Last night, the EU ambassadors met again to clear the way for a milestone: The decision on the gas price cap is to be made today in the Council. At stake are the joint purchase of gas and the rapid expansion of renewable energies, as Manuel Berkel analyzes. An agreement is needed “now” on the emergency regulation on joint gas purchases, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said yesterday. IEA Director Fatih Birol has unpleasant news: The EU faces a massive gas shortfall next year, he said.
In the corruption case surrounding the MEP and Vice President of the EU Parliament, Eva Kaili, there were further searches yesterday evening. An NGO founded by former MEP Pier Antonio Panzeri is increasingly becoming the focus of the investigations. From the political side, there is criticism of the lack of transparency of so-called friendship groups. These are groups that exist in addition to the official delegate group in the EU Parliament for relations with parliaments on the Arabian Peninsula. Their meetings apparently also take place within the Parliament. Markus Grabitz has the details.
Éric Ciotti would have liked to become France’s president this year. As we know, that didn’t work out, but now he has been elected the new president of the French Republicans. With Ciotti, the party of Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy is likely to head even further to the right. Tanja Kuchenbecker profiles the politician about whom, according to the newspaper Libération, a former party comrade says: “Ciotti is no longer flirting with right-wing extremism, he’s in the middle of it.”
By the way: You are reading the 333rd issue of our Briefing today. I wish you an interesting read!
There is a lot at stake in the EU 27 dispute over the gas price cap. All the European institutions have made this clear once again in recent days. Council President Jozef Síkela drummed up support for an agreement in several interviews over the weekend. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen yesterday sought support from the head of the International Energy Agency.
Today, energy ministers are meeting for another extraordinary session to decide on the Market Correction Mechanism. “If we lose trust and respect from households and companies, it will be a threat to social peace and our support for Ukraine,” warned Czech Industry Minister Síkela in the newspaper FAZ.
The gas price cap should also ensure that EU countries do not outbid each other to fill their storage facilities, Síkela told Bloomberg. The accusation was aimed at the German government, which had driven up prices across Europe by purchasing THE last summer.
After a weekend meeting on Saturday, the EU ambassadors discussed yesterday evening to clear the way for a decision on Tuesday. Most recently, France, originally one of the main proponents of a price cap, grew concerned about the impact on financial markets. Earlier, the European Central Bank had warned that the market correction mechanism could jeopardize the financial stability of the eurozone.
“Intervention in the market could achieve the opposite of its intention and raise prices even further as market participants price in the increased uncertainties,” a senior EU diplomat from the opponents’ camp said yesterday. These states are now trying to negotiate clear rules for suspending the mechanism if the price cap has negative effects, he said.
A group of twelve countries, on the other hand, tried again in recent days to include over-the-counter transactions in the mechanism. Both camps would each have a blocking minority, it was said on Friday. It is therefore not excluded that the European Council will deal with the issue at the end of the week and that a decision could only be made at the next Council of Ministers on Dec. 19.
Yesterday, however, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also built up pressure for a quick agreement. An agreement is needed “now” on the emergency regulation on joint gas purchases, von der Leyen told the press. “Every day of delay carries a price tag.” But agreement on emergency regulations on gas purchasing and faster permitting procedures for renewables had been linked by a group of states at the energy ministers’ meeting to an agreement on the gas price cap.
More renewable energies are to help replace gas. The consequences of a standstill were made clear yesterday by the man next to von der Leyen. IEA Director Fatih Birol elaborated on the International Energy Agency’s shock calculation from early November: The EU faces a gas gap of 27 billion cubic meters (bcm) next year, the new report underlined.
For the next year, the energy agency expects, on the one hand, that consumption will increase from 360 to 393 bcm:
Complicating matters is the tight supply in the coming year:
The gas gap could even double to 60 bcm, according to the energy agency, if the EU does not implement its recent targets, such as a faster expansion of renewables and a 15 percent gas cut. The 27 bcm gap could be closed if the EU expands its measures and provides an additional €100 billion, according to the report presented yesterday.
Politically sensitive is above all the appeal for more efficiency and thriftiness. To meet all of the IEA’s assumptions, the EU would need to consume only 330 bcm next year – another eight percent less than in the current year. Added to this would be support for Ukraine and Moldova. Poland, however, is already appealing to the ECJ against the savings targets already agreed, and Spain and Belgium have also expressed reservations. with rtr
The European Parliament is pushing ahead with the removal of Greek MEP and Vice President of the EU Parliament Eva Kaili (S&D), who is in pre-trial detention in Belgium on charges of corruption, money laundering and gang crime. Opening the session week in Strasbourg, Parliament President Roberta Metsola announced impeachment proceedings under Article 21. On Monday, the Socialist S&D parliamentary group expelled the deputy. Meanwhile, Greek authorities have reportedly frozen the 44-year-old’s assets. The PASOK party has also already expelled the Greek socialist.
