Despite U.S. sanctions, oil traders help Russian oil reach global markets


April 22, 2022
JULIA SIMON


Activists demonstrate in front of a ship carrying Russian oil in the Baltic Sea this spring. The U.S. has imposed sanctions on Russian oil. However, most countries have not, and refineries around the world still import Russian oil.Frank Molter/dpa/picture alliance via Getty Images

Since the U.S. imposed sanctions in March, American refineries have stopped welcoming tanker ships laden with Russian oil. But Russian crude exports to other parts of the world have been increasing.

The American sanctions aim to cut the hard-currency revenues that feed the Russian economy and its war effort: 36% of Russian federal budget revenues came from oil and gas last year, according to Russia's Finance Ministry. But while the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Australia have formal embargoes, most countries around the world don't, and oil refineries from India to Spain are still purchasing Russian crude.

A drop-off in Russian oil exports was minimal and has strongly rebounded in April, despite fears of supply shortages driving recent high oil prices, says Matt Smith, lead oil analyst at Kpler, a data analytics firm. Russia has earned more than $12 billion from oil exports since its invasion of Ukraine, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, an international research group. A month into the U.S.-led sanctions, the flow of Russian petroleum to the world, as well as the revenues from it, remains strong.

Much of this oil trade is facilitated by a highly efficient and sometimes controversial group of middlemen: oil trading firms. Oil traders act as global matchmakers between the countries and companies that pump oil and the refineries that process crude into gasoline and other fuels.

"We're merchants," says Saad Rahim, chief economist of Trafigura, a commodity trading firm that handles about 7 million barrels of oil and products a day. "In a sense, it's the oldest business in the world."

Trafigura is one of a handful of companies in Switzerland that handles about a quarter of the world's oil each day. For decades, these firms have sourced much of their oil from Russia. About 80% of Russian commodities are traded in Switzerland, according to a 2021 report from the Swiss Embassy in Moscow. Some oil traders also have stakes in Russia's state oil company and its assets, including in a megaproject in an environmentally fragile part of the Russian Arctic.

In the weeks following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, many trading firms have said they are reviewing their holdings in Russia. Yet traders continue to facilitate the flow of Russian oil and, last month, even increased their Russian oil trading activity, says Oliver Classen, spokesperson for Public Eye, a commodity trading watchdog group in Switzerland.

"We're just looking at data that suggests that key traders working out of Switzerland have significantly stepped up their activities in the war month of March," Classen says.

Some of the trading firms that handle the most Russian oil say they're legally bound to fulfill preexisting contracts to lift Russian crude and are complying with all sanctions. Trafigura and the commodity trading firm Gunvor tell NPR that they condemn the war in Ukraine. Another trader, Glencore, directed NPR to its website, where it also condemns the war. The firm Vitol announced last week that it would stop trading Russian oil by the end of this year.

But for now, the traders' continued loadings have big implications for Russia's ability to wage war in Ukraine, says Alexandra Gillies, an adviser at the Natural Resource Governance Institute, an organization focused on extractive industries.

"In this situation," Gillies says, "they're offering a financial lifeline to Vladimir Putin and his government."

March was busy for traders loading Russian crude

The International Energy Agency has predicted that starting this month, global markets could lose as much as 3 million barrels a day of Russian oil because of sanctions and skittish buyers. The European Union says it is considering oil sanctions. But with the current limited sanctions led by the U.S. in place, oil traders in London and Geneva tell NPR that while some Russian crude is getting rerouted, so far the majority of cargoes are making their way to market.

Traders manage a complex global web of oil, says Giacomo Luciani, an energy economist and professor at the Paris Institute of Political Studies, or Sciences Po. "They're middlemen, so their job consists in matching the most appropriate crude with the most appropriate refinery," he says. Crude oil varies based on qualities such as weight and sulfur content. "It's like wine. Each crude oil is different."

Across the supply chain, traders are valued for their logistical know-how. "They do not own tankers, but they know where the tankers are, they know how to rent a tanker," Luciani says.

