ECB President Christine Lagarde is traveling to Brussels today, where she will meet with the EU Parliament’s Economic Affairs Committee for the last time before the EU elections. On the agenda is a reflection on the first 25 years of the Euro currency and how it should continue in the future. No fewer than nine studies have been produced by academics from all over Europe in preparation for this discussion.
But the “monetary policy dialog” between Parliament and the ECB, which takes place four times a year, is not a seminar for economic policy mind games. It is one of the few democratic instruments of control over the formally independent central bank. In the past economically turbulent years, parliamentarians have been happy to use this instrument to force the head of the central bank to explain her policy publicly.
Conservative MEPs will once again ask Lagarde today why she is not doing more to push inflation back below the two percent mark. Green and left-wing representatives will criticize her for even trying to use interest rate policy to counter supply-side price shocks. They fear that government budgets and green investments will become collateral damage of ECB policy.
The questions are often predictable, and so are Lagarde’s answers, which sometimes seem wooden. The ECB chief wants to prevent her words from being misinterpreted and inadvertently leading to market panic. Nevertheless, the monetary policy dialogues are valuable in putting the spotlight on the ECB’s momentous decisions. Independent institutions must also be able to explain themselves.
This Monday, the party and candidate will officially come together again. The executive committee and board will meet in the morning, after which CDU leader Friedrich Merz will appear before the press together with Ursula von der Leyen. There they will announce something that will hardly surprise anyone: The Christian Democrats want to run in the European elections with the incumbent Commission President, and von der Leyen wants to do the same. The nomination as lead candidate of the European People’s Party on March 6 and 7 is then only a formality.
The party and candidate had often been at odds in recent years. For many in the CDU/CSU, von der Leyen was already too headstrong as a federal minister in Merkel’s cabinet – she preferred to push through her plans with the help of the media instead of involving her party colleagues first. When she moved to Brussels in 2019, she showed even less consideration for their sensitivities. Von der Leyen has “often shaped her role as Commission President independently of her own party family and acted very autonomously”, says Anton Hofreiter, Chairman of the European Affairs Committee in the Bundestag.
What pleases the Greens, infuriates some Christian Democrats in the meantime. Von der Leyen is driving her European Green Deal forward with verve: Her deputy Frans Timmermans has presented one ambitious legislative proposal after another, often peppered with detailed regulations. Initially, the EPP group supported this, but the Ukraine war and energy price crisis caused the mood in the business community to change. Von der Leyen had made the mistake of sticking rigidly to her agenda, even though the world had changed dramatically with the war and pandemic, criticized a leading EPP MEP.
Merz and other leading Christian Democrats talked von der Leyen into it, with success: Last summer, she began to move in the direction of her party family – knowing full well that she needed their support for a second term in office. In her speech on the state of the EU, von der Leyen talks a lot about the competitiveness of industry and the concerns of farmers, she appoints CDU politician Markus Pieper as SME commissioner and buries plans such as stricter chemicals regulations.
Von der Leyen also goes a long way to accommodate the farmers: She withdraws the proposal on the Pesticides Directive and personally announces that the rules for fallow land will continue to be suspended. This rewards farmers “for their important work”, she says, flattering this important group of voters for the EPP.
Moritz Körner, the head of the FDP MEPs in the European Parliament, considers this change of course to be “not very credible”. After all, von der Leyen has “completely neglected competitiveness and the reduction of bureaucracy for four years”.
Many Christian Democrats are also not convinced. They would like to attach conditions to the nomination of the candidate, and swear her to the program of the next mandate, in particular an agenda for the competitiveness of European industry and the interests of farmers. Von der Leyen, however, does not want to be pinned down. Any concrete commitment reduces her future room for maneuver and she risks stepping on the toes of one or more of the EU heads of state and government.
She needs their blessing for a second term of office: Per the EU treaties, the European Council proposes a candidate for Commission President to the European Parliament. If, as expected, the EPP emerges as the strongest force in the European elections from June 6 to 9, the way would probably be clear for von der Leyen. And not only because most of the 27 heads of state and government currently come from EPP parties.
