First, the European industry celebrated the Clean Industrial Deal, and then came the rude awakening. US President Donald Trump announced the prospect of tariffs of 25 percent on products from the EU. “We will be announcing that very soon, and it will be 25 percent in general, and that will apply to cars and all these things,” Trump said according to media reports. The EU was created “to screw the United States,” Trump said, according to the Financial Times.
Bernd Lange (SPD), Chairman of the EU Parliament’s Trade Committee, was relaxed. “Well, Mr. Trump has already announced a lot of things,” he told Table.Briefings. “The important thing now is to know the legal situation in black and white and when it will apply.” However, it is known that tariffs of this magnitude are within Trump’s scope. The EU is prepared. “First of all, of course, we will try to avoid an escalation. If that fails, we will respond immediately with counter-tariffs.”
The Commission also emphasized its willingness to talk, but made it clear: “The EU will always protect European companies, workers and consumers from unjustified tariffs.” Should such tariffs be imposed, “decisive and immediate” action would be taken, it said in response to Trump’s threats.
French President Emmanuel Macron visited Washington at the beginning of the week. However, it appears that the French intervention had no moderating effect on Trump. The Europeans’ efforts to position themselves more independently of the USA have picked up speed again in recent days. The latest tariff threats will be an incentive to step up these efforts.
Get through the day duty-free!
What the negotiating teams of Ukraine and the USA have developed with the raw materials agreement sounds like a partnership of equals. There is no more talk of US President Donald Trump’s demands that Ukraine should make its raw material deposits available in return for aid.
Key points of the paper:
Zelenskiy is expected to sign the contract during his visit to Washington on Feb. 28, after which the Ukrainian parliament will have to approve it. Shortly before the draft agreement was made public, German government circles reported that a raw materials deal also indirectly represents a kind of American security guarantee for Ukraine. If American companies and citizens were to become active in Ukraine, the US government itself would be interested in being able to operate in a secure environment without Russian attacks, so the argument goes.
“It is certainly problematic if the USA wants to secure raw materials in Ukraine but does not want to contribute to the country’s security itself and leaves this task to the Europeans,” said Nils Schmid, foreign policy spokesman for the SPD parliamentary group, to Table.Briefings. On the other hand, Europe has “a notorious weakness in raw materials cooperation due to a lack of suitable financing options and specialized business consortia.”
However, one thing is certain: “The war damage caused by Russia in Ukraine is so enormous that reconstruction will require equally enormous efforts from all of Ukraine’s partners in Europe and America.” According to Schmid, this will also open up a wide range of business opportunities for European companies.
However, on Wednesday the EU Commission held out the prospect of its own projects in Ukraine in the near future. The EU had already signed a Memorandum of Understanding for a raw materials partnership with Ukraine in 2021. Members of the Commission recently discussed its implementation with the Ukrainian government, said Commission Vice-President Stéphane Séjourné in Brussels on Wednesday.
The first announcements will probably be made in March. For example, a graphite extraction project is being discussed that could cover ten percent of European demand by 2030.
Ukraine is one of the most resource-rich countries in Europe and has many untapped deposits, particularly of rare earths. Russian President Vladimir Putin only offered Trump on Tuesday to work together with US companies on the exploitation of raw materials in the occupied Ukrainian territories. The planned agreement between Kyiv and Washington excludes this possibility.
The EU Commission is realigning its industrial strategy. “Made in Europe” is being given clear preference in both public and private procurement. With clean products from the EU, Brussels wants to counter Donald Trump’s plans for a return to fossil fuels with a decarbonization agenda. The EU should remain an attractive location for innovation and production and thus also attract more investment again, according to the clear signal.
Representatives of the US economy immediately threatened to halt investment in the EU. “The scale and speed of investment required for the introduction of clean technologies in Europe can only be achieved through the contribution of American companies,” said the Brussels office of the American Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday.
The Clean Industrial Deal presented on Wednesday is based on a total of six components:
The plan represents a paradigm shift, as both energy-intensive industries and clean-tech companies are now getting the transformational support they had hoped for. The industry’s appeal a year ago has become a turning point of hope, said Ilham Kadri, CEO of Syensqo and President of the European Chemical Industry Council (CEFIC) at the European Industry Summit in Antwerp on Wednesday.
