Already during his first term in office, Donald Trump had set himself the goal of building a strong AI industry in the USA. He is now taking this seriously: on Tuesday evening, he appeared before the cameras at the White House with the CEOs of Oracle, Softbank and OpenAI. The three companies want to invest the incredible sum of USD500 billion in AI infrastructure in the USA.
Although the “Stargate” project was already planned during the Biden administration, Trump’s support has accelerated the initiative, say those involved. It also helped that Trump repealed Joe Biden’s AI regulation with the stroke of a pen. It was aiming to make the development of AI safer and more responsible. There was close cooperation with the EU in this matter.
The EU is now facing a number of challenges: The development of AI is expensive, and the USA has also invested far more than Europe to date. “Europe needs a clear industrial strategy and the Capital Markets Union to strengthen private investment in digital innovation,” says MEP Alexandra Geese (Greens). The EU also urgently needs to free itself from its dependence on US technologies. “Europe is currently vulnerable to blackmail,” warns Tiemo Wölken (SPD). If Trump cuts off access to US cloud services, German companies, starting with the DAX companies, are threatened with disaster.
Finally, regulation also poses a challenge. The AI Act applies in the EU, while Trump has deleted the rules for AI in the USA. “Values such as democracy, human-centeredness and the rule of law will no longer play a role in the future,” says Axel Voss (CDU). This is a warning signal for the EU to finally take the digital transformation more seriously and in a more targeted manner. Now it is time to join forces and set priorities “if we want to survive digitally.” The EU must “get down to business,” says Sergey Lagodinsky (Greens). If the member states do not want to fall further behind the USA in global competition, “the Commission must identify strategic priorities beyond regulatory strategies.”
However, Wölken believes that Europe should not “loose its head by bombastic, but perhaps unrealistic announcements from the Trump administration.” It took less than 24 hours for Trump advisor Elon Musk to cast doubt on the enormous sum of USD500 billion.
Don’t let them drive you crazy,
Donald Tusk could hardly have issued a more urgent warning during his appearance before the EU Parliament: “I would like to tell you that this is a time when Europe cannot afford to save on security.” The head of government and current EU Council President called for every country to spend five percent of its economic output on defense, following Poland’s example. Tusk appealed for his call to be taken seriously: “If Europe wants to survive, it needs to be armed.”
Poland has made security in all aspects the motto of its EU Council Presidency. Tusk emphasized that he was not a militarist. His country has suffered more from wars than almost any other in Europe. Perhaps that is why he understands what is needed now to ensure that history does not repeat itself. Eastern Europeans and the Baltic states have been warning of the threat of war from Russia for some time, while for southern Europeans the threat seems further away.
Poland, with its long border with Russia and Belarus, is not only spending the five percent on its own security but on the security of Europe as a whole, emphasized Tusk: “We are dealing with a hot conflict on our borders.” The continent must wake up from its routine. Now is the time to radically increase defense spending.
Some EU states are against higher spending or Eurobonds and do not want to contract new debt, said Tusk. The most important question was not which method would be used to finance European defense projects. What is more important is that there is no alternative, no choice: “We need to be able to defend ourselves, which means that European money needs to be spent on this purpose.”
Europe should no longer rely on the American protective umbrella and must take its security into its own hands. The head of government called for a joint project with Lithuania and Finland for a protective wall on the eastern border. “Europe is not yet lost,” said Tusk in reference to Poland’s national anthem and appealed for confidence. Europe had no reason to be afraid, Europe would “always be great.”
EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Kaja Kallas expressed similar alarm at the annual meeting of the European Defense Agency (EDA). National intelligence services are warning that Russia could test the readiness of EU states to defend themselves in three to five years. Europe’s failure to invest in military capabilities sends a dangerous signal of weakness to Russia, the aggressor.
Estonia’s former head of government appealed for the warnings to be taken seriously. US President Donald Trump was right when he said that Europe was spending too little on its security. Now is the time to invest. Today, Europe’s front line is in Ukraine and Ukraine is buying Europe time. But the EU is already a target of Russia’s hybrid war.
