The German government had actually written “more transparency at the EU level” into its coalition agreement. But Berlin is being secretive about two current examples. Table.Media wanted to know how far the German government would like to relax the TCTF aid framework, i.e. the financial underpinning of the Net-Zero Industry Act. But after our request for information to the Commission in mid-February, the Directorate General for Competition sent an official rejection yesterday: The German government had refused access to the document!
“In the present case, the German authorities considered that the German position on the TCTF constituted sensitive information, as it related to crisis measures and contained information about a serious disruption of the German economy“, writes DG Comp. The fact that Table.Media already published the German position in early March did not matter at all.
The Commission’s curiously late response reveals the questionable arguments of German officials. For Berlin’s answer did not contain any sensitive information about the German economy. Rather, the German government argued, among other things, that the most generous funding opportunities should also apply to regions in Germany that are not quite so structurally weak.
The German government is also taking a step backwards with the directory of German interest groups in Brussels, which has been maintained for years. “The list that was previously entered at this point will no longer be updated in the future and has thus been removed from the website”, it now says on the Permanent Representation’s page.
But hadn’t the list become superfluous anyway since the introduction of the EU Transparency Register? After all, the German list gave lobby watchdogs a rough idea of which associations and companies had contacts with the Permanent Representations – and not only with EU ambassadors, whose meetings with lobbyists were still listed. However, the old list did not show in detail contacts to ordinary staff members of the representations and ministry officials in Berlin. Now that would be a contribution to more transparency in German EU policy!
I hope you have a successful day and wish you a pleasant read.
EU legislation contains significant gaps and does not address all causes of soil degradation. That is what the Commission writes in its proposal for a new directive on soil health in Europe. A draft is available to Table.Media. 60 to 70 percent of soils in the EU are in poor health, it says – with negative consequences for people, the environment, climate and the economy. It also says the risk of catastrophic consequences of climate change, such as floods and forest fires, is increasing.
Building on this scientific inventory, the Commission justifies its new law, citing a 2020 study by the Directorate General for Research and Innovation, which includes recommendations for limits and targets on carbon concentration, soil sealing, soil recycling and soil pollution so that 75 percent of European soils are healthy by 2030.
It therefore seems contradictory that the Commission does not propose any targets or limit values in its proposal for a directive. Instead, the text focuses on requirements for data collection and monitoring of soil health. Member states are to be obliged to collect data on the following soil parameters, among others:
In addition, the Commission specifies methods and sample sizes and intends to require member states to make the data publicly available.
It is true that the annex to the proposal also contains limit values for the individual parameters, from which value a soil is to be classified as “healthy”. Member states are also required to identify measures to improve soil health. However, there is no formulation in the directive with the obligation to comply with these limit values and implement measures. Yet the Commission itself writes that healthy soils form very slowly and their health can be maintained or improved “if appropriate measures are taken and implemented”.
It is no secret that the Commission had originally planned to demand ambitious targets and measures from the member states. But the political pressure was too great. The European Christian Democrats (European People’s Party, EPP) in particular, but also parts of the liberal Renew Group, are resisting stricter rules that could also have an impact on farmers and food production. This primarily concerns the nature conservation laws of the Green Deal, but also a directive on industrial emissions. So far, this conflict is most evident in the dispute over the Nature Restoration Law. An ambitious soil health law would have further fueled the dispute and probably resulted in another EPP blockade.
Now, however, environmentalists are angry about the Commission’s relenting. They have been calling for stricter rules for years, believing they protect farmers as well as biodiversity through better soil health. It is “another blow to the European Green Deal” if the Commission softens its soil protection rules, Ariel Brunner, regional director for Europe at the NGO Birdlife, told Table.Media. It is tragic “how the agricultural lobby is sabotaging efforts to protect agriculture”.
Bernhard Krüsken, Secretary General of the German Farmers’ Association, says that a large number of directives, ordinances, strategies and regulations already directly and indirectly ensure soil protection. Soil protection is therefore not starting from scratch, he says, defending the Commission’s approach of not setting binding limit values. However, Krüsken calls for stricter rules for “probably the biggest environmental problem in terms of soil protection”: land consumption through sealing and overbuilding by settlement and transport measures. For these issues, the Commission only makes specifications for monitoring the status quo.
Benoit Biteau (Greens), Vice-Chairman of the Agriculture Committee in the EU Parliament, criticizes that the Commission’s “monitoring framework” provides data that we already have. We already know, he said, that “two-thirds of the soils in Europe are not healthy”. He announced that the Greens in Parliament want to tighten the Commission’s proposal.
