The German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs spoke of a “great success” and “ambitious targets” after the energy ministers adopted their positions on the Renewable Energies Directive and the Energy Efficiency Directive yesterday. However, the Council’s targets fell short in several respects of what the Commission and Parliament want to achieve in view of the current energy crisis. For example, the ambition for the industrial use of hydrogen was weakened. The usually rather reserved Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson voiced clear criticism. And Sven Giegold (Greens), state secretary in the BMWK, also said, “Things can really only get greener now.” Manuel Berkel has the details.
Tonight, the NATO summit starts in Madrid as the third leg of the summit marathon after the G7 at Schloss Elmau. Against the backdrop of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has announced the biggest “general overhaul of the military alliance” since the end of the Cold War. The number of NRF rapid reaction forces is to be massively increased – from the current 40,000 to 300,000 soldiers. One focus of the summit will be the adoption of a new strategic concept, in which China is to be mentioned for the first time. There is also a need for talks on Turkey’s demands and on increasing the joint budget, as Stephan Israel reports.
The general orientations of the energy ministers on Monday were followed by words of praise from Berlin. The Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs wrote of a “great success” and “ambitious goals”. But it was its State Secretary Sven Giegold (Greens) who struck a different tone in a video message outside the Council building. Speaking about the upcoming trilogue with the Parliament, the former MEP said, “Things can really only get greener now.”
Although the Council advocated higher targets than in the current versions of the Renewables and Energy Efficiency Directives – these fall short in several respects of what the Commission and Parliament want to push through in the current energy crisis.
The efficiency targets remain at the nine percent originally proposed by the Commission in July 2021, but in view of the gas crisis, Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson and the Parliament had recently called for 13 percent. However, the BMWK considers it a success that at least the target for final energy is to be mandatory for the first time. Savings in primary energy, on the other hand, will remain voluntary. This opens up greater scope for energy-intensive hydrogen production or the expansion of coal-fired power generation to counter the gas shortage.
It remains to be seen how tangible the Commission’s options are for reacting to missed targets. Even though the EU-wide target for final energy is binding, there are only voluntary national targets for the member states. Germany has succeeded in ensuring that the Commission is given options for readjustment and that national governments must readjust if targets are missed if national plans do not add up to the EU-wide target. In practice, much is likely to depend on sanction options.
The Council is shying away from significantly higher ambitions for renewable energies. It does want to increase the target for 2030 from 32 to 40 percent, but not to 45 percent, as the Commission and Parliament had recently demanded. The ambition for the use of hydrogen in industry was also weakened. The target of 50 percent liquid or gaseous renewable fuels of non-biogenic origin (RFNBOs) has been postponed to 2035, with only a minimum of 35 percent by 2030.
The otherwise rather reserved energy commissioner had been unusually clear in criticizing this watering down before the energy ministers. The announcements from the industry make it possible to implement significantly higher hydrogen targets, Simson said.
The Renewable Energies Directive is also intended to simplify planning and approval. The simplifications are to take effect primarily in so-called go-to areas for solar and wind parks. German Economic Affairs Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) welcomed the approach and said he wanted to expand it. The idea of go-to-areas should be reflected in all legal acts relevant to renewable energy. He hopes for a Council decision in September, the minister said. All renewable targets otherwise existed only on paper.
The Council finally adopted the regulation on gas storage. It prescribes mandatory EU-wide minimum gas storage levels of 80 percent by the start of winter. In subsequent years, the level is to be 90 percent. The regulation also introduces a certification procedure for operators of gas storage facilities.
It is to be the most important summit of the military alliance in decades. In view of the threat posed by Russia and the war in Ukraine, NATO wants to position itself significantly better. Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced that the number of NRF rapid reaction forces would be expanded from the current 40,000 to 300,000 soldiers. Forget the time when French President Emmanuel Macron certified that NATO was “brain dead”. At the latest, the Russian attack on Ukraine was the electric shock that brought the alliance back to life.
