The EU is trying to support war-torn Ukraine as much as possible. As a result, no tariffs are currently being levied on Ukrainian export products. However, this has brought criticism from the neighboring states, which see themselves threatened by cheap agricultural products. The discussion gives a foretaste of what is likely to be discussed in the course of Ukraine’s possible accession to the EU, writes Timo Landenberger.
Investing money in an environmentally and socially responsible way – ESG ratings are playing an increasingly important role among investors. The only problem is that so far they have not been regulated and the evaluation criteria are often not comprehensible to outsiders. The point of “water”, for example, does not have to have anything to do with sustainability. It can also only say something about whether there is enough water for operations. Leonie Düngefeld analyzes that the EU Commission now wants to improve the situation with a legislative proposal.
ASAP signals: It’s urgent. Thierry Breton’s third element of his armaments strategy bears this name. And it really is intended to speed things up: The package is designed to increase the EU’s ammunition production capacity to one million projectiles per year within twelve months. Read more about the Frenchman’s plan, which he will present today, in our News.
With the deal between the European Commission and the five Eastern European countries bordering Ukraine, the dispute over Ukrainian agricultural imports seems to be off the table for now. But a continuation of the conflict is already on the horizon. An end to the war is not in sight, and the solution reached does not convince all parties.
At the same time, concerns are growing in Brussels: Can Ukraine’s oft-promised accession to the EU succeed at all in view of the agricultural market chaos? Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy observed the developments with concern and spoke of a dangerous signal of crumbling solidarity.
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the EU suspended tariffs on imports from Ukraine in order to support the country. However, this had led to an oversupply of agricultural goods in some regions, triggering price declines and market disruptions. As a result, Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia had restricted or even stopped imports of Ukrainian agricultural goods. Now, under the agreement now reached, imports are to be allowed again, but only for onward transport to other countries.
For Ukraine, this is “very painful”, says Olga Trofimtseva, special representative for food and agriculture at the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry. Limiting exports to transit goods not only restricts the quantity. It also makes onward transportation very expensive, she adds. “This makes our products uncompetitive on the world market“. This is at a time when domestic agriculture is faced with the decision of whether it is even worth sowing in the spring.
“Our farmers have been in survival mode since the war broke out”, Trofimtseva says. Already, she says, the losses are dramatic. The Kyiv School of Economics estimates direct and indirect losses in the agricultural economy at more than $40 billion.
Before the war, Ukraine’s agricultural sector accounted for about 44 percent of the country’s total export revenues. Currently, the share is even higher, as other exports have come to a complete halt. “This makes it all the more important to maintain agricultural exports to the EU”, Trofimtseva says. After all, almost half of Ukraine’s exports now go this way.
This is particularly evident in the case of wheat. According to the Commission’s expert group, wheat imports to the EU from Ukraine have increased by 877 percent compared to the five-year average before the war. Poland recorded a 10,474 percent increase in its wheat imports.
So these figures prove what is complained about in Eastern European neighboring countries. “But, after all, the goal of the Solidarity Corridors was to support Ukraine and relax the world market. And this has been achieved. We must not leave the role of solving hunger problems to Russia”, says Bettina Rudloff, an agricultural market expert from the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP). In addition, falling prices as a result of oversupply are not bad per se. Especially in times of high inflation, this is a great advantage for the processing industry and consumers.
Norbert Lins, Chairman of the Agriculture Committee in the EU Parliament, disagrees: “Wheat has no place here. It is not acceptable that the silos in Eastern Europe are overflowing while the UN World Food Program has to cut rations. After all, the aim of the solidarity corridors is to get the grain to where it is needed“.
Restricting imports from Ukraine to transit goods is nevertheless the wrong way to go. Thus, the grain will only be passed on within Europe. “It will only take a few days for the riparian states to complain. This kind of thing doesn’t work in a single market”, Lins argues.
What does the chaos now mean for Ukraine’s possible accession to the EU? After all, the country is one of the largest agricultural players in the world. According to the World Data Center, for example, Ukraine has an agricultural area of around 30 million hectares, compared with 175 million hectares in the EU as a whole. About 18 percent of the working Ukrainian population is employed in agriculture (Germany: 1.2 percent), which accounts for over ten percent of Ukraine’s GDP. Upon accession, the European agricultural market would be properly shaken up, as would the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
For SWP expert Rudloff, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages: “On a global level, the EU would be a huge agricultural player with Ukraine and would have much greater influence on the world market than before”. This is especially true in the face of China, which has become dominant in the meantime, and interventionist actors such as Argentina, which repeatedly provoke change by imposing trade restrictions.
