Will factories for EV and truck batteries be mainly built in the United States in the future? In Brussels, there is concern that Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) will encourage future technologies to settle on the other side of the Atlantic. Soon, the EU Commission will present its response to this industrial policy challenge. Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager has a crucial role to play in this. My colleague Till Hoppe has found out what changes to the state aid rules the Commissioner plans to propose soon.
Green Party member Sven Giegold underwent an interesting role reversal. He led the German Green group in the European Parliament and was involved in legislative work on financial regulation dossiers. For the past year, he has had a leading job in the German executive. He is a civil servant state secretary in Habeck’s Ministry of Economics. My colleagues from Table.Media, Stefan Braun and Malte Kreutzfeldt, interviewed him.
Was Luca Visentini just a lone perpetrator who ran his election as general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation ITUC with funds from the criminal NGO Fight Impunity? Or is there evidence of institutional foul play in the international trade union movement? The involvement of trade unions in the Brussels corruption scandal has not yet been sufficiently investigated. However, the German trade unions, which finance ITUC to a large extent, are very hesitant about raising any protest against this.
EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager wants to facilitate state aid for investments in low-carbon technologies in response to the US Inflation Reduction Act. To this end, she will propose a “Temporary Crisis and Transitional Framework,” Vestager wrote in a letter to the ministers of economics and finance of the member states on Friday, which is available to Europe.Table. For this, special regulations are to be extended, which have been issued by the Commission since March following the war against Ukraine and are currently set to expire at the end of 2023.
According to the letter, Vestager plans to address four issues on which she will consult member states in the near future:
The Vice-President of the Commission also emphasizes in her letter that the existing state aid rules already offer plenty of potential for promoting green investments. Several governments are pushing for a relaxation of state aid rules in order to prevent an exodus of domestic manufacturers, especially of heat pumps, wind turbines or solar panels.
France has developed far-reaching proposals of its own, which were circulated in Brussels on Friday in the form of a non-paper. They are also available to Europe.Table.
There is broad agreement with the German government on the reallocation of existing money from the reconstruction fund, said Europe State Secretary Laurence Boone during a visit to Berlin on Friday. As far as the sovereignty fund and additional EU funds are concerned, the first step is to determine the needs and then discuss them with each other, she said: “Germany will want to look at the project first in due course and then talk about the money.”
Table.Media: Mr. Giegold, you have been a civil servant State Secretary in the Ministry of Economics for a good year now. Do you miss the freedom you previously had in the EU Parliament or at Attac?
Sven Giegold: The idea that one is tied up in the ministry and free in Brussels is amusing. Because if you only represent your own opinion, you remain ineffective. As soon as you strive for political power to achieve ecological and social change, you always have to act together in organizations and thus also represent compromises. This was even more true at Attac because the alliance there used to be particularly broad. In this respect, the work in the NGOs wonderfully prepared me for parliament and government.
Nevertheless, there should be significant differences.
Of course. When you speak as state secretary, the German government stands behind your words. I learned that the hard way at the very beginning when I triggered a shitstorm with a remark about wind turbines and red kites.
How do you handle this?
I hardly ever express personal opinions anymore. I also hold back on making demands. Instead, I now communicate almost exclusively what we have achieved and explain its background. I want to show that people who are involved in politics with conviction can actually change things within the institutions. And I think that’s what people expect from the government: That it changes things and moves things forward, not that it voices opinions.
Not everyone in the German government coalition sees it that way. Don’t you find it difficult to hold back when others come forward with uncoordinated demands?
No. This may be surprising for a politician, but I do not like to argue, I prefer to look for common ground. What’s more, I think it’s harmful to always publicly criticize the coalition partners.
You hold a post that was once in the hands of the conservative economist Alfred Müller-Armack under Ludwig Erhard. Overall, the Ministry of Economics is also considered to be rather conservative. As a representative of the Green Party’s left wing, how have you been received here and how do you experience the ministry?
Open, friendly. I have seen that many people here in the house – as well as in society as a whole – wanted climate action to finally make progress. That is the political line we are taking, and the house is working with all its expertise to implement it.
Climate activists have so far portrayed the ministry as more of a hub for blocking the energy transition.