The European Environmental Bureau (EEB) also calls for a much higher level of ambition. “To achieve healthy soils by 2050, legally binding targets, binding plans, comprehensive monitoring of soil biodiversity indicators and the application of the polluter pays principle must be introduced”, demands Caroline Heinzel, soil policy officer at the EEB. An ambitious soil health law is the only way to reverse soil degradation and protect it, she said.
This analysis is not contradicted by the Commission – but it obviously does not have the confidence to mobilize sufficient political support for the necessary measures. With Claire Stam
The huge silos on the Rhine at Raiffeisen animal feed plant Kehl store conventionally and organically produced grain; in any case, it is free of genetic engineering. The company has been in business since 1963 and has an annual turnover of €65 million from animal and pet food. Company director Bernhard Stoll decided against green genetic engineering as early as 1998, out of conviction, as he says. The success of his decision proves Stoll right. Pig farmers and dairy farmers buy his feed instead of GM soy or GM corn from overseas – and can thus guarantee their customers GM-free milk, cheese or meat.
On Thursday, Stoll was in Berlin for the annual meeting of the Food without Genetic Engineering Association. Members have been in an uproar ever since leaked plans from the EU Commission for de-regulation of the strict genetic engineering law have been making the rounds – including a relaxation of the labeling requirement. “I see this as a disenfranchisement of the consumer”, says Bernhard Stoll. And as an attack on his business model: “Brussels is preparing to destroy sustainable corporate values.”
€16 billion a year are turned over by products with the “Ohne Gentechnik” (“No GMOs”) label. The suppliers’ fear: If de-regulation comes, plants from the gene lab could soon be growing everywhere in Europe. This is because the EU plans known so far leave the most difficult task to the member states: to prevent new varieties from crossing over in an uncontrolled manner. Or maybe that mixing takes place because the same machines apply genetically modified and non-GM seeds.
“There are so many risks of carryover”, warns feed dealer Stoll. “If that happens, we need close monitoring.” At a minimum, however, he says the Commission must require reference material from every genetically modified seed – so that if in doubt, concerned parties and authorities can take samples and trace what’s growing there.
However, the current draft does not provide for traceability of genetically modified seeds. The EU Commission is apparently aiming for a 180-degree turnaround on genetic engineering. Plants that have been bred using “new genomic techniques” (NGT), such as the Crispr/Cas gene scissors, and in which no foreign genetic material has been incorporated, will no longer be subject to the strict risk assessment for genetically modified organisms (GMOs). In addition, the labeling requirement for products containing NGT is to be eliminated.
For many plant breeders, this is good news. Since the European Court of Justice ruled in 2018 that the new NGT precision techniques would also give rise to genetically modified organisms and that these would therefore have to pass through the same hurdles as the old GMOs, breeders and researchers have been lobbying massively for de-regulation – supported by politicians from the Liberals and the CDU/CSU.
The EU Commission has obtained scientific expertise for its plans: the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) concluded in its review of NGT plant varieties that they pose virtually no risk. According to EFSA, NGT even have a significantly reduced potential to cause “unintended effects” – not only compared to the old genetic engineering methods, but even compared to conventional breeding. This is because unintended mutations can also occur in the latter through the use of radioactivity or chemicals.
Not every authority in Europe sees it that way. The German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN) believes that the statement that NGT plants are generally associated with fewer risks is incorrect. The application of NGT can also lead to unintended genomic changes, writes the BfN. Introducing new traits into a plant always carries the risk of negative effects on ecosystems and biodiversity, it adds. “If, for example, we succeed in developing a drought-resistant crop, it could become invasive because it could suddenly colonize habitats where it could not survive before”, Germany’s top nature conservation agency warns. This is a serious counterargument, especially since the EU Commission explicitly justifies its plans with the goals of using NGT to contribute to more biodiversity and climate resilience in the fields.
The consumer protection organization Foodwatch has already collected more than 62,000 signatures under its petition “genetic engineering must remain recognizable” even before the official version of the EU plans was released on Wednesday. On Thursday, activists handed them over to the German Federal Ministry of Agriculture. The curtailment of the consumer’s freedom of choice by relaxing the labeling requirement is, of course, not only a no-go from Foodwatch’s point of view. Politicians from the SPD and the Greens also share this view.
“Without labeling, traceability is impossible, and that would be a violation of the precautionary principle. Without labeling, there is no transparency”, said Matthias Miersch, vice chairman of the SPD parliamentary group, after the leak became known. “The SPD will not go along with that.” And Green MEP Karl Bär called the proposal a frontal attack on the European model. Bär’s criticism: “Plants with up to 20 genetic modifications should be considered equivalent to conventionally bred plants” and end up “unlabeled on our plate”. The proposal would herald the end of organic farming, because it would have to protect itself from contamination with ever more effort.
