Les Destiny’s Child se reforment le temps d’un titre inédit et peut-être d’un concert au prochain Super Bowl. Une information confirmée par celle qui est devenue la reine des charts depuis leur séparation, Beyoncé.
C’est la reine-mère elle-même qui l’a déclaré sur son site officiel: les Destiny’s Child sont de retour. «Je suis fière d’annoncer le premier titre inédit des Destiny’s Child depuis 8 ans». Signé Beyoncé. Une information confirméE sur le site du groupe. Queen Be et ses acolytes, Michelle Williams et Kelly Rowlands ont enregistré une chanson baptisée Nuclear, produite par Pharell Williams, et qui accompagne la sortie d’une compilation, Love Songs? prévue pour le 29 janvier.
Il se pourrait même que les Destiny’s Child soient l’une des attractions du fameux concert de la mi-temps du prochain Super Bowl, un événement musical interplanétaire. Les trois copines pourraient y interpréter leur nouveau morceau? mais aussi un medley de leurs tubes, Bills, Bills, Bills, Say my name, Survivor, Independent Women ou encore Bootylicious.
C’est donc en retour en force pour Beyoncé après avoir donné naissance à sa petite Blue Ivy. La toute jeune maman de 31 ans est apparue plus sexy que jamaisen couverture de GQ ce mois-ci et devrait chanter lors de l’investiture de Barack Obama le 22 janvier prochain. Huit ans après la dissolution officielle du groupe, Beyoncé a donc eu envie de retrouver Michelle Williams et Kelly Rowland qui elles aussi ont poursuivi une carrière solo, sans pour autant atteindre le degré de notoriété de la compagne de Jay-Z.
De 1997 à 2004, les Destiny’s Child et leurs courbes affolantes ont mis le monde du R’n B, voire le monde tout court, à leurs pieds le temps de quatre albums studios qui se sont écoulés à plus de 60 millions d’exemplaires, de tubes devenus incontournables. Les trois bombes sont de retour et la déflagration s’annonce terrible.
Le site américain TMZ le disait presque mort, mais Lil Wayne s’en tire in extremis. Cette nuit, il a rassuré ses fans (très inquiets) sur Twitter en expliquant qu’il allait bien. Il est actuellement encore hospitalisé à Los Angeles pour plusieurs crises d’épilepsie en rafale.
«Je vais bien tout le monde. Merci pour les prières et l’amour». C’est ainsi que la planète rap s’est réveillée (ou endormie) ce matin. Lil Wayne, l’homme à la voix de robot se remet doucement de ses multiples incidents de santé depuis un hôpital de Los Angeles. C’est sur Twitter qu’il a tenu lui-même à faire taire les rumeurs les plus sinistres qui circulent sur son état de santé. Un bilan en contradiction totale avec l’annonce dramatique que faisait plus tôt le site américain spécialisé TMZ.
En effet, plus tôt cette nuit, les sources citées à l’hôpital par le journal faisaient état d’une situation très grave après une nouvelle crise d’épilepsie du chanteur de 30 ans. En effet, selon les informations concordantes, cette semaine Lil Wayne aurait eu pas moins de 6 crises avant d’être emmené d’urgence au Cedars-Sinai de Los Angeles.
L’interprète de Lollipop a d’abord été interné mardi dernier, avant de sortir de l’hôpital mercredi. Ce n’est que quelques heures plus tard qu’il aurait été retrouvé inconscient à terre par un de ses gardes du corps. D’après les rumeurs, il aurait fait une overdose de codéine, ingrédient principal de sa boisson préférée le Sizzurp, un cocktail additif dont il se sert pour planer. De retour entre les mains des médecins, ce père de 4 enfants a subi de multiples lavages d’estomac pour retrouver une condition «stable».
Le bilan actuel, dressé par TMZ est alarmant, expliquant qu’aucune décision concernant la star ne serait prise avant l’arrivée de sa mère sur place. Pire encore, les journalistes américains annonçaient hier que l’idole avait été transporté en soins intensifs en raison de tremblement incessants et qu’il avait également été plongé dans un coma artificiel. Une nouvelle qui fait froid dans le dos, puisque TMZ a ajouté: «Il respire actuellement à travers des tubes». Ainsi, nombre de ses proches (famille, amis, autre rappeurs) seraient en train de rejoindre les couloirs de l’hôpital de Los Angeles pour se recueillir à son chevet.
