The German government has been negotiating its China strategy for many months. The coalition partners do not seem to have reached any real agreement – although the government will adopt the paper today, it will not present it jointly. Apparently, the differences are too great.
Only Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock will make a public appearance today: She will give a speech to the China experts at Merics at lunchtime. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had also chosen the Beijing-sanctioned think tank as the venue for her keynote speech on China policy. It is no coincidence: Both politicians propagate a course of selective dissociation from Beijing.
Baerbock and Co. view President Xi Jinping’s increasingly authoritarian-nationalist policies with concern and want to prepare as well as possible for a military attack on Taiwan, for example. Another camp is more concerned with the here and now: China does not yet pose a recognizable threat, so a gentle risk reduction is sufficient.
We will report in detail on the details of the strategy in the next issue.
Rarely has a vote in the EU Parliament been awaited with so much suspense. After weeks of political wrangling over allegations of manipulation and pressure from Green Deal Commissioner Frans Timmermans, the verdict was finally in: the MEPs gathered in Strasbourg yesterday (Wednesday) approved the controversial draft nature restoration regulation with 336 votes in favor, 300 against and 13 abstentions. Shortly before, the parliamentarians had rejected a motion tabled by Christian Democrats (EPP) to reject the law as a whole by a majority of twelve votes.
The law had recently become a symbol of the political tensions surrounding European environmental policy, barely a year before the European elections. The adoption of Parliament’s position means that the trilogue negotiations between the Commission, Parliament and the member states can begin. However, this has not necessarily made the further path of the law any easier.
Admittedly, the EU Parliament adopted an amendment to continue working on the basis of the Council’s position. However, the Council’s level of ambition is significantly lower than the Commission’s proposal, which is why even the supporters of the renaturation law – Greens, Social Democrats, Leftists and some Liberals – could only celebrate cautiously yesterday. The text finally adopted is a mixture of the Council position and the amendments of the Parliament, explained the rapporteur responsible for the renaturation law, Cesar Luena (S&D).
“We are in a bizarre situation where the Parliament’s text is less ambitious than the Council‘s”, admitted Pascal Canfin (Renew), chairman of the Environment Committee. Normally, he said, it’s the other way around. The whole part dealing with agriculture has been watered down, he said. “This is an important aspect that we want to negotiate with the Council”, Canfin announced.
Rapporteur Luena is particularly pained by the deletion of an article on the restoration of agricultural ecosystems, including targets for the rewetting of drained peat bogs. The ultra-conservative EKR group had requested this and received a majority for it.
Luean and Canfin stressed that it was better to have a watered-down text than no text at all. Most importantly, the vote put an end to the “hostage-taking” of an essential law of the Green Deal by the EPP under Manfred Weber, they explained. The text had not been watered down, Weber countered. “It was changed to make sure it could be properly implemented on the ground.”
Former French Environment Minister Canfin concluded by highlighting the important global signal given by the adoption of the text in the EU Parliament a few months before COP28. On the international climate stage, he said, the EU has been pushing for more ambition on biodiversity. “We are under scrutiny”, he said, stressing that the EU’s credibility is at stake in international negotiations on climate and biodiversity. “If the EU had rejected the text, it would have sent the signal that it is pushing other countries to do something that it itself doesn’t want to implement at home.”
In detail, the compromise now reached means that the original goal of the law is slightly modified. Although the goal remains to introduce renaturation measures for at least 20 percent of all land and marine areas in the EU by 2030. However, this quota is to be applied only to habitats that are not in “good condition”. In addition, the target does not have to be achieved for each habitat group individually, but for all of them on average.
Another weakening compared to the Commission’s proposal is in the prohibition of deterioration of habitats that are subject to restoration measures. The new rules will only apply in the case of “significant” deterioration, the Council decided. In the case of sites that are already in good condition or where restoration measures have not yet been implemented, especially outside Natura 2000 sites, “member states will endeavor to take the necessary measures to prevent significant deterioration”. This implies an effort-based obligation rather than a results-based one.
