"Turkey convinced Ukraine grain deal will continue, urges EU to do its part

The Ukraine grain deal is expected to continue, though the EU should also do its part in maintaining it, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told some of his counterparts on the sidelines of the G20 summit on Tuesday (15 "

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"November).

Read the original French article here.

At the G20 summit in Bali, global leaders were calling for the Russia-Ukraine grain deal signed in Turkey in July to be prolonged past its end-date set for 19 November, with US President Joe Biden making a formal request in a communiqué.

Prolonging the deal would indeed ensure global food security as the deal allowed 10 million tonnes of grain to be exported from the “world’s bread basket” from July to September, helping countries, particularly in Africa, deal with food shortages.

“Turkey and France will continue to work to ensure that exports continue unhindered,” Macron said on Twitter following his Tuesday meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit with Erdogan, who reportedly urged the EU to take responsibility and work towards reopening the Black Sea grain corridors.

Biden also met with Erdogan and thanked him for his efforts in renewing the deal as it is “critical to improving global food security amid Russia’s war”.

For his part, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pleaded for an “infinite” extension of the agreement.

Turkish diplomacy

The summit may result in a statement calling for the grain deal to be extended and for a clear and unanimous condemnation of Russia’s actions – though China still refuses to condemn Russia – according to information from AFP.

Besides, prolonging the grain deal would also require convincing Russian President Vladimir Putin, who decided not to attend the summit in person.

Erdogan, who managed to renegotiate reinstating the grain deal when Russia briefly withdrew from it at the end of October, is determined that the deal will be prolonged.

“I am convinced that the grain deal will continue,” he told a press conference on Wednesday (16 November).

Russia gives up obstructing grain exports

Russia said on 2 November it would resume its participation in a deal to free up vital grain exports from war-torn Ukraine after suspending it over the weekend in a move that had threatened to exacerbate hunger across the world.

Europe must do its bit

Erdogan also called on the European Union to “do its part to maintain the agreement” in a statement.

The Russia-Ukraine grain deal must be “prolonged”, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said at the summit’s launch, noting that the bloc “wholeheartedly” supports the deal.

This was reiterated by the EU’s chief diplomat Josep Borrell.

“Russia has no reasons, no legal ground to block food [from] going out from Ukraine to the international markets,” Borrell told a press conference after the EU Foreign Affairs Council on Monday.

“What Russia has been doing is illegal and affecting first [of all] t

"EU ministers must ‘welcome’ Croatia, Bulgaria and Romania to Schengen

The European Commission has repeated its call for EU governments to admit Bulgaria, Romania, and Croatia to the bloc’s Schengen area, which allows passport-free movement, at a vote in December.

Speaking at a press conference on"

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" Wednesday (16 November), EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johannsson said that following recent fact-finding missions by EU agencies, it was clear that “these three nations deserve to feel fully European”.

“It is high time to say welcome […] they are ready to join,” the Commissioner added, unveiling a new report that states that all three countries have met the criteria for membership.

The Schengen area is one of the EU’s flagship policies and, of the remaining member states, only Cyprus and Ireland – both of which have complicated internal border situations – are not part of the area.

In 2011, Bulgaria and Romania’s Schengen status was voted on by national ministers, but accession requires unanimous approval by member states and was blocked by the Dutch and Finnish governments, prompting a delay of over a decade.

Although Finland’s opposition appears to have lifted, last month the Dutch parliament passed a resolution urging Prime Minister Mark Rutte to block approval citing concerns related to organised crime and corruption.

Accession for Bulgaria and Romania would pose “a risk to the security of the Netherlands and the entire Schengen Area,” said Dutch lawmakers.

The Czech presidency plans to put the matter on the agenda of the next home affairs ministers – likely to be the last under its six-month presidency – for a decision on 8 December. Ministers are expected to take two votes, one for Croatia and another for Bulgaria and Romania.

“The wait has been long, I should say, too long. Expectations are high, rightly so, from authorities but not at least citizens,” said Commissioner Johannsson.