The summit begins this evening with a gala dinner hosted by Spain’s King Felipe VI. On the first day of the summit on Wednesday, the heads of state and government are expected to adopt the new strategic concept, which for the first time will also address the threat posed by China. Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelenskiy will join the meeting by video. In the afternoon, the leaders of Georgia, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand will join the meeting. On Thursday, the focus is on the southern neighborhood, with Tunisia and Mauritania as guests. It remains to be seen whether the summit will succeed in officially inviting Finland and Sweden to join NATO.
At the summit, the heads of state and government of the 30 NATO members are expected to decide on an “enhanced forward presence” along the eastern flank. So far, the presence there has been more symbolic. Following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, the alliance had sent rotating combat battalions to the three Baltic states and Poland for the first time. In doing so, the alliance wanted to at least formally comply with the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act, which prohibits permanent troop deployments.
Germany already leads the multilateral battlegroup in Lithuania as a framework nation. Since the Russian attack on Ukraine, the allies have begun to reinforce these battlegroups and to send additional troops also to Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, and especially Romania. The point was to signal to Moscow that an attack on Estonia or Lithuania would always be an attack on the alliance. In NATO jargon, there is talk of the “trip wire”.
Now, from NATO’s point of view, the symbolic presence of the units with a strength of 1200 soldiers per country is no longer enough. The allies want to designate a multinational brigade of 3,000 to 5,000 men and women for each country from the Baltic to Romania. Germany has proposed a model that other framework nations could adopt. According to this model, the brigades would remain stationed in their home countries for the most part but would set up a permanent staff on site, practice regularly in the field, store heavy military equipment and ammunition, and be ready to be called up at short notice in the event of an emergency. This is expected to result in greater flexibility and, of course, lower costs.
The second focus is the adoption of the new strategic concept. The current situation picture is hopelessly outdated. When it was adopted in 2010, then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was still at the table as a welcome guest, and Moscow was praised as a “strategic partner”. NATO has indeed long sought to build cooperation with Moscow. Shortly before the attack on Ukraine, Russia withdrew entirely from the Nato-Russia Council. “Russia is today the greatest and most direct threat to our security,” Jens Stoltenberg said Monday. The wording is likely to be similar in the strategic concept.
For the first time, China will also be mentioned there. Is China an enemy, a systemic rival, a possible partner, or a mixture of all of these? Experts from the allies are likely to be fine-tuning wording right up to the start of the summit on Wednesday. The US sees China and Russia as threats on a similar scale. But some of the Europeans, led by Germany, want to draw a clear distinction between the two countries. Russia, they say, is the main challenge for NATO. Relations with China are more complex than with Russia, and there are not only risks, diplomats say.
Actually, the admission of the two countries should only be a formality: Finland and Sweden announced their intention to join NATO shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine began. But at the last moment, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan vetoed the move. The two countries are to meet Turkish conditions first. Erdoğan accuses Finland and Sweden in particular of not acting decisively enough against sympathizers of the banned Kurdish organization PKK on their territory.
Not all Turkish demands are transparent. Erdoğan may also be concerned with restrictions on arms exports imposed by some NATO members in response to Turkish forces’ crackdown on Kurds in Syria. Or he may want US President Joe Biden to allow the delivery of F-16 fighter jets, which have been blocked since Turkey bought a Russian air defense system.
Stoltenberg said Monday that he was glad that President Erdogan had accepted his invitation to meet Finnish President Sauli Niinistö and Sweden’s Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson today in Madrid before the start of the summit. He said he could not promise anything, but everything would be done to make progress because Finland’s and Sweden’s applications for membership were “historic”.
Expectations at NATO headquarters have recently been rather subdued. Sweden’s position on the PKK is crystal clear, said Prime Minister Andersson after a meeting with Stoltenberg in Brussels on Monday. In addition, legislative changes are being prepared to better prosecute membership in terrorist organizations.
