A week ago, the German government presented its startup strategy. The joint project of the German “traffic light” coalition also covers a number of EU areas. Which and why they play a major role in the strategy’s success, Falk Steiner has the details.
My colleague Nico Beckert took a look at what China’s military actions around Taiwan will mean for supply chains. Taiwan is, after all, the world’s largest supplier of microchips. As of Thursday evening, experts are giving the all-clear – but that could quickly change if China expands the maneuvers even further.
Saving is the order of the day: Germany will need to save ten billion cubic meters of gas by March next year to meet the target set by the EU. Read more about the calculations and what the Federation of German Industries has to say about it in the News section.
For Latvian-born Ekaterina Boening, playing a practical part in the transformation was the reason why she moved this year from the think tank Transport & Environment Deutschland to the energy giant Siemens Energy. Find out more about the exciting field she manages now in today’s Profile.
The goal is clear: “We want to become the driving force for a European location. That is the only sensible goal,” says Anna Christmann, start-up representative of the German government. “We need to be visible as Europe and attractive for start-ups. As the largest country in the EU, we have a special role.”
For this to succeed, measures are to be taken both in Germany and with other EU members and at the EU level. France, in particular, repeatedly emphasized the importance of an improved start-up policy during the first term of office of the liberal French President Macron and during the Council Presidency in the first half of this year. Compared to the grand French goals, which are also partly reflected in the policy of EU Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton, Germany once again appears hesitant here.
At the beginning of the year, the French government announced that it would not only breed a large number of so-called unicorns with a market value of more than €1 billion by 2030. The goal at the time was to have 10 so-called hectocorns by 2030; technology companies with more than €100 billion in market value. Anna Christmann sees France’s efforts as an incentive: “We rely on networking to move forward together. I see the fact that France in particular also has a lot of activities in this area as very positive, because it means we push each other.”
For this to succeed at all, French policymakers attach importance to an improved financing environment – just as German start-up policymakers now do. This means, in particular, better funding for start-ups in the founding and especially the growth phase. Because that is precisely where European investors are scarce – instead, emerging European start-ups are primarily supported by venture capitalists from the US and Asia. “Long-term investments in research-intensive start-ups, for example in the field of quantum computing and artificial intelligence, are particularly important,” says Daniel Breitinger, Head of Start-ups at Bitkom.
But one essential prerequisite is missing: “There is a lack of institutional capital; these investors tend to invest in larger amounts. This makes the comparatively small-volume VC funds in Europe uninteresting for larger investors. So far, there are hardly any funds whose volume exceeds €1 billion.” That is what policymakers now aim to change – but they encounter new problems in the process.
On the initiative of French Minister for the Economy and Finances, Bruno LeMaire (LREM/Renew), German Minister of Finance, Christian Lindner, (FDP/Renew) announced match funding for the €10 billion European Tech Champions Initiative (ETCI) in April: France and Germany will each provide €1 billion to the fund at the European Investment Bank, while Germany will contribute its significant chunk via the Future Fund at the federally owned Kfw – Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (“Credit Institute for Reconstruction”). The European Investment Bank (EIB) is to contribute another €500 million. Many other EU countries have signaled their interest in participating. Shortly before the French presidential election. But since the announcements, the ETCI has gone quiet. When asked, the German Finance Ministry assures that the ETCI is expected to “be able to make its first investments by the end of the year”.
Start-up representative and Green Party politician Christmann also wants to use additional European funds to create more European unicorns: “We are looking at the investment quotas that we have set for the ERP/EIF facility at the European Investment Fund with currently at least 20 percent for climate and social impact investment,” says the start-up representative. “This should also continue to grow, because of course we are not satisfied with 20 percent in the long term.”
While all of these measures do not require regulatory changes, the conditions for start-ups in other areas depend on both the EU and the national levels. When it comes to the coalition’s planned employee equity participation, the players in Brussels will probably be left out, as they will be in the planned, purely German plans for administrative digitization, which will then also make things easier for start-ups. However, Christmann also sees opportunities in new regulations, such as the Artificial Intelligence Act: “The living lab regulation basically also comes from Germany, we have the Data Act and all regulation on data at the European level, and also Solvency II.” These regulations must “of course be designed to be innovation- and start-up-friendly”.
