Recovery billions + China diplomacy + Ga • Table.Briefings

Dear reader,

For the first time since his unsuccessful appearance at the end of the G7 summit, the German chancellor has again spoken out about security guarantees for Ukraine. Details are currently being agreed with the partners and Ukraine, Olaf Scholz said yesterday in the ARD summer interview. However, the commitments for the period after the war would be below the level of a NATO guarantee.

The consequences of the war are also the subject of two important appointments for the chancellor today. After kicking off the concerted action with unions and employers, Scholz will head to Paris, where he will meet Emmanuel Macron for a working dinner at the Elysée in the evening. Meanwhile, the two-day Ukraine Recovery Conference begins in Lugano, where the war-torn country will present its priorities.

On a similar but unrelated recovery note: At the turn of the month, payments from the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) for the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic were recalculated. In the News, Till Hoppe shows which countries will gain and which will have to make do with less aid.

In the long term, the global security architecture will depend not only on Russia but, above all, on China. Frank Sieren analyzes how differently the US and the EU are seeking dialogue with China.

Finally, I would like to draw your attention to my News on the future of the gas networks. The rapporteur for the amendment to the gas market directive, Jens Geier (SPD), wants to oblige municipalities to engage in strategic planning for decommissioning now – also a contribution to making the energy supply independent of Russia.

Your
Manuel Berkel

The US courts China while the EU pouts

This visit is indicative of a new constellation in the newly forming world order: On June 13, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met with his direct counterpart, Yang Jiechi. Yang is the architect of Chinese foreign policy in the Politburo. Yang, on the other hand, had not scheduled a stop with EU representatives. They did not want to.

Meanwhile, a White House spokesman described the Luxembourg talks as “candid, substantive, and productive”. In the process, Sullivan stressed “the importance of maintaining open lines of communication to manage competition between our two countries”. The White H ou se even raised the prospect of a summit between President Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden in the coming months.

Meanwhile, cold silence reigns in Brussels toward China. Only Nicolas Chapuis, the departing EU ambassador to Beijing, is now coming out of the woodwork: He told Bloomberg that two high-level meetings will be held in the coming weeks. But while that is still an unclear plan, the US has long since created facts and reactivated its China contacts. Beijing, in turn, is responding to this initiative with increased receptiveness to talks.

But at the very least, it would have made sense to talk to Yang, China’s most important foreign policy expert. Yang was ambassador to the United States when China became a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. He served as Foreign Minister from 2007 to 2013. Since then, he has headed the CP’s Central Commission for Foreign Affairs as a Politburo member.

Regular exchange between USA and China

Even the COVID risk has not dissuaded Yang from exchanging ideas with his US counterpart. In fact, Yang and Sullivan meet regularly. Back in March 2021, they clashed at a foreign ministers’ summit in Alaska, where Foreign Ministers Antony Blinken and Wang Yi also met for the first time. The meeting was heated and confrontational. Still, communication has increased ever since – despite COVID and mutual sanctions. A year later, they were already sitting together in Rome in harmony.

Other US foreign policy officials also seek to make contact. John Kerry, Joe Biden’s climate envoy, even visited China twice in 2021, in April and September. A third visit is planned. Kerry, a former Secretary of State, also did not just talk about climate during the visit, but paved the way for exchanges in other policy areas. Beijing gave Kerry high credit for the offer of talks. He was allowed to enter the country without quarantine. Nowadays, that is probably the highest honor China can offer a visitor. His Chinese interlocutors instead quarantined themselves afterward. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, who visited China in July 2021, was received just as pragmatically.

Brussels obviously does not consider such direct high-level talks to be necessary, especially since the EU imposed sanctions on China in March 2021 over Xinjiang and Hong Kong, and Beijing responded with counter-sanctions. Because Brussels not only ignored Yang Jiechi. Earlier it ignored Chinese Minister of Defense Wei Fenghe, who visited Serbia, North Macedonia, Hungary, and Greece at the end of March 2021. Brussels had no time for him, although sanctions were already in the air.

Brussels has no time for representatives from Beijing

Meanwhile, Minister of Defense Wei and his US counterpart Lloyd Austin met in June for in-depth talks at the Shangri-La Dialogue of Asian defense ministers in Singapore. EU Foreign Affairs Commissioner Borrell was also supposed to attend. However, he canceled because he tested positive for Covid. Instead of sending another commissioner to represent him, he sent Gunnar Wiegand, the Managing Director for Asia Pacific of the European External Action Service (EEAS). This meant the EU was not represented at the ministerial level at the talks.

At least Beijing’s European envoy Wu Hongbo was received in May by Enrique Mora, the Deputy Secretary-General of the European External Action Service in Brussels. In November, a delegation led by Wan Gang, a former minister of science who remains highly influential to this day, traveled to Europe for talks. He was accompanied by the leading expert on Germany amongst Chinese diplomats, the former ambassador Shi Mingde. So far, there has been no comparable counter-initiative from Brussels.