There are real reasons for this gloomy vision. For while NGT-bred plants are to be put on an equal footing with conventionally bred ones when it comes to conventional agriculture, for organic farmers they are to remain genuine genetic engineering and thus banned. But who is to bear the costs of proving that NGT plants have not accidentally ended up in organic products? And how is this to be technically possible? The EU Commission itself writes that NGT cannot be detected because its genome is too similar to that of natural plants. According to the draft, Brussels wants to leave the solution to this dilemma to the member states.
But opponents of de-regulation have other concerns. Large corporations could use the new genetic engineering to control seeds via patents and make farms dependent on those patents, said Manuel Wiemann of Foodwatch. This would lead to higher genetic uniformity – which in turn would lead to higher pesticide use, the Foodwatch man said.
This is also the view of former Agriculture Minister Renate Künast, now spokeswoman for agriculture and nutrition for the Green Party. “I would consider it a massive mistake if we were to make ourselves dependent on some who have patents to feed the world“, Künast says of the dispute over NGT. 80 percent of the world’s farmers are smallholders, she adds.
She trusts a different scientific expertise than that of those researchers who are already conducting research with Crispr/Cas and Co. That of the United Nations World Agricultural Council, which is assisted by hundreds of scientists. For food sovereignty in the world, the World Agricultural Report recommends agro-ecological methods. In other words, an agriculture that needs little input from outside and works with the natural conditions on the ground. With agroecological know-how, every small farmer can cultivate their own field, without chemicals against pests or expensive seeds from genetic laboratories. Künast: “If we don’t preserve biodiversity, we’ll get into hot water.”
Opposition is, of course, already forming on the ground in Brussels. Benoit Biteau, a Green MEP and first vice-chairman of the European Parliament’s Agriculture Committee, told Table.Media that the Commission’s proposal doesn’t stand a chance. After all, he said, a number of countries have already expressed their opposition. “We will do everything in our power in the European Parliament to fight off this text”, the Frenchman said. “The fight has just begun.”
The auto industry is appealing to the Commission to renegotiate the rules of origin for EVs in the Brexit free trade agreement (TCA). If the passage is not changed, tariffs of ten percent will be imposed on battery electric cars (BEVs) exported to the UK from January. “The Commission, in agreement with the member states, should push for an extension of the current rules of origin in the TCA beyond Jan. 1, 2024”, says Karoline Kampermann of the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA).
According to the TCA, new rules for batteries and EVs will come into force in January. From January, 60 percent of the batteries and 45 percent of the vehicles must be produced in Europe or the UK in order to continue to enjoy duty-free access between the mainland and the island. Since the development of battery production capacities in Europe is proceeding more slowly than planned, it is estimated that by 2024 the European industry will have reached at best half of the required proportion of origin.
Currently, European manufacturers have a competitive advantage over suppliers from China: Chinese manufacturers currently have to pay the tariffs.
In the TCA, negotiated under heavy pressure in the final days before Christmas Eve 2020, three phases were agreed upon for minimum duty-free EVs:
The European Court of Auditors had warned that the development of capacities for the construction of batteries was lagging behind the plans. According to the report, only 16 gigawatt hours of capacity were installed in the EU in 2022, compared with the 66 gigawatt hours announced. Several manufacturers have recently withdrawn their announcements to build new factories in Europe. In view of the lucrative subsidy conditions in the USA through the Inflation Reduction Act, they now want to go with the investment in the USA.
According to an analysis by Benchmark, the committed capacity in battery production in the USA until 2031 has risen massively since the announcement of the IRA. While the EU has always been in the lead in announcements for the construction of battery factories, the USA is now in the lead.
To prevent the tariffs, the British side would have to agree to an amendment to the TCA. The UK government has indicated that it is willing to talk about the rules of origin and is not interested in imposing duties.
European manufacturers warn that tariffs of ten percent will set back EVs from Europe in competition with rivals from China. Kampermann: “They would also be a burden for customers who want to buy an e-vehicle. Not least, this would severely hamper the further ramp-up of electromobility in Europe.”
The British market is particularly important for German manufacturers. The UK ranks third after the USA and China in terms of exports by the German automotive industry. In 2022, manufacturers and suppliers exported goods worth €19 billion to the UK. In return, goods worth €4.9 billion were imported.
German brands had a market share of 46.7 percent of new passenger car registrations in 2022. In terms of exports of EVs to countries outside the EU, the UK was in first place in 2022. German plants exported 88,000 EVs to the UK, with the US in second place, where 70,000 e-vehicles went. Exports to China ranked fifth with 18,000 EVs.
