The EU heads of state and government will meet at 6 p.m. today to discuss the top positions for the next five years. There is every indication that they will be able to reach an agreement quickly, as neither French President Emmanuel Macron nor any of the usual suspects currently have the nerve for power struggles for the top European jobs.
The negotiators from the political camps, Chancellor Olaf Scholz for the Social Democrats and Spain’s Pedro Sánchez, have largely finalized the personnel package. The summit is therefore likely to instruct outgoing Council President Charles Michel to enter into talks with the European Parliament. MEPs must elect the Commission President with an absolute majority before she can form a new Commission.
Despite the broad consensus, the summit will unlikely be over in time for the European Championship match between France and Austria at 9 p.m. Von der Leyen herself will only be in the room for a short time, the bosses will then discuss the personal details without the candidate. However, Michel also wants to discuss the leadership style of his rival; he accuses von der Leyen of a lack of transparency and presidential tendencies. It is unclear how much resonance this will have. In Berlin and other capitals, the Belgian’s feud against von der Leyen is met with a shake of the head.
Other summit participants could try to claim influential dossiers for their countries in the new Commission. Sánchez, for example, has clear ambitions to install his candidate Teresa Ribera as the first Vice-President for the Green Deal. However, the leaders currently have relatively little leverage to dictate their wishes to von der Leyen.
Have a good start to the week!
“We are ready for negotiations,” emphasize Green leadership candidates Terry Reintke and Bas Eickhout at every opportunity these days. They also seem to be willing to make compromises. Nobody leaves negotiations with 100 percent of what they wanted going in, said Reintke last week.
However, they did not want to talk about red lines in public. Nor whether the future of the combustion engine is one of them. EPP leader Manfred Weber and other CDU/CSU MPs want to reverse the ban on new combustion engine cars from 2035 in this legislature. For the Greens, it has so far been out of the question to revoke Green Deal laws.
Weber and his EPP are currently letting the Greens starve on their outstretched arm. Only the Social Democrats and Liberals have received invitations to informal coalition talks, despite the Greens’ ingratiation. Instead, the EPP leader has repeatedly made it clear that cooperation with parts of the right-wing conservative ECR group cannot be ruled out.
It remains to be seen whether Weber would actually prefer to have Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia in the circle of supporters for Ursula von der Leyen or whether he merely wants to put pressure on the Greens to lower their demands. On Monday, the heads of state and government will meet to decide on their candidate for the head of the Commission. If Meloni declares her support for a second term of office for von der Leyen and this also applies to the Fratelli MEPs, the EPP would theoretically not need the Greens at all.
The pressure for the Greens to be involved in the negotiations as early as possible is therefore high. If the Fratelli join the informal von der Leyen coalition, there will no longer be any room for the Greens. For them, cooperation with ECR parties is the one non-negotiable red line.
But Weber must not court the Fratelli too strongly. The Social Democrats and the Liberals also firmly reject cooperation with the ECR. However, as this is a secret ballot in parliament, no one has to reveal their cards in full.
So it could turn out that Meloni and her Fratelli support von der Leyen after all and the Greens nevertheless become part of the von der Leyen coalition. Daniel Caspary, CDU/CSU leader in the European Parliament, called on Wednesday for the Greens, as a democratic party, to be given a hand if they are willing to talk and compromise.
Reintke and Eickhout’s plan to show themselves open to negotiation could work if not only Social Democrats campaign for Green participation but also high-ranking EPP politicians. Weber’s bias against the Greens could thus be elegantly circumvented.
Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius, who will sit for the Lithuanian Greens in the next EU Parliament, is also appealing to his former boss von der Leyen for cooperation. “If the coalition is formed with the Greens, this will result in a very comfortable majority for the pro-European forces,” he said in the Table.Briefings interview. It would only be logical for the Greens to be part of it. “Because one of the big challenges for Europe is competitiveness, and this can be achieved through the Green Deal policy.”
EPP leader Weber also places competitiveness in the foreground. However, he is not thinking of the Green Deal.
Anton Hofreiter, a Green MP, believes Weber is pursuing a twofold agenda with his flattery of Meloni and his distance from the Greens. Weber would like von der Leyen to be nominated by the Council. “But he also has no problem if she fails in Parliament to blame the Greens for not supporting von der Leyen,” Hofreiter told Table.Briefings. The Chairman of the European Affairs Committee also sees no reason to scale down the Greens’ demands on climate protection. After all, continuing the Green Deal is important for the Social Democrats as well as the Greens.