Le mystère reste donc entier, alors que l’homme aux dreadlocks a donné signe de vie sur les réseaux sociaux. Une déclaration brève qui met TMZ dans l’embarras. De fait, cette nuit le rapport du site expliquait: «Lil Wayne dort en ce moment … ce qui est étrange, parce qu’il vient de tweeter en disant qu’il va bien et de remercier les gens pour les prières et l’amour». On ne sait plus qui croire…
Ferrari boss Mattia Binotto wants clarity from Formula 1 and the FIA on the procedures that will govern the entry of team staff into Australia in a fortnight following the coronavirus outbreak.
A cluster of cases involving the novel virus was identified in northern Italy and has put the country’s residents and travelers at risk of being forbidden entry into other countries or quarantined upon arrival.
Ferrari staff faced issues accessing the F2 test organized this week in Bahrain because of unforeseen restrictions imposed by the Kingdom. So Binotto is now seeking clarity from F1’s governing body that teams won’t be confronted with similar problems when heading to Melbourne later this month.
Teams shuffle logistics amid restrictions and coronavirus threat
“I think that what we will need is simply to have assurance before leaving. I don’t think we can discover when [we are there] what can be or what will be the situation,” Binotto said, quoted by Motorsport.com.
“So if there are any medical screenings, we need to know about them. You need to know exactly what’s about. We need to understand what are the consequences in case of any problem.
“Obviously we need to protect our employees. We have got collective and individual responsibility towards them. And it’s important, really, to make sure that before leaving, the picture, whatever is the scenario, is known and clear.”
At a meeting on Friday morning in Barcelona with F1 chief executive Chase Carey, teams were updated on the current situation which remains fluid.
But AlphaTauri team boss Franz Tost expressed his concern that restrictions or a confinement imposed on some team personnel could actually prevent an outfit from competing Down Under.
If such a plight occurred, Tost believes it would be unfair for F1 to go racing.
“We want to have a grand prix. Up to now. I don’t expect that there will come up any problems,” he said.
“But everything is changing hourly and this makes it difficult.
“If teams can’t run for whatever reason – I have not thought about this, also not I’m not a decision maker – then I think it would be unfair to start the season because this is a big disadvantage, whoever it is.
“Regarding Bahrain, if I’m informed right, people coming from Italy had a medical check and if they are not sick, if they don’t have the coronavirus, then they can, of course, work in there. And I expect something similar with Formula 1.”
With the Australian Grand Prix just 14 days away, the local organizer and the country will likely need to make a definitive call on their event in the coming days. And it isn’t looking good.
Gallery: The beautiful wives and girlfriends of F1 drivers
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Coming back after a long break, the European Union faces an ugly fall.
It was the calm before the storm.
Brussels slipped into its usual summer slumber in August, but as a parade of commission officials, lawmakers, regulators and diplomats return to their desks this week, they face an unusually daunting post-vacation agenda — from fixing Greece to the migrant crisis to convincing Britain to remain in the EU to finalizing plans for a new capital markets union.
Then there’s the simmering conflict in Ukraine and concerns over the terror threat posed by Islamic fighters returning from Syria. Complicating matters further is a series of important elections, including in Spain and across the EU’s border in Turkey.
Whether political, economic or security-related, Europe faces obstacles at nearly every turn.
“The fall will be busy, and perhaps ugly,” said Jan Techau, the director of Carnegie Europe, a think tank.
One official, who returned to work on Sunday already, compared the environment to the fall of 2008, when Lehman Brothers went under.
Top of problem file
Greece still poses the most immediate threat. Athens may have secured another bailout but it is still deep in the woods. Greek elections on September 20 could lead to political instability and renew calls for the country to leave the euro.
Beyond Greece, the sheer scale of the challenges promises to test the EU’s institutional cohesion.
Is Europe up to the task? Europeans are no strangers to sticky problems, but finding effective solutions has not been a strong suit. This time, the stakes for Europe, be it in Greece or the U.K., couldn’t be higher.
“The biggest change is not about busy or slow,” Techau said. “It is about confidence. Even among the integrationist elite, the self-evidence of the whole project is less obvious. Many years of crisis, populism, and foreign policy madness have taken their toll.”
In most cases, the issues on deck aren’t new but are only now coming to a head. This confluence is largely Europe’s own doing. Instead of getting ahead of a problem, be it on Greece or migration, European leaders have tended to let crises reach the breaking point before stepping in. That modus operandi, a vestige of the old EU, worked better in a smaller union with less political divergence. In today’s EU of 28 countries, the brinksmanship has often paralyzed decision-making as tempers flare.