Since the invasion of Ukraine, these trading companies have been putting their know-how to work to help keep oil flowing out of Russia. A recent report from Reuters using shipping data shows that March was Trafigura's busiest month of loading cargoes of Russian oil since June 2021. Vitol maintained about the same level of Russian cargoes in March as it did in January and February, and both these companies are still lining up tankers to lift Russian oil this month and next, according to Reuters.

Rahim, of Trafigura, says because the traders aren't sending Russian oil to the U.S. or other countries that have sanctioned Russian oil, their business is legal. "The barrels are not sanctioned that any of the trading houses are touching today," Rahim says. "We have to ensure that that flow continues."
Commodity traders have a checkered history

For decades, the commodity traders in Switzerland have been deeply intertwined with Russia, Luciani says.

Gunvor was co-founded by Putin ally Gennady Timchenko. He sold his Gunvor shares in 2014, just before the U.S. placed sanctions on him following Russia's invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea. Gunvor has a minority, noncontrolling stake in an oil products terminal on the Baltic Sea. A Gunvor spokesperson said in an email to NPR, "The terminal is being reviewed for divestiture."

Vitol and Trafigura each have minority stakes in state oil producer Rosneft's Vostok Oil project in the Russian Arctic. Both companies have announced that they are reviewing their stakes.

Glencore, which owns a small stake in Rosneft as well as a part of a Russian state aluminum project, says on its website that "there is no realistic way to exit these stakes in the current environment."

Litasco, a Swiss oil trading company owned by Russian state oil company Lukoil, and Petraco, a Swiss trader that also has contracts for Russian production, did not reply to requests for comment.

Indian refiner Bharat Petroleum Corp. has bought millions of barrels of Russian oil through Trafigura since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, according to Reuters. Trafigura is among several traders that handle about a quarter of the world's oil daily.Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg via Getty Images

But the traders' ties to Putin's Russia only add to persistent ethical questions that have long haunted the industry, going back to the so-called godfather of oil trading, Marc Rich. Rich, the founder of Glencore, was a notorious sanctions-buster, trading oil with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's Iran and apartheid South Africa. He was indicted in the 1980s for tax evasion, wire fraud and other crimes, and he fled to Switzerland.

In recent years, commodity trading companies have faced renewed scrutiny for their oil deals. In 2020, Vitol admitted to paying billions of dollars in bribes for oil contracts in Brazil, Ecuador and Mexico, and it paid over $135 million to resolve a U.S. Justice Department probe. In 2019, Swiss courts found Gunvor criminally liable for bribery in oil deals in the Republic of Congo and Ivory Coast. Glencore is currently involved in corruption probes in the U.S., the U.K. and Brazil, and it has set aside $1.5 billion for settlements this year for what its chief executive has described as historic misconduct. Brazilian authorities have named Trafigura in investigations into oil deals, but the company denies the allegations.

Rahim says new transparency measures around payments to foreign governments and a move away from agents have changed the culture of the trading industry: "People probably who were in this industry even in the early 2000s would probably not recognize kind of how it is today."

As for the current limited sanctions on Russian oil, Rahim says trading firms are constantly monitoring new regulations to figure out what is allowable. "Across the physical trading houses, I'll tell you that probably the busiest people at those companies are the people in compliance right now," he says.
"A duty of care"

For oil traders, Russia is a key, and not easily replaceable, source in global energy markets. At the recent FT Commodities Global Summit in Lausanne, Switzerland, CEOs of Vitol and Gunvor said that Russia supplies about half of Europe's diesel. Europe now faces diesel shortages, and Rahim says if trading firms were to suddenly stop handling Russian barrels, there would be many more energy shortages all around the world. "We have sort of a, almost a duty of care to make sure that the system maintains itself," he says.

In late March, the economic adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote a letter to the heads of Vitol, Trafigura, Glencore and Gunvor. According to the Financial Times, which first reported the letter, Oleg Ustenko asked the companies to stop trading Russian energy products, which are financing Putin's invasion.

For the trading companies, it is getting harder to find ships willing to pick up cargoes of Russian crude and find banks to provide letters of credit. But while Vitol has announced its plans to stop trading Russian oil by the end of the year, for now it and other key traders are continuing to operate in Russian ports. A Trafigura spokesperson told NPR that the company expects to load lower volumes after May 15. Trading arms of international oil companies like Shell and TotalEnergies also still have long-term contracts to lift Russian oil.