However, the speed of implementation is crucial for the Clean Industrial Deal, criticized the deputy director general of Business Europe, Alexandre Affre. “It is not a good sign that the Industrial Decarbonization Accelerator Act is only planned for the fourth quarter of this year,” he told Table.Briefings.
The Commission only partially answers where the money to support industry is to come from. It puts the short-term additional annual funding requirement for the areas of energy, industrial innovation and growth as well as transportation systems at around EUR 480 billion.
The Commission is proposing a bank for industrial decarbonization. It is to be endowed with around EUR 100 billion, the majority of which will come from the member states. Fresh money is not available anyway. For example, EUR 20 billion is to come from the Innovation Fund, EUR 30 billion is to be provided by the member states and a further EUR 33 billion is to be provided by revenue from the sale of emission allowances from EU emissions trading. However, no additional ETS certificates will be distributed; instead, the member states are to forgo the revenue to which they are entitled.
The rest of the money is to come from the Invest-EU Fund. EUR 2.5 billion from the fund are to leverage ten times the amount of financial resources, so that in the end just over EUR 100 billion will be raised for the Industrial Decarbonization Bank. In total, the Commission hopes to leverage up to EUR 400 billion in private capital.
However, there is a lot of uncertainty in the plans for an acute measure for rapid aid. The next multiannual financial framework should therefore provide more information on how much money Brussels will provide for the decarbonization and competitiveness of the industry in the long term. However, this will take some time. An initial proposal for the new MFF is expected in the summer. It will not come into force until 2028.
The ultimate test will therefore be the implementation of the proposals in concrete measures and their solid financial basis, comments Julia Metz, Director of the think tank Agora Industrie. The competition for the distribution of funds has already begun. The decarbonization bank runs the risk of playing off electrification against gas-dependent solutions that only look good on paper, warned Walburga Hemetsberger, CEO of Solar Power Europe.
The Commission promises high financial savings with its action plan on energy prices. In its press release, the Commission states that this will amount to EUR 45 billion in the current year alone and will grow to EUR 260 billion by 2040. These sums are to be generated by savings on imports of fossil fuels. However, a closer look at the plan shows that the contribution of Wednesday’s announcements cannot be quantified at all.
The savings are calculated based on a comparison with the development since 2019 without the energy transition and with a CO₂ target of minus 90 percent by 2040. However, the action plan leaves it completely open as to how many billions of these savings will come from the new measures now proposed. There is real concern in the industry that the Commission’s proposals will not be enough to reduce energy costs in the short term, said Alexandre Affre from Business Europe.
Renewables should also be the main factor in decoupling electricity prices, which are crucial for decarbonization, from high gas prices. France and its allies celebrated a success here. The role of nuclear energy is weighted higher compared to the leak of the Clean Industrial Deal.
In a pilot program, the EIB is to secure long-term power purchase agreements with guarantees amounting to EUR 500 million. However, the electricity for this will no longer come solely from wind and solar parks, but also from nuclear power plants.
Energy Commissioner Dan Jørgensen tried to put an end to speculation about a completely different form of price reduction on Wednesday. Rumors have been circulating for weeks that after a ceasefire, Ukraine might once again be able to transport Russian gas to the West. When asked about this, Jørgensen replied: “We are determined not to buy any more Russian gas.” You couldn’t say it any clearer than that.
According to Jørgensen, the EU cannot do without the USA when it comes to diversification: “Just as we are dependent on Norway for pipeline gas, we are also dependent on LNG from the USA. That will remain the case in the future.” Following the leak of the drafts, the Commission was criticized for its plans to also finance gas export terminals in the USA in the future.
The fact that the Commission has not also presented the update to the EU Climate Law has been criticized. Observers had expected the 90 percent target for 2040 to be enshrined in law. This would have strengthened the confidence of companies, which demand predictability and a long-term vision, says Romain Pardo from the industry network Corporate Leaders Group Europe.
EU Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra justified the action by saying that the Commission’s targets were known and that it was not possible to publish everything at once. However, the update of the climate law and the legislative proposal for the 2040 climate target are to take place in the coming weeks.