The revision of the Solvency II Directive, in particular, is causing headaches for some observers. From the perspective of the start-up and venture capital industry, a key aspect of this is the question under what conditions financially strong insurers will be allowed to further invest. “The German government is committed to targeted adjustments that further improve the regulatory framework while leading to balanced effects on capital requirements,” the Federal Ministry of Finance stated in response to a query. “This is central to the stability of the industry and the general investment capacity of insurers.”
But insurers themselves fear above all that changes to the model for forward calculations of the yield curve would increase their capital requirements. Life insurers especially often have to decide on their strategies over very long periods, in some cases 40 years – but the predictive power of financial mathematical models does not allow for reliable forecasts this far into the future, which is why yield curves are extrapolated into the future after 20 years. The insurance regulator EIOPA proposed new criteria for this.
But these would reduce investment opportunities even further, according to the industry, especially in riskier asset classes such as venture capital. “The new model would create incentives to invest more in long-dated bonds, such as government bonds,” a GDV spokesman told Europe.Table. “This could reduce funds for investments in real assets.”
The Federal Ministry of Finance does not share this opinion: “The subject of the review of Solvency II is also potential regulatory relaxation for long-term investments to better exploit the investment potential of insurers,” the ministry of FDP Minister of Finance Christian Lindner said. “The German government is committed to risk-appropriate adjustments that also adequately take the protection of policyholders into account.”
One area is completely absent from the German start-up strategy: The defense industry, which German policymakers have recently rediscovered after Russia’s attack on Ukraine. But there is no talk of a watershed in German start-up policy here, as Christmann explains: “We have identified focus areas that are about solving societal challenges. These are climate crisis, health, biotechnology, these are main focus areas that we also serve with the start-up strategy.” The issue is of course increasingly present, says the start-up representative, who is also the aerospace coordinator of the German coalition: “Of course, there are also some areas in which dual-use is an issue, even in aerospace alone, for which I am also in charge. But the focus is on the areas we have listed in the start-up strategy.”
But while there is no shortage of start-up policy, one question has remained unanswered: What qualifies as a start-up in the first place? What as a scale-up? And what counts as a technology-intensive innovation? However, before the first quarter of 2023, EU Commission does not want to answer this question, which is not exactly unimportant for any political control, on all start-up policies at the German and European level: As part of the European Innovation Agenda, a report will then be presented to provide a more uniform Europe-wide answer to precisely this question. At least until then, all participants can continue to have very different definitions – and call them all a start-up.
The logistics, trade, import and export sectors have become thin-skinned in recent years. Too often, global politics and pandemics have thrown their supply schedules out of sync. So news of extended naval operations around Taiwan has caused a scare.
Will chips from Taiwan now become scarce? Will Taiwanese goods be delayed from reaching Europe? Is there a risk of container congestion at important global ports such as Kaohsiung, Anping, Keelung or Taipei? After all, the Taiwan Strait is one of the busiest shipping routes in the region.
But experts are sounding the all-clear for now. “If the military maneuvers only last a short time and are not too extensive, then the disruptions will be mostly limited,” economist Wan-Hsin Liu of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel) told China.Table. There would be alternative routes. The planned duration of the exercises of three days is also within the range that freight companies can still easily accept as a delay.
At any rate, the military exercises have not yet caused any major delays or supply chain problems on the first day. Some shipping companies immediately rerouted their ships to alternative routes after the announcement. Taiwan’s shipping authorities already provided them with options to avoid the danger zones by a wide margin.
Some freighters have also changed their destination and are now calling at ports on the mainland. Others have reduced their speed to reach the critical zones by the weekend after the exercises have ended. However, most freighters simply bypass areas where military exercises are being held.
Ships without a direct destination on Taiwan are also affected. Almost half of the world’s container ships passed through the Taiwan Strait last year, Bloomberg reports. Thus, the restricted zones not only hinder Taiwan traffic, but also ships from Japan, South Korea, and China with destinations in Europe or the United States.
But even if the ships cannot pass through the Taiwan Strait and instead pass by the eastern flank of the island, the delays are only about three days. Such delays are not uncommon in global shipping. Extreme weather such as typhoons regularly cause similar deviations.