Von der Leyen has earned respect for her decisive stance, especially after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. She has “emerged as the voice of the European Union“, says the liberal Körner. For US President Joe Biden, the Commission President is one of the most important contacts in Europe, and Chancellor Scholz has also developed a good working relationship with her, according to reports in Berlin. Unlike Council President Charles Michel, von der Leyen is perceived as a political heavyweight.
When she took office, the former defense minister had already declared that she wanted to lead a “geopolitical commission”. She has backed up this claim with many trips, not least to Kyiv, where she traveled very soon after the Russian attack.
In any case, the 65-year-old has an enormous workload. In mid-January, she traveled by car from the World Economic Forum in Davos to Strasbourg for a speech, from there by charter plane to Forli in northern Italy for a joint appearance with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and then back to Davos via Zurich, where she met representatives of the Western Balkan states in the evening. The following day, she held twelve bilateral meetings at the World Economic Forum before taking a scheduled flight to Stockholm. She goes jogging and abstains from alcohol to cope with this program.
Von der Leyen wants to be more present in the member states than her predecessor Jean-Claude Juncker, for example. Her public appearances with the leading politicians there have contributed to the fact that most people in Europe have an image of her – unlike that of the Social Democratic lead candidate Nicolas Schmit.
This will help her in the upcoming election campaign, which will take her all over the EU. Germany will then only be one of 27 countries, so von der Leyen will hardly be able to be very present in her home country. However, some CDU/CSU strategists may be happy with this – her party colleague is not very popular with the conservative core clientele everywhere.
The election campaign will not be easy, as the Christian Democratic parties are under pressure from the far right in many EU countries. If the forces critical of the EU gain significant support, things could also become tight for von der Leyen. She needs an absolute majority in the European Parliament behind her. But that is where her biggest critics are.
Many MEPs accuse her of treating Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán too leniently. In December, she released €10 billion in EU funds for Orbán without need, says Körner. “Her record as guardian of the treaties is therefore disappointing.”
Given the expected outcome of the election, however, von der Leyen will not only have to get the EPP, but also the Social Democrats, Liberals and Greens largely united behind her to obtain an absolute majority of all MEPs. For parliamentarians, this situation offers powerful leverage to obtain substantive commitments from the Commission President, says Nicolai von Ondarza, research group leader at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP). “She will have to conduct intensive negotiations.”
The results of the Commission’s annual Single Market and Competitiveness Report published on Wednesday are mixed. Based on 17 performance indicators, the report aims to show the state of competitiveness in the European Single Market. The result: Nine indicators show improved values, five have deteriorated, and the rest have either stagnated or the data could not yet be compiled.
One of the positive findings of the report is that the share of internal trade in the EU’s total GDP has been rising sharply again since 2020 after a long period of stagnation. The value of intra-European trade in goods amounted to 26.3% of the EU’s economic power in 2022. This is almost three percentage points more than in the previous year.
However, it is questionable whether this increase is due to factors specific to the Single Market. Trade with partners outside the EU has increased at least as much.
Trade in services within the EU has also grown slightly from a low level, but has only now been able to compensate for the sharp decline during the pandemic. In 2022, the share of intra-European trade in services returned to the 2019 level.
Another indicator that the Commission examines is the conformity deficit in the EU. This measures the number of directives that have been poorly or insufficiently transposed into national law by member states. The Commission is pleased to see a slight improvement here.
With 18 inadequately implemented EU directives, Germany ranks second to last in the European conformity ranking. Only Hungary, with 23 inadequately implemented directives, is even lower down the list.
According to the Commission report, “substantial additional growth” could be unleashed if national trade barriers were tackled, above all through better implementation of rules that have been jointly agreed. For the coming years, the Commission is therefore committed to stronger enforcement of internal market law. It also wants to take action against so-called “gold plating”, whereby national legislators implement the European directive correctly but add additional provisions that lead to differences between member states.
