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Tomorrow’s EU-US meeting on trade and technology in Pittsburgh may be going ahead, but France is still complaining about aspects of the proposals, pointing to simmering anger in Paris over Washington’s surprise defence deal with the UK and Australia.
French diplomats have been formulating last-minute demands for the Pittsburgh statement, despite a recent conciliatory call from US President Joe Biden. We’ll give you a rundown on what those demands are and how the rest of the bloc reacted.
Over in Germany there are two claims for chancellor and several possible coalition configurations, teeing up a multi-dimensional game of political chess. First in line are the two junior partners that are likely to be part of the next government — the Greens and the liberal Free Democrats. We take a look at the young voters who gave an unexpected boost to these two parties, which have now found themselves in the kingmaker position.
France’s steely resolve
The EU’s top trade and digital officials have landed in the US ahead of tomorrow’s inaugural Trade and Technology Council with the Biden administration, but France is still making demands that risk undermining European unity in Pittsburgh, writes Mehreen Khan in Brussels.
EU trade chief Valdis Dombrovskis and tech commissioner Margrethe Vestager will meet their US counterparts in the steel city to launch a new format to revive transatlantic diplomacy. The meeting was only confirmed late on Thursday after France backed down from its initial request to postpone the Pittsburgh gathering after its spat with Washington over the US-UK-Australia nuclear submarine deal.
But less than 24 hours ahead of the summit, the Europeans still need to get their house in order.
EU diplomats told Europe Express that France had demanded last-minute changes to a draft joint statement the bloc will adopt at the meeting, designed to pave the way for more transatlantic co-operation in areas of strategic interest such as semiconductors, AI and technology sharing.
Officials said the commission was sent back to the drawing board last night to tweak parts of a sprawling text that runs into nearly 20 pages.
Among other things, France has asked for a watering down on passages committing the two sides to mutual dependence in the supply of chips. Paris also wants to scrub a reference to the next Trade and Technology Council being held in spring next year (just ahead of April’s French presidential election and during France’s six-month presidency of the EU).
The demands have riled diplomats from other member states, who had assumed French concerns had been addressed during last-ditch diplomacy between Brussels, Paris and Washington last week. “The French still want more,” bemoaned one diplomat.
France’s hold-up is unlikely to have a material impact on the Pittsburgh meeting, which is already being roundly celebrated by Brussels officials as a “new dawn” in EU-US relations (see above). But French brinkmanship over an initiative designed to bolster transatlantic links for the benefit of the EU has strained ties between Paris and other capitals, ahead of France taking the helm of the EU’s rotating presidency in January.
One diplomat said the episode had exposed how France’s broader push for EU “strategic autonomy” in foreign policy seems to be defined as pushing French — rather than common EU — interests. Commission officials will today exert one last push to ensure unity ahead of Pittsburgh.
Chart du jour: Three choices
A coalition led by the Social Democrats and including both the Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats is likely to be the first option under consideration. There is some policy overlap between the three parties — investments, modernisation — but they disagree on taxes and changes to Germany’s constitutional “debt brake”. (Read here on what each coalition configuration would mean)
Young voters go yellow and green
You could read Germany’s election results as suggesting its population still clings (barely) to the decades-old status quo, writes Erika Solomon in Berlin. But a very different picture emerges when that vote is analysed by generation — and it is potentially a troubling one.
Even as older voters continue to cast their ballots for the Volksparteien — the Social Democrats, with Sunday’s narrow victory, and Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats — voters under 30 are voting by and large for the climate-focused Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats.
Their choices hint at a similar urge to break away from Germany’s business as usual.
Charts show a dramatic trend of electoral conflict: as voters get older, they are more likely to vote for the CDU or SPD. The younger they are, the more likely they are to go Green or FDP. First-time voters this year voted 22 per cent for the Greens and 23 per cent for the FDP.
Young Germans are eager for their country to fast-track decarbonisation and speed up digital transformation, areas where Germany has long been a laggard. Politicians have embraced these causes with rhetoric but not with action — to the point where Germany’s highest court (not exactly known for being radical) took the side of young people this year, striking down the government’s climate change law for leaving too much of a burden on future generations.
But it’s not clear whether the rest of Germany will pay them any heed. In terms of electoral weight, the young are at a disadvantage: They are only 14.4 per cent of the voting population. Over 50s make up almost 58 per cent.
Several studies have shown that young people feel their voice is ignored — a Vodafone Foundation survey says 73 per cent feel dissatisfied with how their views are taken into account by politicians.
That can have troubling side effects for a democracy. A study by the researchers at More in Common suggests that nearly half of young voters feel disillusioned or detached from politics, feelings they say can over time erode faith in democratic institutions.
It can also lead them to seek more radical recourse.
Among the climate activist milieu, discontent is brewing. Fridays for Future activists acknowledge a growing push among some in their ranks to start embracing more disruptive forms of civil disobedience.
More troubling still was a smaller trend line that emerge from Sunday’s election: in eastern German states such as Saxony and Thuringia, where the far-right Alternative for Germany got the highest vote, their biggest voting block was not the elderly — it was the young.
Germans don’t have to listen to the next generation yet. But they might want to.
What to watch today
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MEPs in the European parliament’s industry and energy committee vote on the new EU guidelines on whether to continue funding gas infrastructure until 2027
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Commission vice-president Valdis Dombrovskis meets US trade representative Katherine Tai
Notable, Quotable
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Portugal first: About 83 per cent of Portugal’s population are already fully vaccinated against Covid-19 and 86 per cent have received at least one dose, which means the country now has the highest vaccination rate in Europe. The success is in large part due to Vice-Admiral Henrique Gouveia e Melo, a former submarine commander in charge of the jab campaign.
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French delay: France’s Les Républicains party delayed its choice of candidate for next year’s presidential election until December, hoping that they will be able to designate a single champion who can beat President Emmanuel Macron and the far-right leader Marine Le Pen in the April vote.
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Berlin expropriations: Voters in the German capital have backed a campaign calling for the city to expropriate apartments owned by corporate landlords. The vote reflects growing frustration in the German capital over property speculation and skyrocketing rents, which have made Berlin increasingly unaffordable for many residents.
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Parliamentary anti-vaxxers: A newly-created party of vaccine sceptics has been elected to one of Austria’s largest regional parliaments after a shock election result on Sunday. The party was particularly popular in rural communities.
Post-election Germany, unpacked
Join the Europe Express team on October 4 for a subscriber-only webinar on the outcome of Germany’s election and its implications for Germany and the rest of the world. Register free at ft.com/germanwebinar