Update from Berlin #13 | Maritime Sovereignty | Building Energy Act | Summer Break

We are back with some interestings agenda items on this week’s EU- and German federal level. Specifically, we are looking at some really interesting ECJ and Federal Court Hearings. As always, Florian von Gierke will fill you in with the details.

In this episode:
– Government Q&A
– Energy Industry Law
– Maritime Sovereignty
– Bundestag Debates
– Building Energy Act
– Bundesrat Session
– Federal Cabinet
– Summer Break

[Full Script]

Good morning and welcome to what will probably be the last Update from Berlin for a couple of weeks. No, we’re not ending the format, but Berlin will start its summer break next week and so we won’t have regular schedules or agendas available for Parliament. That said, we might come out of hibernation one or two times to provide an intermittent update.

With that out of the way – what’s going on this week?

On Wednesday the Bundestag will start its day with a question and answer session with the Federal Government. This time around Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz will be present to respond to the parliamentarians’ questions.

On Thursday Parliament will debate changes to Germany’s energy industry law. Specifically the draft legislation aims to make Germany compliant with EU regulations and a ruling by the ECJ.

Later this week, on Friday, Parliament will debate proposals by both the governing factions as well as by the CDU and CSU parliamentary group. Both bills concern Germany’s maritime sovereignty and the future of Germany’s maritime industry.

Parliament will also debate proposals dealing with artificial intelligence, climate protection (specifically with regards to emission protection) and the Left Party is asking Parliament to debate the issue of hospital closings. Here – to no surprise – the Left Party wants to make sure that hospitals aren’t closing due to economic pressures.

What also should be on the agenda sometime this week is Germany’s building energy act. After lots of back and forth among the coalition partners, it seems that Energy Minister Robert Habeck from the Green Party can hope for his proposal, with around 100 pages worth of changes, to be put forward and passed in Parliament.

The Bundesrat will also meet on Friday. At their gathering the Federal States will deal with legislation intended to combat pharmaceutical shortages, increase cybersecurity, promote online access to digital government services, and they will debate various food and organic farming matters.

During its meeting on Wednesday the Federal Cabinet will meet with the President of Germany’s Central Bank, Dr. Nagel, to discuss the proposed annual budget for 2024.

That’s it for this week. Again, we’ll likely be off for the next couple of weeks. However, we might be back once or twice to fill you in on what – if anything – is happening in Berlin during the summer break. Parliament restarts in early September, so that’s the latest we’ll start back up again.

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Have a great summer!