The Commission has presented the first two proposals for cutting red tape in the so-called omnibus procedure. The first omnibus is intended to make it easier for companies to comply with Green Deal regulations. Specifically, the supply chain law (CSDDD), sustainability reporting (CSRD), the taxonomy and the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) will be amended. Details of the omnibus legislation had previously been leaked – these have now been largely confirmed.
The focus is on standardizing the scope of the directives and giving the economy more time. “Our proposals lead to simplification, but not to deregulation,” said Economic Affairs Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis. “We still intend to achieve the objectives of the Green Deal, but we want to make it more efficient and less costly for businesses.”
The following is proposed for the CSRD:
The following is proposed for the CSDDD:
The taxonomy is also to be adapted. It regulates which economic activities are considered sustainable; the companies concerned have already had to provide this information for more than three years. Unlike the CSRD and CSDDD, the framework is not to be “opened up” again, but adapted. This is proposed:
The proposals for the CBAM had already become known, as Table.Briefings reported.
According to the Commission, the entire package is expected to save the EU economy at least six billion euros. Due to the urgency of the matter, it was not possible to carry out an impact assessment. How it is now possible to achieve the decarbonization targets, even though a large proportion of the companies previously addressed are exempt, also remained open.
The CSRD had previously assumed that around 50,000 companies would be subject to reporting requirements, including around 14,000 in Germany alone. This figure is now shrinking. Maximilian Müller, Professor of Financial Accounting at the University of Cologne, assumes that 2,000 to 3,000 companies in Germany will now fall within the scope of application.
The EU’s investment vehicles are also to be streamlined. This is the subject of the second omnibus presented by the Commission in the form of a revision of the Invest EU Regulation. SMEs that benefit from investment aid from Invest EU are to be subject to fewer reporting obligations. The Commission also wants to reuse money that flows back from previous investments.
It expects to be able to provide around EUR 2.5 billion as a guarantee to leverage investments of up to EUR 25 billion. The Commission wants to mobilize an additional EUR 25 billion by making it possible to combine Invest EU funds with other subsidies.
First, the European industry celebrated the Clean Industrial Deal, and then came the rude awakening. US President Donald Trump announced the prospect of tariffs of 25 percent on products from the EU. “We will be announcing that very soon, and it will be 25 percent in general, and that will apply to cars and all these things,” Trump said according to media reports. The EU was created “to screw the United States,” Trump said, according to the Financial Times.
Bernd Lange (SPD), Chairman of the EU Parliament’s Trade Committee, was relaxed. “Well, Mr. Trump has already announced a lot of things,” he told Table.Briefings. “The important thing now is to know the legal situation in black and white and when it will apply.” However, it is known that tariffs of this magnitude are within Trump’s scope. The EU is prepared. “First of all, of course, we will try to avoid an escalation. If that fails, we will respond immediately with counter-tariffs.”
The Commission also emphasized its willingness to talk, but made it clear: “The EU will always protect European companies, workers and consumers from unjustified tariffs.” Should such tariffs be imposed, “decisive and immediate” action would be taken, it said in response to Trump’s threats.
French President Emmanuel Macron visited Washington at the beginning of the week. However, it appears that the French intervention had no moderating effect on Trump. The Europeans’ efforts to position themselves more independently of the USA have picked up speed again in recent days. The latest tariff threats will be an incentive to step up these efforts.
Get through the day duty-free!
What the negotiating teams of Ukraine and the USA have developed with the raw materials agreement sounds like a partnership of equals. There is no more talk of US President Donald Trump’s demands that Ukraine should make its raw material deposits available in return for aid.
Key points of the paper:
Zelenskiy is expected to sign the contract during his visit to Washington on Feb. 28, after which the Ukrainian parliament will have to approve it. Shortly before the draft agreement was made public, German government circles reported that a raw materials deal also indirectly represents a kind of American security guarantee for Ukraine. If American companies and citizens were to become active in Ukraine, the US government itself would be interested in being able to operate in a secure environment without Russian attacks, so the argument goes.
