Europe Day is an opportunity for grand, symbolic gestures and inspiring, new impulses. But in Strasbourg, Chancellor Olaf Scholz remained hesitant and vague during his speech in parliament yesterday. Read Markus Grabitz’s analysis to find out which ideas from the coalition agreement between the two parties Scholz fell short of.
Tomorrow’s parliamentary vote on the AI Act, on the other hand, will be about the thicket of details in regular legislation. Members of Parliament will have to fight their way through 3312 amendments. Corinna Visser outlines the most important lines of conflict.
In today’s News, I explain why Minister for Economic Affairs Robert Habeck’s push for an industrial electricity price could be thwarted by the Council Presidency’s latest compromise proposal on the electricity market reform.
Last but not least, Europe’s identity is the subject of André Wilkens & Paweł Zerka’s Opinion. In dealing with Russian citizens and Russian culture, Europe must emphasize its pluralistic culture and thus confirm its self-image and image in the world, the authors write.
Olaf Scholz must have noticed how disappointed many members of parliament were with his speech. At the end of the hour-long debate that followed, in which he was criticized across party lines for lacking courage and initiative, the chancellor took the floor once again. He seemed transformed. Whereas in his actual speech he had read word for word from his manuscript, he now spoke freely and almost passionately. And he received more than polite applause for this – for example when he urged that the promise of accession to the Balkan countries should not be put off any longer.
The head of government of one of the 27 member states does not often get the opportunity to deliver a keynote speech in the European Parliament. But Scholz refrained from setting new accents for the further development of the EU. In his speech, the chancellor described the admission of accession candidates such as the Western Balkan countries, Ukraine and Moldova, and later possibly Georgia, as central to the future. Scholz derived from the enlargement of the EU “to perhaps 500 million citizens” the necessity for internal reforms.
On the details, Scholz referred to the reform proposals he had presented at his Prague speech in August. He emphasized the call for an increasing shift to majority decisions in the Council on foreign and security policy as well as on taxes. To the “skeptics”, he said, he wanted to shout: “It is not unanimity, not 100 percent agreement on all decisions that creates the greatest possible democratic legitimacy – on the contrary!”.
The SPD politician is promoting more free trade agreements and a common asylum policy. This also included “measures for effective external border protection”. This was also decided by the member states in the Council in February. In general, Scholz confined himself to praising the current initiatives of the Parliament and the Council rather than proposing new ones.
Apart from the push for more majority voting, Scholz made no further proposals for institutional reforms. He thus fell short of the European chapter in the coalition agreement from the fall of 2021. In it, the SPD, Greens and FDP had spoken out in favor of:
In his speech in Strasbourg, the word of a constitutional convention, which the European Parliament demands, did not appear. In doing so, he also incited the anger of the MEPs. EPP Group leader Manfred Weber stressed: “We need the Convention”. The EU does not need any more speeches of principle, he said, but leadership. He said that many of the German government’s initiatives were either “too late or too timid”, such as the delivery of tanks and ammunition to Ukraine or the contribution to the debate on the Stability and Growth Pact.
Terry Reintke, head of the Greens’ parliamentary group, takes a similar view, saying that Scholz took office with the promise of a new beginning and the claim to be climate chancellor. “The image of the chancellor who delivers has unfortunately faded”. And further, “They just winged it instead of taking a clear position”, Reintke said. She said she would like to see a chancellor who fights. Martin Schirdewan, co-leader of the Left faction, criticized, “People are longing for answers in the face of ever-growing social inequality, but you didn’t provide them in your speech”.
Only his own S&D parliamentary group praised the chancellor in a debate marked by many contributions from German deputies. Jens Geier, head of Germany’s SPD, said the chancellor had “made the case for several important further developments of the EU in his reform-minded and forward-looking speech”.
Linn Selle, president of the European Movement Germany (EBD), highlighted the chancellor’s commitment to an enlarged and reformed EU in the European Council. “Unfortunately, however, a clear commitment to a strong European Parliament with a right of initiative, a binding system of top candidates and a uniform EU electoral law was missing”. Yet all of these promises were already in the coalition agreement of the traffic light parties.