At the same time, “the EU’s responsibility for feeding the world would take on much greater significance”, says Udo Hemmerling, Deputy Secretary General of the German Farmers’ Association (DVB). “A farm-to-fork strategy of the EU Commission, which approvingly accepts a reduction of its own food production by ten to 20 percent, would then finally be recognized as irresponsible and unsustainable”, the DBV hopes. In addition, however, increasing competitive pressure within the EU must be expected.
Martin Häusling, agricultural policy spokesman for the Greens in the EU Parliament, nevertheless “strongly advocates that we accept Ukraine”. This would bring with it numerous challenges, but these could be solved through early preparation. In this regard, Häusling is counting above all on a change in EU agricultural subsidies toward more environmental protection. “The model of area-based direct payments will then simply no longer work”, says the MEP. And demands a clear positioning from the EU Commission.
The CAP is by far the largest item in the EU budget. Even though payments have been increasingly linked to public services in recent years, for example in the area of environmental protection, the system is still based primarily on direct payments. And these, in turn, are based on the area of farmland cultivated. However, the latter are many times higher in Ukraine than in the EU. High five- or even six-digit hectare figures are not uncommon.
For EPP politician Lins, the debate comes at an inopportune time. “A politically sensitive situation is being exploited here to discuss direct payments. For the countries in Eastern Europe in particular, this is the most important element. This raises the question of whether the discussion is not even more divisive”, says the MEP, speaking of a “diversionary maneuver”. Even without direct payments, the integration of Ukraine into the EU will be a Herculean task. First, however, other tasks need to be solved.
The ESG ratings business is now a billion-dollar market: More and more investors want to invest their money in sustainable funds and companies and are, therefore, increasingly making their investment decisions on the basis of such sustainability ratings.
The EU Commission now wants to create a legal framework for this market. In its impact analysis, it identified concerns about transparency in the procurement of data and the methods used; it also said that ESG ratings are often not up to date, and are also inaccurate and unreliable. The Commission wants to change this and, according to the current agenda, will present a draft law on June 17.
ESG ratings are – independent of credit ratings – an assessment of a company’s business practices with regard to the environmental, social and corporate governance dimensions. BlackRock and other investment vendors use these ratings to label equity and bond funds as “sustainable”, influencing an increasing number of investors in their decisions.
The market for these ratings has grown strongly and consolidated in recent years. There are now around 150 agencies worldwide offering ESG ratings. The largest and most important players, on which the market is heavily concentrated (such as MSCI, ISS and Moody’s), are US or British companies. MSCI, for example, has a 30 percent market share. According to the Commission, “major ESG ratings providers based outside the EU currently provide services to investors in the EU”.
So far, these agencies do not have to be licensed in the EU and are not subject to supervision. Each rating agency has its own method and weights the individual ESG variables differently. Only a few of them voluntarily disclose the indicators used and their weighting.
Until now, one has had to do detective work to understand the individual rating methodologies, says Kornelia Fabisik, who conducts research on ESG ratings at the University of Bern. “It’s currently not easy to assess ESG data quality from the documentation provided by ESG rating agencies”. For example, she says, it is usually not possible to understand within a realistic amount of time whether certain data has been published directly by the rated companies or whether the rating agency has simply estimated the value.
In addition, there is too little information about the significance of individual rating criteria: Investors often assume that the rating refers to a company’s (positive or negative) impact on ESG areas such as the environment or social issues. But often, they say, it is only about the simple materiality, i.e., the risks of ESG factors to the company. For example, with regard to the ESG metric “water” – while one rating agency looks at whether there is enough water for the company’s operations, another measures the amount of substances the company emits into the water. Fabisik sees the proposed regulation as an opportunity for investors to better understand this data.
For rating agencies that also offer other ratings, there is also a risk of conflicts of interest: Researchers at the University of Singapore point out in a paper that there are biases in ESG ratings due to pre-existing business relationships. They found in the cases of agencies Moody’s and S&P that clients already paying (for credit ratings) received higher ESG ratings than companies with which they had no business relationship.
