End to combustion engines + China dispute + Industrial emissions

The meeting between US President Joe Biden and Commission President Ursula von der Leyen a few days ago showed that the EU is increasingly adopting the hard line taken by the US against China. Bernd Lange, Chairman of the Trade Committee in the European Parliament, is surprised by the statements made at the meeting. In an interview with Eric Bonse, he argues for a rational approach to China and warns urgently against decoupling from the People’s Republic. He also explains why, in his view, the dispute over the US Inflation Reduction Act is far from over.

Today, the EU environment ministers meet in Brussels. The focus of the Environment Council is the revision of the Industrial Emissions Directive. There is dispute in the run-up to the meeting about the threshold values above which livestock farms would fall under the directive. There was also apparently no agreement in Berlin. On the eve, the German government had not yet found a common position. The revision of the Industrial Emissions Directive (IED) is of great importance for Germany: of the 52,000 industrial plants affected throughout the EU, 13,000 are located in the Federal Republic alone, as Claire Stam reports.

It is well known that opinions in the traffic lights coalition also differ on the subject of e-fuels. Now the Federal Ministry of Transport presented a proposal on how the dispute about the end of internal combustion engines in 2035 can be resolved within the federal government. According to information acquired by Table.Media, the paper was sent to the EU Commission yesterday afternoon. It was a “big step forward,” government circles said. Read more in the News.

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Sarah Schaefer