Alexander Schuster currently has to answer many questions: “Many of our European partners cannot make sense of the German turnaround”, says the security policy expert of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS). There is a lot of need for explanation, even among experts in other countries, because so far there is little to be seen.
In his view, the defense budget would have to rise to at least two percent of GDP in addition to the special fund of €100 billion, says Schuster. Otherwise, the Bundeswehr would have less money available because the maintenance of new equipment – including the F-35 – would increase and further burden the budget.
Schuster’s work at the CDU-affiliated political foundation consists of analyzing and explaining European security policy. For this purpose, he maintains a cross-border network; in France, for example, the KAS cooperates with the Fondation pour la recherche stratégique (FRS), a think tank close to the Ministry of Defense.
At the European level, the security expert praises, among other things, the Strategic Compass and the European Peace Facility. Nevertheless, Europe must become more capable of action: National and alliance defense within the framework of NATO must be secured – up to now, this has only been possible thanks to the support of the United States.
For that, the EU would need its own Security Council, among other things, Schuster argues. “That would be a great and effective instrument if the European Security Council were a permanent body with operational powers.” This would allow the European pillar in NATO to be strengthened and the British to be integrated into the European security architecture.
Schuster writes his ideas in policy papers, which are also published on the KAS website. Important target groups include members of the Bundestag. “The exchange with the CDU/CSU parliamentary group is good.”
The 36-year-old grew up in Landshut. Europe was present in his life at an early age, says Schuster. His father’s family fled Transylvania in the 1970s to escape the communist system. He studied political science and history in Regensburg. He completed his master’s degree in three semesters and worked as a research assistant to Professor Stephan Bierling. Bierling is also a lecturer at the KAS.
So what belonged together came together. “The Adenauer Foundation offered me an ideological home”, says Schuster. “For me, the path to the KAS had no alternative.” He is in the final stages of writing his dissertation. He received a scholarship from the foundation for his doctorate. He has also been working for the Adenauer Foundation since last October. Tom Schmidtgen
Why do politicians write books? Journalists ask themselves this question every time a former or current minister or member of parliament writes a book. Or, in most cases: has it written for them. Gerhard Schröder, Annalena Baerbock, Heiko Maas, Sigmar Gabriel – they’ve all done it before.
Rarer are politicians who write their own books – and then novels, too. The best example: the erotic novels of Bruno Le Maire or the thrillers of Thierry Breton.
Now a former Austrian EU parliamentarian joins them: Martin Ehrenhauser was a non-attached MEP in Brussels from 2009 to 2014 and campaigned for “democracy, control and justice”. In the process, Ehrenhauser, born in 1978, liked to polarize: In 2017, for example, he camped out in front of and in the Vienna Ballhaus to protest against the bank bailout at the expense of state social spending.
But now Martin Ehrenhauser has written a novel. It’s a romance novel set mainly in Brussels and a little bit in Knokke. The novel is as apolitical as Ehrenhauser’s career has been so far.
“The Lover” (List Verlag), marketed as a “Brussels novel”, tells the story of a somewhat lonely Austrian priest, Monsieur Haslinger, now retired. He tends his balcony plants, reads, walks and assists German-speaking patients. And he gradually falls in love with his new neighbor, a former diplomat, intelligent and flirtatious – and, as we later learn, terminally ill.
The novel is set in Brussels, but not in my Brussels. Martin Ehrenhauser’s Brussels is clean and well-kept, indeed it is much more reminiscent of the London from the movie “Notting Hill” (with Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts). No garbage, no street noise, no poverty. Well-kept balconies, attentive neighbors, in the organic waste you find sick little plants instead of disgusting meat scraps, which the priest nurtures again.
This Brussels stretches mainly from Ixelles via Chatelain to Saint Gilles (but only the nice streets). In Knokke, the vacation resort for wealthy Belgians and half of Luxembourg, the beaches are empty and romantic. Yes, not even the built-up EU quarter appears in the novel. Everyone treats each other respectfully, neighbors apologize when they party too loudly, and even exiled Austrians speak Flemish and French. Even the Chatelain market is somehow quieter and more idyllic than the real Ixelles.
The Lover is not a literary masterpiece. It’s a nice, somewhat cheesy little book that reads well. In my case, an air-polluted, hot weekend was enough (the air of fictional Brussels is clean and fragrant with flowers, by the way). In EU-free August on the beach, it’s certainly a good companion, if nostalgia for an idealized, decelerated Brussels without EU stuff and social hotspots drives you around. Maybe it will also shorten the wait for the next Merkel biography or Jean-Claude Juncker’s scandal memoirs. Charlotte Wirth
The German government had actually written “more transparency at the EU level” into its coalition agreement. But Berlin is being secretive about two current examples. Table.Media wanted to know how far the German government would like to relax the TCTF aid framework, i.e. the financial underpinning of the Net-Zero Industry Act. But after our request for information to the Commission in mid-February, the Directorate General for Competition sent an official rejection yesterday: The German government had refused access to the document!
