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- Gas storage: Pressure on Germany grows
- Antibiotic resistance: EU action needed more than ever
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How can peace be achieved? The EU foreign and defense ministers met yesterday in Brussels for the “Jumbo Council” to answer this question, among others. The result is a new security policy strategy. This strategy was not explicitly drawn up for the war in Ukraine, but it should be part of the response, according to EU Foreign Affairs Commissioner Josep Borrell.
A 5,000 soldiers strong military intervention force, which will not be ready for deployment until 2025, is not part of the answer, but it is probably the most concrete achievement of the new strategy, as Eric Bonse analyzes. As for ways to peace, both the ministers and their new strategy have little to show for themselves.
To be less vulnerable to the enormous gas price fluctuations in the future, the EU plans to impose minimum gas storage volumes thresholds on member states. A leaked draft of the new gas storage regulation shows that Germany’s planned minimum levels are insufficient to meet the EU’s expectations. German storage facilities are supposed to be 90 percent full before winter. The government factions in the Bundestag are only planning for 80 percent, as Manuel Berkel points out.
The prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria has been on the rise for years and naturally does not care about national borders. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) recommendation on which antibiotics should be used exclusively in human medicine in the future is currently causing outrage. One of the criticisms is that it does nothing to prevent the emergence and spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in animal husbandry. Eugenie Ankowitsch puts the EMA’s recommendations and criticism in context and clarifies how important European action is now.
Lukas Scheid
Feature
The EU wants to become a ‘security provider’
The EU has completed its new security policy strategy. After two years of work, the so-called “Strategic Compass” was adopted by the 27 EU foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday. The strategy will strengthen the EU as a “security provider”, said High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell.
The 47-page text, which was published on the Council’s website after a long period of secrecy, contains, among other things, the mandate to establish a new military rapid deployment force. The “EU Rapid Deployment Capacity” is to comprise up to 5,000 soldiers and replace the previous “Battle Groups”, which were never used.
Germany could provide the first contingent, said Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht at the “Jumbo Council” – the joint meeting with foreign ministers – in Brussels. Given the war in Ukraine, the SPD politician said that the German government was sending a “clear signal”: “We stand up for each other.”
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