‘Scandalous’ migration policy
Consider migration. Europe has been struggling with the issue in one form or another for more than a decade. Despite clear forecasts a few years ago that the Syrian war would unleash an unprecedented wave of refugees, the EU did little to prepare.
The acrimony in Europe over migration has become so pronounced that it has led to open conflict between states, even prompting calls in some quarters for the reinstatement of border controls.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Sunday that eastern European countries’ refusal to take in more migrants as part of a quota system was “scandalous,” adding that he has “a very dim view” of Hungary’s move to build a border fence to keep migrants out.
“Hungary is part of Europe. Europe has values and these values are not respected by putting up wire fences,” he said.
As Europe’s leaders argue over quotas and fences, the refugees continue to arrive in large numbers, forcing governments across the region to scramble to care for them.
Brussels, meanwhile, has tried but largely failed to mediate. On Sunday, the EU announced the latest extraordinary meeting to address the refugee crisis on September 14, this time of all 28 interior ministers.
Euro agonies
Europe’s recent record on another hot button issue — the economy — is no more encouraging for Brussels. With large swaths of Europe’s economy still stagnating, unemployment high and banks reluctant to lend, Brussels is under pressure to accelerate plans to boost growth and reinforce the architecture of the eurozone.
So far, those plans haven’t gone much beyond the blueprint stage, amid endless debates between members and Europe’s decision-making apparatus. The lack of progress has fueled criticism that Brussels has lost touch with the rest of Europe.
As if to make the point, a Commission spokeswoman asked by POLITICO where the emphasis would be in the coming weeks responded that the executive would continue “to deliver on our work program with initiatives under the 10 strategic priorities and under stage 1 for completing our economic and monetary union.”
Whatever the fate of such initiatives, the clock is ticking for Jean-Claude Juncker. After serving for nearly a year, the commission president and his stable of commissioners have still to prove they can live up to the promise he made on his election to reinvigorate the Brussels executive after years of drift and sagging morale. Juncker’s big moment comes on September 9, when he will deliver his first State of the Union speech, laying out his agenda for the coming year.
The honeymoon is also over for European Council President Donald Tusk. Since taking office in December, Tusk has clashed openly with southern EU states over migration, amid quiet grumbling among some diplomats and officials about his leadership style in general.
His main achievement has been to help to broker the deal that kept the eurozone intact. In the months ahead, the former Polish prime minister may find himself trying to do the same for Europe Union as well.
Tusk is seen as one of the most important negotiation partners for the British government. London will press for limits on the freedom of movement enshrined in the EU treaties, among other issues, setting the stage for a confrontation with other EU countries. Depending on how much it gets Prime Minister David Cameron would likely decide before year’s end whether to press for the U.K. to stay or leave the EU, a senior British official said.
Having scrapped for so long, how can the leader of UKIP let go when the prize of Brexit is in sight?
LONDON — I had lunch with Nigel Farage a couple of Thursdays ago, a few hours after the first shots were fired in what has been misdescribed as the UK Independence Party’s civil war. It would be much better to call what happened that week, in the emotional aftermath of the general election, a failed putsch against a certainly irritable, but far from autocratic ruler. Which is why I offered to cancel lunch.
“We set a date, so let’s stick to it,” Farage said, after walking in on me in a toilet just as I had zipped up and washed my hands.
I often don’t lock toilet doors, because I’m claustrophobic and fear the consequences of a gammy lock. No awkward moment here, though: Farage doesn’t really do awkward. “But haven’t you got a crisis to attend to, Nigel?” I asked. “Yes, but we must have lunch,” he replied, before ordering a pint of London Pride, and seeing that I had the same. Moments later we would be sharing a very good bottle of Burgundy and some excellent Welsh lamb.
This was just about tolerable for me, as I was on a day off to attend to some personal business. But Farage doesn’t take days off. Later that evening, having spent the whole day with UKIP’s travails leading news bulletins on the BBC, Sky News, and just about everywhere else, including Twitter, Farage would be on Question Time — Britain’s flagship weekly political show, with a national audience of millions — where he put in a commanding performance on his 28th appearance there.