Meanwhile, the strategy between Washington and Beijing is to get the exchange back on track: The aim of the United States is “ensuring that each side understand one another’s intentions, understands priorities,” one of Sullivan’s top diplomats explained recently. “This is critical to avoiding potential miscommunication, misinterpretation, reducing risk. All these things I think are critical for, you know, managing the relationship in a healthy and responsible way.”

Borrell, on the other hand, has yet to do more than make mere announcements: “The EU has been too naïve in our relations with China. We have to build realistic relations with China to defend our values and interests.” Or: “China will increase its global role. We have to engage with China to achieve our global objectives, based on our interests and values.” So far, barely anything has happened. Back in March, Borrell still suggested that China should mediate in the Ukraine war. In April, he called the EU-China summit a “dialogue of the deaf“. At least the strategic dialogue between Wang and Borrell took place via video link took place on September 29.

Criticism from the Netherlands

The bottom line is sobering: At the ministerial level, let alone above it, there have been no direct, personal offline contacts between Brussels and Beijing since the 2019 EU-China Summit three years ago. Back then, Premier Li Keqiang was received by Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker. Covid alone cannot be the reason, as the face-to-face meetings of US representatives with their Chinese counterparts have shown.

Neither European Council President Charles Michel nor Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, nor any of their commissioners, not even Foreign Affairs Representative Josep Borrell, have met their Chinese counterparts in person in office to date, while US security advisors, foreign ministers and defense ministers have long since held personal meetings. While Biden and Xi have also yet to meet in person, they nevertheless know each other very well from the time when they were both vice presidents of their respective countries. Under these circumstances, it is no surprise that talks between Washington and China are progressing well, while the EU-China online summit in April 2022 even ended without a joint declaration.

In the meantime, criticism of Brussels is also being voiced from usually quite level-headed countries such as the Netherlands. Cutting ties with China would not “help anyone in Hong Kong or the Uighurs,” Prime Minister Mark Rutte said recently. “This is one of the reasons I believe the EU should be more of a geopolitical powerhouse, that we have to develop our own policies toward China, in close connection with the US.” That is an idea also shared by the French and the Germans.

Meanwhile, word of the EU’s lack of leadership is slowly spreading in Asia. This spring’s annual Southeast Asia survey by the ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore found that only 16 percent of Southeast Asian elites still believe the EU shows leadership in upholding the rules-based world order and international law. In 2021, it was still 32 percent. By Frank Sieren

Germany gets more money from Brussels – Belgium and Romania get less

The figures were worth only a brief paragraph in the EU Commission’s daily news digest, but the recalculation of the maximum grants from the European reconstruction instrument has a significant impact on many national budgets. Accordingly, Portugal, Spain, and Germany will be able to draw considerably more money from the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), which was launched in the wake of the COVID pandemic. Most of the other countries, on the other hand, will be able to draw down – in some cases significantly – fewer grants from the Brussels pot.

The biggest losers in the recalculation are Belgium and the Netherlands, which each lose more than one-fifth of the funds initially earmarked for them. In the case of Hungary, Slovenia and Romania, the loss is more than 15 percent. In the case of Romania, for example, the difference amounts to a good €2 billion, according to calculations by Nils Redeker, Deputy Director of the Jacques Delors Centre, based on the Commission figures. Germany, on the other hand, can expect an additional €2.4 billion from Brussels, and Spain an additional €7.7 billion.

The EU launched the RRF in 2020, financed by joint debt and totaling €723 billion, to cushion the economic impact of the pandemic. Of this, €338 billion were to flow in the form of non-repayable grants, the rest as loans. The maximum share of the individual member states was based on how severely they were affected by the crisis. It was agreed that the respective impact would be recalculated as of June 30, 2022, on the basis of the final GDP development in the two previous years. However, this adjustment only affects 30 percent of the total grants in the RRF; the remaining 70 percent will be allocated according to the original key.

By the final calculation, about €13 billion would have to be redistributed, Redeker told Europe.Table. Germany, Spain or Portugal, for example, could now finance additional investments in energy independence. For other countries, such as Romania and Bulgaria, gaps now appear in national investment plans that can only be plugged by EU loans, other EU programs, or national funds, Redeker said. “But because of the economic impact of the war, that will not be easy for many countries.” tho

Municipalities to prepare for gas network decommissioning

In its efforts to dismantle large parts of the gas network in the long term, the German Ministry for Economic Affairs has received backing from the EU Parliament. In the future, municipalities are to be obliged to carry out heat planning, which will also include strategic planning for the decommissioning of gas distribution networks. This is stated in a draft report for the Parliament’s Industry Committee on the revision of the gas market directive. The author of the draft is the chairman of the SPD MEPs, Jens Geier.