No NATO summit is complete without a discussion about burden-sharing and money. However, things are unlikely to get as heated as they did at the summit with Donald Trump. The then US president had once accused the European allies of spending too little on common security and even threatened to leave. Joe Biden comes as a friend and convinced transatlanticist. In any case, the burden-sharing situation now looks better, at least on paper. 2022 will be the eighth year in a row in which European allies and Canada will have spent more on defense, Stoltenberg said.
The NATO secretary general put the additional investment since 2014 at $350 billion. Nine member states had now reached the two percent target for defense spending. Nineteen NATO states planned to do so by 2024, including Germany. However, according to Stoltenberg, the two-percent target is increasingly seen as a minimum, not an upper limit.
The rather modest joint budget of the military alliance of around €2.6 billion per year, which Stoltenberg wants to increase, has been controversial until recently. The funds are used to finance the headquarters, the command structures, and the AWACS aircraft for air surveillance. France has so far been opposed to increasing the budget, which Stoltenberg wants to use to relieve troop contributors along the eastern flank and to finance joint capabilities in the fight against hybrid warfare, for example.
The face of the German electrical and digital industry in Brussels holds the title of Dr. phil. in political science, comparative literature, and art history. Does that fit together? When Oliver Blank, Head of European Affairs at the German Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers’ Association (ZVEI), tells us how he got there, a common thread does emerge.
“I originally wanted to become a journalist and write for the feature section or the business section of the FAZ. I chose my fields of study accordingly.” However, interest then shifted more and more in the direction of politics. After studying for a master’s degree in the US, gaining initial professional experience in an advertising agency, and earning his doctorate, he found his destiny: The interface between politics and business is what interests him. “That’s where you end up pretty quickly with an association.”
His first association employer was the VDMA. At that time, shortly before the turn of the millennium, everything was geared toward information technology and Europe. Blank went to Brussels and co-founded the EICTA association there in 1999, which was renamed Digitaleurope in 2009. He spends four years setting up the structures on the ground. “That was my first European job. That’s how I got into this world.” Things changed for Blank in his private life, too. In 2001, his daughter was born, and in 2002, his son. The young family commutes between Brussels and Frankfurt am Main.
That’s when the offer to join the ZVEI’s executive board in Frankfurt came at just the right time in 2003. At the time, Blank was one of the few people without an engineering background. But it is his skills that are needed, such as strong communication skills and political understanding. After all, he is to build up the European branch of the association.
Oliver Blank soon felt at home in the industry. “What fascinates me about the electrical industry to this day is that it is very much a medium-sized business, and you realize how important small and medium-sized companies are to Europe,” he says. Working with them is “huge fun” for him because their commitment to society is not a fad but has always been part of their motivation. “They are involved in their regions, do a lot in education and training. They’ve been doing what’s now called corporate social responsibility for decades.”
When the children grow up, he goes back to Brussels. He sets up the Brussels office of ZVEI. The office grows, expanding its scope under his leadership from Europe to China and, since May of this year, to everything international. “I’ve always been good at pushing new things,” Blank says. He never went anywhere, he says, where there were already ready-made structures. Another professional focus: bringing people together, even those with different views and positions – and thus enabling compromises.
He is therefore very concerned about international developments and increasing polarization. Both the war in Europe and China’s isolation and, not least, the uncertainty about where the US is heading in the next few years, despite all the euphoria about the new transatlantic partnership, are making it more difficult to get people talking to each other. “The global challenges are very great at the moment, and the need for orientation among our member companies is extremely high,” says Blank.
Analyses and forecasts are becoming increasingly important. At the same time, he feels that politicians are increasingly in crisis mode and are less and less able to shape things. Complexity, speed, and a constant prioritization have also arrived in his everyday work. “That wasn’t the case at the beginning of the 2000s. Back then, many EU commissioners didn’t even have a computer on their desk.”