Relieved by defeat
It would be hard to overstate how rewarding a lunch companion Farage makes. He is mobbed most places he goes, whether by fans or foes. The first time we ate together — in the Wolseley, the favored canteen of London’s media class, located near the Ritz — several people spanning the generations and genders came up to him to offer support and thanks, or just to say hi. He is a celebrity now, and loves it. He is also a raconteur, with a bank of excellent anecdotes built up over several decades in business and politics, and a range of specialist subjects that is dazzling. He can talk for England, literally, on the key moments of both the Great and Second World War; he knows phenomenal amounts about cricket; and his knowledge of European politics is far more sophisticated than is suggested by his tub-thumping reputation, which still owes a heavy debt to a scintillating speech he made against Herman van Rompuy (“the charisma of a damp rag and the appearance of a low-grade bank clerk”), which went viral and was a YouTube sensation.
On this particular afternoon, civil wars or putsches notwithstanding, he was very engaging on the fact that what nobody in Britain has grasped about the European Commission is the remarkable relationship between President Jean-Claude Juncker and First Vice-President Frans Timmermans. Both embody the federalist project Farage has spent over two decades fighting, and yet his respect and empathy for them is huge. If your ancestors were as bloodied by the Nazis as Timmermans’s, he says, it’s understandable why you would want to bring Europe together.
None of which makes us natural boozing partners, of course. I represent, and love, three things that Farage’s party has risen to prominence denouncing: immigration, globalization, and the much derided liberal metropolitan elite. I’m a proud version of the former and member of the last, and strong advocate for what goes in between. I also find most of what UKIP stands for nasty, brutish and short on imagination and decency. But despite all this, Farage is probably the most fun politician to have lunch with that I know. And I can’t help but admire his achievement in creating a people’s army of nearly four million voters, which owes so much to his being the most articulate populist in English culture since Enoch Powell, and just as much to a work ethic that is nothing short of phenomenal. My own father aside, Farage works harder and longer than anyone I have ever met. He does so while drinking and smoking more than any politician I know, and — perhaps most remarkable of all — enduring permanent and often acute neuralgic back pain.
And also, of course, while overseeing a party stuffed full of eccentrics. Three hours before we met, Patrick O’Flynn, MEP, UKIP’s economics spokesman, had called Farage “snarling, thin-skinned and aggressive.” As a former political editor of Richard Desmond’s Daily Express, which backed UKIP at the election, his words were calculated to hurt and have a big impact, both of which they did long before he unreservedly apologized. That week Farage had been reinstated as leader of the party having resigned after the election, when he failed to become MP for Thanet South. By the time I saw him, his basic tiggerishness was clearly subdued through exhaustion. He hasn’t taken a two-week holiday for over 20 years, knows he could make a lot of money in the private sector, and wishes he saw more his children from his second marriage. That is why he was, as he admitted, so relieved by his defeat in Thanet South.
But he can’t let go, for one reason above all. The Tories’ promise of a referendum on EU membership could deliver the prize for which Farage has spent these past decades fighting: a British nation freed, as he sees it, from the suffocating grip of Brussels and Strasbourg. Having scrapped for so long, how can he let go when the prize is in sight? He might have done that, had his party let him. But after the national executive committee unanimously demanded his return, he reasoned that with the plebiscite imminent, now is no time for novices.
Pride kicked in
This is one of the two central conflicts at the heart of UKIP, which Farage is trying to resolve, but ultimately will not be able to. The immediate cause of the tension in his party after the election wasn’t the fact that, despite nearly four million votes, it returned only one MP — Douglas Carswell, the Tory convert who sits for Clacton, and of whom more in a moment. The tension comes from the fact that Carswell, Mark Reckless (another Tory convert, but one who lost his seat), and Dan Hannan, a maverick Tory MEP, don’t want Farage to front the referendum campaign for the ‘Out’ (of Europe) camp. These Oxbridge “posh boys” believe there is a sober, pragmatic, and economic case to be made for British exit, or Brexit, and that Farage’s brand of populism is toxic to it. Having garnered those millions of votes, and worked tirelessly to build UKIP up from a bunch of loonies to the electoral force it is today, Farage quite understandably disagrees. Pride has kicked in, too, and he feels that any attempt to keep him out of the campaign is symptomatic of a metropolitan mindset which he’ll be damned if he lets triumph.
The second conflict within UKIP is deeper, and related. As the party’s only MP, Carswell ought to be well-placed to be Farage’s successor. But his views on immigration are different to those of the party’s current leader, in being fundamentally more relaxed and tolerant. This is one reason why Paul Nuttall, Farage’s Liverpudlian deputy, remains the most likely next leader; the other is that he would increase the party’s chances of eating into Labour heartlands in the north.