In May, the green-led Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs had already spread similar ideas for a climate-neutral heat supply. Municipal utilities should start planning the dismantling of gas networks, State Secretary Patrick Graichen had told municipal utility managers at a meeting, according to media reports. “This would devalue an existing infrastructure that is worth several hundred billion euros,” Ingbert Liebing, CEO of the German Association of Local Utilities (VKU), criticized in the German newspaper “Welt” at the time.

Habeck favors heat pumps

According to Representative Geier’s draft, the case-by-case decommissioning of gas networks is to be defined as a new task for pipeline operators. “We will gradually need less natural gas in the future because hydrogen will be used in industrial processes, for example, and fewer people will need natural gas for heating. Therefore, decommissioning or dismantling of natural gas infrastructure must be the task of network operators where pipelines are no longer needed due to more energy- and cost-efficient alternatives,” Geier told Europe.Table.

Climate-friendly alternatives to natural gas heating are primarily heat pumps, wood pellet heating systems and district heating networks powered by renewable energies. According to Geier, natural gas pipelines could also be used to transport hydrogen. At the government’s heat pump summit in late June, however, German Economic Affairs Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) had argued that alternatives to heat pumps would remain the exception. “The use of hydrogen as a gas substitute will be far too expensive in the long term, and maintaining an infrastructure for a technology that is far too expensive will not go anywhere,” Habeck had said.

Among municipal utilities, the plans from the EU Parliament for the gas network met with criticism. “Instead of always putting the dismantling in the spotlight, the policy should create the framework for it, so that the municipal utilities can make the gas infrastructure fit for the transformation to hydrogen,” it says in a message that the VKU had already sent out last Monday. ber

Gas crisis: Germany in Central Europe task force

The Federal Republic of Germany will coordinate closely with eight other EU states as well as Ukraine and Moldova to secure gas supplies. Last Friday, the task force of the EU Energy Platform for Central Eastern Europe initiative started its work, the Commission announced. The other members are Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, and Italy.

The states are to cooperate on gas procurement and filling storage facilities, implementing joint risk prevention plans, using transport infrastructure, and reducing gas consumption. Previously, a task force for Southeastern Europe had already started work, and others are to follow.

According to the German Federal Network Agency (BNetzA), if gas flows from Russia were to cease completely, this could have a serious impact on the physics of the network. So far, gas flows in the Federal Republic have been more or less evenly distributed, BNetzA President Klaus Müller told the Funke Media Group. “That could change should we only receive gas from Norway, the Netherlands, or Belgium,” Müller said. For this reason, storage facilities are already being filled so that the south can also be supplied sufficiently. “At the moment, for example, we are not only focusing on the largest German storage facility in Rehden in Lower Saxony but also on the Wolfersberg storage facility in Bavaria.” ber/dpa

McGuinness examines central sanctions body

In view of difficulties in implementing sanctions against Russia, the Commission is examining options for an EU-wide sanctions authority. Financial Markets Commissioner Mairead McGuinness told the Financial Times that it was open to the idea of establishing a European version of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (Ofac). The US Treasury Department agency implements US government sanctions.

Alternatively, the EU could supervise the planned Anti-Money Laundering Authority (Amla) with the monitoring of sanctions. According to the FT, the Renew Group in Parliament had already proposed using the Amla Regulation to create a central body that would monitor national authorities and enforce financial sanctions.

“Anything that would help member states with implementation and where we see European oversight and coordination would be a plus,” McGuinness told the newspaper. So far, member states have taken the lead. “In some countries, there is a strong infrastructure to implement sanctions, in others, there is not,” the commissioner noted. In Germany, for example, there is no established procedure to seize assets such as yachts, private jets, or houses.

In addition, McGuinness is considering forcing sanctioned companies to disclose their assets and providing criminal penalties if they try to hide them, according to the report. The Commission is also working with financial institutions to ensure they do not go beyond sanctions requirements when reviewing business relationships. ber

Baerbock and Coveney condemn Northern Ireland bill

Germany and Ireland see the UK’s planned law to undermine Brexit rules for Northern Ireland as a clear violation of international agreements. “There is no legal or political justification for unilaterally breaking an international treaty that came into force only two years ago,” Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and her Irish counterpart Simon Coveney wrote in an op-ed for the Sunday Observer, which was also published on the German Foreign Office website. They said the law would “create a new set of uncertainties and make it more challenging to find durable solutions“.

The Conservative government of Prime Minister Boris Johnson in London wants to use the law to repeal the Northern Ireland Protocol, which it had agreed with the EU during the Brexit. The regulation is intended to prevent a hard border between the British province and EU member Ireland and thus new conflicts in the former civil war region. However, it has created a customs border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom.