Gillies, of the Natural Resource Governance Institute, says leaving the oil traders to make their own decisions about pulling out of Russia is a mistake. "Commodity traders for years have shown a willingness to do business with almost everybody," Gillies says. "And so it's not an ideal situation to have these commodity trading companies making those policy decisions about whether they should be continuing to buy Russian oil or not."

"These are some of the most economically important transactions to the Russian state right now," she adds, "so any steps to make those transactions more difficult, I think, is really important."

The intersectionality of 'Afro-feminisms' with professor Rama Salla Dieng

Issued on: 22/04/2022 - 

06:50 PERSPECTIVE 

© FRANCE 24
By:Erin Ogunkeye

It's a controversial question, especially in France: do feminist, anti-racist and LGBTQ+ movements fall under the general scope of universalism? Or should they be broken down into smaller sub-movements to better address the intersectional nature of oppression? In her latest book "African Feminisms", University of Edinburgh professor Rama Salla Dieng considers what it means to be a feminist specifically in Africa, through a series of interviews with activists across the continent. She joined us for Perspective.

How France’s Mainstream Normalized the Far Right

Marine Le Pen is often credited with mainstreaming her far-right party. But it isn’t just that she’s moderated its positions — it’s that the radicalization of establishment conservatives has made her seem less extreme by comparison.
Marine Le Pen waves to her supporters at the end of her electoral campaign rally on April 14, 2022 in Avignon, France. (Chesnot / Getty Images)

BY THÉO AIOLFI

JACOBIN

04.22.2022

The first round of France’s presidential elections cleared the dust of an intense campaign: ultimately, as the polls had promised for years, Emmanuel Macron will again face Marine Le Pen in this Sunday’s runoff vote. As in 2017, the first round produced a close race, with the radical left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon less than 1 percent behind his far-right rival Le Pen. But even a surprise breakthrough for Mélenchon would not have concealed a major development: never has the far right been so electorally powerful in France. Beyond the conflict between the rival strategies of Le Pen and Éric Zemmour, discussed previously at Jacobin, this mainstreaming of far-right forces also owes to a radicalization of the wider political field.

In this article, I will start by discussing the radicalization of the mainstream-conservative Les Républicains (LR). One of postwar France’s two main parties, its base is today divided between Macron and the far right. Here, I will explain how successive French governments, particularly since Nicolas Sarkozy’s presidency from 2007–12, have enabled and contributed to a mainstreaming of such forces’ ideology. In this sense, we can also see that Le Pen and Zemmour’s rival strategies and candidacies are also complementary. While competition may undermine their short-term chances, it benefits the spread of far-right ideas in the long run.

Bankrupt

While Zemmour’s campaign initially weakened Le Pen’s hegemony over the far right, the party which suffered the most from his bid was undoubtedly LR. Its candidate Valérie Pécresse hit a historic low, on less than 5 percent support — humiliatingly falling short of the threshold for getting her campaign costs reimbursed.

The center-right party, in different guises, the dominant player of the Fifth Republic created in 1958, is now torn in two opposite directions. On the one hand, Macron’s hegemony over the center and his increasingly right-wing policies during his presidency have attracted a substantial share of not only LR voters but also of its key figures. In spite of his promise ahead of the 2017 election to transcend the left/right cleavage, Macron offered the Right the lion’s share of control in his governments by appointing former LR members to the most prominent roles such as prime minister (Édouard Philippe and then Jean Castex), economy minister (Bruno Le Maire), and interior minister (Gérald Darmanin). This has forced LR to shift further to the Right to remain a distinctive political offer, emphasizing its conservatism while progressively abandoning its liberalism.

On the other hand, LR has been forced to reassert its difference with Le Pen’s increasingly normalized Rassemblement National (RN) and to defend the imperviousness of its boundary with the far right. While Le Pen never managed to breach this boundary, Zemmour and his open call for the “union des droites” (union of the right-wings) has shown its fragility.