The Commission also argues for the introduction of national single-market offices. These should be given sufficient resources and authority by member states and be responsible for removing national barriers to trade, particularly in the services sector.
The EU Commission is concerned about the lack of venture capital, which is essential for fast-growing start-ups. According to the report, venture capital investments amounted to around 0.09% of European GDP in 2022. A year earlier, the figure was 0.11 percent. In the USA, this figure is 0.75 percent and in China 0.58 percent.
This is one of the reasons why the Commission is calling for a deeper and better-integrated capital market in the EU. However, the Capital Markets Union project, which Finance Ministers Christian Lindner and Bruno Le Maire are also happy to publicly support, remains extremely difficult to implement due to national interests.
Business associations also used the publication of the Single Market Report as an opportunity to draw attention to their demands. A coalition of 25 European associations called for “more love for the Single Market” on Valentine’s Day.
Specifically, the business coalition is pushing for a simplification of the rules for companies and – similar to the Commission – a strong harmonization of the rules in the internal market as well as the removal of trade barriers. To this end, the associations have drawn up a list of more than 100 trade barriers that they would like to get rid of. “The deepening of the single market should be the main political priority until 2030,” write the business associations.
Supportive voices are also coming from the European Parliament. Andreas Schwab, the EPP Group’s spokesperson for internal market policy, said in a statement that it would not be enough to maintain the status quo of the internal market. “Standing still here is a step backwards. We need more ambitious plans to complete the internal market to finally simplify cross-border work,” explained the Christian Democrat.
It is becoming apparent that the harmonization of the internal market will be one of the new Commission’s priorities. Particularly when the international terrain becomes more challenging, the pressure from business is directed towards strengthening the domestic market and expanding it by removing trade barriers.
Further reports on the future of the internal market and the competitiveness of the EU are planned for this half-year. In March, Enrico Letta will complete his report for the Belgian Council Presidency and in June, Mario Draghi will present a report for the EU Commission.
In addition, the EU heads of state and government will meet in April for a special EU summit to discuss internal market issues and prepare the ground for the next EU Commission.
“The war in Ukraine will ultimately also be decided on the assembly line in the world’s manufacturing countries“, said Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius before the start of the meeting of representatives from around 50 nations who coordinate military aid supplies in the “Ukraine Defense Contact Group”. The German minister focused in particular on the production of artillery ammunition, for which the German Rheinmetall Group opened a new plant in Lower Saxony at the beginning of the week: “Ammunition is a global scarce commodity.” This year, Pistorius announced that Germany would be supplying Ukraine with three to four times the previous year’s quantity of artillery shells.
In smaller, so-called capability groups, the supporters of Ukraine are working towards more and faster equipment for the country during the war. Together with 13 other nations, Germany and France signed a letter of intent in Brussels to improve the country’s air defense capabilities.
“Strengthening Ukraine’s air defense capabilities is crucial for the future of the conflict and the protection of the civilian population,” said French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu, who is co-chairing the group with Pistorius. In addition to the two leading nations, the group includes Ukraine, Belgium, Denmark, Greece, Great Britain, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey and the USA.
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who joined the Ramstein meeting via video due to previous cancer treatment in hospital, pledged the West’s continued support for Ukraine at the opening of the meeting – including from the USA. “America will continue its support for Ukraine’s fundamental fight against Putin’s imperial aggression,” promised the Pentagon chief, despite the domestic political dispute in the USA over further support.
The USA is also clearly determined to continue the international coalition of supporters, regardless of its domestic political problems. Given considerations to transfer this coordination task to NATO, the Secretary General of the Alliance was cautious. Although there are talks, the decisive factor is the goal of supporting Ukraine in the best and most reliable way, said Jens Stoltenberg. The US ambassador to NATO, Julianne Smith, was clearer before the meeting, albeit in diplomatic terms: “This format is really delivering results… and the US will continue to engage in this process.”