Carswell’s views on immigration put him at odds not just with Farage, but most of those millions of voters — and illuminate both the remarkable short history of UKIP and the dilemma of its future. The party came from the Anti-Federalist League, with help from the Referendum Party set up by financier Sir James Goldsmith, whose son Zac may well be Tory candidate for mayor of London. In other words, the animating vision of UKIP’s founders, and what brought Farage into politics, is a desire to leave the European Union. On this point, Carswell, a radical democrat who sees the EU as an attack on British sovereignty, agrees.
Yet UKIP has evolved, over the course of its history, from being a party against the EU to a party against globalization. The issue of immigration has allowed Farage to fudge the difference. Immigration, a product of a globalized era, is the top concern of British voters. They see through David Cameron’s stupid pledge to reduce it to the tens of thousands, “no ifs or buts,” while it has risen to 318,000. Farage has argued, rightly, that if Britain is to radically reduce immigration, it must first leave the EU. That is one of the main reasons UKIP have been so popular: voters actually believe Farage’s pledge.
The main appeal of the party is that it appeals to voters left behind by globalization, which has ripped asunder the stable labor markets of yore. Voters living in post-industrial towns, particularly in the north of England and on the east coast, lose their jobs to technology, or foreign workers, whether those workers are in countries that have successfully outsourced work (China, India) or immigrants to Britain who work harder and are better qualified than natives. UKIP offers a coherent if wrong answer to that problem: reduce the number of immigrants, and in so doing turn the clock back to an era of greater certainty and less flux.
Nostalgia versus modernity: This is the conflict between Farage and Carswell, and even if the former can keep a lid on it until that referendum, it is bound to explode afterward. Carswell was born in Africa and grew up partly in Kampala. He has contributed smart ideas on how the internet is changing democracy, blogging extensively, writing a decent book on the idea of “iDemocracy,” and describing his own politics as “Gladstone.com.” Farage is no technophobe, and has made tremendous use of social media, but his deep, visceral patriotism is a long way from Carswell’s comfort with rapid global change.
Whether or not Farage steps down after the referendum — likely next year — depends on much more than the result. After all, his party may not let him; and one reason he probably won’t get the electoral reform he pines for is that senior Tories believe that if they win that referendum and Farage steps down, UKIP will implode and they will have another two million voters at least come back into their fold. Farage had hoped that, having built a mass movement from scratch and delivered the plebiscite he came into politics to achieve, he could hand things over to a party mature enough to become a fixture in our politics.
That may never happen. The upper echelons of UKIP may lack the necessary discipline; and the members’ nostalgia for a disappeared England will always struggle to overcome the inevitable and accelerating fact of globalization. Like Enoch Powell (who, of course, left the Tories to become an Ulster Unionist), Farage may be remembered in history not for a phantom civil war he unleashed within his own party, but a real civil war he fought within British conservatism itself — one that he ultimately lost, but not before a phenomenal effort, and several memorable lunches.
Amol Rajan is editor of the Independent. He Tweets at @amolrajan.
ATHENS — The headlines predicted a panic but there was no sign of it Friday in the streets of the Greek capital.
Comments from a European Central Bank Governing Board member leaked Thursday in the international press suggested that a recent increase in cash withdrawals from Greek banks — almost €40 billion since January — would spike into a full-fledged run after Athens and its creditors reached an impasse in negotiations aimed at avoiding a default and exit from the euro.
Those talks have now been kicked upstairs to an emergency meeting of European Union leaders Monday in Brussels.
But despite the headlines hanging in the kiosks declaring “Last Chance for Deal,” “Knife at our Throat,” and “SOS Greece” in Athens Friday, there was no sign of a run on deposits.
Ordinary Greeks seemed to heed the words of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who on Friday reassured the world that anyone “betting on crisis and terror scenarios will be proven wrong.”
Athens small-business owner Dimitris, 38, was representative of the mood. “I just don’t believe there can be a ‘proper’ default,” he said. “It would entail too much money lost on both sides and instability that goes well beyond finances. At least that’s what I think.”
There were no queues outside banks, the shopping district of Ermou was buzzing and the tourist season was in full swing. Under the midday sun, downtown Athens was crawling with TV crews from around the world filming outside banks, but there was little to no action in the background.