During the campaign, Zemmour only managed to attract one prominent figure from LR, its former deputy leader Guillaume Peltier. His loss has been played down by his peers given that his political journey started in the youth section of the Front National (FN) and later with former leading cadre Bruno Mégret. But outside of party defections, the influence of far-right ideology can be felt deep within LR, as demonstrated by the success of Éric Ciotti, who led the party’s primary before ultimately being defeated by Pécresse and a coalition of moderates. Ciotti, who explicitly called Zemmour “a friend,” has embraced most of the themes of the far right, from defense of “Christian civilization” to criticism of “mass immigration.” His second place in the primary forced the more centrist Pécresse to shift her program further to the Right to accommodate her popular rival.

Éric Zemmour and Éric Ciotti during the Nice book festival in 2015 . (@ECiotti / Twitter)

From Sarkozy to Macron

While this mainstreaming of the far right is thus the result of years of normalization from the Le Pen camp and of the resilience of the “union of the right-wings” strategy, which Zemmour now embodies, it also owes much to other politicians and parties who have progressively adopted the themes and vocabulary of the far-right. Indeed, since the 1980s, mainstream parties have offered increased visibility to xenophobic rhetoric, either by implicitly acknowledging that the far right offers “bad answers to good questions,” as Socialist prime minister Laurent Fabius put it in 1984, or by explicitly adopting it, like Jacques Chirac did in 1991 as he mocked the “noise and smell” of immigrant families during his tenure as mayor of Paris.

The major turning point in this mainstreaming was, however, Nicolas Sarkozy’s presidency. His 2007 campaign substantially legitimized the far right’s agenda by adopting its hard stance on security and immigration. While it temporarily neutralized the far right’s vote, it set off the conservative right on a slippery slope by giving increased visibility to such forces’ ideology. Sarkozy’s position — promoted by his influential advisor Patrick Buisson, who later joined Zemmour’s team — encouraged the emergence of strands within LR such as “la droite forte” (the strong right) or “la droite décomplexée” (the uninhibited right).

The influence of this hard line within LR has increased over the years, as Sarkozy acquired an aura as a model to aspire to, as the most recent president from his party. Unsurprisingly, in an attempt to ensure the electorate of her “pro-security” credentials, Pécresse’s 2022 campaign spoke of “bringing back the Kärcher” — a reference to Sarkozy’s memorable 2005 promise to “clean the French suburbs with a Kärcher,” referring to a type of pressure washer.

Beyond LR, this mainstreaming of far-right themes has progressed under Socialist and liberal governments. In 2015, the shock of the Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan terror attacks encouraged then-president François Hollande to grant a prominent role to security, patriotism, and identity. This was most visible in the rise of Manuel Valls, a figure on the right of the Socialist Party (PS), nominated as Hollande’s interior minister and later prime minister. He defended a controversial bill whereby terrorist suspects could be stripped of their citizenship (“déchéance de nationalité”), creating a rift in PS ranks as it demonstrated the increasing power of far-right ideas even on the mainstream center-left.Macron’s interior minister made headlines for accusing Le Pen of having grown ‘a little soft on Islam.’

Albeit elected on a promise of calming tensions, Macron followed a similar pattern of mainstreaming the far right with the nomination of Gérald Darmanin, a former protégé of Sarkozy, as interior minister. Darmanin made headlines for accusing Le Pen of having grown “a little soft on Islam” in February 2021, as she conceded that she herself could have written his book called “Le Séparatisme islamiste” (“Islamist separatism”).

It is worth dwelling on the central importance Macron’s government attributed to this fight against Islamic “separatismm,” a euphemistic reinterpretation of the far right concept of “communautarism” which implies that Muslim people voluntarily refuse to be part of the French society and remain secluded within their community. For this also proves that this mainstreaming goes beyond Darmanin alone. Even though Macron himself has carefully avoided employing far-right rhetoric, the members of his government have not.

In March 2021, higher education minister Frédérique Vidal accused French academia of being “plagued by Islamo-Leftism,” a far-right conspiratorial term alleging that left-wing intellectuals and politicians are complacent about radical Islam. In January 2022, this argument was pushed even further by Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer, who organized a pseudo-academic colloquium on “wokisme.” This bogeyman “ideology,” which originated in far-right circles, conflates a heterogeneous set of phenomena and concepts — intersectionality, cancel culture, inclusive writing, and gender deconstruction — deemed threatening to French universalism.