For the new law, the EU Commission states the following goals:
The EU began regulating the market for credit rating agencies in 2010 after the financial crisis – since then, credit rating providers in the EU market have had to register and are supervised by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA). In addition, ratings are clearly defined and must use certain grading categories – such as the widely used rating scales from “AAA” to “D”.
In a letter to the EU Commission, ESMA proposes to model the legislative proposal on the regulation for credit rating agencies and to provide oversight of ESG rating agencies. The legal framework should be “proportionate to the size of the company concerned” and “develop a common legal definition of an ESG rating that captures the wide range of rating tools currently available in the market”. The very large differences between ratings from different providers have so far led to “problems in the investment value chain”.
The fact that ratings differ from one another is not a negative thing per se, explains the German scientific platform Sustainable Finance. This merely reflects the complexity of sustainability – and is part of a competitive, diversified market, it says. “However, it is important that users of ESG ratings (investors, asset managers) are aware of this fact”, the researchers write in a report. “Then they can choose the rating provider that best matches their goals/values/expectations“.
The platform recommends creating a binding framework “for the disclosure of key assumptions, the most sensitive methodological features and the objectives of ESG ratings“. This should involve the various users of ESG ratings.
According to a study by the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO), a “better understanding and greater reliability of ESG ratings would boost confidence in and credibility of this fast-growing market” and in this way promote sustainable investment – and thus the achievement of the goals of the EU Green Deal.
Fabisik sees the planned draft first of all as a signal for the rating agencies and a chance to improve the quality and availability of data for users.
The political career of Immacolata Glosemeyer, today Spokesperson for Federal and European Affairs and Regional Development for the SPD parliamentary group in Lower Saxony’s state parliament, began quite classically in local politics: At the age of 25, she began to get involved in Wolfsburg and joined the SPD. In 2011, she was elected local mayor of Wolfsburg’s Nordstadt district, and two years later began her time as a member of Lower Saxony’s state parliament.
Even at the kitchen table, her family discussed politics a lot, but ultimately it was her school principal who motivated her to get involved in politics by addressing her directly. The SPD member of the state parliament wants to pass on this impulse to help shape politics to students herself. Around Europe Day on May 9, Glosemeyer discusses the European idea and their expectations of Europe with young people. To get young people excited about Europe, Glosemeyer is also committed to an EU-funded project that allows young people to travel to other European countries: “It’s important for young people to be able to look beyond their own horizons and get to know young people from other countries and their ways of life”.
Glosemeyer has held the position of European policy spokeswoman for her parliamentary group since 2020: many crises – the Corona pandemic and the Ukraine war – fell into her term of office: “During the pandemic, European cooperation worked well and everyone joined forces in solidarity. That was a good example of how Europe can succeed”.
The two crises show how important joint action is – despite points of friction that cannot be explained away, says Glosemeyer. The EU is also strengthening Lower Saxony in dealing with the aftermath of the pandemic: The “Resilient Inner Cities” project, for example, aims to reactivate Lower Saxony’s inner cities and make them more attractive.
At the same time, Glosemeyer emphasizes that regional supply is also very important in an area like Lower Saxony. The rural areas are to be strengthened with intergenerational projects, coworking spaces and better child and health care. Not least to create structures that attract young families and make it possible to reconcile work and family life. As a founding member of Wolfsburg’s first Tagesmütterverein e.V. (now Familienservice Wolfsburg e.V.), this is a matter particularly close to Glosemeyer’s heart: “It’s not said for nothing that it takes a whole village to raise a child”, she says.
According to Glosemeyer, Lower Saxony’s special location characteristics make it an energy and climate state: “We in Lower Saxony are particularly challenged because, on the one hand, we have extraordinarily favorable location conditions for the generation of renewable energies“, says the politician. And on the other hand, the state also has a great responsibility for the success of the transformation due to its domestic heavy industry – shaping this change positively can only succeed with European solutions.
In order to improve the dovetailing of state and European policy, Glosemeyer is also rethinking internal structures. Fast information about European policy developments and their effects on Lower Saxony, constructive lobbying, that’s what a strong state representation in Brussels is important for – here, Lower Saxony with 20 employees compared to 40 Bavarian representatives, for example, could still be readjusted. So transformation is never absent, even at the structural level. And Immacolata Glosemeyer is committed to shaping this transformation in a participatory manner. Marlene Resch
The EU is trying to support war-torn Ukraine as much as possible. As a result, no tariffs are currently being levied on Ukrainian export products. However, this has brought criticism from the neighboring states, which see themselves threatened by cheap agricultural products. The discussion gives a foretaste of what is likely to be discussed in the course of Ukraine’s possible accession to the EU, writes Timo Landenberger.