Harsh words were also directed at Moscow from Washington. US President Donald Trump threatened Russia on Wednesday with tariffs and new sanctions if Vladimir Putin is not prepared to make a deal for a ceasefire in Ukraine. He would have no choice but to impose “high taxes, tariffs and sanctions” on everything Russia sold to the US: “We can do it the easy way, or the hard way,” Trump threatened.
The EU foreign ministers will discuss the new situation with Kallas at the Foreign Affairs Council next Monday, Jan. 27. A week later, on Feb 3, Tusk will repeat his argument for European defense funding to his colleagues in the European Council.
According to the Federal Ministry of Economics, favorable conditions for energy production should not determine the location of industrial companies. “Companies should compete on their products and not on energy prices,” said State Secretary Philipp Nimmermann at the Franco-German Energy Forum on Wednesday. “We need European instruments that make it possible to keep energy-intensive industries in Europe.”
With his comments, Nimmermann also emphasized that Germany is dependent on the European internal energy market to keep energy-intensive production in the country. In recent months, however, Sweden and Norway have threatened to restrict their electricity exports in order to keep energy prices low in their countries.
The BMWK is aiming for greater harmonization in the calculation of grid fees, for example. “In my opinion, the Commission should consider harmonizing incentive regulation,” said Nimmermann. Given the 27 different regulations in the EU, it is difficult for investors to assess where investments in the grids are attractive. The capital requirement is in the three-digit billion range.
The French side took a rather reserved view of the proposal. If there is harmonization, this should not lead to more complexity, countered Sophie Mourlon, Director General at the Paris Ministry of the Economy. The EU states should also be able to continue to decide on their energy mix.
Nimmermann said that the German government could also imagine financing the expansion of the grid more via the state budget than just via user charges. The state aid issues would be discussed intensively with the Commission.
A highly controversial topic among EU countries is currently the sharing of costs for large power lines and, in particular, interconnectors between countries. “We need a mechanism to compensate countries whose investments provide excessive benefits for the European grid,” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis wrote to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen a few days ago.
Ivan Faucheux from the French regulatory authority CRE considers this approach to be “daring” if the aim is to share costs between the EU27. In practice, it is already difficult to conclude bilateral agreements on this issue. If greater cost-sharing is desired, it must be kept as simple as possible. It would make sense to improve coordination of the three existing mechanisms for cost-sharing, said Annegret Groebel from the Federal Network Agency. Such calculation methods currently exist for the Connecting Europe Facility and the distribution of congestion revenues, among others.
The latest reform of the internal electricity market package is intended to reduce energy costs. The EU states had to implement the directive by Jan. 17. However, Germany will probably need until September due to the early elections, said André Poschmann from the BMWK.
One of the measures in the package is to strengthen long-term electricity supply contracts (PPAs). However, PPAs are currently still very expensive, reported Erika Mink-Zaghloul from Thyssen-Krupp Steel: “There is also a very different willingness to pay among the Amazons and Googles of this world than here in the steel industry.” So far, Thyssen-Krupp has concluded a contract for 110 gigawatt hours, which is in the single-digit percentage range of future electricity requirements.
Poschmann went on to explain some of the numbers that have made the headlines in recent months. The high prices resulting from the dark doldrums in mid-December could have been halved with just 150 megawatts of additional generation capacity in the EU, the official reported. This corresponds to a single large gas turbine.
Only a tenth of the record amount of planned battery storage is likely to be realized. The grid operators have received requests for large batteries with 230 gigawatts to compensate for the fluctuating generation from wind and solar energy. Realistically, 20 to 30 gigawatts are more likely, said Poschmann. However, this alone would mean a completely different level of energy transition.
These days, a new man is touring the institutions of the European Union in Strasbourg. Less than a week after the 51st Bulgarian People’s Assembly elected him as Bulgaria’s new Prime Minister, Rossen Scheljaskov held initial talks with EU Parliament President Roberta Metsola, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the President of the European Council António Costa. Rossen Scheljakov then told journalists that he had expressed his “concerns” about the “competitiveness of the Union” to the Commission President, citing issues such as “over-regulation, bureaucracy, too much administration in the Union’s processes and some policies that need to be revised.”
