Who will succeed Stéphane Séjourné? The promotion of the leader of the liberal Renew Group to French Foreign Minister has caught his colleagues in the European Parliament on the wrong foot. They now want to discuss the successor at today’s parliamentary group meeting in Strasbourg. The delegations already explored the options at the weekend.
The French Renaissance delegation has not yet decided whether it will continue to claim the leadership role. The most likely option so far is that Séjourné’s first deputy, Malik Azmani, will take over the role on more than just an interim basis. His term of office ends in six months anyway, with the European elections in June. The Dutchman has signaled his interest. Azmani and his colleagues are also trying to dispel concerns in the parliamentary group regarding possible cooperation between the VVD party and the radical Geert Wilders in The Hague – cooperation is not on the cards.
The SPD is already one step further in its search for personnel: the party’s leadership committees will decide on the list for the European elections today, with Katarina Barley as frontwoman. The deadline for candidates wanting to lead the European Social Democrats into the election ends on Wednesday. The only candidate so far: Labor Commissioner Nicolas Schmit.
Have a good start to the week!
In the dispute over a possible division of Germany’s electricity price zone, Europe’s energy regulatory agency ACER has found another way to pressure the federal government. As has now become known, the German government thus took the agency to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg last September. The statement of claim was recently published in the European Official Journal.
If the German bidding zone is split up, there is a threat of higher electricity prices in federal states with low levels of electricity generation from renewable energies. This would mean a “structural disadvantage for the industrial centers in the south and west of Germany,” according to a resolution passed last year by Bavaria, North Rhine-Westphalia and four other state governments.
The background to the possible split is European regulations on cross-border electricity trading. The EU wants to ensure a smooth internal market so that cheap electricity from every member state also reaches consumers in other European countries. So far, the dispute between ACER and Germany has revolved around the 70 percent rule.
By the end of 2025, Germany must expand its electricity grid to such an extent that line bottlenecks are eliminated. The goal: 70 percent of the capacity of cross-border lines should be available for European electricity trading. It is important to note that the available transmission capacities are not static. The grid operators must constantly recalculate them following the technical rules defined by ACER.
In the view of the German government, however, the agency violated European law in its Decision on the Core Capacity Calculation Methodology. “The member state [is] de facto required a new configuration of bidding zones, where it can no longer take internal network elements into consideration in the capacity calculation,” reads the statement of claim first published in December. It has now also been published in the European Official Journal on January 3.
Even if the dispute is superficially only about higher technical requirements, experts see this as a political strategy on the part of European regulators. Maintaining the German electricity price zone is set to become so expensive that the federal government feels compelled to split it up. ACER already presented a concrete plan for up to four German price zones in 2022.
The agency’s determination will lead to more power lines in Germany being declared “internal grid elements,” says consultant Christoph Maurer from Consentec. In contrast to critical cross-border connections, grid operators are not allowed to restrict the flow of electricity on these sections when it comes to European electricity trading. This could lead to an increase in trading transactions on the electricity market that are not technically feasible.
The grid operators may then have to ramp up and down the output of power plants more frequently to keep the grid stable. Maurer fears that this redispatch will be unnecessarily increased by the stricter ACER decision. The costs could outweigh the benefits of more intensive European trade – it would ultimately be more expensive for German electricity customers. According to the grid operators, the redispatch costs in 2022 already amounted to €2.8 billion.
Reactions to the elections in Taiwan are causing new tensions between China and the USA. On Saturday evening, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken congratulated the new President William Lai (Lai Ching-te) on his election victory via X (formerly Twitter). The Chinese Foreign Ministry called this a “false signal” and a breach of the pledge not to establish official political relations with the Taiwanese government. It also criticized other countries, including Japan, for their positive reactions to the elections in Taiwan.
Following the elections, a delegation of former high-ranking US government officials arrived in Taiwan on Sunday evening. Together with Laura Rosenberger, the Chairwoman of the US representation in Taiwan (the American Institute Taipei), they intend to meet several leading Taiwanese politicians. The delegation is not traveling on behalf of the US government.
Germany also congratulated but did not go as far as Blinken, who called Lai by name and the election a presidential election. The Federal Foreign Office, on the other hand, only congratulated “the elected,” avoided the word “president” and thus possibly escaped criticism from Beijing. “We congratulate all voters, the candidates who took part in these elections and those who were elected,” the Foreign Office said on Sunday.
On the other hand, a spokesperson on Sunday also emphasized the importance of democratic elections. Germany is committed to maintaining the status quo and building trust. It is interested in deepening cooperation with Taiwan. The French government expressed a similar view, as did a spokesperson for the European External Action Service.
