Both the EU Parliament and the Council welcome the idea of such a “right to repair”. However, it was unclear how this was to be designed in concrete terms for a long time. The EU Commission’s plans are now based, on the one hand, on consumers’ options and, on the other, on the products themselves […]
Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Cyber Week – these are shopping highlights for consumers, but they are playing Russian roulette without knowing it… The EU Commission published its proposal for a Digital Services Act (DSA) in December 2020. This is intended to rebalance the responsibilities of users, platforms, and authorities – with citizens at the center. […]
Consumer price inflation in the eurozone accelerated further in September to a 13-year high of 3.4 percent year on year, prompting a wave of alarmed headlines. Annual inflation in the United States stood at 5.3 percent in August. So, how concerned should European and US policymakers be about a possible prolonged inflationary surge?In the eurozone […]
We have made ourselves too comfortable. In recent years, Germany has not been a pacesetter in digitization – on the contrary. We have watched others set the pace: Big players like the US and China, but also small countries like Denmark or the city-state of Singapore, are showing us how digitization works. We have to […]
After months of planning, leaders from around the world are meeting in Glasgow next week for the UN Climate Change Conference COP26. Even before that meeting, there have been some important signals from formerly more climate-skeptical countries that they are now taking global warming more seriously: At the UN General Assembly, for example, Xi Jinping […]
The new draft EU Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) aims to quadruple the number of companies covered across Europe. It aims to help harness the opportunities for companies arising from the EU Sustainable Finance Strategy and the Green Deal. However, it is the evidence published alongside the draft legislation that may prove crucial in changing the […]
Luck is reality minus expectation. Anyone who believes in this wisdom will see good things in today’s summit simply because it is taking place at all. In fact, it is the first formal exchange at the highest political level since Brexit, an early break in the crumbling Western alliance, from what feels like a different […]
Europe is at a crossroads: While European regulation is tightening the CO2 limits for new cars next year as planned, the German car industry is struggling to remain competitive. Cheap electric vehicles from China are putting pressure on the market, while ambitious emissions targets are set to accelerate the transformation of the industry – with […]
Putin’s war of aggression has shattered the German strategy of hope that economic interdependence can be the engine for a change of values in autocratic states. The fact that Germany continued to build the Nord Stream II Baltic Sea pipeline with little self-reflection and in opposition to its European neighbours and even its security guarantor, […]
A 36-hour negotiation marathon on the European AI Act ended on Friday with a provisional agreement: instead of a mere voluntary commitment, the developers of basic AI models such as GPT-4 or Gemini are to be subject to binding rules. These include transparency and documentation obligations and – in the case of models with so-called […]