“In the present case, the German authorities considered that the German position on the TCTF constituted sensitive information, as it related to crisis measures and contained information about a serious disruption of the German economy“, writes DG Comp. The fact that Table.Media already published the German position in early March did not matter at all.
The Commission’s curiously late response reveals the questionable arguments of German officials. For Berlin’s answer did not contain any sensitive information about the German economy. Rather, the German government argued, among other things, that the most generous funding opportunities should also apply to regions in Germany that are not quite so structurally weak.
The German government is also taking a step backwards with the directory of German interest groups in Brussels, which has been maintained for years. “The list that was previously entered at this point will no longer be updated in the future and has thus been removed from the website”, it now says on the Permanent Representation’s page.
But hadn’t the list become superfluous anyway since the introduction of the EU Transparency Register? After all, the German list gave lobby watchdogs a rough idea of which associations and companies had contacts with the Permanent Representations – and not only with EU ambassadors, whose meetings with lobbyists were still listed. However, the old list did not show in detail contacts to ordinary staff members of the representations and ministry officials in Berlin. Now that would be a contribution to more transparency in German EU policy!
I hope you have a successful day and wish you a pleasant read.
EU legislation contains significant gaps and does not address all causes of soil degradation. That is what the Commission writes in its proposal for a new directive on soil health in Europe. A draft is available to Table.Media. 60 to 70 percent of soils in the EU are in poor health, it says – with negative consequences for people, the environment, climate and the economy. It also says the risk of catastrophic consequences of climate change, such as floods and forest fires, is increasing.
Building on this scientific inventory, the Commission justifies its new law, citing a 2020 study by the Directorate General for Research and Innovation, which includes recommendations for limits and targets on carbon concentration, soil sealing, soil recycling and soil pollution so that 75 percent of European soils are healthy by 2030.
It therefore seems contradictory that the Commission does not propose any targets or limit values in its proposal for a directive. Instead, the text focuses on requirements for data collection and monitoring of soil health. Member states are to be obliged to collect data on the following soil parameters, among others:
In addition, the Commission specifies methods and sample sizes and intends to require member states to make the data publicly available.
It is true that the annex to the proposal also contains limit values for the individual parameters, from which value a soil is to be classified as “healthy”. Member states are also required to identify measures to improve soil health. However, there is no formulation in the directive with the obligation to comply with these limit values and implement measures. Yet the Commission itself writes that healthy soils form very slowly and their health can be maintained or improved “if appropriate measures are taken and implemented”.
It is no secret that the Commission had originally planned to demand ambitious targets and measures from the member states. But the political pressure was too great. The European Christian Democrats (European People’s Party, EPP) in particular, but also parts of the liberal Renew Group, are resisting stricter rules that could also have an impact on farmers and food production. This primarily concerns the nature conservation laws of the Green Deal, but also a directive on industrial emissions. So far, this conflict is most evident in the dispute over the Nature Restoration Law. An ambitious soil health law would have further fueled the dispute and probably resulted in another EPP blockade.
Now, however, environmentalists are angry about the Commission’s relenting. They have been calling for stricter rules for years, believing they protect farmers as well as biodiversity through better soil health. It is “another blow to the European Green Deal” if the Commission softens its soil protection rules, Ariel Brunner, regional director for Europe at the NGO Birdlife, told Table.Media. It is tragic “how the agricultural lobby is sabotaging efforts to protect agriculture”.
Bernhard Krüsken, Secretary General of the German Farmers’ Association, says that a large number of directives, ordinances, strategies and regulations already directly and indirectly ensure soil protection. Soil protection is therefore not starting from scratch, he says, defending the Commission’s approach of not setting binding limit values. However, Krüsken calls for stricter rules for “probably the biggest environmental problem in terms of soil protection”: land consumption through sealing and overbuilding by settlement and transport measures. For these issues, the Commission only makes specifications for monitoring the status quo.
Benoit Biteau (Greens), Vice-Chairman of the Agriculture Committee in the EU Parliament, criticizes that the Commission’s “monitoring framework” provides data that we already have. We already know, he said, that “two-thirds of the soils in Europe are not healthy”. He announced that the Greens in Parliament want to tighten the Commission’s proposal.