Former Vice President William Lai was elected the new president of Taiwan on Saturday (read more about this at China.Table). Lai and his DPP party continue to focus on Taiwan’s international integration. This applies above all to the USA, Taiwan’s strongest and traditionally closest partner. But there are also great opportunities here for the EU and Germany, says sinologist Josie-Marie Perkuhn from the University of Trier. “The DPP is clearly focusing on Europe as a partner.”
Topics for the partnership include the security of supply chains, the expansion of cooperation in science and research and the production of green energy. Shortly before the election, Taiwan’s government decided on two major programs: “Both initiatives are clearly aimed at Europe,” says Perkuhn.
And Brussels seems willing to expand cooperation. “We agree with Taiwan that the status quo in relations must not be changed unilaterally and certainly not by force,” says Michael Gahler, foreign policy spokesman for the EPP Group and Chairman of the EU Parliament’s Taiwan Friendship Group. “As far as possible, we will pursue the expansion of relations. As the European Parliament, we have long called for the conclusion of a bilateral investment agreement.” Leonardo Pape, Michael Radunski, Finn Mayer-Kuckuk
Last week, Mukhtar Babayev was appointed President-designate for the UN Climate Change Conference in Baku in November. The 55-year-old Environment Minister of Azerbaijan can look back on a long career in the oil and gas industry. He is a rather unknown quantity in international climate policy. The fact that a former oil and gas manager will once again be chairing the climate talks is attracting a lot of criticism.
Mukhtar Babayev did represent his country at last year’s COP in Dubai. However, he has only been Environment Minister since 2018. Babayev did not take part in COP26 and COP27. As COP President, it is his job to lead the negotiations and work out compromises. This requires a close network of diplomatic relations and negotiating skills – neither of which Babayev has yet demonstrated.
During the climate conference in Dubai, he said “As the impacts of climate change become increasingly evident, we acknowledge the necessity to unite our efforts, catalyze global cooperation and ensure that our actions are aligned with the gravity of the situation.”
However, Azerbaijan’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC), a country’s self-defined national climate targets, renewed in 2023, are not overly ambitious. Greenhouse gas emissions are to be reduced by 40 percent by 2050. The share of renewables in installed energy capacity is to increase from 16.5 percent (2022) to 30 percent by the end of the decade.
At the same time, the country is expanding its oil and gas production. Production is set to increase by a good third over the next decade. The majority of gas exports go to Europe. The EU sources seven percent of its pipeline imports from Azerbaijan. The country wants to double its exports to the European market by 2027, as reported by Reuters. Azerbaijan’s dependence on fossil fuels is very high. The oil and gas industry already accounts for 92.5 percent of the country’s export revenue and just under 50 percent of GDP.
Babayev comes from Baku, studied political science in Moscow and foreign economic relations in Azerbaijan. After the country’s independence in 1992, he quickly joined the state-owned oil and gas company Socar, where he worked for 26 years. From 2007, he headed the company’s environmental department, which was founded at the time. Until 2010, his task was to reduce the environmental impact of extraction and, for example, to clean up soil contamination after decades of extraction. The goals of his department were partly at odds with Socar’s strategy of massively expanding production.
At a first Socar conference on rehabilitating contaminated soil in 2008, Babayev warned “that the steep drop in oil prices could have a negative impact on future actions,” as Wikileaks quotes from US embassy dispatches. In general, little is known about Babayev because of the unfree press in Azerbaijan. His name does not even appear in the archives of international media such as Bloomberg, the New York Times and the Financial Times until COP28.
Mukhtar Babayev’s appointment, which still has to be formally confirmed by the COP plenary at the start of COP29, has attracted a lot of criticism. Once again, a former manager of an oil and gas company will be COP President, “which pushes us closer to the abyss,” Collin Rees from Oil Change International told AFP. “We now have a former oil executive from an authoritarian petrostate in charge of the world’s response to the [climate] crisis that fossil fuel firms created,” said Alice Harrison, Leader of the Fossil Fuels Campaign at Global Witness.
However, there are other reactions. COP29 will not be as “nerve-wracking” as COP28, former negotiator Kaveh Guilanpour told the BBC. “At a diplomatic level, the financial issues will be difficult, but I think the task of the presidency will be easier overall,” Guilanpour said. Climate journalist Ed King wrote on Twitter that “it’s worth giving Babayev and his team a chance before jumping on them.” There were only a few countries that met all the criteria, he said. However, due to his past as an oil and gas manager, Babayev, like his predecessor Sultan Al Jaber, will be in the spotlight. Nico Beckert
Who will succeed Stéphane Séjourné? The promotion of the leader of the liberal Renew Group to French Foreign Minister has caught his colleagues in the European Parliament on the wrong foot. They now want to discuss the successor at today’s parliamentary group meeting in Strasbourg. The delegations already explored the options at the weekend.
