbicides (especially glyphosate) in soybean cultivation increased by 47 percent from 2009 to 2019, while 96 percent of soybean plants there are now genetically modified. The Heinrich Böll Foundation’s report states that this is because the breeding is primarily aimed at resistance to pesticides, which makes large-scale use possible in the first place.
Organizations such as Foodwatch now fear a similar development in Europe. SUR rapporteur Sarah Wiener (Greens/EFA) shares the criticism. It is clear that the revision of the genetic engineering rules is aimed at deregulation, the MEP said. From the Greens’ point of view, any new regulation could therefore only lead to worsening. “Because it is important to us that genetically modified products are always detectable and clearly labeled. These are precisely the regulations we are in danger of losing.” The Greens reject the revision. Nothing has changed in this regard, Wiener emphasizes.
Rather, pesticide reduction could be achieved by existing means, including agroecological farming methods and consistent implementation of integrated pest management. SUR and genetic engineering would have to remain separate. The fact that the Commission is getting involved in linking the two “reflects, in my opinion, first and foremost how great the political resistance to SUR is”, Wiener says.
Shadow rapporteur Jan Huitema (Renew) takes a completely different view. The objectives of the SUR could only be achieved if the New Genomic Techniques (NGTs) were available in the near future, says the Dutch MEP. “I am keen to continue the negotiations on the SUR in Parliament, but at the same time I expect the proposal for NGTs to be presented on July 5, as promised by the Commission”, he said. It would be important to discuss the two dossiers in parallel.
From the EPP side, neither shadow rapporteur Alexander Bernhuber (ÖVP), nor Norbert Lins (CDU), Chairman of the Agriculture Committee, were willing to comment.
Technologically, a new era has begun with the new genome editing methods such as Crispr/Cas. “Classic mutation breeding is highly randomized and thus less targeted than the new breeding methods”, says Udo Hemmerling, deputy secretary general of the German Farmers’ Association (DBV). The possibilities, he adds, are completely different from those of 25 years ago. According to the DBV and Industrieverband Agrar (IVA), this includes:
The fact that in some regions the application of new genetic engineering is accompanied by increased pesticide use is due to “systematic local conditions”, says IVA Managing Director Martin May. “In Europe, use is declining. Yet the potential of new breeding technologies is not even being exploited here.” The IVA is therefore calling for modernization of the old genetic engineering regulation and, in particular, for the debureaucratization and acceleration of the approval process.
The Farmers’ Association is also insisting on a new version of the regulations as soon as possible. Udo Hemmerling criticizes Timmermans’ approach: “Such a threat of political counter-blockade seems completely excessive, even undemocratic.”
However, it seems increasingly unlikely that the Commission will actually present its proposals on July 5 due to the hardened fronts. The Agriculture Committee will vote on the pesticides regulation at its meeting on July 19, followed by the vote of the Environment Committee on Sept. 11 and the vote of the entire plenum on Oct. 11.
The EU ambassadors of the member states will make a new attempt today, Wednesday, to agree on the 11th sanctions package against Russia. Diplomats were cautiously optimistic in advance that an agreement could be reached. Germany and France were on track to accept the EU Commission’s proposal for an anti-circumvention mechanism, they said. However, an extra round of talks was not ruled out in view of various outstanding issues.
The 11th sanctions package is to enter into force before the EU summit at the end of June at the latest. The member states actually wanted to finalize the measures against circumvention of the current restrictions by the end of May, but two points of contention in particular have so far stood in the way of a quick agreement.
The EU Commission presented its proposals for the new measures at the beginning of May, which are intended to increase the effectiveness of the ten sanctions packages previously adopted. A year after the invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces, the EU, the US and their allies had noted that many of the goods affected by the export bans were reaching Russia via other routes.
According to a study, exports of mobile devices from Armenia, Kazakhstan or Turkey to Russia, for example, skyrocketed, as did exports of computers from Turkey and Kazakhstan. China, in turn, supplied many more semiconductors than before.