Despite his claims that he has never “banalized” its ideas, Macron thus followed in a long line of French politicians who enabled the far right by simultaneously claiming to fight them and legitimizing their talking points. It is useful for Macron to cast himself as the only alternative to fascism: it silences internal debates within his camp and completely sidelines left-wing alternatives from public debate. This led to an incremental rightward shift in the “Overton window” of French politics, with once-unthinkable or taboo ideas becoming acceptable through successive exposure and normalization in the public debate. Understood in this light, the electoral popularity of Le Pen and Zemmour is only the most visible symptom of a much deeper mainstreaming of the far right.

More Similarities Than Differences

In two previous articles, I explored the background and current position of the two most prominent far-right figures in 2022, Le Pen and Zemmour. Contrasting their ideology and style offers multiple lessons about what they stand for and where they differ. Although I have emphasized their differences to develop a nuanced perspective on their current success, it is important to reassert how much overlap there is between them, both ideologically and stylistically.

Ideologically, even though Le Pen softened her stance and introduced a number of social policies to her agenda, both politicians remain deeply committed to the core tenets of exclusionary nationalism: the primacy of the interests of the French nation over everything else, a closed definition of who belongs to the nation (even if Le Pen shifted more toward cultural criteria than Zemmour, whose vision is explicitly ethnic), a promise to drastically limit immigration, the strengthening of the privileges of French citizens over their foreign counterparts, a tough stance on security issues, and a commitment to a form of economic protectionism.Macron followed in a long line of French politicians who enabled the far right by simultaneously claiming to fight them and legitimizing their talking points.

Stylistically, the three core features of the populist style explained in the previous articles helps illuminate the differences and similarities between the two candidates. In this academic approach, grounded in the works of Ernesto Laclau and Benjamin Moffitt, populism is understood as a political style, an open-ended repertoire of political performances relying on three main elements: 1) the articulation of politics as an antagonism between “the people,” embodied by a populist leader, and the elite; 2) the transgression of political norms to appear more authentic and subversive than other politicians; 3) the performative representation of society as undergoing a life-threatening crisis that requires urgent intervention.

Despite the different emphases that each of these three features has in their respective ways of doing politics, both Zemmour and Le Pen relied on all of them during their 2022 campaign. Indeed, it was noteworthy to see Zemmour introducing the people/elite antagonism to his rhetoric during his first campaign rally in Villepinte, where he directly mentioned the French people eighteen times and framed it in opposition with “the elite,” “the system,” and even an elusive “they,” mentioned fifty-two times, that “hate [Zemmour] because they hate you.”

Likewise, although Zemmour’s controversial claims made Le Pen’s own transgressions appear tame in comparison, she continued to break various political norms. In her first large rally in Reims, she used a highly emotional storytelling approach, depicting herself as the victim of “persecution” in her youth and as a resilient fighter. This appeal to the emotions — emphasizing how she had been betrayed by her niece Marion Maréchal and fellow party members who rallied to Zemmour — sought to provide her persona a more “authentic” twist. Moreover, her occasional use of informal expressions, as she did in a recent televised interview, demonstrates the development of a softer transgressive strategy; one which relies on Zemmour’s controversies to doing the symbolic heavy lifting, while she still stands out from other mainstream politicians.

From Rivalry to Complementarity

So, ultimately, Le Pen and Zemmour are playing the very same political game slightly differently. Outside of the short-term rivalry opposing them for this election — apparently a sign of divisions on the far right — they ultimately occupy complementary roles in popularizing its ideas, strengthening their camp in the long run.

The results of the first round saw Le Pen strengthened, asserting her dominance over Zemmour (23 and 7 percent, respectively). Their diverging scores partly owed to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which tremendously increased the importance of foreign affairs to the campaign. While both were initially weakened by their more (Zemmour) or less (Le Pen) open support for Vladimir Putin’s autocratic presidency, they radically differed in their reaction to the situation.