Katarina Barley knows the Berlin political scene well, and yet its peculiarities sometimes catch the former Federal Minister of Justice on the wrong foot. On Tuesday, for example, she made headlines with an alleged call for the EU to have its own nuclear weapons – and was met with criticism and ridicule. The SPD politician had only responded cautiously to a direct interview question on the subject.
As one of 14 Vice-Presidents, Barley is responsible for transparency and communication in the influential “Bureau” of the European Parliament, which consists of Parliament President Roberta Metsola and the Vice-Presidents.
Katarina Barley already realized as a child that she could make a difference. As an 8-year-old, she went with her brother to collect signatures for a playground. It is now the most beautiful playground in Cologne, says Barley. “I’ve always believed that you have to stand up for what you think is right.” This attitude led the 55-year-old SPD politician and feminist to the European Parliament in 2019.
She grew up in Cologne as the daughter of a British father and a German mother and studied law in Marburg and Paris. As one of the first Erasmus students, she benefited from the EU early on. After completing her doctorate, she worked as a lawyer in a law firm and later at the Federal Constitutional Court. A time she still raves about today. She then became a judge in Trier and worked in the Rhineland-Palatinate Ministry of Justice in the European Department. The SPD made her a European Commissioner. “Europe runs through my life”, says Barley. She has German and British citizenship.
The step onto the political stage came by chance: Barley narrowly lost a district council election in 2005. However, the result was such that she decided to dare more politically. But she has doubts. “I’m a very sensitive person, honest and direct. I thought for a long time that you can’t go into politics with that kind of approach.” She has retained this unusual approach to politics. Or, as one comrade puts it behind closed doors, but in a very appreciative way: “Katarina is certainly no stage hog.”
It is therefore all the more astonishing that her party still calls on her time and again for tasks that require the ability to attack, to sharpen, even to polemicize: She was Secretary General of the German SPD under party leader Sigmar Gabriel. In the grand coalition, she first became Minister of Family Affairs in 2017 and then Minister of Justice in 2018. Under her direction, Germany voted in favor of the controversial EU copyright reform in 2019.
In 2019, she was her party’s lead candidate in the European elections and moved from Berlin to the European Parliament. Her enthusiasm for Europe draws her to Strasbourg. “I always have to smile internally when I think about Europe”, she says. This makes her the only federal minister to have ever held such an office for the EU.
She has never regretted her decision. “I didn’t go into politics for myself, but because I wanted to take on responsibility.” In the EU Parliament, she is committed to workers’ rights, strengthening trade unions and works councils, digital security, and ensuring that democratic values based on the rule of law are upheld. She sees the Digital Services Act against hate speech online, the Minimum Wage Directive, and the Right to Repair as successes since 2019: Companies must repair broken devices free of charge during the warranty period in the EU.
In 2019, Katarina Barley was responsible for a historically poor result as the German Social Democrats’ lead candidate. With her at the helm, the comrades achieved 16% nationwide. Within the party, she is credited with the fact that disunity within the SPD was also responsible for this. Party leader Saskia Esken proclaimed Barley as the lead candidate for the upcoming European elections at an early stage. At times, she was also urged to be the lead candidate for the European Socialists. In the end, she was probably happy that Nicolas Schmit, Commissioner for Labor from Luxembourg, has now taken on this job.
In the coming legislature, Barley wants to defend the European project, especially against the right. “We must prevent democratic parties from opening the doors to right-wing extremists and thus normalizing them.” She is alluding to Sweden, where the conservative government is tolerated by right-wing populists. It was therefore all the more important that Poland voted out the right-wing nationalist government. On the other hand, she was “furious” that the EU Commission did not sanction Hungary’s President Viktor Orbán for violations of the rule of law for a long time.
She is hoping for a “pro-European signal” at the election in June. To achieve this, voters must be made aware of what it would mean if the AfD or Marine Le Pen were to prevail. “We, the citizens, will then no longer play a role. Then only national egoism will count”, predicts Barley and says: “We must not jeopardize the EU’s guarantee of peace.” Markus Grabitz/Till Hoppe
ECB President Christine Lagarde is traveling to Brussels today, where she will meet with the EU Parliament’s Economic Affairs Committee for the last time before the EU elections. On the agenda is a reflection on the first 25 years of the Euro currency and how it should continue in the future. No fewer than nine studies have been produced by academics from all over Europe in preparation for this discussion.