“Some analysts have been surprised that there has not been an even more dramatic flight” of deposits, said Nick Malkoutzis, editor of the non-partisan economic analysis website MacroPolis. “I think this is probably down to the fact that some Greeks have become immune to the fears of a Grexit, having been bombarded with such headlines for the last five years. It’s also the case that a lot of Greeks have little or nothing left in their accounts and cannot be panicked into acting.”
Surprisingly, there have also been spikes in personal consumption, with the sales of new cars for instance, up by as much as 10 percent in the past few months, probably explained by people putting their newly withdrawn money in more stable assets.
The only signs betraying public nervousness were two consecutive demonstrations outside the Greek parliament on Wednesday and Thursday: one asking the government to not betray the people by imposing more austerity; the other to make sure Greece stays in the euro. Both were civilized affairs, unlike the spectacular clashes between demonstrators and the police that Athens has seen in previous years.
Greece appears to be holding its breath until the special EU summit Monday, a meeting that looks likely to be the decisive moment in the six-month ordeal that has been the negotiations between Greece and its creditors.
Tsipras, the left-wing prime minister who is often seen as the conciliatory voice between Greek ministers and the trio of lenders, said he’s positive that “there will be a solution based on respecting EU rules and democracy which would allow Greece to return to growth in the euro.”
Another week in what has seemed a repetitive cycle of talks and headlines that mean little for the lives of ordinary people came to an end with yet another crisis meeting to look forward to. The governing Syriza party now says Monday’s summit is “exactly what they wanted.”
Failed 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton would like nothing better than to hug Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex and comfort her over the way the Royal has featured in the U.K. media.
During an interview with the BBC on Tuesday, Clinton took local media to task for what she decried as unfair coverage of the former Suits actress.
Clinton also said “race was clearly an element” in some of the comments Meghan has received on social media.
“To think that some of your — what we would call mainstream — media actually allowed that to be printed in their pages, or amplified, was heartbreaking and wrong,” Clinton said in the joint interview on BBC Radio 5 Live alongside her daughter Chelsea. “I feel as a mother I just want to put my arms around her.
“Oh my God, I want to hug her. I want to tell her to hang in there, don’t let those bad guys get you down, keep going, do what you think is right.”
The former first lady was full of praise for the Duchess, who she called “an amazing young woman.”
“She has stood up for herself, she has made her own way in the world,” said Clinton. “And then she falls in love, and he falls in love with her, and everybody should be celebrating that because it is a true love story.”
Meghan publicly revealed her difficulties with the British press in the recent ITV documentary Harry & Meghan: An African Journey, where she opened up about her struggle to cope in the public life she chose with Prince Harry.
“I never thought that this would be easy, but I thought it would be fair,” she told ITV News anchor Tom Bradby. “That’s the part that’s really hard to reconcile.”
Prince Harry and Meghan will take baby Archie to California next week, where the seventh-in-line to the throne will spend the Thanksgiving holiday with the American side of his family.
Los Angeles-born Markle will be just in time for November 28 when she and the family will celebrate with the former actress’ yoga instructor mother Doria Ragland.
After that the “exhausted” pair will be taking a full six-week break from Royal duties before returning in the New Year.
Follow Simon Kent on Twitter: Follow @SunSimonKent or e-mail to: [email protected]
The EU is skeptical of countries keeping older plants online out of fear of possible blackouts.
The European Commission expressed a strong concern about national energy subsidy schemes Wednesday — arrangements aimed at keeping some generating plants, often older and more polluting ones, on standby in case of blackouts.
The Commission is leaving the door to so-called capacity mechanisms partly open — for now. In the internal energy market consultation it released Wednesday, Brussels acknowledged that these schemes “might be warranted under certain circumstances,” but said they could be costly and distort the market.
Instead, they should be used as a last resort to address real market failures. EU-wide rules on regional, rather than national, mechanisms that do not favor certain technologies over others could be the answer, the consultation says.
“Our worst fear is that each single member develops its own scheme,” Climate Action and Energy Commissioner Miguel Arias Cañete said in a briefing.
The subsidy programs are an unintended side effect of the EU’s quest for a greener, more diversified and free-flowing energy market, which has led to a massive increase in renewable but not always reliable power generated by the wind and sun.
To the Commission, capacity mechanisms raise illegal state aid flags. To member states, particularly in fossil fuel-dependent Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans and disconnected islands such as the U.K. and Ireland, they are key to protecting their electricity supply from big demand peaks or supply dips.