However, some uncertainty remains. Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, only spent a few hours in Taiwan. Her visit, however, has left the region in turmoil. The military exercises around Taiwan have already reached a new dimension. Whether the People’s Republic will be content with that remains to be seen. The designation of the maneuver zones already looks like a preparatory exercise for a naval blockade of Taiwan. According to Taiwanese media, this is exactly how Chinese General Meng Xiangjun portrays the situation.
If China were to extend the exercises, problems might emerge after all. Companies and logisticians would have to be prepared for “considerable disruptions in global supply chains and thus also in the global economy,” according to globalization expert Liu from the IfW. However, experts believe it is too early to be too alarmed. “We might be concerned if the drills become longer and more intense to impact supply chains, but there is no sign of that happening now,” says Huang Huiming, a fund manager at Nanjing Jing Heng Investment Management.
However, even dealing with the scenario is quite relevant in light of the experience of the past few years. Taiwan possesses the world’s largest production base for microchips. The market leader Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC) alone holds a share of 53 percent.
According to Liu, semiconductors accounted for a good 51 percent of Taiwanese exports in the first half of the year. If these components are missing, the assembly lines in Germany will also come to a standstill. As a result, the German economy sees a strong dependence on Taiwan. Above all, it is aware of the possibility of indirect effects caused by outages in the People’s Republic (China.Table reported) and was already an issue before the current crisis.
China also still has the option of extending the sanctions to other Taiwanese commodity groups imposed after Pelosi’s visit. This scenario would involve a customs tricks instead of a naval blockade. China is already rejecting goods on various questionable grounds (China.Table reported).
So far, the food and construction industries have been most affected. But product groups relevant to manufacturing could also become the target of revenge for Pelosi’s provocation. This would hit Taiwan hard. The People’s Republic is the island’s largest trading partner. Last year, it shipped goods worth just under $190 billion to China. Germany accounted for a good $245 billion.
However, far-reaching sanctions are currently considered unlikely. China would also hurt itself by isolating Taiwan economically. The People’s Republic is also dependent on semiconductors from Taiwan (China.Table reported).
Since April, Jekaterina Boening has been responsible for sustainability in the Industrial Applications department at Siemens Energy. The energy division of the Munich-based conglomerate offers companies in industry – such as the energy-intensive chemical industry – concepts for green transformation.
The 32-year-old is responsible for implementing the company’s own sustainability goals in the Industrial Applications unit. Boening is thus moving away from her previous focus on a sustainable transport sector. At the think tank “Transport & Environment Germany”, she was division manager for energy, climate and fuels. “By moving from the think tank to Siemens Energy, I finally wanted to play a practical role in the transformation,” Boening explains.
One of their central tasks is to implement the EU taxonomy in their own company. The first step is to create the processes for measuring “green” investments. In addition, another important task for Boening is to check the climate protection suitability of the company’s own sites. “We want to obtain one hundred percent of our electricity from green sources starting next year and become climate-neutral in all our own operating processes by 2030,” explains Boening.
No easy feat for an industrial company, but perhaps it was precisely this challenge of helping to transform an energy giant that attracted Boening to Siemens Energy. “Of course, there are other companies, for example, from the finance or IT sectors, that announce that they have been climate-neutral for years. But there you have to remember that those companies only had to decarbonize a few offices. For us, and especially for our customers in the energy-intensive industry, it’s a bit more demanding,” says Boening.
Energy has accompanied the Latvian-born, staunch European, and committed Berliner since the beginning of her professional career. “In my first job at Eon, I witnessed the beginning of the German energy transition,” says Boening. Shortly before that, former Chancellor Merkel had announced the phase-out of nuclear energy under the impact of the nuclear disaster in Fukushima.
Boening also learned about Russia’s approach to energy long before Russia used energy as a bargaining chip against the West. She spent four months advising the Russian Energy Ministry on energy conservation as part of a UN Development Program project. Because that is still considered hardly necessary in Russia. “There you are in the student dormitory in a T-shirt and shorts with windows open. It’s minus twenty degrees outside and the heating is on full blast,” explains Boening.
Her country of birth has already gone through the learning process. But it wasn’t easy for the small country either, says Boening. The fact that climate protection and environmental protection hardly played a role in Latvia until recently is due to the fact that such topics require a certain level of prosperity. “With the help of the EU, too, Latvia has achieved that, however, and the Green Deal means that the issues are becoming increasingly important,” Boening explains. David Renke
A week ago, the German government presented its startup strategy. The joint project of the German “traffic light” coalition also covers a number of EU areas. Which and why they play a major role in the strategy’s success, Falk Steiner has the details.