But the “monetary policy dialog” between Parliament and the ECB, which takes place four times a year, is not a seminar for economic policy mind games. It is one of the few democratic instruments of control over the formally independent central bank. In the past economically turbulent years, parliamentarians have been happy to use this instrument to force the head of the central bank to explain her policy publicly.
Conservative MEPs will once again ask Lagarde today why she is not doing more to push inflation back below the two percent mark. Green and left-wing representatives will criticize her for even trying to use interest rate policy to counter supply-side price shocks. They fear that government budgets and green investments will become collateral damage of ECB policy.
The questions are often predictable, and so are Lagarde’s answers, which sometimes seem wooden. The ECB chief wants to prevent her words from being misinterpreted and inadvertently leading to market panic. Nevertheless, the monetary policy dialogues are valuable in putting the spotlight on the ECB’s momentous decisions. Independent institutions must also be able to explain themselves.
This Monday, the party and candidate will officially come together again. The executive committee and board will meet in the morning, after which CDU leader Friedrich Merz will appear before the press together with Ursula von der Leyen. There they will announce something that will hardly surprise anyone: The Christian Democrats want to run in the European elections with the incumbent Commission President, and von der Leyen wants to do the same. The nomination as lead candidate of the European People’s Party on March 6 and 7 is then only a formality.
The party and candidate had often been at odds in recent years. For many in the CDU/CSU, von der Leyen was already too headstrong as a federal minister in Merkel’s cabinet – she preferred to push through her plans with the help of the media instead of involving her party colleagues first. When she moved to Brussels in 2019, she showed even less consideration for their sensitivities. Von der Leyen has “often shaped her role as Commission President independently of her own party family and acted very autonomously”, says Anton Hofreiter, Chairman of the European Affairs Committee in the Bundestag.
What pleases the Greens, infuriates some Christian Democrats in the meantime. Von der Leyen is driving her European Green Deal forward with verve: Her deputy Frans Timmermans has presented one ambitious legislative proposal after another, often peppered with detailed regulations. Initially, the EPP group supported this, but the Ukraine war and energy price crisis caused the mood in the business community to change. Von der Leyen had made the mistake of sticking rigidly to her agenda, even though the world had changed dramatically with the war and pandemic, criticized a leading EPP MEP.
Merz and other leading Christian Democrats talked von der Leyen into it, with success: Last summer, she began to move in the direction of her party family – knowing full well that she needed their support for a second term in office. In her speech on the state of the EU, von der Leyen talks a lot about the competitiveness of industry and the concerns of farmers, she appoints CDU politician Markus Pieper as SME commissioner and buries plans such as stricter chemicals regulations.
Von der Leyen also goes a long way to accommodate the farmers: She withdraws the proposal on the Pesticides Directive and personally announces that the rules for fallow land will continue to be suspended. This rewards farmers “for their important work”, she says, flattering this important group of voters for the EPP.
Moritz Körner, the head of the FDP MEPs in the European Parliament, considers this change of course to be “not very credible”. After all, von der Leyen has “completely neglected competitiveness and the reduction of bureaucracy for four years”.
Many Christian Democrats are also not convinced. They would like to attach conditions to the nomination of the candidate, and swear her to the program of the next mandate, in particular an agenda for the competitiveness of European industry and the interests of farmers. Von der Leyen, however, does not want to be pinned down. Any concrete commitment reduces her future room for maneuver and she risks stepping on the toes of one or more of the EU heads of state and government.
She needs their blessing for a second term of office: Per the EU treaties, the European Council proposes a candidate for Commission President to the European Parliament. If, as expected, the EPP emerges as the strongest force in the European elections from June 6 to 9, the way would probably be clear for von der Leyen. And not only because most of the 27 heads of state and government currently come from EPP parties.