Faithful to his reputation as an unwavering ideologue, Zemmour chose to remain committed to some of his praise for Putin and played down the Russian aggression. Le Pen was pragmatic, and gave a much more explicit condemnation of the Russian invasion, while sweeping under the rug her reliance on Russian funding for her 2017 campaign. Moreover, where Zemmour made the safe bet on the tried-and-tested themes of security and immigration, Le Pen wisely chose to diversify her profile by emphasizing her image as the candidate that will defend French people from increases in the cost of living.

But regardless of their relative fortunes, the fact that a far-right candidate once again reached the second round illustrates this political camp’s powerful electoral appeal. More than that, the far right’s real victory lies in its ability to have shaped the political agenda so profoundly. Although economic issues and foreign affairs imposed themselves, far-right themes of identity, security, and immigration have held an increasingly prominent role during this campaign, which forced other candidates to take a stand on these issues. Even in a period marked by urgent crises around the environment, economic inequality and public health, these themes have struggled to shape the political debate, faced with the dominance of the far-right narrative that the most urgent crisis France faces owes to immigration and the loss of sovereignty.

Equally telling was the fact that their political rivals explicitly used their concepts: Pécresse herself repeatedly mentioned the conspiracy theory of the “Great Replacement” and the notion of “Français de papier” (“paper French”) in her speeches. Even Macron himself increasingly shifted to the Right for his program — so much so that LR accused him of plagiarism — which shows the limits of attempting to sell a centrist program in a context of right-wing dominance. Electorally speaking, the divide between Le Pen’s “front populaire populiste” and Zemmour’s “union of the right-wings” are not so much opposed as complementary. In its own way, each of these strategies consolidates and extends the appeal of far-right ideas toward a different part of the electorate.Although economic issues and foreign affairs imposed themselves, far-right themes of identity, security, and immigration have held an increasingly prominent role during this campaign.

This is notably reflected geographically when considering the two main strongholds of the far right in France. On the one hand, many locations in the South of France support the traditionalist line embodied by Zemmour which aims to convince the bourgeois electorate of the conservative LR to join them on the promise of a stricter stance on security and Islam. On the other hand, Le Pen’s modernist line has proven most successful in the North-East of France and in some of the overseas territories, like Mayotte, where her appeal to working-class voters disappointed by the Socialist Party is grounded in a hybrid combination of social policies and a firm opposition to immigration.

While large cities remain the biggest hurdle for either line within the far right, this heterogenous combination of voters demonstrates the increasingly solid entrenchment of their ideas. As such, these combined forces constitute not only a challenge to the old mainstream parties, but also to the emerging challengers in French politics like Macron’s liberal La République en Marche or radical left parties like Mélenchon’s France Insoumise.

The main lesson of this campaign for those fighting for progressive, ecological, and socialist causes, is that its far-right enemies are no monolithic whole. Just like every other political camp, the far rght is a complex ecosystem with conflicting yet overlapping interests. It is essential to understand the current power dynamic in order to adjust responses and counterstrategies to whatever line currently holds more traction. Furthermore, to get a holistic perspective of the far right’s appeal, it is important to engage not only with what they say, but also how they say it. Ideology and style matter in politics — and we only get half of the story if either of these things is overlooked. Likewise, a successful counterstrategy must learn from both of these components and consider the form as well as the substance of its political offer.

Yet, even such a nuanced approach also has to contextualize actors like Le Pen and Zemmour within the wider developments in French politics. Situating them as part of a broader mainstreaming of their ideas helps understand that one cannot defeat the far-right electorally by emulating their ideas or letting its representatives dictate the political agenda. Even short-term electoral victories like the ones achieved by Sarkozy or Macron become long-term losses, as the political field is incrementally pushed to the Right, forcing politicians to constantly readjust their rhetoric accordingly.

If the Left wants to challenge the far right’s cultural hegemony in French public discourse, it needs to develop a relatable and engaging narrative of its own — and consider how it articulates it.

Théo Aiolfi is a political scientist and Early Career Fellow at the University of Warwick, England.

