Qatargate, the corruption scandal surrounding the EU Parliament, is still good for surprises seven months after the raids. Surprise number one: On Monday, MEP Andrea Cozzolino (formerly S&D), whose extradition Belgian investigators have been demanding for months, surprisingly turned himself in at Zaventem airport. The Neapolitan is accused of having accepted bribes from Morocco and […]
Officially, everyone involved is happy with Intel’s decision to stick with the planned construction of the chip factory in Magdeburg. Saxony-Anhalt is pleased about new jobs and Olaf Scholz about an economic policy success. Even Union faction vice-president Jens Spahn has nothing to complain about: The investment is important “for the region and our technological […]
For weeks now, Berlin’s capital city journalists and political rivals have been busy trying to prove that the Green Party’s candidate for chancellor, Annalena Baerbock, has committed all kinds of offenses. An exercise that is more likely to be followed with a weary smile elsewhere in Europe. The public is familiar with very different kinds […]
There will be great cinema for breakfast today in the European Parliament in Strasbourg. The flick will run from 8:30 a.m. in the Environment Committee and can be followed on livestream. For the first time in the history of EU parliamentarianism, old sailors affirm, the EPP refuses to even deal with a Commission bill. It […]
To mark the 60th anniversary of the Élysée Treaties, the governments in Berlin and Paris have launched the Friendship Pass. 30,000 of them are available to 18- to 27-year-olds on both sides of the Rhine. The tickets were distributed to travel enthusiasts yesterday. It’s a bit like Interrail: on seven days within a month, seven […]
Cartels are a profoundly unfair thing. Like corruption, they lead to customers having to pay higher prices for products than is actually necessary. And yet sometimes there is a tiny bit of fascination mixed in with the disgust: How could the cartel members manage to keep their mouths shut for so long? Why did no […]
So far, the war in Ukraine has largely been left out of international climate negotiations. Russia traditionally keeps a low profile at all UN summits, and Ukraine, as a comparatively small player, does not play a major role. On Monday at the Interim Climate Change Conference (SB58) in Bonn, however, the conflict did come out […]
At the beginning of the week an article in the BILD newspaper gave the impression that it was a hopeless case for German breweries: The destruction of “BILLIONS of beer bottles” was threatening, and even the beer crates would have to be shredded. With quotations of worried federation heads the BILD confirmed alarmed beer sommeliers […]
Self-perception vs. perception by others: depending on your personality, these can be worlds apart.In the case of French MEP Geoffroy Didier (EPP), rapporteur for the Digital Services Act (DSA) in the European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI), the perceptions are extreme: while cross-party accusations are voiced that he is insufficiently representing the JURI positions […]
Plastic beverage bottle lids are among the single-use plastic items “most commonly found as litter on Union beaches.” That is what EU Directive 2019/904 says. So far, so bad. That is where environmentally conscious lawmakers can start to react and regulate.In response, Brussels has come up with a very clever idea in the form of […]