Of course, there were some brakes, I won’t deny that. But it is always the political leadership of a house that sets the line and the agenda. And it was not the case that Peter Altmaier personally stood in the way of the energy transition. He left many people in their posts, as I have since learned, who promoted the energy transition. And it was no coincidence that the expansion of renewables continued under the grand coalition, but unfortunately far too slowly and, ultimately, not with the necessary consistency. Opposition to renewables was tougher in the CDU/CSU parliamentary group than here in the ministry.
How has the energy crisis, which only really broke out shortly after you took office, affected the ministry?
That, of course, created an incredible amount of stress. We have a great responsibility here. I have enormous respect for the civil servants here. It is never really talked about, the personal commitment with which they work here. They work day and night, on weekends, in many units for months.
And in economic policy?
For a long time, the ministry had a reputation for confusing the interests of individual economic players with economic policy. That, too, is a question of management. Regulatory policy – here we are again with Müller-Armack – has a completely different claim. It does not strengthen the individual company, but fair competition. This is shifting now that some providers are benefiting from the ecological-social economic policy while others have to change their business models. We continue to listen to company interests but perhaps question them more.
Your biggest personnel decision was to replace Elga Bartsch as head of the policy division. What does a left-wing Green who used to be with Attac see in a woman from BlackRock – one of those financial investors that Franz Müntefering once dubbed ‘locusts’?
Elga Bartsch is a respected and renowned economist who combines the principles of this house with modern international economics on the central issues of macroeconomic policy. That’s why I nominated her personally. And at BlackRock, she was not in management but in the research department. From there, she brings an international perspective on economics that enriches the German economic debate.
When gasoline prices rose much more than crude oil prices in the summer, you announced tighter antitrust legislation to facilitate action against abuses and unbundling of corporations. Since then, there has been little word on this. Has the industry thwarted your efforts?
Unbundling was never the main focus but was only intended as a last resort. Much more important are new intervention options for the Cartel Office, which in the future will be able to take action even if a violation has not yet been proven under antitrust law. Individual players may not like this, but I expect the proposals to be in the cabinet very soon. After all, a consistent competition policy is a shared interest of all coalition parties.
You are also responsible for arms exports. As a former peace activist, what is it like to suddenly have to approve arms exports to countries like Saudi Arabia?
This decision was the most difficult one I have been involved in so far. After all, I am deeply convinced that it does not make sense to export arms to countries with which we have fundamental disagreements on the rule of law, democracy and human rights. But in essence, it was a balancing act between the basic principles of Green arms export control policy and future cooperation in Europe with our closest partners.
And why did the decision go against the principles?
It was about common European programs. They are based on treaties, and anyone who no longer adheres to treaties after a change of government will have problems signing new treaties in the future. But we need them because there is no future in Europe for each country to pursue its own arms policy – otherwise, we would all be left with expensive and obsolete weapons. To avoid jeopardizing this cooperation, the Federal Security Council has given its approval. The bilateral freeze on the supply of German military equipment to Saudi Arabia remains in effect. To avoid this predicament in the future, we want to Europeanize arms export control policy.
You are also responsible for negotiations at the EU level, for example, on climate action. In various statements, you have suggested that you are not really satisfied with the reporting in the media.
My impression, at least, is that what has the greatest news value is often not what is most relevant to business and society.
For example?
I found it particularly absurd when in June, in an eternal night session, huge progress was made in European climate action – in effect, a doubling of the EU’s climate ambitions. But in my impression, those were not the main headlines; instead, they focused on a recital dealing with a possible exemption from the end of the internal combustion engine.
But that was an exciting question.
It was secondary to the overall package. But apparently, a complex, important agreement on the survival of climate action has less news value than a factually unimportant dispute. And my impression is that newsroom journalism reinforces that. Because journalists there pay more attention to what generates more clicks – and less to what competent journalists consider relevant.
Is that really just down to journalism?
No, that is true: Politics, too, often uses symbolic buzzwords and easily understandable exaggerations. And NGOs, associations and lobbyists also have to represent their interests in a way that gets noticed and clicked. This poses a particular risk: For all topics, without much potential for scandalization and exaggeration, we then make decisions in institutions without strong democratic control. This is precisely why I think it is important to present the interrelationships of decisions, especially in European policy, and to promote them.
Let us circle back to the beginning: Have you ever regretted moving from Brussels to Berlin as a civil servant?