There are also people in the EPP who want to continue to pursue climate protection policy. The Greens are counting on this, as Meloni ascribes little relevance to this topic and has already described the Green Deal as “climate fundamentalism.” On the one hand, there is the lead candidate herself. Von der Leyen has called for a “phase of implementation” of her Green Deal. Something that Meloni shouldn’t like. And Peter Liese, environmental policy spokesperson for the EPP, also clarified that the core of the Green Deal was not up for debate. Von der Leyen was “also the right person for this new phase of the Green Deal.”
In the end, the EPP and the Greens could join forces after all, either by bypassing Weber or if he accepts the Greens’ outstretched hand after all.
The historian and Germany expert Krzysztof Ruchniewicz is Poland’s new Commissioner for German-Polish Cooperation. Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski appointed the 57-year-old to the post, the ministry announced on Platform X on Saturday. The appointment was in recognition of his “contribution to German-Polish understanding and the European idea,” it continued. Ruchniewicz is Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Wroclaw and Director of the Willy Brandt Center for German and European Studies there.
The appointment is a further clear sign from Donald Tusk’s center-left government, which has been in office since December, that it wants to improve the neighborly relationship, which has been tarnished in the meantime. Ruchniewicz’s tasks will include improving social and cross-border cooperation. The commissioner will also support the Foreign Ministry in its dialog with the German side on how to deal with history. This applies in particular to the planned construction of the German-Polish House in Berlin – a place of encounter and remembrance for the victims of the German occupation in Poland from 1939 to 1945. dpa
The German-Finnish political scientist Anna-Maija Mertens is to become the new President of the European Movement Germany (EBD). The EBD Board unanimously nominated the 49-year-old to succeed Linn Selle in the honorary post. The election is scheduled for October 14.
Mertens was Managing Director of Transparency International Germany from 2014 to 2024. She has headed the German Institute for Compliance (DICO) as a board member since April. The previous EBD President, Linn Selle, has led the largest network for European politics in Germany for 6 years. tho
After the European elections, the democratic and pro-European forces in the European Parliament have been weakened. This is a wake-up call to make cooperation much more binding. This is the only way to ensure reliable majorities for an effective EU. Ursula von der Leyen will probably not only need the existing alliance of conservatives, social democrats and liberals for her re-election, but also the Greens.
If this fails, von der Leyen has also recently spoken to the Group of European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) – the group of right-wing conservatives, nationalists and right-wing populists to which the Fratelli d’Italia of Italy’s head of government Giorgia Meloni also belong.
The European Parliament has never been so right-wing. For several years now, far-right parties have been making significant gains in all regions of the EU. What’s more, in this election, their groups were the only ones to make gains compared to their previous group strength.
Even before this European election, this also had an impact on the ability to reach agreement and policy in the European Council, where Hungarian President Viktor Orbán, for example, has repeatedly questioned the EU’s ability to act. In the last legislative period, the European Parliament was an important corrective in this respect. But this is now in question.
In some countries, the shift to the right has been particularly extreme and is causing political aftershocks. In Belgium, where a new national parliament and regional parliaments were elected at the same time as the European elections, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo resigned.
In France, the far-right Rassemblement National won twice as many votes as Emmanuel Macron’s governing alliance. The French president then dissolved the National Assembly and announced new elections. This decision has caused surprise and perplexity not only in France. Whether Macron will succeed in uniting a majority behind his alliance in three weeks, which was not involved in his decision, is questionable.
Instead, Macron runs the risk of being crushed between two emerging alliances on the left and right. The president is playing high stakes and risks exacerbating a domestic political crisis that could also be dangerous for the EU.
In Germany, the right-wing camp also recorded major gains: the AfD came in second place ahead of the SPD and the Greens with 15.9 percent. This is despite two preliminary investigations into the AfD’s leading candidate Maximilian Krah for possible bribery and alleged payments from Russia.
The results in France and the eastern German states, where right-wing extremists became the strongest force almost everywhere, are particularly striking. The fact that Emmanuel Macron and the coalition government have emerged from this election so weakened is one of the worst pieces of news from this election, given the important role of France and Germany in the EU.
The propaganda work of internationally networked, anti-democratic forces is obviously focused on these two countries in the run-up to the decisive elections to the Bundestag and the French presidency for good reason. Special efforts are therefore needed in Germany and France to push back authoritarian populism – the consequences of right-wing participation in government or even a takeover of power would be incalculable for democracy in the EU.