The European Environmental Bureau (EEB) also calls for a much higher level of ambition. “To achieve healthy soils by 2050, legally binding targets, binding plans, comprehensive monitoring of soil biodiversity indicators and the application of the polluter pays principle must be introduced”, demands Caroline Heinzel, soil policy officer at the EEB. An ambitious soil health law is the only way to reverse soil degradation and protect it, she said.
This analysis is not contradicted by the Commission – but it obviously does not have the confidence to mobilize sufficient political support for the necessary measures. With Claire Stam
The huge silos on the Rhine at Raiffeisen animal feed plant Kehl store conventionally and organically produced grain; in any case, it is free of genetic engineering. The company has been in business since 1963 and has an annual turnover of €65 million from animal and pet food. Company director Bernhard Stoll decided against green genetic engineering as early as 1998, out of conviction, as he says. The success of his decision proves Stoll right. Pig farmers and dairy farmers buy his feed instead of GM soy or GM corn from overseas – and can thus guarantee their customers GM-free milk, cheese or meat.
On Thursday, Stoll was in Berlin for the annual meeting of the Food without Genetic Engineering Association. Members have been in an uproar ever since leaked plans from the EU Commission for de-regulation of the strict genetic engineering law have been making the rounds – including a relaxation of the labeling requirement. “I see this as a disenfranchisement of the consumer”, says Bernhard Stoll. And as an attack on his business model: “Brussels is preparing to destroy sustainable corporate values.”
€16 billion a year are turned over by products with the “Ohne Gentechnik” (“No GMOs”) label. The suppliers’ fear: If de-regulation comes, plants from the gene lab could soon be growing everywhere in Europe. This is because the EU plans known so far leave the most difficult task to the member states: to prevent new varieties from crossing over in an uncontrolled manner. Or maybe that mixing takes place because the same machines apply genetically modified and non-GM seeds.
“There are so many risks of carryover”, warns feed dealer Stoll. “If that happens, we need close monitoring.” At a minimum, however, he says the Commission must require reference material from every genetically modified seed – so that if in doubt, concerned parties and authorities can take samples and trace what’s growing there.
However, the current draft does not provide for traceability of genetically modified seeds. The EU Commission is apparently aiming for a 180-degree turnaround on genetic engineering. Plants that have been bred using “new genomic techniques” (NGT), such as the Crispr/Cas gene scissors, and in which no foreign genetic material has been incorporated, will no longer be subject to the strict risk assessment for genetically modified organisms (GMOs). In addition, the labeling requirement for products containing NGT is to be eliminated.
For many plant breeders, this is good news. Since the European Court of Justice ruled in 2018 that the new NGT precision techniques would also give rise to genetically modified organisms and that these would therefore have to pass through the same hurdles as the old GMOs, breeders and researchers have been lobbying massively for de-regulation – supported by politicians from the Liberals and the CDU/CSU.
The EU Commission has obtained scientific expertise for its plans: the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) concluded in its review of NGT plant varieties that they pose virtually no risk. According to EFSA, NGT even have a significantly reduced potential to cause “unintended effects” – not only compared to the old genetic engineering methods, but even compared to conventional breeding. This is because unintended mutations can also occur in the latter through the use of radioactivity or chemicals.
Not every authority in Europe sees it that way. The German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN) believes that the statement that NGT plants are generally associated with fewer risks is incorrect. The application of NGT can also lead to unintended genomic changes, writes the BfN. Introducing new traits into a plant always carries the risk of negative effects on ecosystems and biodiversity, it adds. “If, for example, we succeed in developing a drought-resistant crop, it could become invasive because it could suddenly colonize habitats where it could not survive before”, Germany’s top nature conservation agency warns. This is a serious counterargument, especially since the EU Commission explicitly justifies its plans with the goals of using NGT to contribute to more biodiversity and climate resilience in the fields.
The consumer protection organization Foodwatch has already collected more than 62,000 signatures under its petition “genetic engineering must remain recognizable” even before the official version of the EU plans was released on Wednesday. On Thursday, activists handed them over to the German Federal Ministry of Agriculture. The curtailment of the consumer’s freedom of choice by relaxing the labeling requirement is, of course, not only a no-go from Foodwatch’s point of view. Politicians from the SPD and the Greens also share this view.
“Without labeling, traceability is impossible, and that would be a violation of the precautionary principle. Without labeling, there is no transparency”, said Matthias Miersch, vice chairman of the SPD parliamentary group, after the leak became known. “The SPD will not go along with that.” And Green MEP Karl Bär called the proposal a frontal attack on the European model. Bär’s criticism: “Plants with up to 20 genetic modifications should be considered equivalent to conventionally bred plants” and end up “unlabeled on our plate”. The proposal would herald the end of organic farming, because it would have to protect itself from contamination with ever more effort.