At the end of a busy day, Oliver Blank likes to switch off while cooking. “That’s when I’m monothematic,” he says. In other words, he thinks of nothing but the dish he is preparing. Ulrike Christl
The German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs spoke of a “great success” and “ambitious targets” after the energy ministers adopted their positions on the Renewable Energies Directive and the Energy Efficiency Directive yesterday. However, the Council’s targets fell short in several respects of what the Commission and Parliament want to achieve in view of the current energy crisis. For example, the ambition for the industrial use of hydrogen was weakened. The usually rather reserved Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson voiced clear criticism. And Sven Giegold (Greens), state secretary in the BMWK, also said, “Things can really only get greener now.” Manuel Berkel has the details.
Tonight, the NATO summit starts in Madrid as the third leg of the summit marathon after the G7 at Schloss Elmau. Against the backdrop of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has announced the biggest “general overhaul of the military alliance” since the end of the Cold War. The number of NRF rapid reaction forces is to be massively increased – from the current 40,000 to 300,000 soldiers. One focus of the summit will be the adoption of a new strategic concept, in which China is to be mentioned for the first time. There is also a need for talks on Turkey’s demands and on increasing the joint budget, as Stephan Israel reports.
The general orientations of the energy ministers on Monday were followed by words of praise from Berlin. The Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs wrote of a “great success” and “ambitious goals”. But it was its State Secretary Sven Giegold (Greens) who struck a different tone in a video message outside the Council building. Speaking about the upcoming trilogue with the Parliament, the former MEP said, “Things can really only get greener now.”
Although the Council advocated higher targets than in the current versions of the Renewables and Energy Efficiency Directives – these fall short in several respects of what the Commission and Parliament want to push through in the current energy crisis.
The efficiency targets remain at the nine percent originally proposed by the Commission in July 2021, but in view of the gas crisis, Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson and the Parliament had recently called for 13 percent. However, the BMWK considers it a success that at least the target for final energy is to be mandatory for the first time. Savings in primary energy, on the other hand, will remain voluntary. This opens up greater scope for energy-intensive hydrogen production or the expansion of coal-fired power generation to counter the gas shortage.
It remains to be seen how tangible the Commission’s options are for reacting to missed targets. Even though the EU-wide target for final energy is binding, there are only voluntary national targets for the member states. Germany has succeeded in ensuring that the Commission is given options for readjustment and that national governments must readjust if targets are missed if national plans do not add up to the EU-wide target. In practice, much is likely to depend on sanction options.
The Council is shying away from significantly higher ambitions for renewable energies. It does want to increase the target for 2030 from 32 to 40 percent, but not to 45 percent, as the Commission and Parliament had recently demanded. The ambition for the use of hydrogen in industry was also weakened. The target of 50 percent liquid or gaseous renewable fuels of non-biogenic origin (RFNBOs) has been postponed to 2035, with only a minimum of 35 percent by 2030.
The otherwise rather reserved energy commissioner had been unusually clear in criticizing this watering down before the energy ministers. The announcements from the industry make it possible to implement significantly higher hydrogen targets, Simson said.
The Renewable Energies Directive is also intended to simplify planning and approval. The simplifications are to take effect primarily in so-called go-to areas for solar and wind parks. German Economic Affairs Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) welcomed the approach and said he wanted to expand it. The idea of go-to-areas should be reflected in all legal acts relevant to renewable energy. He hopes for a Council decision in September, the minister said. All renewable targets otherwise existed only on paper.
The Council finally adopted the regulation on gas storage. It prescribes mandatory EU-wide minimum gas storage levels of 80 percent by the start of winter. In subsequent years, the level is to be 90 percent. The regulation also introduces a certification procedure for operators of gas storage facilities.
It is to be the most important summit of the military alliance in decades. In view of the threat posed by Russia and the war in Ukraine, NATO wants to position itself significantly better. Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced that the number of NRF rapid reaction forces would be expanded from the current 40,000 to 300,000 soldiers. Forget the time when French President Emmanuel Macron certified that NATO was “brain dead”. At the latest, the Russian attack on Ukraine was the electric shock that brought the alliance back to life.