Investing money in an environmentally and socially responsible way – ESG ratings are playing an increasingly important role among investors. The only problem is that so far they have not been regulated and the evaluation criteria are often not comprehensible to outsiders. The point of “water”, for example, does not have to have anything to do with sustainability. It can also only say something about whether there is enough water for operations. Leonie Düngefeld analyzes that the EU Commission now wants to improve the situation with a legislative proposal.
ASAP signals: It’s urgent. Thierry Breton’s third element of his armaments strategy bears this name. And it really is intended to speed things up: The package is designed to increase the EU’s ammunition production capacity to one million projectiles per year within twelve months. Read more about the Frenchman’s plan, which he will present today, in our News.
With the deal between the European Commission and the five Eastern European countries bordering Ukraine, the dispute over Ukrainian agricultural imports seems to be off the table for now. But a continuation of the conflict is already on the horizon. An end to the war is not in sight, and the solution reached does not convince all parties.
At the same time, concerns are growing in Brussels: Can Ukraine’s oft-promised accession to the EU succeed at all in view of the agricultural market chaos? Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy observed the developments with concern and spoke of a dangerous signal of crumbling solidarity.
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the EU suspended tariffs on imports from Ukraine in order to support the country. However, this had led to an oversupply of agricultural goods in some regions, triggering price declines and market disruptions. As a result, Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia had restricted or even stopped imports of Ukrainian agricultural goods. Now, under the agreement now reached, imports are to be allowed again, but only for onward transport to other countries.
For Ukraine, this is “very painful”, says Olga Trofimtseva, special representative for food and agriculture at the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry. Limiting exports to transit goods not only restricts the quantity. It also makes onward transportation very expensive, she adds. “This makes our products uncompetitive on the world market“. This is at a time when domestic agriculture is faced with the decision of whether it is even worth sowing in the spring.
“Our farmers have been in survival mode since the war broke out”, Trofimtseva says. Already, she says, the losses are dramatic. The Kyiv School of Economics estimates direct and indirect losses in the agricultural economy at more than $40 billion.
Before the war, Ukraine’s agricultural sector accounted for about 44 percent of the country’s total export revenues. Currently, the share is even higher, as other exports have come to a complete halt. “This makes it all the more important to maintain agricultural exports to the EU”, Trofimtseva says. After all, almost half of Ukraine’s exports now go this way.
This is particularly evident in the case of wheat. According to the Commission’s expert group, wheat imports to the EU from Ukraine have increased by 877 percent compared to the five-year average before the war. Poland recorded a 10,474 percent increase in its wheat imports.
So these figures prove what is complained about in Eastern European neighboring countries. “But, after all, the goal of the Solidarity Corridors was to support Ukraine and relax the world market. And this has been achieved. We must not leave the role of solving hunger problems to Russia”, says Bettina Rudloff, an agricultural market expert from the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP). In addition, falling prices as a result of oversupply are not bad per se. Especially in times of high inflation, this is a great advantage for the processing industry and consumers.
Norbert Lins, Chairman of the Agriculture Committee in the EU Parliament, disagrees: “Wheat has no place here. It is not acceptable that the silos in Eastern Europe are overflowing while the UN World Food Program has to cut rations. After all, the aim of the solidarity corridors is to get the grain to where it is needed“.
Restricting imports from Ukraine to transit goods is nevertheless the wrong way to go. Thus, the grain will only be passed on within Europe. “It will only take a few days for the riparian states to complain. This kind of thing doesn’t work in a single market”, Lins argues.
What does the chaos now mean for Ukraine’s possible accession to the EU? After all, the country is one of the largest agricultural players in the world. According to the World Data Center, for example, Ukraine has an agricultural area of around 30 million hectares, compared with 175 million hectares in the EU as a whole. About 18 percent of the working Ukrainian population is employed in agriculture (Germany: 1.2 percent), which accounts for over ten percent of Ukraine’s GDP. Upon accession, the European agricultural market would be properly shaken up, as would the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
For SWP expert Rudloff, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages: “On a global level, the EU would be a huge agricultural player with Ukraine and would have much greater influence on the world market than before”. This is especially true in the face of China, which has become dominant in the meantime, and interventionist actors such as Argentina, which repeatedly provoke change by imposing trade restrictions.