The 56-year-old lawyer is no stranger to the EU stage, having served as Bulgaria’s transport minister from September 2018 to April 2021 and as parliamentary speaker for a year from April 2023. As head of government, he now leads an unusual three-party coalition. It unites his right-wing and avowedly transatlantic party “Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria” (GERB) with the post-communist “Bulgarian Socialist Party” (BSP), which has traditional ties to Russia, and the populist micro-party “There is Such a People” (ITN).
His governing alliance does not have a parliamentary majority and depends on the goodwill of the Alliance for Rights and Freedoms (APS), a splinter faction of the Turkish Party, which split in July 2024. It is thus difficult to predict whether the Scheljaskov cabinet will bring stability and continuity to the Balkan country after four years of political trials and tribulations. The main element uniting the three coalition members is above all the unconditional will to spare the Bulgarian citizens another parliamentary election in the coming spring. It would be the eighth in four years. Beyond that, they have little political common ground.
The new government will not present a coalition program for another month, but on the sidelines of his talks with MEPs in Strasbourg, Scheljaskov named the adoption of the overdue state budget for the current year as a priority goal for his government. It also depends on whether Bulgaria will be able to call up recently blocked EU funds from its National Recovery and Resilience Plan (ARP) in order to implement urgently needed infrastructure projects to increase energy security and upgrade its transport networks.
After the parliamentary elections on October 27, 2024, the liberal-conservative party alliance of “We Continue the Change” (PP) and “Democratic Bulgaria” (DB) was actually considered to be GERB’s predestined coalition partner. Both formations agreed on the main features of their foreign policy and were in favor of military support for Ukraine. The BSP, on the other hand, rejects arms deliveries to Ukraine, as does President Rumen Radev. The new governing coalition thus marks a certain repositioning of Bulgaria in geopolitical terms. Some political observers see this as inspired by Donald Trump’s election as US president.
As the second strongest political force in parliament, PP/DB is the spearhead of the opposition. It has now taken up its attacks against the GERB-led government. On Wednesday morning, DB MP Martin Dimitrov accused the representatives of the governing factions of “sabotage against joining the eurozone” because they refused to give parliamentary approval for the adoption of the euro of necessary amendments to the law on the Bulgarian National Bank. Frank Stier
Already during his first term in office, Donald Trump had set himself the goal of building a strong AI industry in the USA. He is now taking this seriously: on Tuesday evening, he appeared before the cameras at the White House with the CEOs of Oracle, Softbank and OpenAI. The three companies want to invest the incredible sum of USD500 billion in AI infrastructure in the USA.
Although the “Stargate” project was already planned during the Biden administration, Trump’s support has accelerated the initiative, say those involved. It also helped that Trump repealed Joe Biden’s AI regulation with the stroke of a pen. It was aiming to make the development of AI safer and more responsible. There was close cooperation with the EU in this matter.
The EU is now facing a number of challenges: The development of AI is expensive, and the USA has also invested far more than Europe to date. “Europe needs a clear industrial strategy and the Capital Markets Union to strengthen private investment in digital innovation,” says MEP Alexandra Geese (Greens). The EU also urgently needs to free itself from its dependence on US technologies. “Europe is currently vulnerable to blackmail,” warns Tiemo Wölken (SPD). If Trump cuts off access to US cloud services, German companies, starting with the DAX companies, are threatened with disaster.
Finally, regulation also poses a challenge. The AI Act applies in the EU, while Trump has deleted the rules for AI in the USA. “Values such as democracy, human-centeredness and the rule of law will no longer play a role in the future,” says Axel Voss (CDU). This is a warning signal for the EU to finally take the digital transformation more seriously and in a more targeted manner. Now it is time to join forces and set priorities “if we want to survive digitally.” The EU must “get down to business,” says Sergey Lagodinsky (Greens). If the member states do not want to fall further behind the USA in global competition, “the Commission must identify strategic priorities beyond regulatory strategies.”
However, Wölken believes that Europe should not “loose its head by bombastic, but perhaps unrealistic announcements from the Trump administration.” It took less than 24 hours for Trump advisor Elon Musk to cast doubt on the enormous sum of USD500 billion.