A divided France votes amid a 'shift to the right'

Has freedom disappeared in France? Romy Strassenburg thinks so. As Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen face off for the role of president, the journalist explains why she's scared — and why others aren't fearful enough.

Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen are the 2022 finalists for French president

DW: You wrote a book entitled "Adieu liberte — How my France disappeared." What was "your" France like?

Romy Strassenburg: Like many young Germans, especially women, I had illusions of what France was all about. I thought it was the land of freedom and "savoir vivre" [the idea of knowing how to enjoy life: Eds.], something I always missed a bit in Germany. Once I started living here, I saw this France disappear very quickly. Or rather, I realized that, on the one hand, it is an illusion. It is a society that functions much more hierarchically than what I knew from Germany. On the other hand, it was a time when freedom disappeared in a very real way. And the 2015 attacks magnified that; it was a very different France. It was only then that I realized how little freedom I actually had here, not least because of my work at Charlie Hebdo. On the other hand, freedom has also disappeared with the increasingly repressive and neoliberal policies that have imposed more and more restrictions.

Incumbent Emmanuel Macron and challenger Marine Le Pen are the two finalists in France's 2022 presidential election

What is currently dividing France?

The gap is extremely wide. Some people really have to figure out how they'll fill their refrigerator at the end of the month. I always like to use the example of the Nutella jar: In 2018, large supermarkets in the countryside had Nutella on sale, and people snapped up the jars. There were videos on social media, and people made fun of the customers, saying, oh God, they eat such unhealthy stuff and they're throwing themselves at the discounts! That's what they were saying in Paris.

However, in interviews, people told my colleagues that for their children, Nutella is a luxury product — the rest of the year, their kids would get substitute spreads. This simple example shows the divide: While some people in Paris judge certain parts of the population, many of them have to count every last cent. Add to that the fact that energy prices are rising very significantly and widening the gap even more.

"There's a real danger Le Pen will make it," says Romy Strassenburg, writer and journalist

What particular fears are currently influencing the presidential election?

I could say it's fear of Marine Le Pen. That would be nice, but unfortunately that's not the case. There is a real danger that she will make it. And the real fear is that people won't get up out of their armchairs to vote against her. For a while, fear of the war in Ukraine was very present. Then everyone once again thought Macron was great because he was the only one you can sort of imagine at international meetings and negotiations. Who wants to see Zemmour [a far-right candidate eliminated in the first round: Eds.] or Le Pen at a summit like that? Who wants her to negotiate with Putin? Few!

Fear of the war in Ukraine and fear of declining purchasing power influenced the election. Now, between the two election rounds, you might think people are afraid of Marine Le Pen becoming president. But unfortunately, the fear isn't so great that I can count on her not making it, as was the case five years ago.

Why has culture played a very minor role in this election campaign, even in the election programs?

Unfortunately, issues like the welfare state, ecology and climate change — which we really should have addressed and which the French listed as priorities in surveys — were hardly addressed in the election programs. As far as I am concerned, that includes culture, too, because the energy transition, for instance, presupposes a certain cultural disposition for such change to happen. People need to want a different social and economic model.

As a writer or musician, you also have to ask yourself, how far out on a limb do I go? What is my role, my task in society? ... I think many artists and performers face the dilemma of "What can I do?" ... My impression is, however, that the artist who opens his mouth and says something has somehow fallen by the wayside a bit, in Germany even more than in France.

How can France develop after the election?

Le Pen would of course be the worst-case scenario. She wants to renegotiate the European treaties, wants more sovereignty. I also don't have much hope when it comes to the Ukraine war ... Let's assume Macron remains in office: The huge success and the presence of the two extreme right-wing candidates and the Republican Valerie Precresse [the candidate of the center-right party: Eds] have changed the political culture in the country. The shift to the right has basically happened.

Romy Strassenburg's book 'Adieu liberte' was published in 2019

Now the question is, how do we manage to counteract this in the next five years? Will the left manage to influence politics and culture, for instance by being strong in the parliamentary elections in June? Everywhere the left has a say, there's more money for culture. There are other books in the libraries, there are other events, there are other people performing in theaters. And that's the bottom line. The presidential election is one thing, but in the end, it's also about who is active and committed locally.