The French Renaissance delegation has not yet decided whether it will continue to claim the leadership role. The most likely option so far is that Séjourné’s first deputy, Malik Azmani, will take over the role on more than just an interim basis. His term of office ends in six months anyway, with the European elections in June. The Dutchman has signaled his interest. Azmani and his colleagues are also trying to dispel concerns in the parliamentary group regarding possible cooperation between the VVD party and the radical Geert Wilders in The Hague – cooperation is not on the cards.
The SPD is already one step further in its search for personnel: the party’s leadership committees will decide on the list for the European elections today, with Katarina Barley as frontwoman. The deadline for candidates wanting to lead the European Social Democrats into the election ends on Wednesday. The only candidate so far: Labor Commissioner Nicolas Schmit.
Have a good start to the week!
In the dispute over a possible division of Germany’s electricity price zone, Europe’s energy regulatory agency ACER has found another way to pressure the federal government. As has now become known, the German government thus took the agency to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg last September. The statement of claim was recently published in the European Official Journal.
If the German bidding zone is split up, there is a threat of higher electricity prices in federal states with low levels of electricity generation from renewable energies. This would mean a “structural disadvantage for the industrial centers in the south and west of Germany,” according to a resolution passed last year by Bavaria, North Rhine-Westphalia and four other state governments.
The background to the possible split is European regulations on cross-border electricity trading. The EU wants to ensure a smooth internal market so that cheap electricity from every member state also reaches consumers in other European countries. So far, the dispute between ACER and Germany has revolved around the 70 percent rule.
By the end of 2025, Germany must expand its electricity grid to such an extent that line bottlenecks are eliminated. The goal: 70 percent of the capacity of cross-border lines should be available for European electricity trading. It is important to note that the available transmission capacities are not static. The grid operators must constantly recalculate them following the technical rules defined by ACER.
In the view of the German government, however, the agency violated European law in its Decision on the Core Capacity Calculation Methodology. “The member state [is] de facto required a new configuration of bidding zones, where it can no longer take internal network elements into consideration in the capacity calculation,” reads the statement of claim first published in December. It has now also been published in the European Official Journal on January 3.
Even if the dispute is superficially only about higher technical requirements, experts see this as a political strategy on the part of European regulators. Maintaining the German electricity price zone is set to become so expensive that the federal government feels compelled to split it up. ACER already presented a concrete plan for up to four German price zones in 2022.
The agency’s determination will lead to more power lines in Germany being declared “internal grid elements,” says consultant Christoph Maurer from Consentec. In contrast to critical cross-border connections, grid operators are not allowed to restrict the flow of electricity on these sections when it comes to European electricity trading. This could lead to an increase in trading transactions on the electricity market that are not technically feasible.
The grid operators may then have to ramp up and down the output of power plants more frequently to keep the grid stable. Maurer fears that this redispatch will be unnecessarily increased by the stricter ACER decision. The costs could outweigh the benefits of more intensive European trade – it would ultimately be more expensive for German electricity customers. According to the grid operators, the redispatch costs in 2022 already amounted to €2.8 billion.
Reactions to the elections in Taiwan are causing new tensions between China and the USA. On Saturday evening, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken congratulated the new President William Lai (Lai Ching-te) on his election victory via X (formerly Twitter). The Chinese Foreign Ministry called this a “false signal” and a breach of the pledge not to establish official political relations with the Taiwanese government. It also criticized other countries, including Japan, for their positive reactions to the elections in Taiwan.
Following the elections, a delegation of former high-ranking US government officials arrived in Taiwan on Sunday evening. Together with Laura Rosenberger, the Chairwoman of the US representation in Taiwan (the American Institute Taipei), they intend to meet several leading Taiwanese politicians. The delegation is not traveling on behalf of the US government.
Germany also congratulated but did not go as far as Blinken, who called Lai by name and the election a presidential election. The Federal Foreign Office, on the other hand, only congratulated “the elected,” avoided the word “president” and thus possibly escaped criticism from Beijing. “We congratulate all voters, the candidates who took part in these elections and those who were elected,” the Foreign Office said on Sunday.
On the other hand, a spokesperson on Sunday also emphasized the importance of democratic elections. Germany is committed to maintaining the status quo and building trust. It is interested in deepening cooperation with Taiwan. The French government expressed a similar view, as did a spokesperson for the European External Action Service.