On Thursday morning, it will be exciting in room 200 of the Churchill Building of the European Parliament in Strasbourg. That’s when MEPs in the lead committees – Internal Market (IMCO) and Civil Liberties (LIBE) – will vote on their compromise proposal on the AI Act. Actually, the shadow rapporteurs had agreed in the negotiations to support all compromises reached.
But whether this will happen is by no means certain, because under pressure from the EPP, some points will now be voted on separately from the actual compromise packages. And even if the vote in the committees and then in the plenary succeeds, difficult negotiations with the Council in the trilogue lie ahead. Not least because the Council has not made any provision for general-purpose AIs such as ChatGPT.
In Parliament alone, the two rapporteurs Brando Benifei (S&D) and Dragoş Tudorache (Renew) had to deal with the enormous number of 3312 amendments.
As a result, the (provisional) voting list for Thursday is also extremely long at 351 pages. The political groups had until Tuesday evening to submit further requests for changes. According to information from Europe.Table, however, there were no more substantial changes.
An amendment requested by the EPP already caused the rapporteurs to dismantle the compromise package on Article 5. Thus, the committee members will vote separately on various “prohibited practices in the field of artificial intelligence”:
Axel Voss, shadow rapporteur for the EPP, repeatedly told Europe.Table that his group was keen to ban as few technologies as possible. The thinking behind this is simple: Otherwise, these technologies would naturally still be developed, but outside the EU. However, the EPP is not united behind its shadow rapporteur on this issue: there are likely some MEPs in the EPP group who reject this form of mass surveillance.
The liberals are also divided on the issue. There are also different views in the S&D. The Greens/EFA, however, clearly reject real-time remote biometric recognition. For them, the issue of biometric remote monitoring could even become a key question that could ultimately jeopardize approval of the entire compromise paper.
For the EPP, the key issue is different, namely chat control. Svenja Hahn (Renew) had called for the use of AI-based technologies to monitor private communications to be banned in the AI Act. However, she had refrained from making this demand, as chat control is also discussed elsewhere (for example at CSAM).
However, if compromise amendment 11a fails in the vote, then the MEPs will vote separately on the amendments that actually fall under the compromise. Then the ban on chat control would suddenly be put to the vote again and could find a majority. However, the EPP wants to prevent a chat control regulation in the AI Act at all costs.
The difficult search for consensus in Parliament gives a first impression of how problematic the negotiations with the Council are likely to be in the subsequent trilogue. After all, following the 3312 amendments and a total of twelve compromise packages, Parliament’s position not only differs significantly from the Commission’s proposal, but also from the general approach adopted by the Council in December.
Commission Vice-President Margrethe Vestager said during her visit to Berlin on Monday that the Commission constructed the AI Act to regulate applications, not technologies. That is why the law is future-proof, she said.
Nevertheless, it is problematic to integrate general-purpose AI such as large language models, which also include ChatGPT, into the law. This is because, by definition, they are not developed for any particular purpose and therefore do not fall within the scope of the law.
The parliamentary rapporteurs nevertheless found a way to integrate general-purpose AI in the regulation. The Council had initially refrained from doing so. In view of the public discussion about ChatGPT and similar models, this cannot be postponed now. The discussion about general-purpose AI such as ChatGPT will therefore be one of the major points of negotiation with the Council in the trilogue.
Other points of friction between the Council and Parliament are likely to be:
Vestager said in Berlin that she expects the trilogue negotiations to be concluded this year. How long it will then take for the law to be applied is a matter for the negotiations.
Europeans have proven their challengers wrong. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, European governments and citizens have displayed admirable levels of solidarity with Ukraine and unity within their own ranks.