In order to curb circumvention, the Commission wants to put companies from Armenia, Uzbekistan and the United Arab Emirates on the sanctions list – they are suspected of forwarding listed goods to Russia. Secondly, the Commission wants to use a new instrument to gradually increase pressure on states that cannot explain the sudden increases in exports.
The German government objected to punitive measures also for third countries. The Ministry for Foreign Affairs in particular feared that this would strain diplomatic relations with important partners, according to reports in Berlin. The Commission has accommodated the concerns a bit and presented another adjusted proposal on Tuesday.
The proposal provides for a clearly graduated procedure. In a first step, the pressure on companies is to be increased and they are to be sanctioned in case of repetition. Only in the last instance, after warnings and diplomatic efforts, would sanctions against third countries be possible. The EU member states would have to unanimously approve the listing or sanctioning of companies or third countries in each case.
Previously, the German government had pushed in vain for a different approach, namely to oblige exporting companies to include a “no-Russia clause” in their supply contracts. This clause would have obliged customers in third countries not to forward the delivered goods to Russia. Berlin wanted to limit this obligation to certain goods, such as certain semiconductors, that are important to Russia’s military machinery and cannot be easily sourced from elsewhere.
According to reports, the “no-Russia clause” will now not be pursued as part of the 11th sanctions package. The idea of the “no-Russia clause” followed on from the announcement by German Minister for Economic Affairs Robert Habeck on the anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine that companies would be held more accountable via the extension of end-use declarations.
In German industry, the plans met with criticism from the outset. “A no-Russia clause in supply contracts of European companies would have little effect in practice, but would create a high administrative burden”, said Nikolas Keßels, deputy head of department for foreign trade policy at the BDI. “How, after all, are companies supposed to ensure that the contractual partner in a third country also adheres to it?”
Roland Stein, an expert on foreign trade law at the law firm Blomstein, also criticized the German government’s approach: “The idea of a no-Russia clause sounds charming, but in many cases it is very difficult to implement.”
But Keßels also believes that the Commission’s proposed blacklist for entire states is the wrong approach: “The grid would be far too rough and the diplomatic collateral damage potentially enormous”, he warns. A blacklist for sanctions evaders among companies would make more sense, he says. “In this way, economic actors who become conspicuous could first be placed on a suspect list, if the indications substantiate, on an entity list, and, as a final stage, on a blockade list.”
European companies would then no longer be allowed to trade with the players on the list. “The US is already following this pattern, and the EU should follow suit”, Keßels urges. Till Hoppe and Stephan Israel
Germany will not have a National Security Council in the future either. Is that regrettable – or is the Federal Chancellery the right place anyway to coordinate the necessary coordination with the line ministries and the federal states in crisis situations?
Action by the state as a whole must be coordinated across departments and with due regard for the federal system of the Federal Republic. The logical and constitutionally indisputable place for this is the Federal Chancellery, which is also the organizational framework for cabinet meetings and decisions. For the same reasons, the National Security Council is also assigned to the head of government in other countries. In Germany, a Federal Security Council would be nothing more, both legally and organizationally, than a cabinet committee with a powerful substructure for situation assessment and evaluation, which prepares the cabinet’s decisions.
Where does that leave the intelligence services?
The Federal Intelligence Service (German: Bundesnachrichtendienst, BND) and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (German: Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz) have always been at the core of the decision-making processes on all issues of internal and external security, defense, foreign policy and security policy with their capacities for situation assessment and situation evaluation. This would necessarily remain so in an expanded structure if they were not accentuated even further.
The British government presented a new security strategy in March. You headed the BND Resident Office in London for a long time. What can Germany learn from the UK in terms of security and defense?
The political will and the administrative ability to understand national security issues as a task for the whole state, across party lines, and to treat them as such. National security should by no means be a matter of negotiation in the free play of forces between party-politically influenced independent departments and their ministers, moderated only by a general directive authority of the chancellor. It would be good if the security policy “teenage years” of the Federal Republic of Germany once stated by Wolfgang Schmidt, the head of the Federal Chancellery, could be overcome as quickly as possible here.
The British security strategy also deals with investments in new armaments projects, for example in cooperation with French arms manufacturers. Is Germany too pacifist to conduct strategic debates on national security interests with a military-industrial perspective?