Several countries have already started going it alone on support schemes, developing varied ways of making sure there’s electricity on tap when renewables falter or imports are disrupted. Germany did so just weeks ago, agreeing to pay older lignite-fired power plants to go into a capacity reserve, until they are gradually shut down between now and 2020.
While the U.K. secured the EU’s green light for its capacity market last year, others have forged ahead without paying attention to bloc guidelines. This has raised suspicion in Brussels, prompting Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager to launch an investigation in April into whether capacity markets distort competition or create trade barriers. The probe is starting with 11 countries.
“[Vestager’s] inquiry came as a bit of a surprise,” said Wim Vandenberghe, an energy and antitrust lawyer at Dechert LLP, noting that the Commission had already published guidelines on capacity markets in 2014, as well as approving the U.K.’s scheme.
“At the same time, I think the reason for launching it is that the EU realizes a lot of national governments are putting these capacity markets in place without always following the guidelines. They’re going about it in a national way, it’s a very national prerogative,” he said.
The dream of an energy union
The internal market design consultation is one of four major measures the Commission released Wednesday in its summer package, and all four are geared towards achieving the overarching goal of the energy union — de-carbonizing the EU’s energy supply and breaking down national barriers.
“It is no coincidence that our proposals have been packaged together,” Arias Cañete said. “Each of the four measures will help us meet our climate and energy targets for 2020 and beyond.”
The internal market design paper lays out the Commission’s vision for adapting the electricity market to a world in which renewables play a far bigger role, based on expectations that they will supply 50 percent of Europe’s power by 2030. This requires decentralized power grids that connect large numbers of small, dispersed renewable generators such as solar and wind farms, as opposed to older grids centralized around fewer big fossil fuel plants.
Another part of the summer package is a series of proposals to significantly reform the EU’s flawed Emissions Trading Scheme, which is supposed to use market mechanisms to get utilities and industries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The other two parts are designed to empower consumers. Energy labeling rules will provide more useful information on the energy hunger of electronics and appliances like televisions and refrigerators. A New Deal for Consumers, which Arias Cañete described as “a plan to move from market-led consumers to consumer-led markets,” is aimed at giving customers more information and choice in energy purchases.
Nationalism vs. Unionism
Commission officials have often said the hardest part in implementing the energy union is convincing member states to open their borders. Energy supply is so critical to national security that countries are often reluctant to rely on neighbors for backup.
It is this fear that drives capacity support schemes, even though some believe they fundamentally clash with the goals of both the energy union and the EU’s internal market.
In a market that already has an oversupply of electricity, thanks to new renewables driven by the EU’s binding 2020 targets, government subsides serve to keep the most expensive generators, namely nuclear and fossil fuel-fired plants, afloat with “artificial payments,” said Luxembourg MEP Claude Turmes, the Green Party’s energy spokesman.
“What should happen in the market is low power prices should lead to a gradual kicking out or phasing of the oldest, most inefficient power plants that would gradually clear the market of the overcapacity,” he said. “The Commission should say a clear ‘no’ to capacity payments at the national level, and there is no reason for regional capacity markets either.”
But to get rid of national capacity mechanisms, the EU would have to become a true single energy market, with electricity easily flowing wherever on the continent it is needed.
As well as countries dependent on imports, it is the member states on the periphery of the continent, such as the U.K., Ireland and Malta, that are most in need of backup capacity reserves, said U.K. MEP Ian Duncan, energy spokesman for the European Conservatives and Reformists. And for them to benefit from non-national capacity markets, these countries will need more interconnectors to link the power grids of different countries.
“Capacity markets at the moment can’t function without interconnections, so we need to look at how we create a capacity market that can ensure constant flow from intermittent sources of electricity,” Duncan said.
Blues boss Frank Lampard has confirmed that his top goalscorer is nursing a niggling knock, while an American forward remains stuck on the sidelines
Tammy Abraham has joined Christian Pulisic and N’Golo Kante on the treatment table at Chelsea, with Frank Lampard confirming that a niggling ankle complaint will rule the striker out of his immediate plans.
The Blues are preparing for a Premier League clash with Bournemouth on Saturday and Abraham, who saw 29 minutes off the bench in a midweek 3-0 Champions League defeat to Bayern Munich, will play no part against the Cherries.
The England international, who has 15 goals to his name this season, has joined those stuck on the sidelines after aggravating a previous problem in a warm down at Stamford Bridge.
