- Future Conference: poor reform record
- Packaging: Lobby battle over reusable targets
- Commission ban not off the table
- Ethics authority should not be able to punish violations
- Industrial electricity: Habeck wants EU guarantees
- Data Act: Group CEOs call for thought pause
- DSA: Commission collects feedback on audits
- Sanctions: Exports to third countries targeted
- Slovakia: Head of government resigns
- Funda Tekin – At the interface between EU and Turkey
On Tuesday morning, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will speak in the European Parliament. The date, May 9, is historic, not only because it marks the victory over Nazi Germany celebrated in Russia and elsewhere. On May 9, 1950, Robert Schuman presented his idea of a European Coal and Steel Community. It is unlikely that Olaf Scholz’s speech this Europe Day will be similarly visionary. According to Berlin, significant new impulses are hardly to be expected in Strasbourg. Scholz had already presented his European policy ideas in Prague last summer.
So far, the chancellor has implemented little of his Prague plans. The interim results of the conference on the future of Europe are equally sobering. On May 9, 2022, the Future Conference, which was co-designed by citizens, ended with a ceremony in the Strasbourg plenum. But only the EU Commission has something to show for the 49 reform proposals, as Markus Grabitz analyzes.
Margrethe Vestager is visiting Berlin today. Robert Habeck invited the Vice President of the Commission to the Ministry of Economics to discuss the interaction between the state and the market in the ecological transformation. The Competition Commissioner is likely to be particularly interested in Habeck’s concept of an industrial electricity price. Read more about this in the news section.
Have a good start to the week!
Till Hoppe
Feature
One year after the Future Conference: poor reform results
The final report of the “Conference on the Future of Europe,” which ended last year with a ceremony in the Strasbourg plenum on May 9 – Europe Day – contained 49 points. In the meantime, it has become clear that the Future Conference did not trigger any real reform momentum. “One year later, there are virtually no presentable results,” says Nicolai von Ondarza of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP).
The Future Conference did not lead to the institutions resolving the existing contradictions between them, the research group leader notes. Instead, he says, the Council and Parliament continued to get stuck in the nitty-gritty. The big point of contention remains whether changes to the European treaties are necessary. The Parliament is calling for a constitutional convention. But there is not enough support for this among the member states.
Window of opportunity for reforms is closing
“If there was a window of opportunity for reform after May 9, it is now almost closed because the pre-election campaign for next year’s European elections has begun,” Ondarza says. He adds that the conference was at best “good exercise for the next mandate.”
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