My colleague Nico Beckert took a look at what China’s military actions around Taiwan will mean for supply chains. Taiwan is, after all, the world’s largest supplier of microchips. As of Thursday evening, experts are giving the all-clear – but that could quickly change if China expands the maneuvers even further.
Saving is the order of the day: Germany will need to save ten billion cubic meters of gas by March next year to meet the target set by the EU. Read more about the calculations and what the Federation of German Industries has to say about it in the News section.
For Latvian-born Ekaterina Boening, playing a practical part in the transformation was the reason why she moved this year from the think tank Transport & Environment Deutschland to the energy giant Siemens Energy. Find out more about the exciting field she manages now in today’s Profile.
The goal is clear: “We want to become the driving force for a European location. That is the only sensible goal,” says Anna Christmann, start-up representative of the German government. “We need to be visible as Europe and attractive for start-ups. As the largest country in the EU, we have a special role.”
For this to succeed, measures are to be taken both in Germany and with other EU members and at the EU level. France, in particular, repeatedly emphasized the importance of an improved start-up policy during the first term of office of the liberal French President Macron and during the Council Presidency in the first half of this year. Compared to the grand French goals, which are also partly reflected in the policy of EU Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton, Germany once again appears hesitant here.
At the beginning of the year, the French government announced that it would not only breed a large number of so-called unicorns with a market value of more than €1 billion by 2030. The goal at the time was to have 10 so-called hectocorns by 2030; technology companies with more than €100 billion in market value. Anna Christmann sees France’s efforts as an incentive: “We rely on networking to move forward together. I see the fact that France in particular also has a lot of activities in this area as very positive, because it means we push each other.”
For this to succeed at all, French policymakers attach importance to an improved financing environment – just as German start-up policymakers now do. This means, in particular, better funding for start-ups in the founding and especially the growth phase. Because that is precisely where European investors are scarce – instead, emerging European start-ups are primarily supported by venture capitalists from the US and Asia. “Long-term investments in research-intensive start-ups, for example in the field of quantum computing and artificial intelligence, are particularly important,” says Daniel Breitinger, Head of Start-ups at Bitkom.
But one essential prerequisite is missing: “There is a lack of institutional capital; these investors tend to invest in larger amounts. This makes the comparatively small-volume VC funds in Europe uninteresting for larger investors. So far, there are hardly any funds whose volume exceeds €1 billion.” That is what policymakers now aim to change – but they encounter new problems in the process.
On the initiative of French Minister for the Economy and Finances, Bruno LeMaire (LREM/Renew), German Minister of Finance, Christian Lindner, (FDP/Renew) announced match funding for the €10 billion European Tech Champions Initiative (ETCI) in April: France and Germany will each provide €1 billion to the fund at the European Investment Bank, while Germany will contribute its significant chunk via the Future Fund at the federally owned Kfw – Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (“Credit Institute for Reconstruction”). The European Investment Bank (EIB) is to contribute another €500 million. Many other EU countries have signaled their interest in participating. Shortly before the French presidential election. But since the announcements, the ETCI has gone quiet. When asked, the German Finance Ministry assures that the ETCI is expected to “be able to make its first investments by the end of the year”.
Start-up representative and Green Party politician Christmann also wants to use additional European funds to create more European unicorns: “We are looking at the investment quotas that we have set for the ERP/EIF facility at the European Investment Fund with currently at least 20 percent for climate and social impact investment,” says the start-up representative. “This should also continue to grow, because of course we are not satisfied with 20 percent in the long term.”
While all of these measures do not require regulatory changes, the conditions for start-ups in other areas depend on both the EU and the national levels. When it comes to the coalition’s planned employee equity participation, the players in Brussels will probably be left out, as they will be in the planned, purely German plans for administrative digitization, which will then also make things easier for start-ups. However, Christmann also sees opportunities in new regulations, such as the Artificial Intelligence Act: “The living lab regulation basically also comes from Germany, we have the Data Act and all regulation on data at the European level, and also Solvency II.” These regulations must “of course be designed to be innovation- and start-up-friendly”.