Last month, the European Parliament backed a resolution by a 534 to 53 margin in favour of Croatian accession, while MEPs also repeated their own calls for Bulgaria and Romania to join the bloc, describing the continued delay as ‘discriminatory’.

The two countries invited a fact-finding mission last month to assess their legal frameworks and governance relating to borders, sharing of security information and efficient police cooperation, in an attempt to assuage any remaining questions from member states.

Bulgaria and Romania have “strongly proven” that they have met EU requirements on border control, said Johannsson, who added that there was an ongoing EU mission assessing the visa-issuing process and data protection in the two countries.

[Edited by Nathalie Weatherald]

https://www.euractiv.com/section/justice-home-affairs/news/eu-ministers-must-welcome-croatia-bulgaria-and-romania-to-schengen/?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=9715&pnespid=5_B3FSdYJLNE1qiRvD__EYrRuUvzDpl9KbnlxOR2.xdmUtmzlKq6XI82HrEKxejwpBNAqkKQaw

"

"Data Centres in Europe are Wasting Energy, But It’s Not Where You Think

The Proposed Energy Efficiency Directive should apply to data centres of 100kW and above.

Data centres are the foundation of the digital economy. Every social media post, chat message and video upload relies on data centres. W"

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"ithout data centres there would be no Netflix, no autonomous driving, no online banking, no eGovernment and no rapid development of vaccines. They are critical to the world we live in today. But they must also operate in ways that minimise environmental impacts. Huge progress has already been made in energy efficiency. Today’s data centres are processing more than sixteen times as much internet traffic, and house ten-times the computing power, while using nearly the same amount of energy as in 2010.[1]

Extending energy efficiency

Despite these efficiency gains, data centres do consume significant amounts of electricity. So it is important that steps are taken to ensure every individual data centre continues to operate as efficiently as possible to deliver the maximum value to society. And this is even more important in the context of the current energy crisis. The European Parliament, Commission and Council are currently considering a revision of the Energy Efficiency Directive. Recently, CISPE, the association of Cloud Infrastructure Service Providers in Europe, asked 451 Research to examine how much energy could be saved from further efficiency gains in the data centre sector. The research provides important additional insights that should inform the recast of the Energy Efficiency Directive, as it defines how data centres, along with many other energy consumers, measure and manage their consumption.

451 Research found that 16,000 medium-sized data centres with IT power of more than 100kW account for one third of the energy consumed by the sector – this is projected to account for 34 terawatt hours in 2022.

Older, enterprise data centres are less efficient

The vast majority of these 16,000 medium-sized data centres are operated by businesses, local and national governments, and public sector organisations. Many of these data centres, as identified in previous research by 451 Research, are wasting energy.

In data centres, a widely used metric for measuring energy efficiency is Power Utilisation Effectiveness (PUE). Data centres need a range of auxiliary services, including cooling, to support the main ‘work’ of the IT systems, PUE measures the size of this ‘overhead’ energy used as a ratio to the energy used to power the computing equipment. Since PUE is a ratio, the closer the number is to 1.0, the more energy efficient the data centre is. Unfortunately, a previous study by 451 Research found that enterprise data centres in Europe performed poorly with an average PUE of 2.1[2] – a considerably high ratio that signifies poor energy efficiency.

Striving for 1.4 PUE

Only about 10% of the 16,000 data centres with IT power above 100

"EU member states clip Commission wings in anti-coercion tool discussions

EU member states agreed on Wednesday (16 November) on a common negotiating position regarding the EU regulation for an Anti-Coercion Instrument, significantly curtailing the European Commission’s powers to act unilaterally in "

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END AD---"

"reaction to attempts of economic coercion by third countries.

The Anti-Coercion Instrument was proposed by the EU Commission in December 2021 to shore up the EU’s capacity to react to attempts of economic coercion by third countries, such as China.