Von der Leyen has earned respect for her decisive stance, especially after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. She has “emerged as the voice of the European Union“, says the liberal Körner. For US President Joe Biden, the Commission President is one of the most important contacts in Europe, and Chancellor Scholz has also developed a good working relationship with her, according to reports in Berlin. Unlike Council President Charles Michel, von der Leyen is perceived as a political heavyweight.
When she took office, the former defense minister had already declared that she wanted to lead a “geopolitical commission”. She has backed up this claim with many trips, not least to Kyiv, where she traveled very soon after the Russian attack.
In any case, the 65-year-old has an enormous workload. In mid-January, she traveled by car from the World Economic Forum in Davos to Strasbourg for a speech, from there by charter plane to Forli in northern Italy for a joint appearance with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and then back to Davos via Zurich, where she met representatives of the Western Balkan states in the evening. The following day, she held twelve bilateral meetings at the World Economic Forum before taking a scheduled flight to Stockholm. She goes jogging and abstains from alcohol to cope with this program.
Von der Leyen wants to be more present in the member states than her predecessor Jean-Claude Juncker, for example. Her public appearances with the leading politicians there have contributed to the fact that most people in Europe have an image of her – unlike that of the Social Democratic lead candidate Nicolas Schmit.
This will help her in the upcoming election campaign, which will take her all over the EU. Germany will then only be one of 27 countries, so von der Leyen will hardly be able to be very present in her home country. However, some CDU/CSU strategists may be happy with this – her party colleague is not very popular with the conservative core clientele everywhere.
The election campaign will not be easy, as the Christian Democratic parties are under pressure from the far right in many EU countries. If the forces critical of the EU gain significant support, things could also become tight for von der Leyen. She needs an absolute majority in the European Parliament behind her. But that is where her biggest critics are.
Many MEPs accuse her of treating Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán too leniently. In December, she released €10 billion in EU funds for Orbán without need, says Körner. “Her record as guardian of the treaties is therefore disappointing.”
Given the expected outcome of the election, however, von der Leyen will not only have to get the EPP, but also the Social Democrats, Liberals and Greens largely united behind her to obtain an absolute majority of all MEPs. For parliamentarians, this situation offers powerful leverage to obtain substantive commitments from the Commission President, says Nicolai von Ondarza, research group leader at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP). “She will have to conduct intensive negotiations.”
The results of the Commission’s annual Single Market and Competitiveness Report published on Wednesday are mixed. Based on 17 performance indicators, the report aims to show the state of competitiveness in the European Single Market. The result: Nine indicators show improved values, five have deteriorated, and the rest have either stagnated or the data could not yet be compiled.
One of the positive findings of the report is that the share of internal trade in the EU’s total GDP has been rising sharply again since 2020 after a long period of stagnation. The value of intra-European trade in goods amounted to 26.3% of the EU’s economic power in 2022. This is almost three percentage points more than in the previous year.
However, it is questionable whether this increase is due to factors specific to the Single Market. Trade with partners outside the EU has increased at least as much.
Trade in services within the EU has also grown slightly from a low level, but has only now been able to compensate for the sharp decline during the pandemic. In 2022, the share of intra-European trade in services returned to the 2019 level.
Another indicator that the Commission examines is the conformity deficit in the EU. This measures the number of directives that have been poorly or insufficiently transposed into national law by member states. The Commission is pleased to see a slight improvement here.
With 18 inadequately implemented EU directives, Germany ranks second to last in the European conformity ranking. Only Hungary, with 23 inadequately implemented directives, is even lower down the list.
According to the Commission report, “substantial additional growth” could be unleashed if national trade barriers were tackled, above all through better implementation of rules that have been jointly agreed. For the coming years, the Commission is therefore committed to stronger enforcement of internal market law. It also wants to take action against so-called “gold plating”, whereby national legislators implement the European directive correctly but add additional provisions that lead to differences between member states.