The revision of the Solvency II Directive, in particular, is causing headaches for some observers. From the perspective of the start-up and venture capital industry, a key aspect of this is the question under what conditions financially strong insurers will be allowed to further invest. “The German government is committed to targeted adjustments that further improve the regulatory framework while leading to balanced effects on capital requirements,” the Federal Ministry of Finance stated in response to a query. “This is central to the stability of the industry and the general investment capacity of insurers.”
But insurers themselves fear above all that changes to the model for forward calculations of the yield curve would increase their capital requirements. Life insurers especially often have to decide on their strategies over very long periods, in some cases 40 years – but the predictive power of financial mathematical models does not allow for reliable forecasts this far into the future, which is why yield curves are extrapolated into the future after 20 years. The insurance regulator EIOPA proposed new criteria for this.
But these would reduce investment opportunities even further, according to the industry, especially in riskier asset classes such as venture capital. “The new model would create incentives to invest more in long-dated bonds, such as government bonds,” a GDV spokesman told Europe.Table. “This could reduce funds for investments in real assets.”
The Federal Ministry of Finance does not share this opinion: “The subject of the review of Solvency II is also potential regulatory relaxation for long-term investments to better exploit the investment potential of insurers,” the ministry of FDP Minister of Finance Christian Lindner said. “The German government is committed to risk-appropriate adjustments that also adequately take the protection of policyholders into account.”
One area is completely absent from the German start-up strategy: The defense industry, which German policymakers have recently rediscovered after Russia’s attack on Ukraine. But there is no talk of a watershed in German start-up policy here, as Christmann explains: “We have identified focus areas that are about solving societal challenges. These are climate crisis, health, biotechnology, these are main focus areas that we also serve with the start-up strategy.” The issue is of course increasingly present, says the start-up representative, who is also the aerospace coordinator of the German coalition: “Of course, there are also some areas in which dual-use is an issue, even in aerospace alone, for which I am also in charge. But the focus is on the areas we have listed in the start-up strategy.”
But while there is no shortage of start-up policy, one question has remained unanswered: What qualifies as a start-up in the first place? What as a scale-up? And what counts as a technology-intensive innovation? However, before the first quarter of 2023, EU Commission does not want to answer this question, which is not exactly unimportant for any political control, on all start-up policies at the German and European level: As part of the European Innovation Agenda, a report will then be presented to provide a more uniform Europe-wide answer to precisely this question. At least until then, all participants can continue to have very different definitions – and call them all a start-up.
The logistics, trade, import and export sectors have become thin-skinned in recent years. Too often, global politics and pandemics have thrown their supply schedules out of sync. So news of extended naval operations around Taiwan has caused a scare.
Will chips from Taiwan now become scarce? Will Taiwanese goods be delayed from reaching Europe? Is there a risk of container congestion at important global ports such as Kaohsiung, Anping, Keelung or Taipei? After all, the Taiwan Strait is one of the busiest shipping routes in the region.
But experts are sounding the all-clear for now. “If the military maneuvers only last a short time and are not too extensive, then the disruptions will be mostly limited,” economist Wan-Hsin Liu of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel) told China.Table. There would be alternative routes. The planned duration of the exercises of three days is also within the range that freight companies can still easily accept as a delay.
At any rate, the military exercises have not yet caused any major delays or supply chain problems on the first day. Some shipping companies immediately rerouted their ships to alternative routes after the announcement. Taiwan’s shipping authorities already provided them with options to avoid the danger zones by a wide margin.
Some freighters have also changed their destination and are now calling at ports on the mainland. Others have reduced their speed to reach the critical zones by the weekend after the exercises have ended. However, most freighters simply bypass areas where military exercises are being held.
Ships without a direct destination on Taiwan are also affected. Almost half of the world’s container ships passed through the Taiwan Strait last year, Bloomberg reports. Thus, the restricted zones not only hinder Taiwan traffic, but also ships from Japan, South Korea, and China with destinations in Europe or the United States.
But even if the ships cannot pass through the Taiwan Strait and instead pass by the eastern flank of the island, the delays are only about three days. Such delays are not uncommon in global shipping. Extreme weather such as typhoons regularly cause similar deviations.