The result is particularly painful for the Greens. In 2019, they were the fourth-largest group in the European Parliament. Now they have fallen behind the far-right groups to sixth place. Of the total of 18 seats lost, nine are attributable to the German Greens and seven to the French Greens. The Greens have lost most of all in their traditional strongholds and also where they are currently involved in governments. In Germany, at first glance, they have suffered a strong demobilization of their own voter potential, especially among young voters.
The reasons for this lack of mobilization must now be addressed quickly and critically. Only in this way can the party find ways to reach the people it has already reached as a party in recent years with a view to the upcoming state elections and the upcoming federal elections. What is needed now is communication at eye level and emotionally convincing goals.
Democracy has to be learned. In fact, as the sociologist Oskar Negt said 20 years ago, democracy is “the only form of government that has to be learned.” And one would like to add that this is especially true for the European Union. Because here, democracy has its very own rules. Everything is even more complex than at the national level. But learning the rules of the game is worth it. The earlier you start, the better.
And what is the best way to reach young people? Naturally, with a computer game. The EU Commission has named its online game Fabulous Council, with which secondary school pupils can learn how to overcome conflicts of interest and find compromises that work for everyone.
In the interactive game, pupils slip into the roles of five groups of entities: Vampires, witches and wizards, nature spirits, dragon riders and farmers. They decide on the rules that govern everyday life in the fantasy land of Nafasia.
Different values are important to each group – money, community, nature or comfort. In nine votes on different topics, the number of points for all four values changes depending on the result of the vote. A group emerges from the council meeting as the winner if both of the group’s values end up with more than zero points. However, if one of the five groups is unable to score points for either of their values at the end, the entire Fabulous Council loses. Nafasia is then threatened with the curse of the last king. And who wants to risk that?
The new version of the online game Fabulous Council launches today, Monday, at the Computer Games Museum in Berlin with new features. They bring environmental protection, the right to repair and artificial intelligence into the classroom. A Berlin school class tries out the new version on-site.
The Commission representative in Germany, Barbara Gessler, will also be there. “We want to reach young people in Germany, and to do this we are entering worlds in which many of them feel at home,” says Gessler. “Gaming can also convey how Europe works and what is important.” One thing you can definitely learn from the game: democracy is when everyone plays along.
You can find the new teaser video and more information about the game here. vis
The EU heads of state and government will meet at 6 p.m. today to discuss the top positions for the next five years. There is every indication that they will be able to reach an agreement quickly, as neither French President Emmanuel Macron nor any of the usual suspects currently have the nerve for power struggles for the top European jobs.
The negotiators from the political camps, Chancellor Olaf Scholz for the Social Democrats and Spain’s Pedro Sánchez, have largely finalized the personnel package. The summit is therefore likely to instruct outgoing Council President Charles Michel to enter into talks with the European Parliament. MEPs must elect the Commission President with an absolute majority before she can form a new Commission.
Despite the broad consensus, the summit will unlikely be over in time for the European Championship match between France and Austria at 9 p.m. Von der Leyen herself will only be in the room for a short time, the bosses will then discuss the personal details without the candidate. However, Michel also wants to discuss the leadership style of his rival; he accuses von der Leyen of a lack of transparency and presidential tendencies. It is unclear how much resonance this will have. In Berlin and other capitals, the Belgian’s feud against von der Leyen is met with a shake of the head.
Other summit participants could try to claim influential dossiers for their countries in the new Commission. Sánchez, for example, has clear ambitions to install his candidate Teresa Ribera as the first Vice-President for the Green Deal. However, the leaders currently have relatively little leverage to dictate their wishes to von der Leyen.
Have a good start to the week!
“We are ready for negotiations,” emphasize Green leadership candidates Terry Reintke and Bas Eickhout at every opportunity these days. They also seem to be willing to make compromises. Nobody leaves negotiations with 100 percent of what they wanted going in, said Reintke last week.
However, they did not want to talk about red lines in public. Nor whether the future of the combustion engine is one of them. EPP leader Manfred Weber and other CDU/CSU MPs want to reverse the ban on new combustion engine cars from 2035 in this legislature. For the Greens, it has so far been out of the question to revoke Green Deal laws.
Weber and his EPP are currently letting the Greens starve on their outstretched arm. Only the Social Democrats and Liberals have received invitations to informal coalition talks, despite the Greens’ ingratiation. Instead, the EPP leader has repeatedly made it clear that cooperation with parts of the right-wing conservative ECR group cannot be ruled out.