Monday evening, the Brussels police launched a second round of searches. This indicates that the scandal is widening. More and more, the role of an NGO is coming into the focus of the investigation. One of the main suspects is former MEP Pier Antonio Panzeri, who founded the NGO Fight Impunity in 2019 after leaving Parliament.
The NGO’s board includes former commissioners such as Emma Bonino and ex-Foreign Affairs Commissioner Federica Mogherini, as well as ex-Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos. Since yesterday, the head of the European Parliament Subcommittee on Human Rights, the Belgian Socialist Maria Arena, has temporarily suspended her office. The background is that the police searched the office of her assistant, who used to work for Fight Impunity.
The detailed circumstances of the case are still not clear. Investigators “suspect a Gulf state of attempting to influence the economic and political decisions of the European Parliament” by “paying substantial sums of money or offering substantial gifts to third parties holding a strategically important position in the European Parliament.” The Gulf state is said to be the Soccer World Cup host Qatar.
Officially, however, the prosecutor’s office has not confirmed this. Four people are in custody, including Kaili’s partner. Her father, from whom large amounts of cash were seized, has since been released. Also released under conditions is former MEP Luca Visentini, who is general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).
Metsola announced an internal investigation, lobbyists’ access to the European Parliament is to be reformed. Meetings with non-EU representatives are to be made more transparent. Kaili gave a speech in the plenary recently in which she called Qatar a “champion of workers’ rights.” Everyone who talked to the emirate was accused of corruption across the board, she criticized. In the LIBE Committee, Kaili also voted in favor of liberalizing visa requirements for citizens of Qatar, Kuwait and Oman, although she herself is not a member of the Committee. Meanwhile, there are signs that the European Parliament is putting visa liberalization on hold in response to the corruption scandal.
The discussion about consequences is ongoing: Inge Gräßle (CDU), corruption expert in the Bundestag and former head of the Budgetary Control Committee in the European Parliament, says: “The European Parliament has much more far-reaching regulations than the Bundestag. The Bundestag, for example, does not know the obligation to disclose lobby contacts for committee chairs, rapporteurs and shadow rapporteurs.” The scandal makes it clear that the European Parliament does not have a problem with rules in the first place, but a problem with control. What Kaili is accused of is a criminal violation of the law.
Nevertheless, she believes it would make sense to tighten up the transparency rules in the European Parliament. Up to now, MEPs have only had to report contacts with lobbyists from companies and associations. Meetings with representatives of third countries or agencies commissioned by third countries to represent interests are not subject to the obligation. Gräßle: “There is no reason not to publish MEPs’ contacts with third countries.” She also calls for a closer look at the role of NGOs.
Rasmus Andresen (Greens), head of the German group, takes a similar view: “There are repeated indications that some NGOs abuse their status to engage in shady lobbying activities.”
Gräßle and Andresen also criticize the lack of transparency in the activities of so-called friendship groups, which also exist alongside the official delegate group in the EU Parliament for relations with Parliaments on the Arabian Peninsula. The members of Qatar’s unofficial friendship group from the European Parliament are listed on the website of the Qatar Embassy: They are 14 MEPs, including five Christian Democrats, two Liberals and one Socialist.
The activities of the friendship groups are partly sponsored by third countries. It is reported that sometimes meetings of these friendship groups also take place within the Parliament. The EP’s transparency rules state that “MEPs who are members of such groups must make their status transparent and must not interfere in the activities of official groups of the Parliament.”
Éric Ciotti would have liked to become France’s president this year. But Valérie Pécresse prevailed against him in the conservative Republicans’ primary election campaign and ran as the top candidate against Emmanuel Macron.
Now the 57-year-old Ciotti has won a belated victory: He was elected the new president of the Republicans by party supporters in a runoff election over the weekend with 53.7 percent of the vote. He was the favorite of the party, which is drifting further and further to the right. Pécresse had already accelerated the shift to the right of the former center-right party; with Ciotti, it is heading even further outward. His ideas are not too different from those of the right-wing populists.
Ciotti is a member of Parliament from Nice in the south of France. In the presidential election campaign, he focused on the classic themes of the right: Security and immigration. In France, he is also called “Monsieur Security.” He wants to save the nation, abolish social benefits for foreigners and tighten immigration laws. “France must remain France,” he proclaimed again and again.