The instrument should allow the EU to take countermeasures against a third country that tries to pressure one or more EU member states to do its bidding by using the member states’ economic dependencies.

“The EU and its Member States have become in recent years the target of deliberate economic pressure exercised by non-EU countries through measures affecting trade and investment,” Jozef Síkela, Czech minister of industry and trade said in a statement.

In the past winter, for example, China implemented a de facto trade embargo against Lithuania after the Baltic state had allowed Taiwan to open a liaison office in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius.

On Wednesday, negotiators from EU member states agreed on a common position on the anti-coercion instrument.

“The EU has the right to defend itself better on the global stage when becoming a target of economic intimidation,” said Síkela, who was responsible for the negotiations since the Czech Republic currently holds the rotating presidency of the Council of EU member states.

Bringing a gun to trade negotiations

The chair of the European Parliament’s trade committee Bernd Lange argues that the EU needs more defensive instruments to safeguard its trade interests in an environment where multilateral trade rules are not respected.

However, the Council’s position cuts back the authority of the Commission and gives EU member states more say in the use of the tool compared to the Commission’s proposal.

For example, the Commission had originally proposed that it should have the competence to unilaterally determine whether a third-country action is a case of economic coercion. In the Council’s version, a qualified majority of EU member states would have to agree to such a determination.

Moreover, the Commission had originally proposed that it should be able to unilaterally impose response measures in case of an emergency, or “on duly justified imperative grounds of urgency to avoid irreparable damage to the Union,” as the Commission proposal reads.

EU member states scrapped this urgency provision in their version of the regulation. Instead, the response measures proposed by the Commission would also have to be approved by a qualified majority of member states.

In general, the EU member states added language to make the Anti-Coercion Instrument less sharp. For example, the Council position stresses that all EU interests have to be considered when decidi

"The Brief — Big Tech and the Big Ego trap

Last year, the movie Don’t Look Up provided a desecrating and caricatured picture of today’s society – a toxic cocktail of a mass antiscientific movement, ruthless and self-serving politicians, and uncritical media obsessed with attention-seeking celebritie"

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"s.

In this scenario, the megalomaniac tech billionaire – a figure that now seems growingly inescapable in the caricatures of contemporary society – made his grand entry. And it is not hard to see in the character of Peter Isherwood a mix of past and present innovation gurus like Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg.

And, of course, Elon Musk.

After the movie, the actor impersonating the villain admitted that he had significantly based his character on Tesla’s CEO, for “that mindset of men and technology being the greatest thing in the universe, that nothing else is a higher force and anything that nature throws at us, we’ll deal with it”.

The success of a handful of tech companies has indeed happened at a break-neck speed and was enough to get to anyone’s head as their market capitalisation surpassed the GDP of several G7 countries.

Yet, as quickly as it arose, this aura of invincibility is now fading away, following weeks of shrinking profits and mass layoffs of staff across the Big Tech companies.

The reason is simple: during COVID, with millions of people stuck at home, digital services became a lifeline to continue running the world economy. Therefore, the stock market started seeing tech companies as safe-haven assets whose value could never decrease.

Market capitalisation is not only based on the current value of a company but also on the expectations for the future. Therefore, the tech sector often runs the risk of being overestimated. What is more future-oriented than new technologies?

Except that the bubble will burst when the financial markets and the real economy drift excessively apart, as it did in the late 1990s, following the arrival and spread of the internet. That is also why tech entrepreneurs are obsessed with finding the ‘next big thing’.

The fear of missing the train is what keeps CEOs in Silicon Valley up at night. Incidentally, the new frontier of technological developments tends to be the projection of these businessmen’s egos, from Bezos’ obsession with space to Zuckerberg toying with the metaverse, and all the way to Musk’s super app.

However, magniloquent PR announcements can also backfire when you are not able to keep up with the hype. That’s a lesson Zuckerberg must have painfully learned as he saw his wealth reduced by over $100 billion in little more than one year.