At the same time, “the EU’s responsibility for feeding the world would take on much greater significance”, says Udo Hemmerling, Deputy Secretary General of the German Farmers’ Association (DVB). “A farm-to-fork strategy of the EU Commission, which approvingly accepts a reduction of its own food production by ten to 20 percent, would then finally be recognized as irresponsible and unsustainable”, the DBV hopes. In addition, however, increasing competitive pressure within the EU must be expected.
Martin Häusling, agricultural policy spokesman for the Greens in the EU Parliament, nevertheless “strongly advocates that we accept Ukraine”. This would bring with it numerous challenges, but these could be solved through early preparation. In this regard, Häusling is counting above all on a change in EU agricultural subsidies toward more environmental protection. “The model of area-based direct payments will then simply no longer work”, says the MEP. And demands a clear positioning from the EU Commission.
The CAP is by far the largest item in the EU budget. Even though payments have been increasingly linked to public services in recent years, for example in the area of environmental protection, the system is still based primarily on direct payments. And these, in turn, are based on the area of farmland cultivated. However, the latter are many times higher in Ukraine than in the EU. High five- or even six-digit hectare figures are not uncommon.
For EPP politician Lins, the debate comes at an inopportune time. “A politically sensitive situation is being exploited here to discuss direct payments. For the countries in Eastern Europe in particular, this is the most important element. This raises the question of whether the discussion is not even more divisive”, says the MEP, speaking of a “diversionary maneuver”. Even without direct payments, the integration of Ukraine into the EU will be a Herculean task. First, however, other tasks need to be solved.
The ESG ratings business is now a billion-dollar market: More and more investors want to invest their money in sustainable funds and companies and are, therefore, increasingly making their investment decisions on the basis of such sustainability ratings.
The EU Commission now wants to create a legal framework for this market. In its impact analysis, it identified concerns about transparency in the procurement of data and the methods used; it also said that ESG ratings are often not up to date, and are also inaccurate and unreliable. The Commission wants to change this and, according to the current agenda, will present a draft law on June 17.
ESG ratings are – independent of credit ratings – an assessment of a company’s business practices with regard to the environmental, social and corporate governance dimensions. BlackRock and other investment vendors use these ratings to label equity and bond funds as “sustainable”, influencing an increasing number of investors in their decisions.
The market for these ratings has grown strongly and consolidated in recent years. There are now around 150 agencies worldwide offering ESG ratings. The largest and most important players, on which the market is heavily concentrated (such as MSCI, ISS and Moody’s), are US or British companies. MSCI, for example, has a 30 percent market share. According to the Commission, “major ESG ratings providers based outside the EU currently provide services to investors in the EU”.
So far, these agencies do not have to be licensed in the EU and are not subject to supervision. Each rating agency has its own method and weights the individual ESG variables differently. Only a few of them voluntarily disclose the indicators used and their weighting.
Until now, one has had to do detective work to understand the individual rating methodologies, says Kornelia Fabisik, who conducts research on ESG ratings at the University of Bern. “It’s currently not easy to assess ESG data quality from the documentation provided by ESG rating agencies”. For example, she says, it is usually not possible to understand within a realistic amount of time whether certain data has been published directly by the rated companies or whether the rating agency has simply estimated the value.
In addition, there is too little information about the significance of individual rating criteria: Investors often assume that the rating refers to a company’s (positive or negative) impact on ESG areas such as the environment or social issues. But often, they say, it is only about the simple materiality, i.e., the risks of ESG factors to the company. For example, with regard to the ESG metric “water” – while one rating agency looks at whether there is enough water for the company’s operations, another measures the amount of substances the company emits into the water. Fabisik sees the proposed regulation as an opportunity for investors to better understand this data.
For rating agencies that also offer other ratings, there is also a risk of conflicts of interest: Researchers at the University of Singapore point out in a paper that there are biases in ESG ratings due to pre-existing business relationships. They found in the cases of agencies Moody’s and S&P that clients already paying (for credit ratings) received higher ESG ratings than companies with which they had no business relationship.