It remains to be seen whether Weber would actually prefer to have Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia in the circle of supporters for Ursula von der Leyen or whether he merely wants to put pressure on the Greens to lower their demands. On Monday, the heads of state and government will meet to decide on their candidate for the head of the Commission. If Meloni declares her support for a second term of office for von der Leyen and this also applies to the Fratelli MEPs, the EPP would theoretically not need the Greens at all.
The pressure for the Greens to be involved in the negotiations as early as possible is therefore high. If the Fratelli join the informal von der Leyen coalition, there will no longer be any room for the Greens. For them, cooperation with ECR parties is the one non-negotiable red line.
But Weber must not court the Fratelli too strongly. The Social Democrats and the Liberals also firmly reject cooperation with the ECR. However, as this is a secret ballot in parliament, no one has to reveal their cards in full.
So it could turn out that Meloni and her Fratelli support von der Leyen after all and the Greens nevertheless become part of the von der Leyen coalition. Daniel Caspary, CDU/CSU leader in the European Parliament, called on Wednesday for the Greens, as a democratic party, to be given a hand if they are willing to talk and compromise.
Reintke and Eickhout’s plan to show themselves open to negotiation could work if not only Social Democrats campaign for Green participation but also high-ranking EPP politicians. Weber’s bias against the Greens could thus be elegantly circumvented.
Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius, who will sit for the Lithuanian Greens in the next EU Parliament, is also appealing to his former boss von der Leyen for cooperation. “If the coalition is formed with the Greens, this will result in a very comfortable majority for the pro-European forces,” he said in the Table.Briefings interview. It would only be logical for the Greens to be part of it. “Because one of the big challenges for Europe is competitiveness, and this can be achieved through the Green Deal policy.”
EPP leader Weber also places competitiveness in the foreground. However, he is not thinking of the Green Deal.
Anton Hofreiter, a Green MP, believes Weber is pursuing a twofold agenda with his flattery of Meloni and his distance from the Greens. Weber would like von der Leyen to be nominated by the Council. “But he also has no problem if she fails in Parliament to blame the Greens for not supporting von der Leyen,” Hofreiter told Table.Briefings. The Chairman of the European Affairs Committee also sees no reason to scale down the Greens’ demands on climate protection. After all, continuing the Green Deal is important for the Social Democrats as well as the Greens.
There are also people in the EPP who want to continue to pursue climate protection policy. The Greens are counting on this, as Meloni ascribes little relevance to this topic and has already described the Green Deal as “climate fundamentalism.” On the one hand, there is the lead candidate herself. Von der Leyen has called for a “phase of implementation” of her Green Deal. Something that Meloni shouldn’t like. And Peter Liese, environmental policy spokesperson for the EPP, also clarified that the core of the Green Deal was not up for debate. Von der Leyen was “also the right person for this new phase of the Green Deal.”
In the end, the EPP and the Greens could join forces after all, either by bypassing Weber or if he accepts the Greens’ outstretched hand after all.
The historian and Germany expert Krzysztof Ruchniewicz is Poland’s new Commissioner for German-Polish Cooperation. Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski appointed the 57-year-old to the post, the ministry announced on Platform X on Saturday. The appointment was in recognition of his “contribution to German-Polish understanding and the European idea,” it continued. Ruchniewicz is Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Wroclaw and Director of the Willy Brandt Center for German and European Studies there.
The appointment is a further clear sign from Donald Tusk’s center-left government, which has been in office since December, that it wants to improve the neighborly relationship, which has been tarnished in the meantime. Ruchniewicz’s tasks will include improving social and cross-border cooperation. The commissioner will also support the Foreign Ministry in its dialog with the German side on how to deal with history. This applies in particular to the planned construction of the German-Polish House in Berlin – a place of encounter and remembrance for the victims of the German occupation in Poland from 1939 to 1945. dpa
The German-Finnish political scientist Anna-Maija Mertens is to become the new President of the European Movement Germany (EBD). The EBD Board unanimously nominated the 49-year-old to succeed Linn Selle in the honorary post. The election is scheduled for October 14.
Mertens was Managing Director of Transparency International Germany from 2014 to 2024. She has headed the German Institute for Compliance (DICO) as a board member since April. The previous EBD President, Linn Selle, has led the largest network for European politics in Germany for 6 years. tho
After the European elections, the democratic and pro-European forces in the European Parliament have been weakened. This is a wake-up call to make cooperation much more binding. This is the only way to ensure reliable majorities for an effective EU. Ursula von der Leyen will probably not only need the existing alliance of conservatives, social democrats and liberals for her re-election, but also the Greens.