Don’t let them drive you crazy,
Donald Tusk could hardly have issued a more urgent warning during his appearance before the EU Parliament: “I would like to tell you that this is a time when Europe cannot afford to save on security.” The head of government and current EU Council President called for every country to spend five percent of its economic output on defense, following Poland’s example. Tusk appealed for his call to be taken seriously: “If Europe wants to survive, it needs to be armed.”
Poland has made security in all aspects the motto of its EU Council Presidency. Tusk emphasized that he was not a militarist. His country has suffered more from wars than almost any other in Europe. Perhaps that is why he understands what is needed now to ensure that history does not repeat itself. Eastern Europeans and the Baltic states have been warning of the threat of war from Russia for some time, while for southern Europeans the threat seems further away.
Poland, with its long border with Russia and Belarus, is not only spending the five percent on its own security but on the security of Europe as a whole, emphasized Tusk: “We are dealing with a hot conflict on our borders.” The continent must wake up from its routine. Now is the time to radically increase defense spending.
Some EU states are against higher spending or Eurobonds and do not want to contract new debt, said Tusk. The most important question was not which method would be used to finance European defense projects. What is more important is that there is no alternative, no choice: “We need to be able to defend ourselves, which means that European money needs to be spent on this purpose.”
Europe should no longer rely on the American protective umbrella and must take its security into its own hands. The head of government called for a joint project with Lithuania and Finland for a protective wall on the eastern border. “Europe is not yet lost,” said Tusk in reference to Poland’s national anthem and appealed for confidence. Europe had no reason to be afraid, Europe would “always be great.”
EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Kaja Kallas expressed similar alarm at the annual meeting of the European Defense Agency (EDA). National intelligence services are warning that Russia could test the readiness of EU states to defend themselves in three to five years. Europe’s failure to invest in military capabilities sends a dangerous signal of weakness to Russia, the aggressor.
Estonia’s former head of government appealed for the warnings to be taken seriously. US President Donald Trump was right when he said that Europe was spending too little on its security. Now is the time to invest. Today, Europe’s front line is in Ukraine and Ukraine is buying Europe time. But the EU is already a target of Russia’s hybrid war.
Harsh words were also directed at Moscow from Washington. US President Donald Trump threatened Russia on Wednesday with tariffs and new sanctions if Vladimir Putin is not prepared to make a deal for a ceasefire in Ukraine. He would have no choice but to impose “high taxes, tariffs and sanctions” on everything Russia sold to the US: “We can do it the easy way, or the hard way,” Trump threatened.
The EU foreign ministers will discuss the new situation with Kallas at the Foreign Affairs Council next Monday, Jan. 27. A week later, on Feb 3, Tusk will repeat his argument for European defense funding to his colleagues in the European Council.
According to the Federal Ministry of Economics, favorable conditions for energy production should not determine the location of industrial companies. “Companies should compete on their products and not on energy prices,” said State Secretary Philipp Nimmermann at the Franco-German Energy Forum on Wednesday. “We need European instruments that make it possible to keep energy-intensive industries in Europe.”
With his comments, Nimmermann also emphasized that Germany is dependent on the European internal energy market to keep energy-intensive production in the country. In recent months, however, Sweden and Norway have threatened to restrict their electricity exports in order to keep energy prices low in their countries.
The BMWK is aiming for greater harmonization in the calculation of grid fees, for example. “In my opinion, the Commission should consider harmonizing incentive regulation,” said Nimmermann. Given the 27 different regulations in the EU, it is difficult for investors to assess where investments in the grids are attractive. The capital requirement is in the three-digit billion range.
The French side took a rather reserved view of the proposal. If there is harmonization, this should not lead to more complexity, countered Sophie Mourlon, Director General at the Paris Ministry of the Economy. The EU states should also be able to continue to decide on their energy mix.
Nimmermann said that the German government could also imagine financing the expansion of the grid more via the state budget than just via user charges. The state aid issues would be discussed intensively with the Commission.
A highly controversial topic among EU countries is currently the sharing of costs for large power lines and, in particular, interconnectors between countries. “We need a mechanism to compensate countries whose investments provide excessive benefits for the European grid,” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis wrote to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen a few days ago.