The Commission also argues for the introduction of national single-market offices. These should be given sufficient resources and authority by member states and be responsible for removing national barriers to trade, particularly in the services sector.
The EU Commission is concerned about the lack of venture capital, which is essential for fast-growing start-ups. According to the report, venture capital investments amounted to around 0.09% of European GDP in 2022. A year earlier, the figure was 0.11 percent. In the USA, this figure is 0.75 percent and in China 0.58 percent.
This is one of the reasons why the Commission is calling for a deeper and better-integrated capital market in the EU. However, the Capital Markets Union project, which Finance Ministers Christian Lindner and Bruno Le Maire are also happy to publicly support, remains extremely difficult to implement due to national interests.
Business associations also used the publication of the Single Market Report as an opportunity to draw attention to their demands. A coalition of 25 European associations called for “more love for the Single Market” on Valentine’s Day.
Specifically, the business coalition is pushing for a simplification of the rules for companies and – similar to the Commission – a strong harmonization of the rules in the internal market as well as the removal of trade barriers. To this end, the associations have drawn up a list of more than 100 trade barriers that they would like to get rid of. “The deepening of the single market should be the main political priority until 2030,” write the business associations.
Supportive voices are also coming from the European Parliament. Andreas Schwab, the EPP Group’s spokesperson for internal market policy, said in a statement that it would not be enough to maintain the status quo of the internal market. “Standing still here is a step backwards. We need more ambitious plans to complete the internal market to finally simplify cross-border work,” explained the Christian Democrat.
It is becoming apparent that the harmonization of the internal market will be one of the new Commission’s priorities. Particularly when the international terrain becomes more challenging, the pressure from business is directed towards strengthening the domestic market and expanding it by removing trade barriers.
Further reports on the future of the internal market and the competitiveness of the EU are planned for this half-year. In March, Enrico Letta will complete his report for the Belgian Council Presidency and in June, Mario Draghi will present a report for the EU Commission.
In addition, the EU heads of state and government will meet in April for a special EU summit to discuss internal market issues and prepare the ground for the next EU Commission.
“The war in Ukraine will ultimately also be decided on the assembly line in the world’s manufacturing countries“, said Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius before the start of the meeting of representatives from around 50 nations who coordinate military aid supplies in the “Ukraine Defense Contact Group”. The German minister focused in particular on the production of artillery ammunition, for which the German Rheinmetall Group opened a new plant in Lower Saxony at the beginning of the week: “Ammunition is a global scarce commodity.” This year, Pistorius announced that Germany would be supplying Ukraine with three to four times the previous year’s quantity of artillery shells.
In smaller, so-called capability groups, the supporters of Ukraine are working towards more and faster equipment for the country during the war. Together with 13 other nations, Germany and France signed a letter of intent in Brussels to improve the country’s air defense capabilities.
“Strengthening Ukraine’s air defense capabilities is crucial for the future of the conflict and the protection of the civilian population,” said French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu, who is co-chairing the group with Pistorius. In addition to the two leading nations, the group includes Ukraine, Belgium, Denmark, Greece, Great Britain, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey and the USA.
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who joined the Ramstein meeting via video due to previous cancer treatment in hospital, pledged the West’s continued support for Ukraine at the opening of the meeting – including from the USA. “America will continue its support for Ukraine’s fundamental fight against Putin’s imperial aggression,” promised the Pentagon chief, despite the domestic political dispute in the USA over further support.
The USA is also clearly determined to continue the international coalition of supporters, regardless of its domestic political problems. Given considerations to transfer this coordination task to NATO, the Secretary General of the Alliance was cautious. Although there are talks, the decisive factor is the goal of supporting Ukraine in the best and most reliable way, said Jens Stoltenberg. The US ambassador to NATO, Julianne Smith, was clearer before the meeting, albeit in diplomatic terms: “This format is really delivering results… and the US will continue to engage in this process.”