In terms of defense capability and the associated need for powerful weapons and armaments, there is no doubt that this is the case. In the context of the turn of the millennium, this realization has almost become common knowledge, at least in a verbal departure from security policy based on the Pippi Longstocking principle: “I’ll make the world as I like it.” New trade-offs seem to be developing here, enabling more sustainable cooperation with allies and partners in development and production, but also in the transfer of weapons.
The triad of the German security strategy is probably defense/resilience/sustainability. What are you missing here? Is this the right focus?
I would definitely add talkability as a fourth category. He who talks does not shoot, but you must be able to do so with a chance of success in the context of self-defense or emergency aid mandated by international law if no peaceful approach to averting the attack can be found.
How feminist should Germany’s future security and defense policy be?
Effective foreign, security and defense policy must have a holistic orientation and be geared to overcoming the causes of conflict, especially discrimination and violence of all kinds. In this general framework alone, one-half of the world’s population is just as important as the other. From this general maxim of justice, politics must be feminist in its orientation, not least in the effort to counteract grave injustices with often destabilizing consequences.
You can read a longer version of the interview with Gerhard Conrad in German in our Security.Table briefing.
Lena Düpont spent a few weeks in the Czech Republic in 2004 with a student program. She still remembers the atmosphere shortly after the country joined the EU. “On the ground, we discussed a lot about what it meant for people to become part of a community that I took for granted.” Her time in the Czech Republic, she says, was instrumental in politicizing Düpont at the time – she recognized the value of the European Union in terms of peace, freedom and stability.
In the meantime, the 36-year-old sits as an MEP for the EPP Group in the EU Parliament and actively shapes European policy. Although she has been working in Brussels for three years, it is always a special moment for her when she walks to her workplace, the Parliament, in the morning, says the CDU politician. She particularly enjoys these few minutes of peace and quiet. “That’s when you can really take a breath before the hustle and bustle starts.” As a member of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) and the CDU/CSU group’s spokesperson on home affairs and migration policy, she is currently primarily concerned with Europe’s asylum and migration policy.
Last week, the interior ministers of the member states agreed on a reform of the EU asylum system. In particular, it provides for a much tougher approach to migrants with no prospects of staying. The next step in implementing the plans is now negotiations with the European Parliament, which has a say in the matter. Lena Düpont welcomes the decision: “The agreement on orderly asylum procedures while maintaining humanitarian standards is years overdue”, she let it be known after the agreement.
She is firmly convinced that the bill will be passed before the end of this legislative term, before the next EU elections in 2024. The CDU politician says that the issue is in part highly partisan and emotionally charged. In recent years, she says, people have only shimmied from emergency solution to emergency solution in migration policy. “We finally need an answer for people who seek protection with us, but also for the people who end up taking them in.”
According to the politician, the reform could above all better clarify issues relating to the distribution of refugees among the individual EU states. “In this way, the states at the external borders of the EU in particular will be relieved”, says Düpont. “At the same time, the migration pact also provides for instruments to improve repatriation procedures.”
After graduating from school, Düpont first studied political science and journalism at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. In 2009, she started her career in Brussels as office manager for then MEP Renate Sommer. “That was on the same day that the Lisbon Treaty came into force”, Düpont recalls.
In 2011, she turned her back on Brussels for a while and went to Berlin to work in the Bundestag. “It was exciting to compare the work of both parliaments”, says Düpont. For a long time, she worked in the engine room of politics, without an active office – until the Brexit referendum. A caesura for the politician. She realized that the EU community and its values could no longer be taken for granted. “And then it’s just no longer enough to be there in the second row of politics and grumble from the sidelines”, Düpont says of her decision to run in the 2019 European elections. As an elected Member of Parliament, she is now helping to shape policy in Brussels.
Away from her desk in Brussels, Düpont spends a lot of time in her constituency in Lower Saxony. This is also where her hometown of Gifhorn is located. “I like Brussels and its European flair”, says Düpont, “but I draw most of my strength from my home country”. Dayan Djajadisastra with material from dpa