The trilogue negotiations could also be complicated by the early parliamentary elections in Spain on July 23. Teresa Ribera, Spanish Minister for Ecological Change, announced that she would “do everything” to reach an agreement in the trilogue under the Spanish Council Presidency. However, she may soon no longer be part of the government, as a right-wing alliance of parties could take power.
The announced dispute on the open stage did not take place. The NATO summit in Vilnius ended quite harmoniously on Wednesday. Ukraine is moving closer to the military alliance than ever before, said NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg during his joint appearance with Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Both were at pains in unison to forget the differences of opinion in the alliance on the roadmap for Ukraine into NATO. The President of Ukraine did not repeat his demand for a date in the room with the heads of state and government, diplomats said.
Before arriving in Vilnius, Zelenskiy had described it as “absurd” in an indignant tweet that Ukraine was not given a time frame for membership. Diplomats puzzled over whether the Ukrainian president’s criticism was intended to secure changes to the vague wording in the summit communiqué. By the second day of the summit, disappointment had given way to satisfaction. Both sides had an interest in being able to present the summit as a success.
Ukraine’s path to NATO will be shortened from a two-step to a one-step process, Stoltenberg emphasized. Specifically, Ukraine’s allies will waive the so-called “Member Action Plan” (MAP), which candidates usually have to go through. However, Sweden and Finland recently did not have to complete the preliminary program either. The MAP is concerned, among other things, with the interoperability of the armed forces.
Stoltenberg further referred to extensive new pledges by the allies to support Ukraine with ammunition, long-range missiles and battle tanks. On the day of the summit, the new NATO-Ukraine Council, which can also be convened by Zelenskiy at any time, was held for the first time. According to the Secretary General, the allies and Ukraine will meet here on an equal footing, unlike in a previous format.
“We have positive news in terms of support packages from some of our partners”, Zelenskiy also stressed. He added that it is also important that Ukraine does not have to go through the MAP pre-program on its way to NATO. The new NATO-Ukraine Council, he said, must be an “instrument of integration”, not partnership. He said it was also positive that a framework agreement on security guarantees had been adopted by G7 leaders on the sidelines of the summit.
Exactly what these security guarantees will look like after the end of the war is an open question. For the time being, the aim is to support Ukraine “as long as necessary” and continuously with war material, as US President Joe Biden emphasized. For Zelenskiy, the security guarantees have the particular purpose of bridging the time until NATO membership. “I want this summit to be a success for everyone, including our soldiers, our citizens and children”, the Ukrainian president said. His personal assessment: “The results of the summit are good, but if we had received an invitation, the result would have been optimal.”
Why couldn’t the allies agree on a clear roadmap for Ukraine toward accession? “Letting Ukraine in now would have meant that NATO is at war with Russia”, said Jake Sullivan, security adviser to the US President on the sidelines of the summit. However, there was never any talk of joining before the war ended. And for Moscow, the allies are already going too far even with just the security guarantees: “The G7’s security guarantees for Ukraine are damaging Russia’s security”, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
In addition to the USA, the fear of an escalation to the point of a world war was also the reason for Germany to slow down. Nobody wanted a world war, Zelenskiy countered. Stoltenberg was asked during his appearance before the media whether some member states wanted to leave the question of Ukraine’s NATO membership open in order to be able to use it as a bargaining chip with a view to later peace negotiations with Moscow, as was rumored. Ukraine will become a member of the alliance, and never before have the allies shown the way so clearly, the NATO Secretary General replied. Moreover, there would be no peace solution against Ukraine’s will.
“It is a missed opportunity for European security that there was no concrete roadmap and invitation for Ukraine to join NATO in Vilnius”, defense expert and CDU member of the Bundestag Roderich Kiesewetter criticized on Twitter. Russia understands this as weakness, he said.
