EU Green Deal delivery hits dud notes

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The European Commission’s Green Deal unveiling was oddly choreographed, with a multitude of messages that failed to focus minds on the need to address the climate crisis. Behind closed doors, dissenting voices were sidelined and concerns ignored in a rush to meet the deadline, according to officials familiar with the talks.

Today the effort continues with Frans Timmermans, Green Deal commissioner, presenting plans for a carbon border tax and greening of the transport sector.

Poland’s constitutional tribunal meanwhile went where no top court in the EU has dared to go before: challenging the European Court of Justice’s right to issue injunctions — the latest escalation in Warsaw’s dispute with Brussels, which may have far-reaching consequences for the rule of law. More here.

We’re also profiling Portugal’s former navy admiral who is now in charge of the country’s vaccination effort and has managed to make considerable progress after a sluggish start.

And we’ll explore what the German competition authority chief, Andreas Mundt, has in store for Big Tech companies.

Unfit for 55

Brussels’ blockbuster reveal of its landmark climate policies has been marred by discord inside the European Commission, writes Mehreen Khan in Brussels.

In what threatens to be a foreshadowing of disputes to come, a sizeable number of EU commissioners voiced opposition to parts of a package that would raise the cost of polluting for swaths of European business and households over decades, officials told the Financial Times.

One commissioner — Austria’s budget chief Johannes Hahn — voted against the greening policies during a tense meeting of the EU’s executive ahead of the grand unveiling yesterday. Another six commissioners raised detailed objections to plans to extend carbon pricing to cars and tougher emissions standards for automakers, according to insiders.

The divisions soured the mood on a day that was meant to mark the culmination of months of painstaking work on 13 legislative measures designed to reduce emissions by making polluters pay or adopt greener alternatives.

Despite protestations from members of the college, the final package contained no major surprises. “There was long debate and the airing of differences, but in the end nothing changed,” said one official familiar with the discussion. Here’s the FT’s breakdown of what it all means.

Commission president Ursula von der Leyen tried to paper over the cracks at a messy press conference where the messaging ultimately fell flat.

Von der Leyen appeared alongside six of her commissioners in a spectacle that struggled to convey the urgency of the climate crisis and instead descended into technicalities.

The dissonance reflects the competing and often conflictual approach to achieving the bloc’s green goals across the EU.

Von der Leyen has come under fire for choosing to extend carbon pricing — a policy that is firmly backed by her home country Germany but which has been fiercely criticised by environmental groups and other member states for making the poorest households bear the rising cost of pollution. Industry groups have also lashed out at policies they say will deprive them of money to invest and innovate in green technology.

In a partial acknowledgment of the dud delivery, the commission has dropped the jarring “Fit for 55” title that has been widely ridiculed for resembling a boot camp for the middle-aged. But the title, like yesterday’s unveiling, will stay long in the memory.

Chart du jour: Driving towards net zero

One of Brussels’ most controversial reforms is the inclusion of cars in its emission trading scheme and a ban on selling new petrol engine vehicles by 2035. The chart above shows that in many member states, CO2 emissions from new cars are still steadily creeping up.

Captain vaccine

Portugal last week vaccinated more than a million people — a tenth of the population — against Covid-19, setting a national record and moving the country to the top of the international rankings for the number of doses administered per 100 inhabitants in that period, writes Peter Wise in Lisbon.

The push to accelerate vaccination is led by a bearded navy commander in camouflage fatigues who has emerged as the quiet hero of Portugal’s fight against coronavirus.

Vice-Admiral Henrique Gouveia e Melo, a former leader of the navy’s submarine squadron, has boosted national confidence by bringing military order and the imperturbable calm of a sea veteran to an endeavour that began less confidently.

I wear combat dress because this is a battle we cannot afford to lose

Prime Minister António Costa appointed the 60-year-old admiral to head the vaccination task force in February after its former leader, Francisco Ramos, a health administrator, quit two months into the job when it emerged that staff at the hospital he managed had not observed vaccination priority rules. 

Ramos’s resignation came when shortages of Covid-19 vaccines in the EU sparked a controversy in Portugal over “queue jumping”, including a tussle over how many and which public officials should have priority access to jabs.

The greater availability of vaccines and a new military approach has since led to the full vaccination of more than 41 per cent of the population, above an EU average of 39 per cent. The admiral has targeted the full vaccination of 70 per cent by mid-September.

Other weapons in the war against the Delta variant, which now accounts for almost all new cases in Lisbon and the Algarve, are proving less consensual. The sight of waiters administering rapid antigen tests outside restaurants, for example, has drawn strong criticism.

“Making restaurant employees into nurses” was a sign of government “confusion and disorientation”, Luís Marques Mendes, a former leader of the opposition Social Democrats, told SIC television.

Antitrust 2.0

Critics of EU antitrust enforcement often complain that action is too slow and fines are just the cost of doing business, failing to deter big companies from alleged anti-competitive behaviour. But the landscape is changing, with more enforcers and the courts entering the fray, writes Javier Espinoza in Brussels.

The criticism levelled at the European Commission is not without merit. Brussels and Google are still fighting in court over multiple fines against the tech giant, years after they were imposed — and even longer when one considers when the first complaints were filed over a decade ago. In the meantime, some argue, smaller rivals suffer the consequences to the point where they have to close up shop or see their customer base dwindle.

But change is on the way as national regulators are starting to bring cases against Big Tech, sometimes moving faster than the commission.

This week French competition authority fined Google €500m for failing to strike a fair deal with publishers in the country. Last month, the same body slapped the US giant with a €200m fine for alleged antitrust abuse in advertising. Germany has also opened cases under new digital rules against Apple, Amazon and Google.

Andreas Mundt, head of Germany’s competition authority, thinks Europe is entering a new phase in antitrust enforcement and companies must pay attention.

In a recent interview with the FT, Mundt stressed the uncharted territory that national antitrust bodies have now entered in regards to tech companies:

“What we do here is still new. If we act in traditional markets like steel and wood, I go back to the jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice or the Federal Supreme Court and I find lots of rulings which show the way.”

Pending judgments from the ECJ and national court rulings mean a body of case law is slowly coming together to give a steer to watchdogs in what they can or cannot pursue. “We will go into enforcement stage 2.0. It’s different from what we did before and companies must take it seriously,” said Mundt.

What to watch today

1. Day 2 of EU’s climate policy bonanza

2. German Chancellor Angela Merkel meets US President Joe Biden in Washington, with Ukraine featuring prominently on their agenda

Notable, Quotable

Personal information . . . can be published in a selective and misleading way and also falsified with manipulated information in order to discredit individuals or parties

• Germany cyber-attacked: Since February this year, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the BfV, has recorded a wave of phishing attacks targeting the private email addresses of German MPs as well as regional legislators. Such attacks could be seeking to influence September’s Bundestag election, German officials said.

• Blocking migrants: Lithuanian lawmakers have voted for new migration laws that would increase the hurdles for claiming asylum in the country, after an influx of people coming via Belarus. (BBC)

• Just do it: Nike has failed to stop an investigation into its Dutch tax arrangements, after Europe’s second-highest court yesterday signed off on Brussels’ inquiry into the Netherlands’ tax dealings with the US apparel company between 2006 and 2015.

• Norway’s 9/11: Ten years after the massacre perpetrated by a Norwegian far-right mass murderer, our Nordics bureau chief has teamed up with a local photojournalist to document how the lives of the survivors, society and politics have changed since.

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