The internet has increasingly moved toward a more immersive experience, from text-based social media like Facebook to image-centred Instagram. Hence, the evolution toward a three-dimensional online presence might seem like a natural step in this direction.

However, Zuckerberg’s gamble might have been premature, as this t

"How member states’ consultation might impact the European Media Freedom Act

Experts have warned that the Commission’s proposed European Media Freedom Act may face further obstacles as it enters consultation with member states.

As the Media Freedom Act moves to examination by member states and the "

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"European Parliament, EURACTIV Bulgaria held a conference with media experts to examine potential roadblocks in the process.

The Commission released its proposal for a Media Freedom Act to a mixed reaction from civil society and media sector organisations on September 16.

Commission releases Media Freedom Act proposal, to mixed reactions

The Commission has released its proposal for a Media Freedom Act, to mixed reaction from civil society and media sector organisations.

Julie Majercsak, head of the Brussels office of Reporters Without Borders, voiced concern that the text could be weakened “in particular by some member states” during the legislative process.

Asked if these states would be the “usual suspects” Poland and Hungary, she mentioned no names but hinted that the list would be longer.

“We can expect some resistance and reluctance from some member states,” she said, hinting at risks even if the decision is to be taken by a qualified majority.

In that sense, she said that the role of Germany would be key.

“If we lose Germany or if we do not manage to convince Germany to support the text, that can be very problematic,” Majercsak said.

MEP Radan Kanev, who co-hosted the conference, pointed out that the problems with media interference are not personal but structural. The act is needed, he said but added that it should be discussed mainly by experts, not politicians.

“Politicians’ interference in media affairs is always dangerous because we are very much tempted to regulate media in a way that pleases us in specific circumstances. It usually backfires lately. And this is exactly what we should fight with the European Media Act,” Kanev explained.

He stressed the issue of harmonisation proposed by the Commission, specifically when it comes to professional standards and good practices, lamenting that these standards are all falling under recommendations, and not under regulations of the proposed Act.

“We risk entering a very big trap. We already have many too recommendations,” Kanev said.

The MEP also highlighted that binding standards established by media professionals and money which is under the control of politicians are the two key elements not sufficiently considered and elaborated on in the regulation proposal.

At the national level, most media – especially those receiving public finances – are considered as abiding by professional standards “on paper”, Kanev said, hinting that the reality is different.

“I can give many examples in Bulgaria and other countries, of media that are officially covering professional standards and disseminating quite vulgar disinformation and even quite open Russian propaganda during the aggres

"Health Brief: The accessibility conundrum of gene therapies

Despite their life-changing potential, innovative treatments based on genetically modified cells are still not fully accessible to all patients.

It is generally accepted that there are more than 7,000 rare diseases, a lot of which have a "

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"genetic deficit at their roots.

For around 95% of these diseases, treatment is not available or is being developed. Outdated regulatory frameworks could further limit the necessary innovation to unlock the potential of these treatments.

As such, the forthcoming revision of the EU’s pharmaceutical framework is expected to streamline the procedures linked to the evaluation and authorisation of medicines for rare diseases, also known as orphan drugs.

This will affect the approval of Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products (ATMPs) – a term that is interchangeably used as cell and gene therapies – which are currently mostly used to treat rare diseases.

“This is the sole treatment option which allows you to treat genetic diseases at its roots,” Hildegard Büning, president of the European society of gene and cell therapy, explained at an event last week.

Gene therapies are not really a new thing as they have been investigated by the pharmaceutical sector since the 1990s. However, it was only in 2012 that the first gene therapy – an in vivo treatment targeting an ultra-rare disease – was approved in the EU market.

Until now, only 23 products based on genetically modified cells have been authorised in Europe. Although originally designed for treating monogenic diseases only, the technology has spread to other therapeutic areas as well, such as cancer, infectious diseases, and cell therapies.

These therapies try to address the genetic cause of a disease by either replacing the malfunctioning gene or making it inactive or introducing a new gene that helps fight it.