The summit begins this evening with a gala dinner hosted by Spain’s King Felipe VI. On the first day of the summit on Wednesday, the heads of state and government are expected to adopt the new strategic concept, which for the first time will also address the threat posed by China. Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelenskiy will join the meeting by video. In the afternoon, the leaders of Georgia, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand will join the meeting. On Thursday, the focus is on the southern neighborhood, with Tunisia and Mauritania as guests. It remains to be seen whether the summit will succeed in officially inviting Finland and Sweden to join NATO.
At the summit, the heads of state and government of the 30 NATO members are expected to decide on an “enhanced forward presence” along the eastern flank. So far, the presence there has been more symbolic. Following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, the alliance had sent rotating combat battalions to the three Baltic states and Poland for the first time. In doing so, the alliance wanted to at least formally comply with the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act, which prohibits permanent troop deployments.
Germany already leads the multilateral battlegroup in Lithuania as a framework nation. Since the Russian attack on Ukraine, the allies have begun to reinforce these battlegroups and to send additional troops also to Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, and especially Romania. The point was to signal to Moscow that an attack on Estonia or Lithuania would always be an attack on the alliance. In NATO jargon, there is talk of the “trip wire”.
Now, from NATO’s point of view, the symbolic presence of the units with a strength of 1200 soldiers per country is no longer enough. The allies want to designate a multinational brigade of 3,000 to 5,000 men and women for each country from the Baltic to Romania. Germany has proposed a model that other framework nations could adopt. According to this model, the brigades would remain stationed in their home countries for the most part but would set up a permanent staff on site, practice regularly in the field, store heavy military equipment and ammunition, and be ready to be called up at short notice in the event of an emergency. This is expected to result in greater flexibility and, of course, lower costs.
The second focus is the adoption of the new strategic concept. The current situation picture is hopelessly outdated. When it was adopted in 2010, then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was still at the table as a welcome guest, and Moscow was praised as a “strategic partner”. NATO has indeed long sought to build cooperation with Moscow. Shortly before the attack on Ukraine, Russia withdrew entirely from the Nato-Russia Council. “Russia is today the greatest and most direct threat to our security,” Jens Stoltenberg said Monday. The wording is likely to be similar in the strategic concept.
For the first time, China will also be mentioned there. Is China an enemy, a systemic rival, a possible partner, or a mixture of all of these? Experts from the allies are likely to be fine-tuning wording right up to the start of the summit on Wednesday. The US sees China and Russia as threats on a similar scale. But some of the Europeans, led by Germany, want to draw a clear distinction between the two countries. Russia, they say, is the main challenge for NATO. Relations with China are more complex than with Russia, and there are not only risks, diplomats say.
Actually, the admission of the two countries should only be a formality: Finland and Sweden announced their intention to join NATO shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine began. But at the last moment, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan vetoed the move. The two countries are to meet Turkish conditions first. Erdoğan accuses Finland and Sweden in particular of not acting decisively enough against sympathizers of the banned Kurdish organization PKK on their territory.
Not all Turkish demands are transparent. Erdoğan may also be concerned with restrictions on arms exports imposed by some NATO members in response to Turkish forces’ crackdown on Kurds in Syria. Or he may want US President Joe Biden to allow the delivery of F-16 fighter jets, which have been blocked since Turkey bought a Russian air defense system.
Stoltenberg said Monday that he was glad that President Erdogan had accepted his invitation to meet Finnish President Sauli Niinistö and Sweden’s Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson today in Madrid before the start of the summit. He said he could not promise anything, but everything would be done to make progress because Finland’s and Sweden’s applications for membership were “historic”.
Expectations at NATO headquarters have recently been rather subdued. Sweden’s position on the PKK is crystal clear, said Prime Minister Andersson after a meeting with Stoltenberg in Brussels on Monday. In addition, legislative changes are being prepared to better prosecute membership in terrorist organizations.