This strong European sentiment will be put to a test in the months ahead. But it is not just Russian disinformation or growing cost-of-living or migration concerns that may undermine it. What the EU and member state leaders need to recognize is that their collective response to Russia’s war will significantly influence citizens’ attitudes inside Europe and their image abroad. Their actions will either reassert or undermine European values, and thereby their credibility and legitimacy.
Understood as a sense of sharing a common space, a common future and common values, the European sentiment is remarkably strong today.
The European public is strongly attached to Europe, and optimistic about the EU’s future, according to recent opinion polls. Governments of most EU member states are clearly pro-European – with the sole exception of Hungary (and mixed messages from Poland and Bulgaria). Throughout the past year, the governments of four countries (Czechia, Denmark, Slovakia, Slovenia) have demonstrated a growing attachment to Europe, while in just one (Bulgaria) the government has become increasingly skeptical about the benefits of the European project.
The European Sentiment Compass, a joint initiative by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) and the European Cultural Foundation (ECF) explores how Europe is responding to the challenges that Russia’s war on Ukraine constitutes for European values and culture. The findings should encourage the EU and member state leaders to revisit the way in which they talk and think about Europe.
When asked how Europe should help them, Ukrainian officials typically call for the delivery of weapons and ammunition. Understandably, military equipment is seen as solely capable of making an immediate difference on the battlefield. But the longer the war in Ukraine lasts, the more important it will become to ensure that European support remains acceptable for European citizens and convincing for Ukrainians. This will require a strong “European sentiment“, to borrow an expression from Robert Schuman, one of the architects of Europe’s post-1945 integration.
What the EU and member state leaders broadly recognize are the risks related to Russian disinformation and the growing cost-of-living and migration concerns among Europeans. These could indeed deeply affect the European sentiment and, with it, also the European support for Ukraine. It’s good that the EU and member state leaders are taking measures to tackle these threats.
However, what is underestimated is the risk that their decisions concerning Russian culture, media, and citizens could also undermine the European sentiment. On this, the EU and member state leaders are facing various dilemmas. Should they restrict the presence of Russian culture as a sign of solidarity with Ukraine? Should they clamp down on Russian media in the EU27? Should they impose a travel ban on all Russian citizens? Should they consider Russians as collectively responsible for the war? Or could they see Russian and Belarussian citizens and cultural actors as allies in stopping the war and in the transformation of these countries for the better?
The way the EU and member state leaders respond to these dilemmas can either vindicate or refute their image – both in the eyes of their own citizens and those of the rest of the world. Europe can prove to be trustworthy, peaceful, and strong. Or it can provide arguments for those who claim it is hypocritical, aggressive, and weak.
To avoid the latter scenario, the EU and member state leaders need to regain confidence in liberalism and in their own citizens.
First, they need to be very cautious about their dealings with Russian culture in Europe. As long as the war is ongoing, there should be no space in Europe for Russian artists who are to any extent related to the Russian state. However, from this, there is a long way to saying that the entire Russian culture should be put on hold – as some in Kyiv and in the more hawkish EU member states propose.
Secondly, the EU and its member states should demonstrate that they are a place where a pluralist debate can happen. Focusing too much on banning Russian media and chasing fake news puts Europe on the defensive. Instead of just complaining about Russian propaganda and resorting to measures that may seem like censorship, Europe should prepare to engage in the battle of narratives – and win it.
Finally, European leaders should resist the temptation of using black-and-white rhetoric – and instead see people as allies. They should acknowledge that not all Russians bear the same responsibility for the war in Ukraine. And that Belarusian citizens are not the same as Lukashenka’s regime which collaborates with Putin. In fact, many Russian and Belarussian citizens may prove useful allies in ending the war in Ukraine.
The war in Ukraine is not just a challenge for European security. It is also putting Europe’s commitment to openness, diversity, freedom, solidarity, and individual responsibility to the test. At stake is not just Europe’s image in the eyes of the world and of Europeans themselves. The sustainability of Europe’s unity and of Europe’s support for Ukraine is at stake too.
André Wilkens is the director of the European Cultural Foundation (ECF) in Amsterdam.