Compared to many other treatments, ATMPs are pretty much focused on finding the symptoms of a certain disease in a bid to correct its genetic causes.

The most advanced type of these treatments is called gene transfer and consists of introducing a new ‘healthy’ gene to replace a malfunctioning one that causes the disease.

There are also other therapy options, including one trying to neutralise the malfunctioning gene by making it inactive and another one introducing a gene that helps the body fight the disease.

If the whole clinical development might be full of hardships, there are also regulatory hurdles that make the path toward marketing authorisation an extremely long one.

While national agencies have to possibility to give their scientific advice anytime during the clinical development to ensure an efficient approval procedure, it is ultimately the European Medicines Agency (EMA) that grants the final go-ahead for the product to be used in all EU countries.

“We have already experienced the assessment of these therapies, the only thing is that not all of them are available,” said

"Time to stop counting forest biomass as ‘renewable energy’

Phasing out forest biomass as ‘renewable energy’ would yield massive benefits in terms of air pollution and climate protection, writes Mary S. Booth. To sweeten the deal, the EU should suspend fines for countries missing their renewable ene"

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END AD---"

"rgy target as a consequence of efforts made, she suggests.

Mary S. Booth is the director of the Partnership for Policy Integrity (PFPI), a non-profit group.

Policymakers at COP27 are trying to advance last year’s commitments to end global deforestation. But even as they support such efforts, some EU policymakers are seeking to water down a weak – yet still important – proposal by the European Parliament that would protect forests within the EU, by disqualifying energy from burning trees and other forest biomass from counting as renewable energy.

The forest products industry obviously has the ear of key policymakers in opposing reforms. Now, thanks to an open letter from forestry scientists and practitioners, we can see what arguments they’ve been making.

What emerges is a disturbing picture of an industry that deploys dangerous misinformation, mirroring the worst trends in political tactics today. The contempt for science – and nature – evinced by the forestry letter is alarming enough, but the letter and associated lobbying come just as EU institutions are negotiating the EU’s biomass policy in the Trilogue on the Renewable Energy Directive.

At stake is the EU’s ability to achieve climate, nature restoration, and air quality goals.

Scientists tell us that meeting climate and nature targets requires restoring the EU’s degraded forests so they can store more atmospheric CO2 and support thriving ecosystems. To help meet this goal, the EU has just enacted legislation that sets member state ‘land sink’ targets to increase carbon storage in forests and other lands by 2030. The EU is also crafting nature restoration targets to reverse declines in ecosystems and biodiversity.

But in complete denial of these essential goals, the forestry letter claims “in many European countries a high level of growing wood stocks has already been reached and further accumulation of biomass appears risky under climate warming.” The forestry letter also argues that because the EU imports wood to meet demand, “it seems inadequate to set aside forest areas for wilderness, which has not been proven to maintain additional species.”

These false and anti-scientific claims indicate a frightening trend: the forest industry thinks they should be entitled to log everywhere, and they’re willing to use misinformation to accomplish that.

The EU’s forests are in trouble and need protection. A big part of the problem is intensive logging, including for biomass energy. The EU burns more than half the wood it harvests for energy, but far from being “carbon neutral”, logging and burning trees for energy hollows out forests and emits more CO2 per unit of energy than fossil fuel

"Difficulties ahead for German push to revitalise EU-US trade relations

The German government has proposed restarting EU-US free-trade agreement negotiations. However, it is unlikely a deal will be reached, as businesses and the European Commission set more hope on a step-by-step approach to remove "

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END AD---"

"trade barriers.

As part of an agreement on the future trade policy agenda reached last Friday (11 November), Germany’s centre-left “traffic light” coalition agreed to attempt to restart trade negotiations for a free-trade area encompassing the EU and the US.

The last attempt at such an agreement, the negotiations for a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), failed after Donald Trump took office as US president in 2017. Yet the German push to revitalise the talks is likely to fail, with even business representatives being sceptical about the success chances.