If this fails, von der Leyen has also recently spoken to the Group of European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) – the group of right-wing conservatives, nationalists and right-wing populists to which the Fratelli d’Italia of Italy’s head of government Giorgia Meloni also belong.
The European Parliament has never been so right-wing. For several years now, far-right parties have been making significant gains in all regions of the EU. What’s more, in this election, their groups were the only ones to make gains compared to their previous group strength.
Even before this European election, this also had an impact on the ability to reach agreement and policy in the European Council, where Hungarian President Viktor Orbán, for example, has repeatedly questioned the EU’s ability to act. In the last legislative period, the European Parliament was an important corrective in this respect. But this is now in question.
In some countries, the shift to the right has been particularly extreme and is causing political aftershocks. In Belgium, where a new national parliament and regional parliaments were elected at the same time as the European elections, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo resigned.
In France, the far-right Rassemblement National won twice as many votes as Emmanuel Macron’s governing alliance. The French president then dissolved the National Assembly and announced new elections. This decision has caused surprise and perplexity not only in France. Whether Macron will succeed in uniting a majority behind his alliance in three weeks, which was not involved in his decision, is questionable.
Instead, Macron runs the risk of being crushed between two emerging alliances on the left and right. The president is playing high stakes and risks exacerbating a domestic political crisis that could also be dangerous for the EU.
In Germany, the right-wing camp also recorded major gains: the AfD came in second place ahead of the SPD and the Greens with 15.9 percent. This is despite two preliminary investigations into the AfD’s leading candidate Maximilian Krah for possible bribery and alleged payments from Russia.
The results in France and the eastern German states, where right-wing extremists became the strongest force almost everywhere, are particularly striking. The fact that Emmanuel Macron and the coalition government have emerged from this election so weakened is one of the worst pieces of news from this election, given the important role of France and Germany in the EU.
The propaganda work of internationally networked, anti-democratic forces is obviously focused on these two countries in the run-up to the decisive elections to the Bundestag and the French presidency for good reason. Special efforts are therefore needed in Germany and France to push back authoritarian populism – the consequences of right-wing participation in government or even a takeover of power would be incalculable for democracy in the EU.
The result is particularly painful for the Greens. In 2019, they were the fourth-largest group in the European Parliament. Now they have fallen behind the far-right groups to sixth place. Of the total of 18 seats lost, nine are attributable to the German Greens and seven to the French Greens. The Greens have lost most of all in their traditional strongholds and also where they are currently involved in governments. In Germany, at first glance, they have suffered a strong demobilization of their own voter potential, especially among young voters.
The reasons for this lack of mobilization must now be addressed quickly and critically. Only in this way can the party find ways to reach the people it has already reached as a party in recent years with a view to the upcoming state elections and the upcoming federal elections. What is needed now is communication at eye level and emotionally convincing goals.
Democracy has to be learned. In fact, as the sociologist Oskar Negt said 20 years ago, democracy is “the only form of government that has to be learned.” And one would like to add that this is especially true for the European Union. Because here, democracy has its very own rules. Everything is even more complex than at the national level. But learning the rules of the game is worth it. The earlier you start, the better.
And what is the best way to reach young people? Naturally, with a computer game. The EU Commission has named its online game Fabulous Council, with which secondary school pupils can learn how to overcome conflicts of interest and find compromises that work for everyone.
In the interactive game, pupils slip into the roles of five groups of entities: Vampires, witches and wizards, nature spirits, dragon riders and farmers. They decide on the rules that govern everyday life in the fantasy land of Nafasia.
Different values are important to each group – money, community, nature or comfort. In nine votes on different topics, the number of points for all four values changes depending on the result of the vote. A group emerges from the council meeting as the winner if both of the group’s values end up with more than zero points. However, if one of the five groups is unable to score points for either of their values at the end, the entire Fabulous Council loses. Nafasia is then threatened with the curse of the last king. And who wants to risk that?
The new version of the online game Fabulous Council launches today, Monday, at the Computer Games Museum in Berlin with new features. They bring environmental protection, the right to repair and artificial intelligence into the classroom. A Berlin school class tries out the new version on-site.
The Commission representative in Germany, Barbara Gessler, will also be there. “We want to reach young people in Germany, and to do this we are entering worlds in which many of them feel at home,” says Gessler. “Gaming can also convey how Europe works and what is important.” One thing you can definitely learn from the game: democracy is when everyone plays along.
You can find the new teaser video and more information about the game here. vis