Europe Day is an opportunity for grand, symbolic gestures and inspiring, new impulses. But in Strasbourg, Chancellor Olaf Scholz remained hesitant and vague during his speech in parliament yesterday. Read Markus Grabitz’s analysis to find out which ideas from the coalition agreement between the two parties Scholz fell short of.
Tomorrow’s parliamentary vote on the AI Act, on the other hand, will be about the thicket of details in regular legislation. Members of Parliament will have to fight their way through 3312 amendments. Corinna Visser outlines the most important lines of conflict.
In today’s News, I explain why Minister for Economic Affairs Robert Habeck’s push for an industrial electricity price could be thwarted by the Council Presidency’s latest compromise proposal on the electricity market reform.
Last but not least, Europe’s identity is the subject of André Wilkens & Paweł Zerka’s Opinion. In dealing with Russian citizens and Russian culture, Europe must emphasize its pluralistic culture and thus confirm its self-image and image in the world, the authors write.
Olaf Scholz must have noticed how disappointed many members of parliament were with his speech. At the end of the hour-long debate that followed, in which he was criticized across party lines for lacking courage and initiative, the chancellor took the floor once again. He seemed transformed. Whereas in his actual speech he had read word for word from his manuscript, he now spoke freely and almost passionately. And he received more than polite applause for this – for example when he urged that the promise of accession to the Balkan countries should not be put off any longer.
The head of government of one of the 27 member states does not often get the opportunity to deliver a keynote speech in the European Parliament. But Scholz refrained from setting new accents for the further development of the EU. In his speech, the chancellor described the admission of accession candidates such as the Western Balkan countries, Ukraine and Moldova, and later possibly Georgia, as central to the future. Scholz derived from the enlargement of the EU “to perhaps 500 million citizens” the necessity for internal reforms.
On the details, Scholz referred to the reform proposals he had presented at his Prague speech in August. He emphasized the call for an increasing shift to majority decisions in the Council on foreign and security policy as well as on taxes. To the “skeptics”, he said, he wanted to shout: “It is not unanimity, not 100 percent agreement on all decisions that creates the greatest possible democratic legitimacy – on the contrary!”.
The SPD politician is promoting more free trade agreements and a common asylum policy. This also included “measures for effective external border protection”. This was also decided by the member states in the Council in February. In general, Scholz confined himself to praising the current initiatives of the Parliament and the Council rather than proposing new ones.
Apart from the push for more majority voting, Scholz made no further proposals for institutional reforms. He thus fell short of the European chapter in the coalition agreement from the fall of 2021. In it, the SPD, Greens and FDP had spoken out in favor of:
In his speech in Strasbourg, the word of a constitutional convention, which the European Parliament demands, did not appear. In doing so, he also incited the anger of the MEPs. EPP Group leader Manfred Weber stressed: “We need the Convention”. The EU does not need any more speeches of principle, he said, but leadership. He said that many of the German government’s initiatives were either “too late or too timid”, such as the delivery of tanks and ammunition to Ukraine or the contribution to the debate on the Stability and Growth Pact.
Terry Reintke, head of the Greens’ parliamentary group, takes a similar view, saying that Scholz took office with the promise of a new beginning and the claim to be climate chancellor. “The image of the chancellor who delivers has unfortunately faded”. And further, “They just winged it instead of taking a clear position”, Reintke said. She said she would like to see a chancellor who fights. Martin Schirdewan, co-leader of the Left faction, criticized, “People are longing for answers in the face of ever-growing social inequality, but you didn’t provide them in your speech”.
Only his own S&D parliamentary group praised the chancellor in a debate marked by many contributions from German deputies. Jens Geier, head of Germany’s SPD, said the chancellor had “made the case for several important further developments of the EU in his reform-minded and forward-looking speech”.
Linn Selle, president of the European Movement Germany (EBD), highlighted the chancellor’s commitment to an enlarged and reformed EU in the European Council. “Unfortunately, however, a clear commitment to a strong European Parliament with a right of initiative, a binding system of top candidates and a uniform EU electoral law was missing”. Yet all of these promises were already in the coalition agreement of the traffic light parties.
