- Dispute over oil embargo overshadows EU summit
- EU monitoring
- G7 energy ministers: agreement on coal phase-out with restrictions
- New task force for gas procurement
- Russia continues to supply Serbia with natural gas
- Italy wants to further support banks with stricter requirements
- Hans-Jochen Luhmann – climate researcher at the right time
An embargo on oil imports by ship, but not via pipelines – that is the compromise proposal of the EU Commission on the planned oil embargo against Russia. However, this proposal has not yet led to a breakthrough with Hungary’s resistance getting in the way of a consensus on the sixth sanctions package. The EU ambassadors want to try for another push before the heads of state and government arrive in Brussels today for the extraordinary summit. Stephan Israel gives an outlook.
“Predominantly” decarbonized electricity sectors by 2035 – that is the goal that the G7 countries committed to at the end of the climate, energy, and environment ministers’ meeting in Berlin on Friday. The use of the term “predominantly” hints at some constraints. Nevertheless, David Ryfisch of Germanwatch, for example, speaks of progress because they had previously not wanted to commit to a specific year. On the other hand, there is no specific date for the coal phase-out, to which the group of states collectively committed for the first time. When asked about this, German Economic Affairs and Climate Action Minister Robert Habeck remained vague, as Lukas Scheid reports.
How can the energy efficiency of buildings be increased? Hans-Jochen Luhmann wrote his doctorate on this question in 1972. He had already been working on the consequences of environmental degradation in the late 1960s and was thus ahead of his time in Germany. In today’s Profile, you can learn more about Luhmann, who is now 77 years old and works as a senior scientist at the Wuppertal Institute, and his long career.
Sarah Schaefer
Feature
Dispute over oil embargo overshadows EU summit
A meeting of EU ambassadors on the controversial embargo on Russian oil on Sunday evening did not bring the hoped-for breakthrough. The Committee of Permanent Representatives (COREPER) therefore wants to make another attempt today before the start of the EU summit at 4 p.m. in Brussels. A compromise proposal from the EU Commission is on the table: The oil embargo should initially apply only to Russian oil transported by ship. Oil transported by pipeline would be exempt, specifically the huge Druzhba pipeline.
EU diplomats defended the compromise by saying that more than two-thirds of Russian oil is transported to the EU by sea. With the compromise proposal, the EU Commission wants to bring Hungary on board, which obtains Russian oil almost exclusively via the Druzhba pipeline and has blocked the entire sixth sanctions package. In a letter to EU Council President Charles Michel last Wednesday, Hungary’s head of government Viktor Orbán had even urged that the issue of sanctions not be discussed at the summit.
The original Commission proposal was to end imports of Russian crude oil within six months and oil products within eight months. Hungary and Slovakia, as landlocked countries without a sea connection, would have been given 20 months. The futile negotiations of the past weeks, especially with Budapest, revolved around even longer transition periods and demands for billions of euros in subsidies for the conversion in Hungary.
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