Former Vice President William Lai was elected the new president of Taiwan on Saturday (read more about this at China.Table). Lai and his DPP party continue to focus on Taiwan’s international integration. This applies above all to the USA, Taiwan’s strongest and traditionally closest partner. But there are also great opportunities here for the EU and Germany, says sinologist Josie-Marie Perkuhn from the University of Trier. “The DPP is clearly focusing on Europe as a partner.”
Topics for the partnership include the security of supply chains, the expansion of cooperation in science and research and the production of green energy. Shortly before the election, Taiwan’s government decided on two major programs: “Both initiatives are clearly aimed at Europe,” says Perkuhn.
And Brussels seems willing to expand cooperation. “We agree with Taiwan that the status quo in relations must not be changed unilaterally and certainly not by force,” says Michael Gahler, foreign policy spokesman for the EPP Group and Chairman of the EU Parliament’s Taiwan Friendship Group. “As far as possible, we will pursue the expansion of relations. As the European Parliament, we have long called for the conclusion of a bilateral investment agreement.” Leonardo Pape, Michael Radunski, Finn Mayer-Kuckuk
Last week, Mukhtar Babayev was appointed President-designate for the UN Climate Change Conference in Baku in November. The 55-year-old Environment Minister of Azerbaijan can look back on a long career in the oil and gas industry. He is a rather unknown quantity in international climate policy. The fact that a former oil and gas manager will once again be chairing the climate talks is attracting a lot of criticism.
Mukhtar Babayev did represent his country at last year’s COP in Dubai. However, he has only been Environment Minister since 2018. Babayev did not take part in COP26 and COP27. As COP President, it is his job to lead the negotiations and work out compromises. This requires a close network of diplomatic relations and negotiating skills – neither of which Babayev has yet demonstrated.
During the climate conference in Dubai, he said “As the impacts of climate change become increasingly evident, we acknowledge the necessity to unite our efforts, catalyze global cooperation and ensure that our actions are aligned with the gravity of the situation.”
However, Azerbaijan’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC), a country’s self-defined national climate targets, renewed in 2023, are not overly ambitious. Greenhouse gas emissions are to be reduced by 40 percent by 2050. The share of renewables in installed energy capacity is to increase from 16.5 percent (2022) to 30 percent by the end of the decade.
At the same time, the country is expanding its oil and gas production. Production is set to increase by a good third over the next decade. The majority of gas exports go to Europe. The EU sources seven percent of its pipeline imports from Azerbaijan. The country wants to double its exports to the European market by 2027, as reported by Reuters. Azerbaijan’s dependence on fossil fuels is very high. The oil and gas industry already accounts for 92.5 percent of the country’s export revenue and just under 50 percent of GDP.
Babayev comes from Baku, studied political science in Moscow and foreign economic relations in Azerbaijan. After the country’s independence in 1992, he quickly joined the state-owned oil and gas company Socar, where he worked for 26 years. From 2007, he headed the company’s environmental department, which was founded at the time. Until 2010, his task was to reduce the environmental impact of extraction and, for example, to clean up soil contamination after decades of extraction. The goals of his department were partly at odds with Socar’s strategy of massively expanding production.
At a first Socar conference on rehabilitating contaminated soil in 2008, Babayev warned “that the steep drop in oil prices could have a negative impact on future actions,” as Wikileaks quotes from US embassy dispatches. In general, little is known about Babayev because of the unfree press in Azerbaijan. His name does not even appear in the archives of international media such as Bloomberg, the New York Times and the Financial Times until COP28.
Mukhtar Babayev’s appointment, which still has to be formally confirmed by the COP plenary at the start of COP29, has attracted a lot of criticism. Once again, a former manager of an oil and gas company will be COP President, “which pushes us closer to the abyss,” Collin Rees from Oil Change International told AFP. “We now have a former oil executive from an authoritarian petrostate in charge of the world’s response to the [climate] crisis that fossil fuel firms created,” said Alice Harrison, Leader of the Fossil Fuels Campaign at Global Witness.
However, there are other reactions. COP29 will not be as “nerve-wracking” as COP28, former negotiator Kaveh Guilanpour told the BBC. “At a diplomatic level, the financial issues will be difficult, but I think the task of the presidency will be easier overall,” Guilanpour said. Climate journalist Ed King wrote on Twitter that “it’s worth giving Babayev and his team a chance before jumping on them.” There were only a few countries that met all the criteria, he said. However, due to his past as an oil and gas manager, Babayev, like his predecessor Sultan Al Jaber, will be in the spotlight. Nico Beckert