“I’m not quite sure that there is the political momentum that would be required, to be honest, on either side of the Atlantic to get into a massive and comprehensive trade negotiation,” Thibaut L’Ortye of the American Chamber of Commerce to the EU, who is representing American businesses operating in the EU, told EURACTIV.

This view was echoed by the European Commission, saying that negotiations for a new, TTIP-style trade agreement were “not on the agenda”.

Instead, L’Ortye puts his hopes on the Trade and Technology Council (TTC), a forum created between the US government and European institutions to increase cooperation in strategic economic areas.

Thus, while the appetite for all-encompassing and lengthy trade negotiations is small, cooperation has moved to a more small-scale approach.

“The [TTC] has become our main cooperation platform where we talk about both bilateral trade facilitation and global standards,” a Commission spokesperson told EURACTIV.

The next meeting of ministers of the US government with EU Commissioners is set to take place on the 5th of December.

“Everybody feels confident that there will be a series of announcements,” L’Ortye told EURACTIV, pointing to multiple working groups on topics like artificial intelligence, semiconductors, supply chain risks and cybersecurity.

EU Commission sets member states' expectations for next transatlantic meeting

The European Union and the United States aim to complete a series of ‘deliverables’ ahead of the next high-level meeting in December, including a roadmap on trustworthy AI, a joint exercise on supply chain disruptions, and recommendations on charging infrastructure.

‘Inflation Reduction Act’ under fire

German industry representatives agree on the importance of the forum.

The TTC “should be used more to jointly shape tomorrow’s trade standards instead of having them imposed by a world dominated by China”, Volker Treier, head of Foreign Trade Policy at the German Chambers of Industry and Commerce (DIHK) told EURACTIV.

However, the association also points to multiple barriers for European compani

"French opposition touts EU electricity market exit

France should drop the idea of an EU electricity market and fully nationalise energy giant EDF, as rising electricity costs would be better managed with a more integrated public energy service, according to some in the parliamentary opposition.

Re"

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"ad the original French article here.

France announced its plans in July to recapitalise energy giant EDF, while some, mostly in the opposition, have been calling for its nationalisation.

However, those voices have grown louder since the finance committee’s special rapporteur, Socialist Party Deputy Phillipe Brun of the radical-left alliance NUPES, published a damning report on Monday (14 November).

The announcement that the government will entirely recapitalise EDF, rather than fully nationalise it, means the company can still divide its activities, whether this is regarding nuclear or other renewables for example. Nationalisation, which needs approval from parliament, including on the activities, would, however, allow EDF to no longer face competition in the French electricity market.

Based on notes from the economy ministry, the report pointed to a transfer to the private sector that could concern “about 30% of the activities related to the energy transition” – though Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire opposes this.

Even before the report was published, Brun had called for EDF’s nationalisation, arguing it would avoid “the disintegration of the [EDF] group” and “the disintegration of the public service”, and noting that it would receive backing from all opposition parties.

“I can safely say that there is a majority [of MPs] in favour of a nationalisation bill,” he told EURACTIV France.

Unanimous backing also comes from industrialists in his constituency, he added.

EU competition law will not force French state to divide nationalised EDF

The French government recently unveiled its emergency plan for the energy company EDF which some say is the first step towards the division of the group’s activities, while whether or not this will fall under the remit of EU competition law is the subject of much discussion.

An integrated public energy service

Market regulation of electricity prices, as put forward by the European Commission since 1996, is something that is no longer viable given the circumstances, according to Brun, who also questioned the relevance of an EU energy market amid increasing prices.

Communist Senator Céline Brulin also said she was in favour of France having an integrated public energy service.

“The situation [high electricity prices] shows the limits of price liberalism,” she told EURACTIV France.

“Even the most fervent liberals recognise this,” she acknowledged, referring to Senators in the majority from the more traditionally liberal-conservative party Les Républicains (LR).

This was indeed acknowledged by Olivier Marleix, the president of the LR group in the National Assembly.

“It is not forbidden to reflect on