More teams
Lampard told reporters when offering a fitness update: “Pulisic is injured. Kante injured, Abraham injured. We are trying to find a solution with Tammy. It’s the same.
“At the moment he is not doing anything active for a couple of days. But we don’t know the length.”
While Abraham has been in and out of the side over recent weeks, United States international Pulisic has not been seen since New Year’s Day.
Lampard added on the 21-year-old, who has an adductor injury: “It has been longer. It was to be a lot less. But I had a similar injury when I was a player, so I can sympathise. I know it can be a delicate injury.
“The way he was playing, the hot patch, the ability to go past players.”
One man who is back in contention after spending a long time out of action is Ruben Loftus-Cheek.
Lampard said of the highly-rated midfielder, who is looking for his first competitive minutes of the season: “Ruben is in the squad again. It would mean a lot for him. It is a lonely place to be injured. With the ability that he has got he is one of the most exciting English midfield players.”
Chelsea will face Bournemouth at the Vitality Stadium looking to cement their standing inside the Premier League’s top four.
They are only three points clear of the chasing pack at present and need to raise their spirits after suffering a morale-sapping reversal against Bayern.
Lampard added on a thrilling battle for Champions League qualification: “When you look around and the form of [Manchester] United, a strong unit and spent well last summer, similar with Tottenham and you can’t write off Arsenal.
“Wolves and Sheffield United, you have to respect them, they are good teams. We have a fight on. Anyone who is in range has a chance.”
Commission Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič plans a journey across the EU to sell the idea that energy is best done together.
EU countries jealously guard their national sovereignty when it comes to national energy policies, but that isn’t stopping the Commission’s energy chief Maroš Šefčovič from embarking on a road show this week to push the Commission’s flagship energy union project.
The tour starts Wednesday in The Netherlands, where the Commission vice president will discuss the state of energy and climate policy with Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Economic Affairs Minister Henk Kamp.
But Šefčovič doesn’t want to leave the impression that Commission is venturing too far into member state territory, saying that the energy union “cannot and shouldn’t be imposed from Brussels.”
“The Commission made the first analysis for each member state, of the strengths and weaknesses of their energy system and of the new opportunities the energy union can bring,” Šefčovič said at a briefing this week.
There’s much that needs to be done if the bloc wants a functioning energy union, with Šefčovič saying that several of the obstacles are “country specific.”
EU members still have to improve energy efficiency, increase the number of cross-border interconnectors linking electricity and natural gas networks and boost regional cooperation. “We have quite a few interconnectors which are planned, for which financing is ready and still they don’t take off,” Šefčovič complained.
The countries on Šefčovič’s tour will get questions like: “Do you agree with our analysis? Are all the statistics and figures correct? What is your level of ambition? How do you want to transform your energy system?”
Member states will also have an opportunity to add elements or fine-tune data in the Commission’s country-specific analysis, Šefčovič said.
Based on responses, the Commission will prepare recommendations on how each country’s climate and energy plans should look, and whether national plans are compatible with EU goals. The coming months will also feed into the first state of the energy union report to be published in the fall.
“It should become a powerful annual tool to monitor progress and to see each year where we stand at the European, regional and national level,” said Šefčovič.
The Commission is also looking to clean up its reporting obligations, which according to an EU official “is something of a mess.” Part of the new governance system Šefčovič will be selling to EU member states is to combine reporting obligations under one national energy and climate plan to come out every two years probably, starting late 2016 or early 2017.
“Rationalizing our requirements shouldn’t weaken monitoring,” the EU official said.
The tour will not only bring Šefčovič face to face with member states’ political leaders, but also national parliaments and civil society. And before taking off, he stopped at the European Parliament in Strasbourg to give MEPs a run-down of his plans.
“Without clear checks, controls, monitoring, positive encouragement we would never achieve the results,” he said, adding that the Commission was fully aware that it is starting something new. “We are working in the area, which for many years was perceived as the area of national sovereignty despite the fact that … when it comes to energy since the Lisbon Treaty it’s a shared competence and so we clearly need to work together and cooperate.”
But convincing EU countries to sign up to the Commission’s ambitions will be a challenge.
“I am afraid you need a lot of magic and mystery to convince 28 member states that … we sincerely need this single energy union in order to stay competitive,” said Dutch Liberal MEP Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy. “In each member state we see strong reluctance to give away sovereignty to Brussels.”
Šefčovič doesn’t disagree, saying that convincing members to a common European approach “will not be easy,” but that the tour could actually end up building support for the project.