No, not at all. Unlike the Bundestag, the European Parliament is a parliament in which there are only a handful of members who serve for a long time. After twelve years there, I personally felt it was time to do something new. And even though I had my problems with government authorities in the past, I feel very comfortable in my new role. But one thing has remained from the libertarian skepticism of my youth: I have a deep-seated aversion to bureaucracy – and am therefore really glad that I am now also responsible for reducing bureaucracy, with some success.
The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) has postponed the decision on the provisionally suspended General Secretary Luca Visentini. Visentini has been heavily implicated in the wake of the corruption scandal surrounding criminal NGOs in Brussels. During a video call on Friday, the ITUC General Council decided to do nothing until the next regular meeting on March 11 and await further investigations. Until then, his deputy, Owen Tudor, is to take over.
This hesitant stance has caused a stir in the international trade union movement. Particularly among the German trade unions, which are major financiers of the ITUC, discontent is high. Behind closed doors, there are calls for the leaders of the DGB and IG Metall to show their colors and see to Visentini’s removal.
Visentini admitted accepting an envelope with a Santa Claus sticker and the contents of 50,000 euros from the head of the NGO “Fight Impunity”, Antonio Panzeri, on October 10. Panzeri, a Socialist ex-EU MEP, is where all threads of the scandal come together, which also saw the arrest of former European Parliament Vice-President Eva Kaili (S&D) on December 9. Panzeri distributed large sums of cash allegedly from donors in Qatar and Morocco. What he received in return, and who else received money, is still unclear.
The money handover to Visentini was observed and recorded by the police. Panzeri said during the handover, “We seem like those guys from Ocean’s Eleven.” The film is set in a gangster milieu. Visentini claims to be innocent: “I accepted this donation in cash because of the quality of the donor and its non-profit character. I was not asked, neither did I ask anything in exchange for the money and no conditions whatsoever were set for this donation.”
Indeed, there has arguably been a fundamental shift in the ITUC’s position on Qatar. The position had changed from “harshest criticism” to “praising Qatar to the skies,” wrote German trade unionist Frank Hoffer in an article for Social Europe.
What is clear is what Visentini did with Panzeri’s money. Visentini admits that he used it to pay for his campaign to be elected general secretary at the ITUC congress in Melbourne, Australia, in November. He says he used an ITUC solidarity fund to pay for trade unionists to travel to the Melbourne congress. Indeed, top unionists from Germany were visibly surprised when Visentini was named general secretary at the meeting. They had favored another official.
When the corruption scandal surrounding Panzeri and his NGO “Fight Impunity” became public in early December, Visentini, Kaili and her partner Panzeri were arrested, but released after 48 hours. Before Christmas, the ITUC general council decided to suspend Visentini for the time being. The press statement said the suspension was no presumption of guilt. A commission has been set up to look into the case.
According to observers, the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the ITUC now take diametrically different positions on the situation of workers in Qatar than, for example, independent civil rights movements or the British trade union umbrella organization, the Trade Union Congress. But Hoffer urges that there should be no doubt in the positioning on such an important issue. “Addressing these challenges requires, first and foremost, a leadership whose integrity is beyond doubt,” Hoffer wrote in a note to the ITUC, the world’s umbrella trade union organization. So far, neither the DGB nor the powerful IG Metall seems to have recognized this need.
“I really hate to apply somewhere,” Werner Patzelt said in an interview. “I like being invited.” His latest invitation takes the political scientist to Brussels – on behalf of Budapest. Here, Patzelt heads the Brussels office of the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC), a Hungarian think tank with close ties to the policies of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Orbán is an avowed supporter of illiberal democracy. His Fidesz party left the Christian Democratic EPP group in the European Parliament in 2021. It thus came close to expulsion. Not least because of Fidesz’s anti-EU campaigns, EPP group leader Manfred Weber had broken with Orbán and pushed for his resignation.
Patzelt served as a senior fellow at the MCC in Budapest for nine months last year. Before that, he was a professor at the Technical University of Dresden for 27 years until his retirement. In 1992, the now 69-year-old founded the Institute for Political Science. He gained recognition for his research on parliamentarism, on Pegida and his consulting work for the AfD in Saxony in 2015.
Patzelt is a native of Passau and a member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). He now commutes between Brussels and Dresden, where his family still lives. Despite all the new work, he looks forward to practicing the cello on the weekends. He plays chamber music with his son and friends.