“It is certainly problematic if the USA wants to secure raw materials in Ukraine but does not want to contribute to the country’s security itself and leaves this task to the Europeans,” said Nils Schmid, foreign policy spokesman for the SPD parliamentary group, to Table.Briefings. On the other hand, Europe has “a notorious weakness in raw materials cooperation due to a lack of suitable financing options and specialized business consortia.”
However, one thing is certain: “The war damage caused by Russia in Ukraine is so enormous that reconstruction will require equally enormous efforts from all of Ukraine’s partners in Europe and America.” According to Schmid, this will also open up a wide range of business opportunities for European companies.
However, on Wednesday the EU Commission held out the prospect of its own projects in Ukraine in the near future. The EU had already signed a Memorandum of Understanding for a raw materials partnership with Ukraine in 2021. Members of the Commission recently discussed its implementation with the Ukrainian government, said Commission Vice-President Stéphane Séjourné in Brussels on Wednesday.
The first announcements will probably be made in March. For example, a graphite extraction project is being discussed that could cover ten percent of European demand by 2030.
Ukraine is one of the most resource-rich countries in Europe and has many untapped deposits, particularly of rare earths. Russian President Vladimir Putin only offered Trump on Tuesday to work together with US companies on the exploitation of raw materials in the occupied Ukrainian territories. The planned agreement between Kyiv and Washington excludes this possibility.
The EU Commission is realigning its industrial strategy. “Made in Europe” is being given clear preference in both public and private procurement. With clean products from the EU, Brussels wants to counter Donald Trump’s plans for a return to fossil fuels with a decarbonization agenda. The EU should remain an attractive location for innovation and production and thus also attract more investment again, according to the clear signal.
Representatives of the US economy immediately threatened to halt investment in the EU. “The scale and speed of investment required for the introduction of clean technologies in Europe can only be achieved through the contribution of American companies,” said the Brussels office of the American Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday.
The Clean Industrial Deal presented on Wednesday is based on a total of six components:
The plan represents a paradigm shift, as both energy-intensive industries and clean-tech companies are now getting the transformational support they had hoped for. The industry’s appeal a year ago has become a turning point of hope, said Ilham Kadri, CEO of Syensqo and President of the European Chemical Industry Council (CEFIC) at the European Industry Summit in Antwerp on Wednesday.
However, the speed of implementation is crucial for the Clean Industrial Deal, criticized the deputy director general of Business Europe, Alexandre Affre. “It is not a good sign that the Industrial Decarbonization Accelerator Act is only planned for the fourth quarter of this year,” he told Table.Briefings.
The Commission only partially answers where the money to support industry is to come from. It puts the short-term additional annual funding requirement for the areas of energy, industrial innovation and growth as well as transportation systems at around EUR 480 billion.
The Commission is proposing a bank for industrial decarbonization. It is to be endowed with around EUR 100 billion, the majority of which will come from the member states. Fresh money is not available anyway. For example, EUR 20 billion is to come from the Innovation Fund, EUR 30 billion is to be provided by the member states and a further EUR 33 billion is to be provided by revenue from the sale of emission allowances from EU emissions trading. However, no additional ETS certificates will be distributed; instead, the member states are to forgo the revenue to which they are entitled.
The rest of the money is to come from the Invest-EU Fund. EUR 2.5 billion from the fund are to leverage ten times the amount of financial resources, so that in the end just over EUR 100 billion will be raised for the Industrial Decarbonization Bank. In total, the Commission hopes to leverage up to EUR 400 billion in private capital.
However, there is a lot of uncertainty in the plans for an acute measure for rapid aid. The next multiannual financial framework should therefore provide more information on how much money Brussels will provide for the decarbonization and competitiveness of the industry in the long term. However, this will take some time. An initial proposal for the new MFF is expected in the summer. It will not come into force until 2028.
The ultimate test will therefore be the implementation of the proposals in concrete measures and their solid financial basis, comments Julia Metz, Director of the think tank Agora Industrie. The competition for the distribution of funds has already begun. The decarbonization bank runs the risk of playing off electrification against gas-dependent solutions that only look good on paper, warned Walburga Hemetsberger, CEO of Solar Power Europe.