Reinhard Bütikofer, foreign policy coordinator for the Greens in the EU Parliament, also wrote in a statement of a “step backward”. Germany and the United States had unfortunately prevented a reliable membership perspective. In order to avoid a crisis of confidence between Ukraine and NATO, more effective weapons support is now even more important.
What risks does a company pose to human rights and the environment through its business activities? What measures are needed to prevent and remedy them? And how can a company generally meet its due diligence obligations with a human rights approach? These are the questions Diana Sanabria is dealing with at the logistics company Hapag-Lloyd AG.
“No company can completely rule out human rights risks“, says the lawyer. For example, she says, you can’t say that unequal treatment doesn’t matter when the gender pay gap in the German labor market was 39 percent in 2022. She says that while human rights risks are not high in comparison for her own employer, the situation is different for the approximately 10,000 suppliers from all over the world.
As Senior Manager of the Supply Chain Act, Diana Sanabria has to pore over documents and maintain contacts with a wide range of stakeholders on a daily basis – from various departments within the company, works councils and trade unions to NGOs and universities. Together with her team, she also takes care of preparing the report on compliance with the due diligence requirements enshrined in German law for the responsible German Federal Office of Economic Affairs and Export Control (BAFA), as well as handling complaints, for example from potentially affected parties.
So far, this consists of her, the supervisor and another employee, and also involves several departments such as Compliance, Human Resources and Sustainability in different regions. Diana Sanabria also keeps an eye on the news situation. One example: “When the media reported on a truck strike in Gräfenhausen in Hesse three months ago, I checked it out immediately. There were no suppliers from us involved, otherwise we would have taken action”, she says.
Why she chose this position? “The Supply Chain Sourcing Act is like a baby to me that is only a few months old: I want to see it run, and run right.” The law came into effect at the beginning of the year and is the basis of her work. Hapag-Lloyd takes the issue very seriously, she says. “Just being hired with my approach to the issue is a statement.”
As a global economy officer at the Center for Mission and Ecumenism, Diana Sanabria was a member of the national board of the Clean Clothes Campaign, where she was responsible for the issue of due diligence at the national and European level. In this position, she campaigned for the law.
As a native Colombian, she knows the beginning of several supply chains, Sanabria says. One example: “It takes a lot of water to mine the coal that is delivered to Germany. And then the indigenous communities that live in the affected regions lack that.” She speaks German with almost no accent.
She only started learning the language as an adult – during her studies in her hometown of Bogotá. It was there that she met her future husband, who is from Hamburg. With the help of a DAAD scholarship, Diana Sanabria then completed her master’s degree at the University of Konstanz.
On the side, the Hamburg resident by choice is involved in the Doughnut Coalition association for a socio-ecological transformation of the city, which was named after the concept of the same name by British economics professor Kate Raworth. She also mentors law students at Bucerius Law School who want to become professional advocates for sustainability through due diligence in the near future. In many cases, these ESG experts are still lacking, and she would like to change that. So that companies can make better decisions. And so that countries like Colombia can make progress with change. Janna Degener-Storr
From the water, the perspective on cities changes. Normally, MEPs travel by land to the European Parliament’s headquarters in Strasbourg. Some come in their own cars, others are driven by the motor pool. Some cycle. A conspicuously large number come by streetcar.
But you can also take the boat. Up to 40 times a day, a fully glazed launch sails to the parliament building across the canal that surrounds the historic city center with the cathedral. The boat departs about 200 meters from the cathedral. The trip takes 17 minutes. And just like on a bus, each passenger can signal his or her wish to stop at Parliament by pressing a button.
From April to September, there are special trips during the session weeks for anyone who wants to go to the EP. Each morning and evening, anyone with an access pass can board for free. The departure times, at 8 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. in the evening, give an indication of the core working hours in the High House of the European sovereign. Will the contemplative journey by water also change the view of one or the other on the political business? mgr
The German government has been negotiating its China strategy for many months. The coalition partners do not seem to have reached any real agreement – although the government will adopt the paper today, it will not present it jointly. Apparently, the differences are too great.