The EU had already given the government in London an ultimatum in mid-June. Should it not respond within two months to EU objections to the British implementation of the Northern Ireland Protocol, the Brussels authority could take the UK to the European Court of Justice, Commission Vice President Maroš Šefčovič said. dpa/ber

North Macedonia: president in favor of compromise

Thousands of North Macedonians have demonstrated against a proposal under discussion to settle the dispute over history and national identity with neighboring Bulgaria. Yesterday, North Macedonian media reported that the demonstrators in the capital Skopje on Saturday evening followed the call of the nationalist opposition party VMRO-DPMNE, which also demanded the resignation of the government of social democrat Dimitar Kovačevski. VMRO-DPMNE announced another protest rally for yesterday evening.

Since the end of 2020, the EU country Bulgaria has blocked the start of EU accession talks with North Macedonia, claiming that Skopje does not accept the Bulgarian interpretation of the common history and does not anchor it in the constitution and curricula. There is also a dispute over demands for rights for the Bulgarian minority in North Macedonia. Most recently, the French EU presidency, which ended a few days ago, presented several compromise proposals in this regard.

VMRO-DPMNE called the latest French proposal a “legalization of the assimilation of the Macedonian people“. North Macedonia’s President Stevo Pendarovski, on the other hand, spoke out Sunday in favor of accepting the French compromise proposal. “The proposal boils down to one request, to include the Bulgarians in the constitution. I do not believe that this is a fateful dilemma. My position is that the decision to accept the proposal is only to start the negotiations.,” Pendarovski said after a meeting with his Security Council. dpa

Götz Reichert – observing the long-term

Götz Reichert is the Head of the Department on Environment, Energy, Climate and Transport at the Centrum für Europäische Politik Freiburg/Berlin (Center for European Policy, CEP).

Götz Reichert is a child of the seventies and eighties. And as such, he witnessed how environmental pollution became more and more visible in Europe. With the political changes around 1990, Reichert hoped for more international cooperation in environmental, climate, and energy policy as well. However, these hopes were fulfilled in rudimentary ways at best. “A lot of things have remained frighteningly topical in some cases. But there was also a push for integration in the early nineties at the European level. And I started studying at that time and wanted to spend my professional life in the field,” recalls Reichert.

At the time, he did not know what exactly that would look like. He first studied law at the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen, where he specialized in environmental law and later earned a doctorate on the protection of resources in international and European law. He also enrolled in a master’s program in international environmental law at George Washington University. “I was working in parallel at an NGO in Washington at the time, the Center for International Environmental Law. That was right in the middle of this Washington policy bubble that also exists in Brussels. That’s what shaped me a lot,” Reichert explains.

Monitoring 130 European projects

He joined the Centrum für europäische Politik (Center for European Policy, CEP), which was founded at that time, in 2008 via a position at the World Bank and an academic position in Tübingen. The think tank regularly issues briefings on current issues and also provides experts in parliaments. Discussions with political decision-makers are part of the daily work routine. “That also distinguishes us somewhat from the university sector. Whenever we analyze something, we try to get a broad picture,” says Reichert. As a lawyer, he says, he has to consider a lot of technical questions to get to the core of the issues.

At CEP, he heads the Environment, Energy, Climate, and Transport department and accordingly always has to keep track of all possible movements in Brussels. “I spend a not inconsiderable amount of my daily working time monitoring developments. Really every day. And that’s where my 14 years of experience certainly come in handy, so I know where to look, that I know when something is moving,” Reichert explains.

He reads through all the new papers and dossiers, so he is always up to date. At the moment, he says, he’s dealing with about 130 projects at the EU level. “130 projects that don’t keep us busy every day or every week or every month, but that will keep us busy for the next two or three years. We won’t be able to comment on everything, but just know what’s going on.” That way, Reichert explains, you can also set a selection at the right time and contribute to the discussion with a particular opinion or analysis and provide impetus.

Rise of conflicts over water

What he learned during his time at the World Bank was that environmental and climate issues can lead to serious upheavals. “Back then, I experienced that states don’t talk to each other at all, that it goes as far as armed conflict when it comes to vital resources like water,” he recalls.