The MCC was founded 25 years ago. In 2020, the think tank received $1.7 billion from the Hungarian parliament and government. The latter gave the MCC a state equity stake in the mineral oil company MOL and the pharmaceutical company Gedeon Richter. The MCC wants to use all that money to educate a “new, patriotic generation,” according to its website. Over the next five years, the MCC plans to distribute scholarships to 10,000 Hungarian students.
“At the Mathias Corvinus Collegium, Orbanism is cultivated, developed further, and successfully exported from here,” wrote the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit shortly before Christmas. The chairman of the foundation is Balázs Orbán. Balázs Orbán is not related to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, but he is his chief of staff.
In the coming years, the MCC plans to establish 35 offices in Hungarian-speaking regions. Last November, the MCC established the Brussels branch, and moved into an office near the stock exchange. Because the Hungarian government does many things differently than its EU partners, Orbán is being pushed hard, Patzelt says. “The MCC wants to delve into the lion’s den.”
The office with about 25 employees has two tasks. It is to offer Hungarian students excursions to the EU. “The goal is to form an internationally presentable Hungarian elite,” explains Patzelt. In addition, the think tank he heads is to reflect on fundamental European issues. But the MCC does not want to create an ideological counterweight. “It’s about a free, rational debate about controversial content,” says Patzelt. “We are not refusing to debate in any case.” Among other things, the MCC wants to create a European “fear barometer” and a study on the “effects of family policy in various European countries.”
Patzelt sees nothing critical about his new employer. “Fidesz did not drag Hungary into the abyss,” he says. “Unlike Berlin, the country also has functioning elections.” The political scientist does not want to hear anything about restrictions on the freedom of the press and the rule of law, as the EU Commission found and as a result refused to pay out billions in EU funds to Hungary
“It will be hard to claim that everyone has been silenced in Hungary.” The Hungarian government is pushing more of a balance of leftists and conservatives in the media, he says. Most of the country’s journalists see it differently. They complain that only journalists close to Fidesz are allowed on public broadcasting. Further explanation will appear in his book, which will be published this year, Patzelt says. Even the title makes it clear that Patzelt has a special relationship with the Hungarian head of government. It is called “Orbán Country? Hungary’s Politics and History.” Tom Schmidtgen
Will factories for EV and truck batteries be mainly built in the United States in the future? In Brussels, there is concern that Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) will encourage future technologies to settle on the other side of the Atlantic. Soon, the EU Commission will present its response to this industrial policy challenge. Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager has a crucial role to play in this. My colleague Till Hoppe has found out what changes to the state aid rules the Commissioner plans to propose soon.
Green Party member Sven Giegold underwent an interesting role reversal. He led the German Green group in the European Parliament and was involved in legislative work on financial regulation dossiers. For the past year, he has had a leading job in the German executive. He is a civil servant state secretary in Habeck’s Ministry of Economics. My colleagues from Table.Media, Stefan Braun and Malte Kreutzfeldt, interviewed him.
Was Luca Visentini just a lone perpetrator who ran his election as general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation ITUC with funds from the criminal NGO Fight Impunity? Or is there evidence of institutional foul play in the international trade union movement? The involvement of trade unions in the Brussels corruption scandal has not yet been sufficiently investigated. However, the German trade unions, which finance ITUC to a large extent, are very hesitant about raising any protest against this.
EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager wants to facilitate state aid for investments in low-carbon technologies in response to the US Inflation Reduction Act. To this end, she will propose a “Temporary Crisis and Transitional Framework,” Vestager wrote in a letter to the ministers of economics and finance of the member states on Friday, which is available to Europe.Table. For this, special regulations are to be extended, which have been issued by the Commission since March following the war against Ukraine and are currently set to expire at the end of 2023.
According to the letter, Vestager plans to address four issues on which she will consult member states in the near future:
The Vice-President of the Commission also emphasizes in her letter that the existing state aid rules already offer plenty of potential for promoting green investments. Several governments are pushing for a relaxation of state aid rules in order to prevent an exodus of domestic manufacturers, especially of heat pumps, wind turbines or solar panels.
France has developed far-reaching proposals of its own, which were circulated in Brussels on Friday in the form of a non-paper. They are also available to Europe.Table.
There is broad agreement with the German government on the reallocation of existing money from the reconstruction fund, said Europe State Secretary Laurence Boone during a visit to Berlin on Friday. As far as the sovereignty fund and additional EU funds are concerned, the first step is to determine the needs and then discuss them with each other, she said: “Germany will want to look at the project first in due course and then talk about the money.”