There are real reasons for this gloomy vision. For while NGT-bred plants are to be put on an equal footing with conventionally bred ones when it comes to conventional agriculture, for organic farmers they are to remain genuine genetic engineering and thus banned. But who is to bear the costs of proving that NGT plants have not accidentally ended up in organic products? And how is this to be technically possible? The EU Commission itself writes that NGT cannot be detected because its genome is too similar to that of natural plants. According to the draft, Brussels wants to leave the solution to this dilemma to the member states.
But opponents of de-regulation have other concerns. Large corporations could use the new genetic engineering to control seeds via patents and make farms dependent on those patents, said Manuel Wiemann of Foodwatch. This would lead to higher genetic uniformity – which in turn would lead to higher pesticide use, the Foodwatch man said.
This is also the view of former Agriculture Minister Renate Künast, now spokeswoman for agriculture and nutrition for the Green Party. “I would consider it a massive mistake if we were to make ourselves dependent on some who have patents to feed the world“, Künast says of the dispute over NGT. 80 percent of the world’s farmers are smallholders, she adds.
She trusts a different scientific expertise than that of those researchers who are already conducting research with Crispr/Cas and Co. That of the United Nations World Agricultural Council, which is assisted by hundreds of scientists. For food sovereignty in the world, the World Agricultural Report recommends agro-ecological methods. In other words, an agriculture that needs little input from outside and works with the natural conditions on the ground. With agroecological know-how, every small farmer can cultivate their own field, without chemicals against pests or expensive seeds from genetic laboratories. Künast: “If we don’t preserve biodiversity, we’ll get into hot water.”
Opposition is, of course, already forming on the ground in Brussels. Benoit Biteau, a Green MEP and first vice-chairman of the European Parliament’s Agriculture Committee, told Table.Media that the Commission’s proposal doesn’t stand a chance. After all, he said, a number of countries have already expressed their opposition. “We will do everything in our power in the European Parliament to fight off this text”, the Frenchman said. “The fight has just begun.”
The auto industry is appealing to the Commission to renegotiate the rules of origin for EVs in the Brexit free trade agreement (TCA). If the passage is not changed, tariffs of ten percent will be imposed on battery electric cars (BEVs) exported to the UK from January. “The Commission, in agreement with the member states, should push for an extension of the current rules of origin in the TCA beyond Jan. 1, 2024”, says Karoline Kampermann of the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA).
According to the TCA, new rules for batteries and EVs will come into force in January. From January, 60 percent of the batteries and 45 percent of the vehicles must be produced in Europe or the UK in order to continue to enjoy duty-free access between the mainland and the island. Since the development of battery production capacities in Europe is proceeding more slowly than planned, it is estimated that by 2024 the European industry will have reached at best half of the required proportion of origin.
Currently, European manufacturers have a competitive advantage over suppliers from China: Chinese manufacturers currently have to pay the tariffs.
In the TCA, negotiated under heavy pressure in the final days before Christmas Eve 2020, three phases were agreed upon for minimum duty-free EVs:
The European Court of Auditors had warned that the development of capacities for the construction of batteries was lagging behind the plans. According to the report, only 16 gigawatt hours of capacity were installed in the EU in 2022, compared with the 66 gigawatt hours announced. Several manufacturers have recently withdrawn their announcements to build new factories in Europe. In view of the lucrative subsidy conditions in the USA through the Inflation Reduction Act, they now want to go with the investment in the USA.
According to an analysis by Benchmark, the committed capacity in battery production in the USA until 2031 has risen massively since the announcement of the IRA. While the EU has always been in the lead in announcements for the construction of battery factories, the USA is now in the lead.
To prevent the tariffs, the British side would have to agree to an amendment to the TCA. The UK government has indicated that it is willing to talk about the rules of origin and is not interested in imposing duties.
European manufacturers warn that tariffs of ten percent will set back EVs from Europe in competition with rivals from China. Kampermann: “They would also be a burden for customers who want to buy an e-vehicle. Not least, this would severely hamper the further ramp-up of electromobility in Europe.”
The British market is particularly important for German manufacturers. The UK ranks third after the USA and China in terms of exports by the German automotive industry. In 2022, manufacturers and suppliers exported goods worth €19 billion to the UK. In return, goods worth €4.9 billion were imported.
German brands had a market share of 46.7 percent of new passenger car registrations in 2022. In terms of exports of EVs to countries outside the EU, the UK was in first place in 2022. German plants exported 88,000 EVs to the UK, with the US in second place, where 70,000 e-vehicles went. Exports to China ranked fifth with 18,000 EVs.