On Thursday morning, it will be exciting in room 200 of the Churchill Building of the European Parliament in Strasbourg. That’s when MEPs in the lead committees – Internal Market (IMCO) and Civil Liberties (LIBE) – will vote on their compromise proposal on the AI Act. Actually, the shadow rapporteurs had agreed in the negotiations to support all compromises reached.
But whether this will happen is by no means certain, because under pressure from the EPP, some points will now be voted on separately from the actual compromise packages. And even if the vote in the committees and then in the plenary succeeds, difficult negotiations with the Council in the trilogue lie ahead. Not least because the Council has not made any provision for general-purpose AIs such as ChatGPT.
In Parliament alone, the two rapporteurs Brando Benifei (S&D) and Dragoş Tudorache (Renew) had to deal with the enormous number of 3312 amendments.
As a result, the (provisional) voting list for Thursday is also extremely long at 351 pages. The political groups had until Tuesday evening to submit further requests for changes. According to information from Europe.Table, however, there were no more substantial changes.
An amendment requested by the EPP already caused the rapporteurs to dismantle the compromise package on Article 5. Thus, the committee members will vote separately on various “prohibited practices in the field of artificial intelligence”:
Axel Voss, shadow rapporteur for the EPP, repeatedly told Europe.Table that his group was keen to ban as few technologies as possible. The thinking behind this is simple: Otherwise, these technologies would naturally still be developed, but outside the EU. However, the EPP is not united behind its shadow rapporteur on this issue: there are likely some MEPs in the EPP group who reject this form of mass surveillance.
The liberals are also divided on the issue. There are also different views in the S&D. The Greens/EFA, however, clearly reject real-time remote biometric recognition. For them, the issue of biometric remote monitoring could even become a key question that could ultimately jeopardize approval of the entire compromise paper.
For the EPP, the key issue is different, namely chat control. Svenja Hahn (Renew) had called for the use of AI-based technologies to monitor private communications to be banned in the AI Act. However, she had refrained from making this demand, as chat control is also discussed elsewhere (for example at CSAM).
However, if compromise amendment 11a fails in the vote, then the MEPs will vote separately on the amendments that actually fall under the compromise. Then the ban on chat control would suddenly be put to the vote again and could find a majority. However, the EPP wants to prevent a chat control regulation in the AI Act at all costs.
The difficult search for consensus in Parliament gives a first impression of how problematic the negotiations with the Council are likely to be in the subsequent trilogue. After all, following the 3312 amendments and a total of twelve compromise packages, Parliament’s position not only differs significantly from the Commission’s proposal, but also from the general approach adopted by the Council in December.
Commission Vice-President Margrethe Vestager said during her visit to Berlin on Monday that the Commission constructed the AI Act to regulate applications, not technologies. That is why the law is future-proof, she said.
Nevertheless, it is problematic to integrate general-purpose AI such as large language models, which also include ChatGPT, into the law. This is because, by definition, they are not developed for any particular purpose and therefore do not fall within the scope of the law.
The parliamentary rapporteurs nevertheless found a way to integrate general-purpose AI in the regulation. The Council had initially refrained from doing so. In view of the public discussion about ChatGPT and similar models, this cannot be postponed now. The discussion about general-purpose AI such as ChatGPT will therefore be one of the major points of negotiation with the Council in the trilogue.
Other points of friction between the Council and Parliament are likely to be:
Vestager said in Berlin that she expects the trilogue negotiations to be concluded this year. How long it will then take for the law to be applied is a matter for the negotiations.
Europeans have proven their challengers wrong. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, European governments and citizens have displayed admirable levels of solidarity with Ukraine and unity within their own ranks.