“I want a strict right that will restore order to the streets,” Ciotti said after his election. He stands for a unification of the right. “Ciotti is no longer flirting with right-wing extremism, he’s in the middle of it,” the rather left-wing newspaper Libération quoted a former party comrade of Ciotti’s as saying.
Behind him is the unpopular ex-party leader Laurent Wauquiez, who has long dreamed of becoming president. Ciotti has already declared his support for the far-right politician as a candidate for the 2027 presidential election and is putting his own ambitions on hold for the time being. The two want to lead the Republicans to the presidency as a team of two. But that is still a long way off. First of all, Ciotti has to bring order to his party, which has split into several camps.
Ciotti has held numerous offices in politics, but has never been a minister. He began his political career in the 1990s after graduating from the prestigious Sciences Po School of Politics in Paris. He then accompanied Christian Estrosi, mayor of Nice, in several posts, serving as a parliamentary assistant, campaign manager and deputy mayor of Nice. Today, the two are rivals. Estrosi has joined Macron, while Ciotti has always clearly ruled out an alliance with the president. He would rather vote for the far-right Éric Zemmour than for Macron, he declared in the last presidential election.
Shortly before the election for the party presidency, Ciotti’s campaign was still in danger. French media revealed that the financial prosecutor’s office had opened a case against his ex-wife for embezzling public funds. Ciotti is alleged to have employed her for years in his deputy’s office in Parliament and the City Hall of Nice. This is reminiscent of the scandal of ex-Prime Minister François Fillon, who wanted to become president in 2017. Ciotti won the election anyway.
He has a major challenge ahead of him. His party is fighting for survival; he must bring it out of the shadows. In recent years, there hasn’t been much room for the Republicans between Macron in the liberal center and the parties of Marine Le Pen and Éric Zemmour.
The right-wing bourgeois party of Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy has been in opposition for ten years. Many party bigwigs have left for Macron. The parliamentary group has shrunk from more than 300 deputies to 62. Pécresse did not even win five percent of the vote as a presidential candidate in May. Ciotti believes the Republicans will go under if they don’t win the presidential race in 2027. Tanja Kuchenbecker
Last night, the EU ambassadors met again to clear the way for a milestone: The decision on the gas price cap is to be made today in the Council. At stake are the joint purchase of gas and the rapid expansion of renewable energies, as Manuel Berkel analyzes. An agreement is needed “now” on the emergency regulation on joint gas purchases, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said yesterday. IEA Director Fatih Birol has unpleasant news: The EU faces a massive gas shortfall next year, he said.
In the corruption case surrounding the MEP and Vice President of the EU Parliament, Eva Kaili, there were further searches yesterday evening. An NGO founded by former MEP Pier Antonio Panzeri is increasingly becoming the focus of the investigations. From the political side, there is criticism of the lack of transparency of so-called friendship groups. These are groups that exist in addition to the official delegate group in the EU Parliament for relations with parliaments on the Arabian Peninsula. Their meetings apparently also take place within the Parliament. Markus Grabitz has the details.
Éric Ciotti would have liked to become France’s president this year. As we know, that didn’t work out, but now he has been elected the new president of the French Republicans. With Ciotti, the party of Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy is likely to head even further to the right. Tanja Kuchenbecker profiles the politician about whom, according to the newspaper Libération, a former party comrade says: “Ciotti is no longer flirting with right-wing extremism, he’s in the middle of it.”
By the way: You are reading the 333rd issue of our Briefing today. I wish you an interesting read!
There is a lot at stake in the EU 27 dispute over the gas price cap. All the European institutions have made this clear once again in recent days. Council President Jozef Síkela drummed up support for an agreement in several interviews over the weekend. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen yesterday sought support from the head of the International Energy Agency.
Today, energy ministers are meeting for another extraordinary session to decide on the Market Correction Mechanism. “If we lose trust and respect from households and companies, it will be a threat to social peace and our support for Ukraine,” warned Czech Industry Minister Síkela in the newspaper FAZ.
The gas price cap should also ensure that EU countries do not outbid each other to fill their storage facilities, Síkela told Bloomberg. The accusation was aimed at the German government, which had driven up prices across Europe by purchasing THE last summer.
After a weekend meeting on Saturday, the EU ambassadors discussed yesterday evening to clear the way for a decision on Tuesday. Most recently, France, originally one of the main proponents of a price cap, grew concerned about the impact on financial markets. Earlier, the European Central Bank had warned that the market correction mechanism could jeopardize the financial stability of the eurozone.