Alexander Schuster currently has to answer many questions: “Many of our European partners cannot make sense of the German turnaround”, says the security policy expert of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS). There is a lot of need for explanation, even among experts in other countries, because so far there is little to be seen.
In his view, the defense budget would have to rise to at least two percent of GDP in addition to the special fund of €100 billion, says Schuster. Otherwise, the Bundeswehr would have less money available because the maintenance of new equipment – including the F-35 – would increase and further burden the budget.
Schuster’s work at the CDU-affiliated political foundation consists of analyzing and explaining European security policy. For this purpose, he maintains a cross-border network; in France, for example, the KAS cooperates with the Fondation pour la recherche stratégique (FRS), a think tank close to the Ministry of Defense.
At the European level, the security expert praises, among other things, the Strategic Compass and the European Peace Facility. Nevertheless, Europe must become more capable of action: National and alliance defense within the framework of NATO must be secured – up to now, this has only been possible thanks to the support of the United States.
For that, the EU would need its own Security Council, among other things, Schuster argues. “That would be a great and effective instrument if the European Security Council were a permanent body with operational powers.” This would allow the European pillar in NATO to be strengthened and the British to be integrated into the European security architecture.
Schuster writes his ideas in policy papers, which are also published on the KAS website. Important target groups include members of the Bundestag. “The exchange with the CDU/CSU parliamentary group is good.”
The 36-year-old grew up in Landshut. Europe was present in his life at an early age, says Schuster. His father’s family fled Transylvania in the 1970s to escape the communist system. He studied political science and history in Regensburg. He completed his master’s degree in three semesters and worked as a research assistant to Professor Stephan Bierling. Bierling is also a lecturer at the KAS.
So what belonged together came together. “The Adenauer Foundation offered me an ideological home”, says Schuster. “For me, the path to the KAS had no alternative.” He is in the final stages of writing his dissertation. He received a scholarship from the foundation for his doctorate. He has also been working for the Adenauer Foundation since last October. Tom Schmidtgen
Why do politicians write books? Journalists ask themselves this question every time a former or current minister or member of parliament writes a book. Or, in most cases: has it written for them. Gerhard Schröder, Annalena Baerbock, Heiko Maas, Sigmar Gabriel – they’ve all done it before.
Rarer are politicians who write their own books – and then novels, too. The best example: the erotic novels of Bruno Le Maire or the thrillers of Thierry Breton.
Now a former Austrian EU parliamentarian joins them: Martin Ehrenhauser was a non-attached MEP in Brussels from 2009 to 2014 and campaigned for “democracy, control and justice”. In the process, Ehrenhauser, born in 1978, liked to polarize: In 2017, for example, he camped out in front of and in the Vienna Ballhaus to protest against the bank bailout at the expense of state social spending.
But now Martin Ehrenhauser has written a novel. It’s a romance novel set mainly in Brussels and a little bit in Knokke. The novel is as apolitical as Ehrenhauser’s career has been so far.
“The Lover” (List Verlag), marketed as a “Brussels novel”, tells the story of a somewhat lonely Austrian priest, Monsieur Haslinger, now retired. He tends his balcony plants, reads, walks and assists German-speaking patients. And he gradually falls in love with his new neighbor, a former diplomat, intelligent and flirtatious – and, as we later learn, terminally ill.
The novel is set in Brussels, but not in my Brussels. Martin Ehrenhauser’s Brussels is clean and well-kept, indeed it is much more reminiscent of the London from the movie “Notting Hill” (with Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts). No garbage, no street noise, no poverty. Well-kept balconies, attentive neighbors, in the organic waste you find sick little plants instead of disgusting meat scraps, which the priest nurtures again.
This Brussels stretches mainly from Ixelles via Chatelain to Saint Gilles (but only the nice streets). In Knokke, the vacation resort for wealthy Belgians and half of Luxembourg, the beaches are empty and romantic. Yes, not even the built-up EU quarter appears in the novel. Everyone treats each other respectfully, neighbors apologize when they party too loudly, and even exiled Austrians speak Flemish and French. Even the Chatelain market is somehow quieter and more idyllic than the real Ixelles.
The Lover is not a literary masterpiece. It’s a nice, somewhat cheesy little book that reads well. In my case, an air-polluted, hot weekend was enough (the air of fictional Brussels is clean and fragrant with flowers, by the way). In EU-free August on the beach, it’s certainly a good companion, if nostalgia for an idealized, decelerated Brussels without EU stuff and social hotspots drives you around. Maybe it will also shorten the wait for the next Merkel biography or Jean-Claude Juncker’s scandal memoirs. Charlotte Wirth