Only Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock will make a public appearance today: She will give a speech to the China experts at Merics at lunchtime. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had also chosen the Beijing-sanctioned think tank as the venue for her keynote speech on China policy. It is no coincidence: Both politicians propagate a course of selective dissociation from Beijing.
Baerbock and Co. view President Xi Jinping’s increasingly authoritarian-nationalist policies with concern and want to prepare as well as possible for a military attack on Taiwan, for example. Another camp is more concerned with the here and now: China does not yet pose a recognizable threat, so a gentle risk reduction is sufficient.
We will report in detail on the details of the strategy in the next issue.
Rarely has a vote in the EU Parliament been awaited with so much suspense. After weeks of political wrangling over allegations of manipulation and pressure from Green Deal Commissioner Frans Timmermans, the verdict was finally in: the MEPs gathered in Strasbourg yesterday (Wednesday) approved the controversial draft nature restoration regulation with 336 votes in favor, 300 against and 13 abstentions. Shortly before, the parliamentarians had rejected a motion tabled by Christian Democrats (EPP) to reject the law as a whole by a majority of twelve votes.
The law had recently become a symbol of the political tensions surrounding European environmental policy, barely a year before the European elections. The adoption of Parliament’s position means that the trilogue negotiations between the Commission, Parliament and the member states can begin. However, this has not necessarily made the further path of the law any easier.
Admittedly, the EU Parliament adopted an amendment to continue working on the basis of the Council’s position. However, the Council’s level of ambition is significantly lower than the Commission’s proposal, which is why even the supporters of the renaturation law – Greens, Social Democrats, Leftists and some Liberals – could only celebrate cautiously yesterday. The text finally adopted is a mixture of the Council position and the amendments of the Parliament, explained the rapporteur responsible for the renaturation law, Cesar Luena (S&D).
“We are in a bizarre situation where the Parliament’s text is less ambitious than the Council‘s”, admitted Pascal Canfin (Renew), chairman of the Environment Committee. Normally, he said, it’s the other way around. The whole part dealing with agriculture has been watered down, he said. “This is an important aspect that we want to negotiate with the Council”, Canfin announced.
Rapporteur Luena is particularly pained by the deletion of an article on the restoration of agricultural ecosystems, including targets for the rewetting of drained peat bogs. The ultra-conservative EKR group had requested this and received a majority for it.
Luean and Canfin stressed that it was better to have a watered-down text than no text at all. Most importantly, the vote put an end to the “hostage-taking” of an essential law of the Green Deal by the EPP under Manfred Weber, they explained. The text had not been watered down, Weber countered. “It was changed to make sure it could be properly implemented on the ground.”
Former French Environment Minister Canfin concluded by highlighting the important global signal given by the adoption of the text in the EU Parliament a few months before COP28. On the international climate stage, he said, the EU has been pushing for more ambition on biodiversity. “We are under scrutiny”, he said, stressing that the EU’s credibility is at stake in international negotiations on climate and biodiversity. “If the EU had rejected the text, it would have sent the signal that it is pushing other countries to do something that it itself doesn’t want to implement at home.”
In detail, the compromise now reached means that the original goal of the law is slightly modified. Although the goal remains to introduce renaturation measures for at least 20 percent of all land and marine areas in the EU by 2030. However, this quota is to be applied only to habitats that are not in “good condition”. In addition, the target does not have to be achieved for each habitat group individually, but for all of them on average.
Another weakening compared to the Commission’s proposal is in the prohibition of deterioration of habitats that are subject to restoration measures. The new rules will only apply in the case of “significant” deterioration, the Council decided. In the case of sites that are already in good condition or where restoration measures have not yet been implemented, especially outside Natura 2000 sites, “member states will endeavor to take the necessary measures to prevent significant deterioration”. This implies an effort-based obligation rather than a results-based one.