The area of water access in particular still occupies him intensively today, which is why he also travels to international congresses and contributes as a lawyer. Conflicts over water will continue to increase as a result of climate change. Reichert also sees this in his work in Europe. “It will also become important for Germany. After all, we in Germany think we always have enough water. But the Spanish, the Portuguese, they’re already fighting fiercely over certain deposits.” Those hopes and motives that prompted Götz Reichert to become involved in environmental and climate policy 30 years ago will probably keep him busy for many years to come. Constantin Eckner

EUROPE.TABLE EDITORS

Till
Hoppe

Charlotte
Wirth

Falk
Steiner

Timo
Landenberger

Corinna
Visser

Lukas
Knigge

Eric
Bonse

Sarah
Schaefer

Manuel
Berkel

Lisa-Martina
Klein

Markus
Grabitz

Stephan
Israel

Claire
Stam

Dear reader,

For the first time since his unsuccessful appearance at the end of the G7 summit, the German chancellor has again spoken out about security guarantees for Ukraine. Details are currently being agreed with the partners and Ukraine, Olaf Scholz said yesterday in the ARD summer interview. However, the commitments for the period after the war would be below the level of a NATO guarantee.

The consequences of the war are also the subject of two important appointments for the chancellor today. After kicking off the concerted action with unions and employers, Scholz will head to Paris, where he will meet Emmanuel Macron for a working dinner at the Elysée in the evening. Meanwhile, the two-day Ukraine Recovery Conference begins in Lugano, where the war-torn country will present its priorities.

On a similar but unrelated recovery note: At the turn of the month, payments from the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) for the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic were recalculated. In the News, Till Hoppe shows which countries will gain and which will have to make do with less aid.

In the long term, the global security architecture will depend not only on Russia but, above all, on China. Frank Sieren analyzes how differently the US and the EU are seeking dialogue with China.

Finally, I would like to draw your attention to my News on the future of the gas networks. The rapporteur for the amendment to the gas market directive, Jens Geier (SPD), wants to oblige municipalities to engage in strategic planning for decommissioning now – also a contribution to making the energy supply independent of Russia.

Your
Manuel Berkel

The US courts China while the EU pouts

This visit is indicative of a new constellation in the newly forming world order: On June 13, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met with his direct counterpart, Yang Jiechi. Yang is the architect of Chinese foreign policy in the Politburo. Yang, on the other hand, had not scheduled a stop with EU representatives. They did not want to.

Meanwhile, a White House spokesman described the Luxembourg talks as “candid, substantive, and productive”. In the process, Sullivan stressed “the importance of maintaining open lines of communication to manage competition between our two countries”. The White H ou se even raised the prospect of a summit between President Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden in the coming months.

Meanwhile, cold silence reigns in Brussels toward China. Only Nicolas Chapuis, the departing EU ambassador to Beijing, is now coming out of the woodwork: He told Bloomberg that two high-level meetings will be held in the coming weeks. But while that is still an unclear plan, the US has long since created facts and reactivated its China contacts. Beijing, in turn, is responding to this initiative with increased receptiveness to talks.

But at the very least, it would have made sense to talk to Yang, China’s most important foreign policy expert. Yang was ambassador to the United States when China became a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. He served as Foreign Minister from 2007 to 2013. Since then, he has headed the CP’s Central Commission for Foreign Affairs as a Politburo member.

Regular exchange between USA and China

Even the COVID risk has not dissuaded Yang from exchanging ideas with his US counterpart. In fact, Yang and Sullivan meet regularly. Back in March 2021, they clashed at a foreign ministers’ summit in Alaska, where Foreign Ministers Antony Blinken and Wang Yi also met for the first time. The meeting was heated and confrontational. Still, communication has increased ever since – despite COVID and mutual sanctions. A year later, they were already sitting together in Rome in harmony.

Other US foreign policy officials also seek to make contact. John Kerry, Joe Biden’s climate envoy, even visited China twice in 2021, in April and September. A third visit is planned. Kerry, a former Secretary of State, also did not just talk about climate during the visit, but paved the way for exchanges in other policy areas. Beijing gave Kerry high credit for the offer of talks. He was allowed to enter the country without quarantine. Nowadays, that is probably the highest honor China can offer a visitor. His Chinese interlocutors instead quarantined themselves afterward. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, who visited China in July 2021, was received just as pragmatically.

Brussels obviously does not consider such direct high-level talks to be necessary, especially since the EU imposed sanctions on China in March 2021 over Xinjiang and Hong Kong, and Beijing responded with counter-sanctions. Because Brussels not only ignored Yang Jiechi. Earlier it ignored Chinese Minister of Defense Wei Fenghe, who visited Serbia, North Macedonia, Hungary, and Greece at the end of March 2021. Brussels had no time for him, although sanctions were already in the air.

Brussels has no time for representatives from Beijing

Meanwhile, Minister of Defense Wei and his US counterpart Lloyd Austin met in June for in-depth talks at the Shangri-La Dialogue of Asian defense ministers in Singapore. EU Foreign Affairs Commissioner Borrell was also supposed to attend. However, he canceled because he tested positive for Covid. Instead of sending another commissioner to represent him, he sent Gunnar Wiegand, the Managing Director for Asia Pacific of the European External Action Service (EEAS). This meant the EU was not represented at the ministerial level at the talks.