Table.Media: Mr. Giegold, you have been a civil servant State Secretary in the Ministry of Economics for a good year now. Do you miss the freedom you previously had in the EU Parliament or at Attac?
Sven Giegold: The idea that one is tied up in the ministry and free in Brussels is amusing. Because if you only represent your own opinion, you remain ineffective. As soon as you strive for political power to achieve ecological and social change, you always have to act together in organizations and thus also represent compromises. This was even more true at Attac because the alliance there used to be particularly broad. In this respect, the work in the NGOs wonderfully prepared me for parliament and government.
Nevertheless, there should be significant differences.
Of course. When you speak as state secretary, the German government stands behind your words. I learned that the hard way at the very beginning when I triggered a shitstorm with a remark about wind turbines and red kites.
How do you handle this?
I hardly ever express personal opinions anymore. I also hold back on making demands. Instead, I now communicate almost exclusively what we have achieved and explain its background. I want to show that people who are involved in politics with conviction can actually change things within the institutions. And I think that’s what people expect from the government: That it changes things and moves things forward, not that it voices opinions.
Not everyone in the German government coalition sees it that way. Don’t you find it difficult to hold back when others come forward with uncoordinated demands?
No. This may be surprising for a politician, but I do not like to argue, I prefer to look for common ground. What’s more, I think it’s harmful to always publicly criticize the coalition partners.
You hold a post that was once in the hands of the conservative economist Alfred Müller-Armack under Ludwig Erhard. Overall, the Ministry of Economics is also considered to be rather conservative. As a representative of the Green Party’s left wing, how have you been received here and how do you experience the ministry?
Open, friendly. I have seen that many people here in the house – as well as in society as a whole – wanted climate action to finally make progress. That is the political line we are taking, and the house is working with all its expertise to implement it.
Climate activists have so far portrayed the ministry as more of a hub for blocking the energy transition.
Of course, there were some brakes, I won’t deny that. But it is always the political leadership of a house that sets the line and the agenda. And it was not the case that Peter Altmaier personally stood in the way of the energy transition. He left many people in their posts, as I have since learned, who promoted the energy transition. And it was no coincidence that the expansion of renewables continued under the grand coalition, but unfortunately far too slowly and, ultimately, not with the necessary consistency. Opposition to renewables was tougher in the CDU/CSU parliamentary group than here in the ministry.
How has the energy crisis, which only really broke out shortly after you took office, affected the ministry?
That, of course, created an incredible amount of stress. We have a great responsibility here. I have enormous respect for the civil servants here. It is never really talked about, the personal commitment with which they work here. They work day and night, on weekends, in many units for months.
And in economic policy?
For a long time, the ministry had a reputation for confusing the interests of individual economic players with economic policy. That, too, is a question of management. Regulatory policy – here we are again with Müller-Armack – has a completely different claim. It does not strengthen the individual company, but fair competition. This is shifting now that some providers are benefiting from the ecological-social economic policy while others have to change their business models. We continue to listen to company interests but perhaps question them more.
Your biggest personnel decision was to replace Elga Bartsch as head of the policy division. What does a left-wing Green who used to be with Attac see in a woman from BlackRock – one of those financial investors that Franz Müntefering once dubbed ‘locusts’?
Elga Bartsch is a respected and renowned economist who combines the principles of this house with modern international economics on the central issues of macroeconomic policy. That’s why I nominated her personally. And at BlackRock, she was not in management but in the research department. From there, she brings an international perspective on economics that enriches the German economic debate.
When gasoline prices rose much more than crude oil prices in the summer, you announced tighter antitrust legislation to facilitate action against abuses and unbundling of corporations. Since then, there has been little word on this. Has the industry thwarted your efforts?
Unbundling was never the main focus but was only intended as a last resort. Much more important are new intervention options for the Cartel Office, which in the future will be able to take action even if a violation has not yet been proven under antitrust law. Individual players may not like this, but I expect the proposals to be in the cabinet very soon. After all, a consistent competition policy is a shared interest of all coalition parties.
You are also responsible for arms exports. As a former peace activist, what is it like to suddenly have to approve arms exports to countries like Saudi Arabia?