“Intervention in the market could achieve the opposite of its intention and raise prices even further as market participants price in the increased uncertainties,” a senior EU diplomat from the opponents’ camp said yesterday. These states are now trying to negotiate clear rules for suspending the mechanism if the price cap has negative effects, he said.
A group of twelve countries, on the other hand, tried again in recent days to include over-the-counter transactions in the mechanism. Both camps would each have a blocking minority, it was said on Friday. It is therefore not excluded that the European Council will deal with the issue at the end of the week and that a decision could only be made at the next Council of Ministers on Dec. 19.
Yesterday, however, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also built up pressure for a quick agreement. An agreement is needed “now” on the emergency regulation on joint gas purchases, von der Leyen told the press. “Every day of delay carries a price tag.” But agreement on emergency regulations on gas purchasing and faster permitting procedures for renewables had been linked by a group of states at the energy ministers’ meeting to an agreement on the gas price cap.
More renewable energies are to help replace gas. The consequences of a standstill were made clear yesterday by the man next to von der Leyen. IEA Director Fatih Birol elaborated on the International Energy Agency’s shock calculation from early November: The EU faces a gas gap of 27 billion cubic meters (bcm) next year, the new report underlined.
For the next year, the energy agency expects, on the one hand, that consumption will increase from 360 to 393 bcm:
Complicating matters is the tight supply in the coming year:
The gas gap could even double to 60 bcm, according to the energy agency, if the EU does not implement its recent targets, such as a faster expansion of renewables and a 15 percent gas cut. The 27 bcm gap could be closed if the EU expands its measures and provides an additional €100 billion, according to the report presented yesterday.
Politically sensitive is above all the appeal for more efficiency and thriftiness. To meet all of the IEA’s assumptions, the EU would need to consume only 330 bcm next year – another eight percent less than in the current year. Added to this would be support for Ukraine and Moldova. Poland, however, is already appealing to the ECJ against the savings targets already agreed, and Spain and Belgium have also expressed reservations. with rtr
The European Parliament is pushing ahead with the removal of Greek MEP and Vice President of the EU Parliament Eva Kaili (S&D), who is in pre-trial detention in Belgium on charges of corruption, money laundering and gang crime. Opening the session week in Strasbourg, Parliament President Roberta Metsola announced impeachment proceedings under Article 21. On Monday, the Socialist S&D parliamentary group expelled the deputy. Meanwhile, Greek authorities have reportedly frozen the 44-year-old’s assets. The PASOK party has also already expelled the Greek socialist.
Monday evening, the Brussels police launched a second round of searches. This indicates that the scandal is widening. More and more, the role of an NGO is coming into the focus of the investigation. One of the main suspects is former MEP Pier Antonio Panzeri, who founded the NGO Fight Impunity in 2019 after leaving Parliament.
The NGO’s board includes former commissioners such as Emma Bonino and ex-Foreign Affairs Commissioner Federica Mogherini, as well as ex-Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos. Since yesterday, the head of the European Parliament Subcommittee on Human Rights, the Belgian Socialist Maria Arena, has temporarily suspended her office. The background is that the police searched the office of her assistant, who used to work for Fight Impunity.
The detailed circumstances of the case are still not clear. Investigators “suspect a Gulf state of attempting to influence the economic and political decisions of the European Parliament” by “paying substantial sums of money or offering substantial gifts to third parties holding a strategically important position in the European Parliament.” The Gulf state is said to be the Soccer World Cup host Qatar.
Officially, however, the prosecutor’s office has not confirmed this. Four people are in custody, including Kaili’s partner. Her father, from whom large amounts of cash were seized, has since been released. Also released under conditions is former MEP Luca Visentini, who is general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).
Metsola announced an internal investigation, lobbyists’ access to the European Parliament is to be reformed. Meetings with non-EU representatives are to be made more transparent. Kaili gave a speech in the plenary recently in which she called Qatar a “champion of workers’ rights.” Everyone who talked to the emirate was accused of corruption across the board, she criticized. In the LIBE Committee, Kaili also voted in favor of liberalizing visa requirements for citizens of Qatar, Kuwait and Oman, although she herself is not a member of the Committee. Meanwhile, there are signs that the European Parliament is putting visa liberalization on hold in response to the corruption scandal.