At least Beijing’s European envoy Wu Hongbo was received in May by Enrique Mora, the Deputy Secretary-General of the European External Action Service in Brussels. In November, a delegation led by Wan Gang, a former minister of science who remains highly influential to this day, traveled to Europe for talks. He was accompanied by the leading expert on Germany amongst Chinese diplomats, the former ambassador Shi Mingde. So far, there has been no comparable counter-initiative from Brussels.

Meanwhile, the strategy between Washington and Beijing is to get the exchange back on track: The aim of the United States is “ensuring that each side understand one another’s intentions, understands priorities,” one of Sullivan’s top diplomats explained recently. “This is critical to avoiding potential miscommunication, misinterpretation, reducing risk. All these things I think are critical for, you know, managing the relationship in a healthy and responsible way.”

Borrell, on the other hand, has yet to do more than make mere announcements: “The EU has been too naïve in our relations with China. We have to build realistic relations with China to defend our values and interests.” Or: “China will increase its global role. We have to engage with China to achieve our global objectives, based on our interests and values.” So far, barely anything has happened. Back in March, Borrell still suggested that China should mediate in the Ukraine war. In April, he called the EU-China summit a “dialogue of the deaf“. At least the strategic dialogue between Wang and Borrell took place via video link took place on September 29.

Criticism from the Netherlands

The bottom line is sobering: At the ministerial level, let alone above it, there have been no direct, personal offline contacts between Brussels and Beijing since the 2019 EU-China Summit three years ago. Back then, Premier Li Keqiang was received by Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker. Covid alone cannot be the reason, as the face-to-face meetings of US representatives with their Chinese counterparts have shown.

Neither European Council President Charles Michel nor Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, nor any of their commissioners, not even Foreign Affairs Representative Josep Borrell, have met their Chinese counterparts in person in office to date, while US security advisors, foreign ministers and defense ministers have long since held personal meetings. While Biden and Xi have also yet to meet in person, they nevertheless know each other very well from the time when they were both vice presidents of their respective countries. Under these circumstances, it is no surprise that talks between Washington and China are progressing well, while the EU-China online summit in April 2022 even ended without a joint declaration.

In the meantime, criticism of Brussels is also being voiced from usually quite level-headed countries such as the Netherlands. Cutting ties with China would not “help anyone in Hong Kong or the Uighurs,” Prime Minister Mark Rutte said recently. “This is one of the reasons I believe the EU should be more of a geopolitical powerhouse, that we have to develop our own policies toward China, in close connection with the US.” That is an idea also shared by the French and the Germans.

Meanwhile, word of the EU’s lack of leadership is slowly spreading in Asia. This spring’s annual Southeast Asia survey by the ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore found that only 16 percent of Southeast Asian elites still believe the EU shows leadership in upholding the rules-based world order and international law. In 2021, it was still 32 percent. By Frank Sieren

Germany gets more money from Brussels – Belgium and Romania get less

The figures were worth only a brief paragraph in the EU Commission’s daily news digest, but the recalculation of the maximum grants from the European reconstruction instrument has a significant impact on many national budgets. Accordingly, Portugal, Spain, and Germany will be able to draw considerably more money from the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), which was launched in the wake of the COVID pandemic. Most of the other countries, on the other hand, will be able to draw down – in some cases significantly – fewer grants from the Brussels pot.

The biggest losers in the recalculation are Belgium and the Netherlands, which each lose more than one-fifth of the funds initially earmarked for them. In the case of Hungary, Slovenia and Romania, the loss is more than 15 percent. In the case of Romania, for example, the difference amounts to a good €2 billion, according to calculations by Nils Redeker, Deputy Director of the Jacques Delors Centre, based on the Commission figures. Germany, on the other hand, can expect an additional €2.4 billion from Brussels, and Spain an additional €7.7 billion.

The EU launched the RRF in 2020, financed by joint debt and totaling €723 billion, to cushion the economic impact of the pandemic. Of this, €338 billion were to flow in the form of non-repayable grants, the rest as loans. The maximum share of the individual member states was based on how severely they were affected by the crisis. It was agreed that the respective impact would be recalculated as of June 30, 2022, on the basis of the final GDP development in the two previous years. However, this adjustment only affects 30 percent of the total grants in the RRF; the remaining 70 percent will be allocated according to the original key.

By the final calculation, about €13 billion would have to be redistributed, Redeker told Europe.Table. Germany, Spain or Portugal, for example, could now finance additional investments in energy independence. For other countries, such as Romania and Bulgaria, gaps now appear in national investment plans that can only be plugged by EU loans, other EU programs, or national funds, Redeker said. “But because of the economic impact of the war, that will not be easy for many countries.” tho

Municipalities to prepare for gas network decommissioning

In its efforts to dismantle large parts of the gas network in the long term, the German Ministry for Economic Affairs has received backing from the EU Parliament. In the future, municipalities are to be obliged to carry out heat planning, which will also include strategic planning for the decommissioning of gas distribution networks. This is stated in a draft report for the Parliament’s Industry Committee on the revision of the gas market directive. The author of the draft is the chairman of the SPD MEPs, Jens Geier.