For the new law, the EU Commission states the following goals:
The EU began regulating the market for credit rating agencies in 2010 after the financial crisis – since then, credit rating providers in the EU market have had to register and are supervised by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA). In addition, ratings are clearly defined and must use certain grading categories – such as the widely used rating scales from “AAA” to “D”.
In a letter to the EU Commission, ESMA proposes to model the legislative proposal on the regulation for credit rating agencies and to provide oversight of ESG rating agencies. The legal framework should be “proportionate to the size of the company concerned” and “develop a common legal definition of an ESG rating that captures the wide range of rating tools currently available in the market”. The very large differences between ratings from different providers have so far led to “problems in the investment value chain”.
The fact that ratings differ from one another is not a negative thing per se, explains the German scientific platform Sustainable Finance. This merely reflects the complexity of sustainability – and is part of a competitive, diversified market, it says. “However, it is important that users of ESG ratings (investors, asset managers) are aware of this fact”, the researchers write in a report. “Then they can choose the rating provider that best matches their goals/values/expectations“.
The platform recommends creating a binding framework “for the disclosure of key assumptions, the most sensitive methodological features and the objectives of ESG ratings“. This should involve the various users of ESG ratings.
According to a study by the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO), a “better understanding and greater reliability of ESG ratings would boost confidence in and credibility of this fast-growing market” and in this way promote sustainable investment – and thus the achievement of the goals of the EU Green Deal.
Fabisik sees the planned draft first of all as a signal for the rating agencies and a chance to improve the quality and availability of data for users.
The political career of Immacolata Glosemeyer, today Spokesperson for Federal and European Affairs and Regional Development for the SPD parliamentary group in Lower Saxony’s state parliament, began quite classically in local politics: At the age of 25, she began to get involved in Wolfsburg and joined the SPD. In 2011, she was elected local mayor of Wolfsburg’s Nordstadt district, and two years later began her time as a member of Lower Saxony’s state parliament.
Even at the kitchen table, her family discussed politics a lot, but ultimately it was her school principal who motivated her to get involved in politics by addressing her directly. The SPD member of the state parliament wants to pass on this impulse to help shape politics to students herself. Around Europe Day on May 9, Glosemeyer discusses the European idea and their expectations of Europe with young people. To get young people excited about Europe, Glosemeyer is also committed to an EU-funded project that allows young people to travel to other European countries: “It’s important for young people to be able to look beyond their own horizons and get to know young people from other countries and their ways of life”.
Glosemeyer has held the position of European policy spokeswoman for her parliamentary group since 2020: many crises – the Corona pandemic and the Ukraine war – fell into her term of office: “During the pandemic, European cooperation worked well and everyone joined forces in solidarity. That was a good example of how Europe can succeed”.
The two crises show how important joint action is – despite points of friction that cannot be explained away, says Glosemeyer. The EU is also strengthening Lower Saxony in dealing with the aftermath of the pandemic: The “Resilient Inner Cities” project, for example, aims to reactivate Lower Saxony’s inner cities and make them more attractive.
At the same time, Glosemeyer emphasizes that regional supply is also very important in an area like Lower Saxony. The rural areas are to be strengthened with intergenerational projects, coworking spaces and better child and health care. Not least to create structures that attract young families and make it possible to reconcile work and family life. As a founding member of Wolfsburg’s first Tagesmütterverein e.V. (now Familienservice Wolfsburg e.V.), this is a matter particularly close to Glosemeyer’s heart: “It’s not said for nothing that it takes a whole village to raise a child”, she says.
According to Glosemeyer, Lower Saxony’s special location characteristics make it an energy and climate state: “We in Lower Saxony are particularly challenged because, on the one hand, we have extraordinarily favorable location conditions for the generation of renewable energies“, says the politician. And on the other hand, the state also has a great responsibility for the success of the transformation due to its domestic heavy industry – shaping this change positively can only succeed with European solutions.
In order to improve the dovetailing of state and European policy, Glosemeyer is also rethinking internal structures. Fast information about European policy developments and their effects on Lower Saxony, constructive lobbying, that’s what a strong state representation in Brussels is important for – here, Lower Saxony with 20 employees compared to 40 Bavarian representatives, for example, could still be readjusted. So transformation is never absent, even at the structural level. And Immacolata Glosemeyer is committed to shaping this transformation in a participatory manner. Marlene Resch