This decision was the most difficult one I have been involved in so far. After all, I am deeply convinced that it does not make sense to export arms to countries with which we have fundamental disagreements on the rule of law, democracy and human rights. But in essence, it was a balancing act between the basic principles of Green arms export control policy and future cooperation in Europe with our closest partners.
And why did the decision go against the principles?
It was about common European programs. They are based on treaties, and anyone who no longer adheres to treaties after a change of government will have problems signing new treaties in the future. But we need them because there is no future in Europe for each country to pursue its own arms policy – otherwise, we would all be left with expensive and obsolete weapons. To avoid jeopardizing this cooperation, the Federal Security Council has given its approval. The bilateral freeze on the supply of German military equipment to Saudi Arabia remains in effect. To avoid this predicament in the future, we want to Europeanize arms export control policy.
You are also responsible for negotiations at the EU level, for example, on climate action. In various statements, you have suggested that you are not really satisfied with the reporting in the media.
My impression, at least, is that what has the greatest news value is often not what is most relevant to business and society.
For example?
I found it particularly absurd when in June, in an eternal night session, huge progress was made in European climate action – in effect, a doubling of the EU’s climate ambitions. But in my impression, those were not the main headlines; instead, they focused on a recital dealing with a possible exemption from the end of the internal combustion engine.
But that was an exciting question.
It was secondary to the overall package. But apparently, a complex, important agreement on the survival of climate action has less news value than a factually unimportant dispute. And my impression is that newsroom journalism reinforces that. Because journalists there pay more attention to what generates more clicks – and less to what competent journalists consider relevant.
Is that really just down to journalism?
No, that is true: Politics, too, often uses symbolic buzzwords and easily understandable exaggerations. And NGOs, associations and lobbyists also have to represent their interests in a way that gets noticed and clicked. This poses a particular risk: For all topics, without much potential for scandalization and exaggeration, we then make decisions in institutions without strong democratic control. This is precisely why I think it is important to present the interrelationships of decisions, especially in European policy, and to promote them.
Let us circle back to the beginning: Have you ever regretted moving from Brussels to Berlin as a civil servant?
No, not at all. Unlike the Bundestag, the European Parliament is a parliament in which there are only a handful of members who serve for a long time. After twelve years there, I personally felt it was time to do something new. And even though I had my problems with government authorities in the past, I feel very comfortable in my new role. But one thing has remained from the libertarian skepticism of my youth: I have a deep-seated aversion to bureaucracy – and am therefore really glad that I am now also responsible for reducing bureaucracy, with some success.
The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) has postponed the decision on the provisionally suspended General Secretary Luca Visentini. Visentini has been heavily implicated in the wake of the corruption scandal surrounding criminal NGOs in Brussels. During a video call on Friday, the ITUC General Council decided to do nothing until the next regular meeting on March 11 and await further investigations. Until then, his deputy, Owen Tudor, is to take over.
This hesitant stance has caused a stir in the international trade union movement. Particularly among the German trade unions, which are major financiers of the ITUC, discontent is high. Behind closed doors, there are calls for the leaders of the DGB and IG Metall to show their colors and see to Visentini’s removal.
Visentini admitted accepting an envelope with a Santa Claus sticker and the contents of 50,000 euros from the head of the NGO “Fight Impunity”, Antonio Panzeri, on October 10. Panzeri, a Socialist ex-EU MEP, is where all threads of the scandal come together, which also saw the arrest of former European Parliament Vice-President Eva Kaili (S&D) on December 9. Panzeri distributed large sums of cash allegedly from donors in Qatar and Morocco. What he received in return, and who else received money, is still unclear.
The money handover to Visentini was observed and recorded by the police. Panzeri said during the handover, “We seem like those guys from Ocean’s Eleven.” The film is set in a gangster milieu. Visentini claims to be innocent: “I accepted this donation in cash because of the quality of the donor and its non-profit character. I was not asked, neither did I ask anything in exchange for the money and no conditions whatsoever were set for this donation.”
Indeed, there has arguably been a fundamental shift in the ITUC’s position on Qatar. The position had changed from “harshest criticism” to “praising Qatar to the skies,” wrote German trade unionist Frank Hoffer in an article for Social Europe.
What is clear is what Visentini did with Panzeri’s money. Visentini admits that he used it to pay for his campaign to be elected general secretary at the ITUC congress in Melbourne, Australia, in November. He says he used an ITUC solidarity fund to pay for trade unionists to travel to the Melbourne congress. Indeed, top unionists from Germany were visibly surprised when Visentini was named general secretary at the meeting. They had favored another official.