In May, the green-led Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs had already spread similar ideas for a climate-neutral heat supply. Municipal utilities should start planning the dismantling of gas networks, State Secretary Patrick Graichen had told municipal utility managers at a meeting, according to media reports. “This would devalue an existing infrastructure that is worth several hundred billion euros,” Ingbert Liebing, CEO of the German Association of Local Utilities (VKU), criticized in the German newspaper “Welt” at the time.

Habeck favors heat pumps

According to Representative Geier’s draft, the case-by-case decommissioning of gas networks is to be defined as a new task for pipeline operators. “We will gradually need less natural gas in the future because hydrogen will be used in industrial processes, for example, and fewer people will need natural gas for heating. Therefore, decommissioning or dismantling of natural gas infrastructure must be the task of network operators where pipelines are no longer needed due to more energy- and cost-efficient alternatives,” Geier told Europe.Table.

Climate-friendly alternatives to natural gas heating are primarily heat pumps, wood pellet heating systems and district heating networks powered by renewable energies. According to Geier, natural gas pipelines could also be used to transport hydrogen. At the government’s heat pump summit in late June, however, German Economic Affairs Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) had argued that alternatives to heat pumps would remain the exception. “The use of hydrogen as a gas substitute will be far too expensive in the long term, and maintaining an infrastructure for a technology that is far too expensive will not go anywhere,” Habeck had said.

Among municipal utilities, the plans from the EU Parliament for the gas network met with criticism. “Instead of always putting the dismantling in the spotlight, the policy should create the framework for it, so that the municipal utilities can make the gas infrastructure fit for the transformation to hydrogen,” it says in a message that the VKU had already sent out last Monday. ber

Gas crisis: Germany in Central Europe task force

The Federal Republic of Germany will coordinate closely with eight other EU states as well as Ukraine and Moldova to secure gas supplies. Last Friday, the task force of the EU Energy Platform for Central Eastern Europe initiative started its work, the Commission announced. The other members are Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, and Italy.

The states are to cooperate on gas procurement and filling storage facilities, implementing joint risk prevention plans, using transport infrastructure, and reducing gas consumption. Previously, a task force for Southeastern Europe had already started work, and others are to follow.

According to the German Federal Network Agency (BNetzA), if gas flows from Russia were to cease completely, this could have a serious impact on the physics of the network. So far, gas flows in the Federal Republic have been more or less evenly distributed, BNetzA President Klaus Müller told the Funke Media Group. “That could change should we only receive gas from Norway, the Netherlands, or Belgium,” Müller said. For this reason, storage facilities are already being filled so that the south can also be supplied sufficiently. “At the moment, for example, we are not only focusing on the largest German storage facility in Rehden in Lower Saxony but also on the Wolfersberg storage facility in Bavaria.” ber/dpa

McGuinness examines central sanctions body

In view of difficulties in implementing sanctions against Russia, the Commission is examining options for an EU-wide sanctions authority. Financial Markets Commissioner Mairead McGuinness told the Financial Times that it was open to the idea of establishing a European version of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (Ofac). The US Treasury Department agency implements US government sanctions.

Alternatively, the EU could supervise the planned Anti-Money Laundering Authority (Amla) with the monitoring of sanctions. According to the FT, the Renew Group in Parliament had already proposed using the Amla Regulation to create a central body that would monitor national authorities and enforce financial sanctions.

“Anything that would help member states with implementation and where we see European oversight and coordination would be a plus,” McGuinness told the newspaper. So far, member states have taken the lead. “In some countries, there is a strong infrastructure to implement sanctions, in others, there is not,” the commissioner noted. In Germany, for example, there is no established procedure to seize assets such as yachts, private jets, or houses.

In addition, McGuinness is considering forcing sanctioned companies to disclose their assets and providing criminal penalties if they try to hide them, according to the report. The Commission is also working with financial institutions to ensure they do not go beyond sanctions requirements when reviewing business relationships. ber

Baerbock and Coveney condemn Northern Ireland bill

Germany and Ireland see the UK’s planned law to undermine Brexit rules for Northern Ireland as a clear violation of international agreements. “There is no legal or political justification for unilaterally breaking an international treaty that came into force only two years ago,” Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and her Irish counterpart Simon Coveney wrote in an op-ed for the Sunday Observer, which was also published on the German Foreign Office website. They said the law would “create a new set of uncertainties and make it more challenging to find durable solutions“.