This strong European sentiment will be put to a test in the months ahead. But it is not just Russian disinformation or growing cost-of-living or migration concerns that may undermine it. What the EU and member state leaders need to recognize is that their collective response to Russia’s war will significantly influence citizens’ attitudes inside Europe and their image abroad. Their actions will either reassert or undermine European values, and thereby their credibility and legitimacy.
Understood as a sense of sharing a common space, a common future and common values, the European sentiment is remarkably strong today.
The European public is strongly attached to Europe, and optimistic about the EU’s future, according to recent opinion polls. Governments of most EU member states are clearly pro-European – with the sole exception of Hungary (and mixed messages from Poland and Bulgaria). Throughout the past year, the governments of four countries (Czechia, Denmark, Slovakia, Slovenia) have demonstrated a growing attachment to Europe, while in just one (Bulgaria) the government has become increasingly skeptical about the benefits of the European project.
The European Sentiment Compass, a joint initiative by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) and the European Cultural Foundation (ECF) explores how Europe is responding to the challenges that Russia’s war on Ukraine constitutes for European values and culture. The findings should encourage the EU and member state leaders to revisit the way in which they talk and think about Europe.
When asked how Europe should help them, Ukrainian officials typically call for the delivery of weapons and ammunition. Understandably, military equipment is seen as solely capable of making an immediate difference on the battlefield. But the longer the war in Ukraine lasts, the more important it will become to ensure that European support remains acceptable for European citizens and convincing for Ukrainians. This will require a strong “European sentiment“, to borrow an expression from Robert Schuman, one of the architects of Europe’s post-1945 integration.
What the EU and member state leaders broadly recognize are the risks related to Russian disinformation and the growing cost-of-living and migration concerns among Europeans. These could indeed deeply affect the European sentiment and, with it, also the European support for Ukraine. It’s good that the EU and member state leaders are taking measures to tackle these threats.
However, what is underestimated is the risk that their decisions concerning Russian culture, media, and citizens could also undermine the European sentiment. On this, the EU and member state leaders are facing various dilemmas. Should they restrict the presence of Russian culture as a sign of solidarity with Ukraine? Should they clamp down on Russian media in the EU27? Should they impose a travel ban on all Russian citizens? Should they consider Russians as collectively responsible for the war? Or could they see Russian and Belarussian citizens and cultural actors as allies in stopping the war and in the transformation of these countries for the better?
The way the EU and member state leaders respond to these dilemmas can either vindicate or refute their image – both in the eyes of their own citizens and those of the rest of the world. Europe can prove to be trustworthy, peaceful, and strong. Or it can provide arguments for those who claim it is hypocritical, aggressive, and weak.
To avoid the latter scenario, the EU and member state leaders need to regain confidence in liberalism and in their own citizens.
First, they need to be very cautious about their dealings with Russian culture in Europe. As long as the war is ongoing, there should be no space in Europe for Russian artists who are to any extent related to the Russian state. However, from this, there is a long way to saying that the entire Russian culture should be put on hold – as some in Kyiv and in the more hawkish EU member states propose.
Secondly, the EU and its member states should demonstrate that they are a place where a pluralist debate can happen. Focusing too much on banning Russian media and chasing fake news puts Europe on the defensive. Instead of just complaining about Russian propaganda and resorting to measures that may seem like censorship, Europe should prepare to engage in the battle of narratives – and win it.
Finally, European leaders should resist the temptation of using black-and-white rhetoric – and instead see people as allies. They should acknowledge that not all Russians bear the same responsibility for the war in Ukraine. And that Belarusian citizens are not the same as Lukashenka’s regime which collaborates with Putin. In fact, many Russian and Belarussian citizens may prove useful allies in ending the war in Ukraine.
The war in Ukraine is not just a challenge for European security. It is also putting Europe’s commitment to openness, diversity, freedom, solidarity, and individual responsibility to the test. At stake is not just Europe’s image in the eyes of the world and of Europeans themselves. The sustainability of Europe’s unity and of Europe’s support for Ukraine is at stake too.
André Wilkens is the director of the European Cultural Foundation (ECF) in Amsterdam.