Ivan Faucheux from the French regulatory authority CRE considers this approach to be “daring” if the aim is to share costs between the EU27. In practice, it is already difficult to conclude bilateral agreements on this issue. If greater cost-sharing is desired, it must be kept as simple as possible. It would make sense to improve coordination of the three existing mechanisms for cost-sharing, said Annegret Groebel from the Federal Network Agency. Such calculation methods currently exist for the Connecting Europe Facility and the distribution of congestion revenues, among others.
The latest reform of the internal electricity market package is intended to reduce energy costs. The EU states had to implement the directive by Jan. 17. However, Germany will probably need until September due to the early elections, said André Poschmann from the BMWK.
One of the measures in the package is to strengthen long-term electricity supply contracts (PPAs). However, PPAs are currently still very expensive, reported Erika Mink-Zaghloul from Thyssen-Krupp Steel: “There is also a very different willingness to pay among the Amazons and Googles of this world than here in the steel industry.” So far, Thyssen-Krupp has concluded a contract for 110 gigawatt hours, which is in the single-digit percentage range of future electricity requirements.
Poschmann went on to explain some of the numbers that have made the headlines in recent months. The high prices resulting from the dark doldrums in mid-December could have been halved with just 150 megawatts of additional generation capacity in the EU, the official reported. This corresponds to a single large gas turbine.
Only a tenth of the record amount of planned battery storage is likely to be realized. The grid operators have received requests for large batteries with 230 gigawatts to compensate for the fluctuating generation from wind and solar energy. Realistically, 20 to 30 gigawatts are more likely, said Poschmann. However, this alone would mean a completely different level of energy transition.
These days, a new man is touring the institutions of the European Union in Strasbourg. Less than a week after the 51st Bulgarian People’s Assembly elected him as Bulgaria’s new Prime Minister, Rossen Scheljaskov held initial talks with EU Parliament President Roberta Metsola, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the President of the European Council António Costa. Rossen Scheljakov then told journalists that he had expressed his “concerns” about the “competitiveness of the Union” to the Commission President, citing issues such as “over-regulation, bureaucracy, too much administration in the Union’s processes and some policies that need to be revised.”
The 56-year-old lawyer is no stranger to the EU stage, having served as Bulgaria’s transport minister from September 2018 to April 2021 and as parliamentary speaker for a year from April 2023. As head of government, he now leads an unusual three-party coalition. It unites his right-wing and avowedly transatlantic party “Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria” (GERB) with the post-communist “Bulgarian Socialist Party” (BSP), which has traditional ties to Russia, and the populist micro-party “There is Such a People” (ITN).
His governing alliance does not have a parliamentary majority and depends on the goodwill of the Alliance for Rights and Freedoms (APS), a splinter faction of the Turkish Party, which split in July 2024. It is thus difficult to predict whether the Scheljaskov cabinet will bring stability and continuity to the Balkan country after four years of political trials and tribulations. The main element uniting the three coalition members is above all the unconditional will to spare the Bulgarian citizens another parliamentary election in the coming spring. It would be the eighth in four years. Beyond that, they have little political common ground.
The new government will not present a coalition program for another month, but on the sidelines of his talks with MEPs in Strasbourg, Scheljaskov named the adoption of the overdue state budget for the current year as a priority goal for his government. It also depends on whether Bulgaria will be able to call up recently blocked EU funds from its National Recovery and Resilience Plan (ARP) in order to implement urgently needed infrastructure projects to increase energy security and upgrade its transport networks.
After the parliamentary elections on October 27, 2024, the liberal-conservative party alliance of “We Continue the Change” (PP) and “Democratic Bulgaria” (DB) was actually considered to be GERB’s predestined coalition partner. Both formations agreed on the main features of their foreign policy and were in favor of military support for Ukraine. The BSP, on the other hand, rejects arms deliveries to Ukraine, as does President Rumen Radev. The new governing coalition thus marks a certain repositioning of Bulgaria in geopolitical terms. Some political observers see this as inspired by Donald Trump’s election as US president.
As the second strongest political force in parliament, PP/DB is the spearhead of the opposition. It has now taken up its attacks against the GERB-led government. On Wednesday morning, DB MP Martin Dimitrov accused the representatives of the governing factions of “sabotage against joining the eurozone” because they refused to give parliamentary approval for the adoption of the euro of necessary amendments to the law on the Bulgarian National Bank. Frank Stier