Katarina Barley knows the Berlin political scene well, and yet its peculiarities sometimes catch the former Federal Minister of Justice on the wrong foot. On Tuesday, for example, she made headlines with an alleged call for the EU to have its own nuclear weapons – and was met with criticism and ridicule. The SPD politician had only responded cautiously to a direct interview question on the subject.
As one of 14 Vice-Presidents, Barley is responsible for transparency and communication in the influential “Bureau” of the European Parliament, which consists of Parliament President Roberta Metsola and the Vice-Presidents.
Katarina Barley already realized as a child that she could make a difference. As an 8-year-old, she went with her brother to collect signatures for a playground. It is now the most beautiful playground in Cologne, says Barley. “I’ve always believed that you have to stand up for what you think is right.” This attitude led the 55-year-old SPD politician and feminist to the European Parliament in 2019.
She grew up in Cologne as the daughter of a British father and a German mother and studied law in Marburg and Paris. As one of the first Erasmus students, she benefited from the EU early on. After completing her doctorate, she worked as a lawyer in a law firm and later at the Federal Constitutional Court. A time she still raves about today. She then became a judge in Trier and worked in the Rhineland-Palatinate Ministry of Justice in the European Department. The SPD made her a European Commissioner. “Europe runs through my life”, says Barley. She has German and British citizenship.
The step onto the political stage came by chance: Barley narrowly lost a district council election in 2005. However, the result was such that she decided to dare more politically. But she has doubts. “I’m a very sensitive person, honest and direct. I thought for a long time that you can’t go into politics with that kind of approach.” She has retained this unusual approach to politics. Or, as one comrade puts it behind closed doors, but in a very appreciative way: “Katarina is certainly no stage hog.”
It is therefore all the more astonishing that her party still calls on her time and again for tasks that require the ability to attack, to sharpen, even to polemicize: She was Secretary General of the German SPD under party leader Sigmar Gabriel. In the grand coalition, she first became Minister of Family Affairs in 2017 and then Minister of Justice in 2018. Under her direction, Germany voted in favor of the controversial EU copyright reform in 2019.
In 2019, she was her party’s lead candidate in the European elections and moved from Berlin to the European Parliament. Her enthusiasm for Europe draws her to Strasbourg. “I always have to smile internally when I think about Europe”, she says. This makes her the only federal minister to have ever held such an office for the EU.
She has never regretted her decision. “I didn’t go into politics for myself, but because I wanted to take on responsibility.” In the EU Parliament, she is committed to workers’ rights, strengthening trade unions and works councils, digital security, and ensuring that democratic values based on the rule of law are upheld. She sees the Digital Services Act against hate speech online, the Minimum Wage Directive, and the Right to Repair as successes since 2019: Companies must repair broken devices free of charge during the warranty period in the EU.
In 2019, Katarina Barley was responsible for a historically poor result as the German Social Democrats’ lead candidate. With her at the helm, the comrades achieved 16% nationwide. Within the party, she is credited with the fact that disunity within the SPD was also responsible for this. Party leader Saskia Esken proclaimed Barley as the lead candidate for the upcoming European elections at an early stage. At times, she was also urged to be the lead candidate for the European Socialists. In the end, she was probably happy that Nicolas Schmit, Commissioner for Labor from Luxembourg, has now taken on this job.
In the coming legislature, Barley wants to defend the European project, especially against the right. “We must prevent democratic parties from opening the doors to right-wing extremists and thus normalizing them.” She is alluding to Sweden, where the conservative government is tolerated by right-wing populists. It was therefore all the more important that Poland voted out the right-wing nationalist government. On the other hand, she was “furious” that the EU Commission did not sanction Hungary’s President Viktor Orbán for violations of the rule of law for a long time.
She is hoping for a “pro-European signal” at the election in June. To achieve this, voters must be made aware of what it would mean if the AfD or Marine Le Pen were to prevail. “We, the citizens, will then no longer play a role. Then only national egoism will count”, predicts Barley and says: “We must not jeopardize the EU’s guarantee of peace.” Markus Grabitz/Till Hoppe