The discussion about consequences is ongoing: Inge Gräßle (CDU), corruption expert in the Bundestag and former head of the Budgetary Control Committee in the European Parliament, says: “The European Parliament has much more far-reaching regulations than the Bundestag. The Bundestag, for example, does not know the obligation to disclose lobby contacts for committee chairs, rapporteurs and shadow rapporteurs.” The scandal makes it clear that the European Parliament does not have a problem with rules in the first place, but a problem with control. What Kaili is accused of is a criminal violation of the law.
Nevertheless, she believes it would make sense to tighten up the transparency rules in the European Parliament. Up to now, MEPs have only had to report contacts with lobbyists from companies and associations. Meetings with representatives of third countries or agencies commissioned by third countries to represent interests are not subject to the obligation. Gräßle: “There is no reason not to publish MEPs’ contacts with third countries.” She also calls for a closer look at the role of NGOs.
Rasmus Andresen (Greens), head of the German group, takes a similar view: “There are repeated indications that some NGOs abuse their status to engage in shady lobbying activities.”
Gräßle and Andresen also criticize the lack of transparency in the activities of so-called friendship groups, which also exist alongside the official delegate group in the EU Parliament for relations with Parliaments on the Arabian Peninsula. The members of Qatar’s unofficial friendship group from the European Parliament are listed on the website of the Qatar Embassy: They are 14 MEPs, including five Christian Democrats, two Liberals and one Socialist.
The activities of the friendship groups are partly sponsored by third countries. It is reported that sometimes meetings of these friendship groups also take place within the Parliament. The EP’s transparency rules state that “MEPs who are members of such groups must make their status transparent and must not interfere in the activities of official groups of the Parliament.”
Éric Ciotti would have liked to become France’s president this year. But Valérie Pécresse prevailed against him in the conservative Republicans’ primary election campaign and ran as the top candidate against Emmanuel Macron.
Now the 57-year-old Ciotti has won a belated victory: He was elected the new president of the Republicans by party supporters in a runoff election over the weekend with 53.7 percent of the vote. He was the favorite of the party, which is drifting further and further to the right. Pécresse had already accelerated the shift to the right of the former center-right party; with Ciotti, it is heading even further outward. His ideas are not too different from those of the right-wing populists.
Ciotti is a member of Parliament from Nice in the south of France. In the presidential election campaign, he focused on the classic themes of the right: Security and immigration. In France, he is also called “Monsieur Security.” He wants to save the nation, abolish social benefits for foreigners and tighten immigration laws. “France must remain France,” he proclaimed again and again.
“I want a strict right that will restore order to the streets,” Ciotti said after his election. He stands for a unification of the right. “Ciotti is no longer flirting with right-wing extremism, he’s in the middle of it,” the rather left-wing newspaper Libération quoted a former party comrade of Ciotti’s as saying.
Behind him is the unpopular ex-party leader Laurent Wauquiez, who has long dreamed of becoming president. Ciotti has already declared his support for the far-right politician as a candidate for the 2027 presidential election and is putting his own ambitions on hold for the time being. The two want to lead the Republicans to the presidency as a team of two. But that is still a long way off. First of all, Ciotti has to bring order to his party, which has split into several camps.
Ciotti has held numerous offices in politics, but has never been a minister. He began his political career in the 1990s after graduating from the prestigious Sciences Po School of Politics in Paris. He then accompanied Christian Estrosi, mayor of Nice, in several posts, serving as a parliamentary assistant, campaign manager and deputy mayor of Nice. Today, the two are rivals. Estrosi has joined Macron, while Ciotti has always clearly ruled out an alliance with the president. He would rather vote for the far-right Éric Zemmour than for Macron, he declared in the last presidential election.
Shortly before the election for the party presidency, Ciotti’s campaign was still in danger. French media revealed that the financial prosecutor’s office had opened a case against his ex-wife for embezzling public funds. Ciotti is alleged to have employed her for years in his deputy’s office in Parliament and the City Hall of Nice. This is reminiscent of the scandal of ex-Prime Minister François Fillon, who wanted to become president in 2017. Ciotti won the election anyway.
He has a major challenge ahead of him. His party is fighting for survival; he must bring it out of the shadows. In recent years, there hasn’t been much room for the Republicans between Macron in the liberal center and the parties of Marine Le Pen and Éric Zemmour.
The right-wing bourgeois party of Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy has been in opposition for ten years. Many party bigwigs have left for Macron. The parliamentary group has shrunk from more than 300 deputies to 62. Pécresse did not even win five percent of the vote as a presidential candidate in May. Ciotti believes the Republicans will go under if they don’t win the presidential race in 2027. Tanja Kuchenbecker
