Month: December 2023

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European Parliament polling reaches tipping point for right-of-centre majority

Latest polling results from the three institutions that provide regular updates on seat projections for the European Parliament elections in June 2024 now point for the first time to the possibility that the three right-of-centre political groups – the EPP, ID and ECR – may have a majority of seats on their own in the next Parliament.

My previous synthesis of the seat projections in May 2023 (see my blog post here) showed that the left-of-centre groups – S&D, Greens and the Left – together with Renew were still slightly ahead of the right-of-centre groups though they would have required support from the independent MEPs – the so-called Non-Inscrits – to create an overall majority. This is no longer the case.

In the following table, I present the seat projections by the three institutions – Europe Elects, Politico Poll of Polls, and Der (europäische) Föderalist – as a percentage of the overall number of seats (note, this is not a projection of the share of total votes received by the national political parties affiliated with these political groups).… Read the rest

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Contrasting recent decisions on pesticides

During the past week, I was intrigued by a post on the social media platform X from Pascal Canfin, Chair of the Committee on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety in the European Parliament which in translation read: “We have just rejected in Parliament a proposal from the Commission which would have allowed the importation of foodstuffs produced with a pesticide banned in Europe, tricyclazole. This would have been unfair competition that was unacceptable for our farmers. I welcome it.”

What intrigued me about this post was the implication that, because the Parliament had rejected the Commission proposal, the imports of foodstuffs (specifically, rice) produced with tricyclazole into the EU would no longer be possible.… Read the rest

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Trilogues begin on the Certification Framework for Carbon Removals Regulation

The Commission put forward its legislative proposal for a Certification Framework for Carbon Removals (CFCR) in November 2022. The Regulation has the two broad objectives to define quality criteria for carbon removal activities to ensure only high-quality removals are certified, and to define rules for the verification and certification of carbon removals, including rules for the functioning and recognition by the Commission of certification schemes. The main innovation in the Regulation is that it defines Certified Removal Units (CRUs) that can be used in national or corporate GHG inventories or exchanged through voluntary carbon markets.

In a previous post last September, I discussed the amendments to the Commission’s proposal being discussed by the Council and European Parliament at that time. Last month, both institutions finalized their mandate for negotiations (the Council) and first reading position (the Parliament). I summarise in this post the main changes proposed by the two institutions to the Commission’s proposal, using the framework developed in the previous post.… Read the rest