The trilogue negotiations could also be complicated by the early parliamentary elections in Spain on July 23. Teresa Ribera, Spanish Minister for Ecological Change, announced that she would “do everything” to reach an agreement in the trilogue under the Spanish Council Presidency. However, she may soon no longer be part of the government, as a right-wing alliance of parties could take power.
The announced dispute on the open stage did not take place. The NATO summit in Vilnius ended quite harmoniously on Wednesday. Ukraine is moving closer to the military alliance than ever before, said NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg during his joint appearance with Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Both were at pains in unison to forget the differences of opinion in the alliance on the roadmap for Ukraine into NATO. The President of Ukraine did not repeat his demand for a date in the room with the heads of state and government, diplomats said.
Before arriving in Vilnius, Zelenskiy had described it as “absurd” in an indignant tweet that Ukraine was not given a time frame for membership. Diplomats puzzled over whether the Ukrainian president’s criticism was intended to secure changes to the vague wording in the summit communiqué. By the second day of the summit, disappointment had given way to satisfaction. Both sides had an interest in being able to present the summit as a success.
Ukraine’s path to NATO will be shortened from a two-step to a one-step process, Stoltenberg emphasized. Specifically, Ukraine’s allies will waive the so-called “Member Action Plan” (MAP), which candidates usually have to go through. However, Sweden and Finland recently did not have to complete the preliminary program either. The MAP is concerned, among other things, with the interoperability of the armed forces.
Stoltenberg further referred to extensive new pledges by the allies to support Ukraine with ammunition, long-range missiles and battle tanks. On the day of the summit, the new NATO-Ukraine Council, which can also be convened by Zelenskiy at any time, was held for the first time. According to the Secretary General, the allies and Ukraine will meet here on an equal footing, unlike in a previous format.
“We have positive news in terms of support packages from some of our partners”, Zelenskiy also stressed. He added that it is also important that Ukraine does not have to go through the MAP pre-program on its way to NATO. The new NATO-Ukraine Council, he said, must be an “instrument of integration”, not partnership. He said it was also positive that a framework agreement on security guarantees had been adopted by G7 leaders on the sidelines of the summit.
Exactly what these security guarantees will look like after the end of the war is an open question. For the time being, the aim is to support Ukraine “as long as necessary” and continuously with war material, as US President Joe Biden emphasized. For Zelenskiy, the security guarantees have the particular purpose of bridging the time until NATO membership. “I want this summit to be a success for everyone, including our soldiers, our citizens and children”, the Ukrainian president said. His personal assessment: “The results of the summit are good, but if we had received an invitation, the result would have been optimal.”
Why couldn’t the allies agree on a clear roadmap for Ukraine toward accession? “Letting Ukraine in now would have meant that NATO is at war with Russia”, said Jake Sullivan, security adviser to the US President on the sidelines of the summit. However, there was never any talk of joining before the war ended. And for Moscow, the allies are already going too far even with just the security guarantees: “The G7’s security guarantees for Ukraine are damaging Russia’s security”, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
In addition to the USA, the fear of an escalation to the point of a world war was also the reason for Germany to slow down. Nobody wanted a world war, Zelenskiy countered. Stoltenberg was asked during his appearance before the media whether some member states wanted to leave the question of Ukraine’s NATO membership open in order to be able to use it as a bargaining chip with a view to later peace negotiations with Moscow, as was rumored. Ukraine will become a member of the alliance, and never before have the allies shown the way so clearly, the NATO Secretary General replied. Moreover, there would be no peace solution against Ukraine’s will.
“It is a missed opportunity for European security that there was no concrete roadmap and invitation for Ukraine to join NATO in Vilnius”, defense expert and CDU member of the Bundestag Roderich Kiesewetter criticized on Twitter. Russia understands this as weakness, he said.
