- Crisis instrument: EU states to build up reserves
- China, USA, EU: race for the chips lead
- Big tech should share Europe network costs
- Bulgaria: President Radev lists transitional government priorities
- Election campaign in Italy: alliance against right-wing parties formed
- Italy lacks €9 billion from excess profits tax
- Spain adopts measures to save energy
- Expert: Insurers not inclined to invest in nuclear power despite taxonomy
- Lars Hänsel – for a common European voice
The Single Market Emergency Instrument is supposed to prepare the EU’s internal market for crises. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen plans to present the instrument during her State of the Union address on September 13. But the first details are already out in the open: According to an internal document, the Commission wants to be able to instruct member states to set aside “strategic reserves” and specify the criteria according to which they should be allocated to the industry, in the event of a crisis. Markus Grabitz took a look at the paper and summarized the most important points.
Currently, two-thirds of the world’s chips come from East Asia. If Europe and the USA have their way, that will soon change due to the European Chips Act and the “Chips and Science Act” – as the law to strengthen the domestic semiconductor industry is called in Washington political slang – that was passed by the US Senate a few days ago. However, Beijing is also spending a lot of money to promote the Chinese chip industry – and is apparently enjoying considerable success. Felix Lee analyzed the global race for the chips lead.
Lars Hänsel is convinced that “Europe needs to completely rethink its business model”. The head of the Europe and North America department at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation wants to rethink Europe. For him, this also includes giving the member states more freedom and finding a different way of dealing with the Eastern European countries. Read more about Hänsel in today’s profile by Lisa-Martina Klein.
Sarah Schaefer
Feature
EU states to build up reserves
According to information available to Europe.Table, the new crisis instrument for the single market, which EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen plans to present on September 13 during her State of the Union address to the EU Parliament in Strasbourg, is to be switched like a traffic light in three phases – green, yellow, and red. Officials around Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton are still working flat out on the details of the Single Market Emergency Instrument (SMEI). Europe.Table has received an internal paper from the Commission that provides information on what the instrument could look like in concrete terms.
Accordingly, the crisis instrument is to have three “fundamental objectives”. The most important goal is to ensure the functioning of the internal market – even in times of crises such as a pandemic or a disruption of supply chains due to a war. The goal is also to minimize disruptions to the internal EU exchange of goods, services, and employees. It is also supposed to combat shortages of services and goods.
With the crisis instrument, the Commission aims to learn the lesson from the first months of the pandemic, when uncoordinated measures by member states, such as export bans on masks and medical devices, ruptured supply chains and led to severe disruptions in the internal market.
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