The Commission promises high financial savings with its action plan on energy prices. In its press release, the Commission states that this will amount to EUR 45 billion in the current year alone and will grow to EUR 260 billion by 2040. These sums are to be generated by savings on imports of fossil fuels. However, a closer look at the plan shows that the contribution of Wednesday’s announcements cannot be quantified at all.
The savings are calculated based on a comparison with the development since 2019 without the energy transition and with a CO₂ target of minus 90 percent by 2040. However, the action plan leaves it completely open as to how many billions of these savings will come from the new measures now proposed. There is real concern in the industry that the Commission’s proposals will not be enough to reduce energy costs in the short term, said Alexandre Affre from Business Europe.
Renewables should also be the main factor in decoupling electricity prices, which are crucial for decarbonization, from high gas prices. France and its allies celebrated a success here. The role of nuclear energy is weighted higher compared to the leak of the Clean Industrial Deal.
In a pilot program, the EIB is to secure long-term power purchase agreements with guarantees amounting to EUR 500 million. However, the electricity for this will no longer come solely from wind and solar parks, but also from nuclear power plants.
Energy Commissioner Dan Jørgensen tried to put an end to speculation about a completely different form of price reduction on Wednesday. Rumors have been circulating for weeks that after a ceasefire, Ukraine might once again be able to transport Russian gas to the West. When asked about this, Jørgensen replied: “We are determined not to buy any more Russian gas.” You couldn’t say it any clearer than that.
According to Jørgensen, the EU cannot do without the USA when it comes to diversification: “Just as we are dependent on Norway for pipeline gas, we are also dependent on LNG from the USA. That will remain the case in the future.” Following the leak of the drafts, the Commission was criticized for its plans to also finance gas export terminals in the USA in the future.
The fact that the Commission has not also presented the update to the EU Climate Law has been criticized. Observers had expected the 90 percent target for 2040 to be enshrined in law. This would have strengthened the confidence of companies, which demand predictability and a long-term vision, says Romain Pardo from the industry network Corporate Leaders Group Europe.
EU Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra justified the action by saying that the Commission’s targets were known and that it was not possible to publish everything at once. However, the update of the climate law and the legislative proposal for the 2040 climate target are to take place in the coming weeks.
The Commission has presented the first two proposals for cutting red tape in the so-called omnibus procedure. The first omnibus is intended to make it easier for companies to comply with Green Deal regulations. Specifically, the supply chain law (CSDDD), sustainability reporting (CSRD), the taxonomy and the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) will be amended. Details of the omnibus legislation had previously been leaked – these have now been largely confirmed.
The focus is on standardizing the scope of the directives and giving the economy more time. “Our proposals lead to simplification, but not to deregulation,” said Economic Affairs Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis. “We still intend to achieve the objectives of the Green Deal, but we want to make it more efficient and less costly for businesses.”
The following is proposed for the CSRD:
The following is proposed for the CSDDD:
The taxonomy is also to be adapted. It regulates which economic activities are considered sustainable; the companies concerned have already had to provide this information for more than three years. Unlike the CSRD and CSDDD, the framework is not to be “opened up” again, but adapted. This is proposed:
The proposals for the CBAM had already become known, as Table.Briefings reported.
According to the Commission, the entire package is expected to save the EU economy at least six billion euros. Due to the urgency of the matter, it was not possible to carry out an impact assessment. How it is now possible to achieve the decarbonization targets, even though a large proportion of the companies previously addressed are exempt, also remained open.
The CSRD had previously assumed that around 50,000 companies would be subject to reporting requirements, including around 14,000 in Germany alone. This figure is now shrinking. Maximilian Müller, Professor of Financial Accounting at the University of Cologne, assumes that 2,000 to 3,000 companies in Germany will now fall within the scope of application.
The EU’s investment vehicles are also to be streamlined. This is the subject of the second omnibus presented by the Commission in the form of a revision of the Invest EU Regulation. SMEs that benefit from investment aid from Invest EU are to be subject to fewer reporting obligations. The Commission also wants to reuse money that flows back from previous investments.
It expects to be able to provide around EUR 2.5 billion as a guarantee to leverage investments of up to EUR 25 billion. The Commission wants to mobilize an additional EUR 25 billion by making it possible to combine Invest EU funds with other subsidies.