However, some uncertainty remains. Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, only spent a few hours in Taiwan. Her visit, however, has left the region in turmoil. The military exercises around Taiwan have already reached a new dimension. Whether the People’s Republic will be content with that remains to be seen. The designation of the maneuver zones already looks like a preparatory exercise for a naval blockade of Taiwan. According to Taiwanese media, this is exactly how Chinese General Meng Xiangjun portrays the situation.
If China were to extend the exercises, problems might emerge after all. Companies and logisticians would have to be prepared for “considerable disruptions in global supply chains and thus also in the global economy,” according to globalization expert Liu from the IfW. However, experts believe it is too early to be too alarmed. “We might be concerned if the drills become longer and more intense to impact supply chains, but there is no sign of that happening now,” says Huang Huiming, a fund manager at Nanjing Jing Heng Investment Management.
However, even dealing with the scenario is quite relevant in light of the experience of the past few years. Taiwan possesses the world’s largest production base for microchips. The market leader Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC) alone holds a share of 53 percent.
According to Liu, semiconductors accounted for a good 51 percent of Taiwanese exports in the first half of the year. If these components are missing, the assembly lines in Germany will also come to a standstill. As a result, the German economy sees a strong dependence on Taiwan. Above all, it is aware of the possibility of indirect effects caused by outages in the People’s Republic (China.Table reported) and was already an issue before the current crisis.
China also still has the option of extending the sanctions to other Taiwanese commodity groups imposed after Pelosi’s visit. This scenario would involve a customs tricks instead of a naval blockade. China is already rejecting goods on various questionable grounds (China.Table reported).
So far, the food and construction industries have been most affected. But product groups relevant to manufacturing could also become the target of revenge for Pelosi’s provocation. This would hit Taiwan hard. The People’s Republic is the island’s largest trading partner. Last year, it shipped goods worth just under $190 billion to China. Germany accounted for a good $245 billion.
However, far-reaching sanctions are currently considered unlikely. China would also hurt itself by isolating Taiwan economically. The People’s Republic is also dependent on semiconductors from Taiwan (China.Table reported).
Since April, Jekaterina Boening has been responsible for sustainability in the Industrial Applications department at Siemens Energy. The energy division of the Munich-based conglomerate offers companies in industry – such as the energy-intensive chemical industry – concepts for green transformation.
The 32-year-old is responsible for implementing the company’s own sustainability goals in the Industrial Applications unit. Boening is thus moving away from her previous focus on a sustainable transport sector. At the think tank “Transport & Environment Germany”, she was division manager for energy, climate and fuels. “By moving from the think tank to Siemens Energy, I finally wanted to play a practical role in the transformation,” Boening explains.
One of their central tasks is to implement the EU taxonomy in their own company. The first step is to create the processes for measuring “green” investments. In addition, another important task for Boening is to check the climate protection suitability of the company’s own sites. “We want to obtain one hundred percent of our electricity from green sources starting next year and become climate-neutral in all our own operating processes by 2030,” explains Boening.
No easy feat for an industrial company, but perhaps it was precisely this challenge of helping to transform an energy giant that attracted Boening to Siemens Energy. “Of course, there are other companies, for example, from the finance or IT sectors, that announce that they have been climate-neutral for years. But there you have to remember that those companies only had to decarbonize a few offices. For us, and especially for our customers in the energy-intensive industry, it’s a bit more demanding,” says Boening.
Energy has accompanied the Latvian-born, staunch European, and committed Berliner since the beginning of her professional career. “In my first job at Eon, I witnessed the beginning of the German energy transition,” says Boening. Shortly before that, former Chancellor Merkel had announced the phase-out of nuclear energy under the impact of the nuclear disaster in Fukushima.
Boening also learned about Russia’s approach to energy long before Russia used energy as a bargaining chip against the West. She spent four months advising the Russian Energy Ministry on energy conservation as part of a UN Development Program project. Because that is still considered hardly necessary in Russia. “There you are in the student dormitory in a T-shirt and shorts with windows open. It’s minus twenty degrees outside and the heating is on full blast,” explains Boening.
Her country of birth has already gone through the learning process. But it wasn’t easy for the small country either, says Boening. The fact that climate protection and environmental protection hardly played a role in Latvia until recently is due to the fact that such topics require a certain level of prosperity. “With the help of the EU, too, Latvia has achieved that, however, and the Green Deal means that the issues are becoming increasingly important,” Boening explains. David Renke