No NATO summit is complete without a discussion about burden-sharing and money. However, things are unlikely to get as heated as they did at the summit with Donald Trump. The then US president had once accused the European allies of spending too little on common security and even threatened to leave. Joe Biden comes as a friend and convinced transatlanticist. In any case, the burden-sharing situation now looks better, at least on paper. 2022 will be the eighth year in a row in which European allies and Canada will have spent more on defense, Stoltenberg said.
The NATO secretary general put the additional investment since 2014 at $350 billion. Nine member states had now reached the two percent target for defense spending. Nineteen NATO states planned to do so by 2024, including Germany. However, according to Stoltenberg, the two-percent target is increasingly seen as a minimum, not an upper limit.
The rather modest joint budget of the military alliance of around €2.6 billion per year, which Stoltenberg wants to increase, has been controversial until recently. The funds are used to finance the headquarters, the command structures, and the AWACS aircraft for air surveillance. France has so far been opposed to increasing the budget, which Stoltenberg wants to use to relieve troop contributors along the eastern flank and to finance joint capabilities in the fight against hybrid warfare, for example.
The face of the German electrical and digital industry in Brussels holds the title of Dr. phil. in political science, comparative literature, and art history. Does that fit together? When Oliver Blank, Head of European Affairs at the German Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers’ Association (ZVEI), tells us how he got there, a common thread does emerge.
“I originally wanted to become a journalist and write for the feature section or the business section of the FAZ. I chose my fields of study accordingly.” However, interest then shifted more and more in the direction of politics. After studying for a master’s degree in the US, gaining initial professional experience in an advertising agency, and earning his doctorate, he found his destiny: The interface between politics and business is what interests him. “That’s where you end up pretty quickly with an association.”
His first association employer was the VDMA. At that time, shortly before the turn of the millennium, everything was geared toward information technology and Europe. Blank went to Brussels and co-founded the EICTA association there in 1999, which was renamed Digitaleurope in 2009. He spends four years setting up the structures on the ground. “That was my first European job. That’s how I got into this world.” Things changed for Blank in his private life, too. In 2001, his daughter was born, and in 2002, his son. The young family commutes between Brussels and Frankfurt am Main.
That’s when the offer to join the ZVEI’s executive board in Frankfurt came at just the right time in 2003. At the time, Blank was one of the few people without an engineering background. But it is his skills that are needed, such as strong communication skills and political understanding. After all, he is to build up the European branch of the association.
Oliver Blank soon felt at home in the industry. “What fascinates me about the electrical industry to this day is that it is very much a medium-sized business, and you realize how important small and medium-sized companies are to Europe,” he says. Working with them is “huge fun” for him because their commitment to society is not a fad but has always been part of their motivation. “They are involved in their regions, do a lot in education and training. They’ve been doing what’s now called corporate social responsibility for decades.”
When the children grow up, he goes back to Brussels. He sets up the Brussels office of ZVEI. The office grows, expanding its scope under his leadership from Europe to China and, since May of this year, to everything international. “I’ve always been good at pushing new things,” Blank says. He never went anywhere, he says, where there were already ready-made structures. Another professional focus: bringing people together, even those with different views and positions – and thus enabling compromises.
He is therefore very concerned about international developments and increasing polarization. Both the war in Europe and China’s isolation and, not least, the uncertainty about where the US is heading in the next few years, despite all the euphoria about the new transatlantic partnership, are making it more difficult to get people talking to each other. “The global challenges are very great at the moment, and the need for orientation among our member companies is extremely high,” says Blank.
Analyses and forecasts are becoming increasingly important. At the same time, he feels that politicians are increasingly in crisis mode and are less and less able to shape things. Complexity, speed, and a constant prioritization have also arrived in his everyday work. “That wasn’t the case at the beginning of the 2000s. Back then, many EU commissioners didn’t even have a computer on their desk.”
At the end of a busy day, Oliver Blank likes to switch off while cooking. “That’s when I’m monothematic,” he says. In other words, he thinks of nothing but the dish he is preparing. Ulrike Christl