When the corruption scandal surrounding Panzeri and his NGO “Fight Impunity” became public in early December, Visentini, Kaili and her partner Panzeri were arrested, but released after 48 hours. Before Christmas, the ITUC general council decided to suspend Visentini for the time being. The press statement said the suspension was no presumption of guilt. A commission has been set up to look into the case.
According to observers, the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the ITUC now take diametrically different positions on the situation of workers in Qatar than, for example, independent civil rights movements or the British trade union umbrella organization, the Trade Union Congress. But Hoffer urges that there should be no doubt in the positioning on such an important issue. “Addressing these challenges requires, first and foremost, a leadership whose integrity is beyond doubt,” Hoffer wrote in a note to the ITUC, the world’s umbrella trade union organization. So far, neither the DGB nor the powerful IG Metall seems to have recognized this need.
“I really hate to apply somewhere,” Werner Patzelt said in an interview. “I like being invited.” His latest invitation takes the political scientist to Brussels – on behalf of Budapest. Here, Patzelt heads the Brussels office of the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC), a Hungarian think tank with close ties to the policies of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Orbán is an avowed supporter of illiberal democracy. His Fidesz party left the Christian Democratic EPP group in the European Parliament in 2021. It thus came close to expulsion. Not least because of Fidesz’s anti-EU campaigns, EPP group leader Manfred Weber had broken with Orbán and pushed for his resignation.
Patzelt served as a senior fellow at the MCC in Budapest for nine months last year. Before that, he was a professor at the Technical University of Dresden for 27 years until his retirement. In 1992, the now 69-year-old founded the Institute for Political Science. He gained recognition for his research on parliamentarism, on Pegida and his consulting work for the AfD in Saxony in 2015.
Patzelt is a native of Passau and a member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). He now commutes between Brussels and Dresden, where his family still lives. Despite all the new work, he looks forward to practicing the cello on the weekends. He plays chamber music with his son and friends.
The MCC was founded 25 years ago. In 2020, the think tank received $1.7 billion from the Hungarian parliament and government. The latter gave the MCC a state equity stake in the mineral oil company MOL and the pharmaceutical company Gedeon Richter. The MCC wants to use all that money to educate a “new, patriotic generation,” according to its website. Over the next five years, the MCC plans to distribute scholarships to 10,000 Hungarian students.
“At the Mathias Corvinus Collegium, Orbanism is cultivated, developed further, and successfully exported from here,” wrote the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit shortly before Christmas. The chairman of the foundation is Balázs Orbán. Balázs Orbán is not related to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, but he is his chief of staff.
In the coming years, the MCC plans to establish 35 offices in Hungarian-speaking regions. Last November, the MCC established the Brussels branch, and moved into an office near the stock exchange. Because the Hungarian government does many things differently than its EU partners, Orbán is being pushed hard, Patzelt says. “The MCC wants to delve into the lion’s den.”
The office with about 25 employees has two tasks. It is to offer Hungarian students excursions to the EU. “The goal is to form an internationally presentable Hungarian elite,” explains Patzelt. In addition, the think tank he heads is to reflect on fundamental European issues. But the MCC does not want to create an ideological counterweight. “It’s about a free, rational debate about controversial content,” says Patzelt. “We are not refusing to debate in any case.” Among other things, the MCC wants to create a European “fear barometer” and a study on the “effects of family policy in various European countries.”
Patzelt sees nothing critical about his new employer. “Fidesz did not drag Hungary into the abyss,” he says. “Unlike Berlin, the country also has functioning elections.” The political scientist does not want to hear anything about restrictions on the freedom of the press and the rule of law, as the EU Commission found and as a result refused to pay out billions in EU funds to Hungary
“It will be hard to claim that everyone has been silenced in Hungary.” The Hungarian government is pushing more of a balance of leftists and conservatives in the media, he says. Most of the country’s journalists see it differently. They complain that only journalists close to Fidesz are allowed on public broadcasting. Further explanation will appear in his book, which will be published this year, Patzelt says. Even the title makes it clear that Patzelt has a special relationship with the Hungarian head of government. It is called “Orbán Country? Hungary’s Politics and History.” Tom Schmidtgen