Reinhard Bütikofer, foreign policy coordinator for the Greens in the EU Parliament, also wrote in a statement of a “step backward”. Germany and the United States had unfortunately prevented a reliable membership perspective. In order to avoid a crisis of confidence between Ukraine and NATO, more effective weapons support is now even more important.
What risks does a company pose to human rights and the environment through its business activities? What measures are needed to prevent and remedy them? And how can a company generally meet its due diligence obligations with a human rights approach? These are the questions Diana Sanabria is dealing with at the logistics company Hapag-Lloyd AG.
“No company can completely rule out human rights risks“, says the lawyer. For example, she says, you can’t say that unequal treatment doesn’t matter when the gender pay gap in the German labor market was 39 percent in 2022. She says that while human rights risks are not high in comparison for her own employer, the situation is different for the approximately 10,000 suppliers from all over the world.
As Senior Manager of the Supply Chain Act, Diana Sanabria has to pore over documents and maintain contacts with a wide range of stakeholders on a daily basis – from various departments within the company, works councils and trade unions to NGOs and universities. Together with her team, she also takes care of preparing the report on compliance with the due diligence requirements enshrined in German law for the responsible German Federal Office of Economic Affairs and Export Control (BAFA), as well as handling complaints, for example from potentially affected parties.
So far, this consists of her, the supervisor and another employee, and also involves several departments such as Compliance, Human Resources and Sustainability in different regions. Diana Sanabria also keeps an eye on the news situation. One example: “When the media reported on a truck strike in Gräfenhausen in Hesse three months ago, I checked it out immediately. There were no suppliers from us involved, otherwise we would have taken action”, she says.
Why she chose this position? “The Supply Chain Sourcing Act is like a baby to me that is only a few months old: I want to see it run, and run right.” The law came into effect at the beginning of the year and is the basis of her work. Hapag-Lloyd takes the issue very seriously, she says. “Just being hired with my approach to the issue is a statement.”
As a global economy officer at the Center for Mission and Ecumenism, Diana Sanabria was a member of the national board of the Clean Clothes Campaign, where she was responsible for the issue of due diligence at the national and European level. In this position, she campaigned for the law.
As a native Colombian, she knows the beginning of several supply chains, Sanabria says. One example: “It takes a lot of water to mine the coal that is delivered to Germany. And then the indigenous communities that live in the affected regions lack that.” She speaks German with almost no accent.
She only started learning the language as an adult – during her studies in her hometown of Bogotá. It was there that she met her future husband, who is from Hamburg. With the help of a DAAD scholarship, Diana Sanabria then completed her master’s degree at the University of Konstanz.
On the side, the Hamburg resident by choice is involved in the Doughnut Coalition association for a socio-ecological transformation of the city, which was named after the concept of the same name by British economics professor Kate Raworth. She also mentors law students at Bucerius Law School who want to become professional advocates for sustainability through due diligence in the near future. In many cases, these ESG experts are still lacking, and she would like to change that. So that companies can make better decisions. And so that countries like Colombia can make progress with change. Janna Degener-Storr
From the water, the perspective on cities changes. Normally, MEPs travel by land to the European Parliament’s headquarters in Strasbourg. Some come in their own cars, others are driven by the motor pool. Some cycle. A conspicuously large number come by streetcar.
But you can also take the boat. Up to 40 times a day, a fully glazed launch sails to the parliament building across the canal that surrounds the historic city center with the cathedral. The boat departs about 200 meters from the cathedral. The trip takes 17 minutes. And just like on a bus, each passenger can signal his or her wish to stop at Parliament by pressing a button.
From April to September, there are special trips during the session weeks for anyone who wants to go to the EP. Each morning and evening, anyone with an access pass can board for free. The departure times, at 8 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. in the evening, give an indication of the core working hours in the High House of the European sovereign. Will the contemplative journey by water also change the view of one or the other on the political business? mgr