The Conservative government of Prime Minister Boris Johnson in London wants to use the law to repeal the Northern Ireland Protocol, which it had agreed with the EU during the Brexit. The regulation is intended to prevent a hard border between the British province and EU member Ireland and thus new conflicts in the former civil war region. However, it has created a customs border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom.

The EU had already given the government in London an ultimatum in mid-June. Should it not respond within two months to EU objections to the British implementation of the Northern Ireland Protocol, the Brussels authority could take the UK to the European Court of Justice, Commission Vice President Maroš Šefčovič said. dpa/ber

North Macedonia: president in favor of compromise

Thousands of North Macedonians have demonstrated against a proposal under discussion to settle the dispute over history and national identity with neighboring Bulgaria. Yesterday, North Macedonian media reported that the demonstrators in the capital Skopje on Saturday evening followed the call of the nationalist opposition party VMRO-DPMNE, which also demanded the resignation of the government of social democrat Dimitar Kovačevski. VMRO-DPMNE announced another protest rally for yesterday evening.

Since the end of 2020, the EU country Bulgaria has blocked the start of EU accession talks with North Macedonia, claiming that Skopje does not accept the Bulgarian interpretation of the common history and does not anchor it in the constitution and curricula. There is also a dispute over demands for rights for the Bulgarian minority in North Macedonia. Most recently, the French EU presidency, which ended a few days ago, presented several compromise proposals in this regard.

VMRO-DPMNE called the latest French proposal a “legalization of the assimilation of the Macedonian people“. North Macedonia’s President Stevo Pendarovski, on the other hand, spoke out Sunday in favor of accepting the French compromise proposal. “The proposal boils down to one request, to include the Bulgarians in the constitution. I do not believe that this is a fateful dilemma. My position is that the decision to accept the proposal is only to start the negotiations.,” Pendarovski said after a meeting with his Security Council. dpa

Götz Reichert – observing the long-term

Götz Reichert is a child of the seventies and eighties. And as such, he witnessed how environmental pollution became more and more visible in Europe. With the political changes around 1990, Reichert hoped for more international cooperation in environmental, climate, and energy policy as well. However, these hopes were fulfilled in rudimentary ways at best. “A lot of things have remained frighteningly topical in some cases. But there was also a push for integration in the early nineties at the European level. And I started studying at that time and wanted to spend my professional life in the field,” recalls Reichert.

At the time, he did not know what exactly that would look like. He first studied law at the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen, where he specialized in environmental law and later earned a doctorate on the protection of resources in international and European law. He also enrolled in a master’s program in international environmental law at George Washington University. “I was working in parallel at an NGO in Washington at the time, the Center for International Environmental Law. That was right in the middle of this Washington policy bubble that also exists in Brussels. That’s what shaped me a lot,” Reichert explains.

Monitoring 130 European projects

He joined the Centrum für europäische Politik (Center for European Policy, CEP), which was founded at that time, in 2008 via a position at the World Bank and an academic position in Tübingen. The think tank regularly issues briefings on current issues and also provides experts in parliaments. Discussions with political decision-makers are part of the daily work routine. “That also distinguishes us somewhat from the university sector. Whenever we analyze something, we try to get a broad picture,” says Reichert. As a lawyer, he says, he has to consider a lot of technical questions to get to the core of the issues.

At CEP, he heads the Environment, Energy, Climate, and Transport department and accordingly always has to keep track of all possible movements in Brussels. “I spend a not inconsiderable amount of my daily working time monitoring developments. Really every day. And that’s where my 14 years of experience certainly come in handy, so I know where to look, that I know when something is moving,” Reichert explains.

He reads through all the new papers and dossiers, so he is always up to date. At the moment, he says, he’s dealing with about 130 projects at the EU level. “130 projects that don’t keep us busy every day or every week or every month, but that will keep us busy for the next two or three years. We won’t be able to comment on everything, but just know what’s going on.” That way, Reichert explains, you can also set a selection at the right time and contribute to the discussion with a particular opinion or analysis and provide impetus.

Rise of conflicts over water

What he learned during his time at the World Bank was that environmental and climate issues can lead to serious upheavals. “Back then, I experienced that states don’t talk to each other at all, that it goes as far as armed conflict when it comes to vital resources like water,” he recalls.

The area of water access in particular still occupies him intensively today, which is why he also travels to international congresses and contributes as a lawyer. Conflicts over water will continue to increase as a result of climate change. Reichert also sees this in his work in Europe. “It will also become important for Germany. After all, we in Germany think we always have enough water. But the Spanish, the Portuguese, they’re already fighting fiercely over certain deposits.” Those hopes and motives that prompted Götz Reichert to become involved in environmental and climate policy 30 years ago will probably keep him busy for many years to come. Constantin Eckner