What role do the voters of the eliminated leftist candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon play in the second round of the elections?

Jean-Luc Melenchon was in a stronger position in this election after the first round than he was in 2017. He has said, "Don't vote for the far right!" True, Melenchon did not say, "Vote Macron." But many feared that Melenchon voters now on the left fringe might move to the right fringe. So Melenchon's call might not be such a bad thing.

We're actually already looking ahead to the next election five years down the road; we have already expanded our horizons. Looking at my book "Adieu liberte," if Macron remains in office, I would like him to be so grateful to the voters that he does not restrict freedom even further and instead takes them into consideration.

It is very questionable and dangerous when I, a journalist, am no longer allowed to film a policeman and accompany him on patrol — that is new [a law passed in 2021 restricts capturing images of police: Eds.] Not only female journalists, everyone in civil society whom Macron wanted to draw into his movement has been left out. He has not kept his promise. We can't actually do what we want to do. He has not included women artists and journalists in his project. I'd like to think that the coronavirus crisis and the yellow vests made it difficult, but Macron's record is still devastating in many ways.

The journalist and author Romy Strassenburg won the German-French Journalism Award in 2008 and was editor-in-chief of the German edition of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

This interview has been translated from German.

From Mumbai to Paris, the cities investing in the planet

This Earth Day, we show how city councils and mayors have stepped up to boldly decarbonize in the face of national government inaction

A vision for a green city: Local governments are creating low-emission cities built for people

On this year's Earth Day, governments who "hold the keys to transform and build the green economy" are being summoned to "invest in our planet." Yet so far, national governments signed up to the Paris Climate Agreement have been slow to facilitate low-carbon economies.

Current emission reduction commitments are on track for an increase of nearly 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 F) of global heating above preindustrial levels — double the 1.5 C threshold for a livable planet. Meanwhile, governments continue to subsidize the fossil fuel industry at three times the rate of clean energy, putting far-reaching emissions cuts out of reach.

The failures are complex, ranging from the long-term influence of the fossil fuel lobby on the national stage to the energy crisis fueled by the invasion of Ukraine, which has states looking to boost non-Russian oil and gas supply.

But local, city and regional governments are stepping up in the wake of sluggish national climate action.

"The difference between cities and national governments is the difference between night and day, between delayers and doers," London mayor Sadiq Khan said of commitments to climate action during last year's COP26 climate conference.

From cities such as Copenhagen, which is promising climate neutrality by 2025 — way ahead of the deadline agreed to in Paris in 2015 — to compact and car-free zero-carbon districts, here are four ways municipal authorities are investing in the planet.

Cities For People: How Paris & Barcelona learned urban planning from Groningen

1. Copenhagen: World's first climate-neutral city?

Back in 2012, Copenhagen's government unveiled a 2025 Climate Plan that had the ambitious goal of creating the world's first carbon-neutral city. The Danish capital remains on track to reach net-zero emissions by 2025, a full 25 years before the national government's 2050 net-zero target.

About 66% of city emissions are attributed to energy, and 34% to transport. It plans to make cuts by tackling energy consumption and production, as well as green mobility. The aim is to reduce emissions by 100% compared to 2005 and increase economic growth by near 25% in the same period through greater investment and job creation. In 2020, Copenhagen had only another 20% in cuts to go to reach its goal, with private cars the main source of remaining carbon pollution in the city.

With electricity and heat the biggest source of CO2, Copenhagen's government is replacing coal, oil and gas with renewable energy. Wind, solar and biomass have already taken up much of this slack, but 50% of the reduction will come simply from energy efficiency — the city has installed a smart energy grid to reduce massive waste across housing, retail and production.

In terms of transport, the Copenhagen government wants at least 75% of trips in the city to be taken on foot, bike or public transport by 2025. Internal combustion engine vehicles will be banned in the city by 2030.

Bicycles will dominate the streets in climate-neutral Copenhagen

2. Mumbai: A South Asian climate leader

When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi committed to carbon neutrality by 2070 at COP26, it was seen as a promising step from the world's third-biggest CO2 emitter.

But Mumbai, the country's most-populous city, with well over 20 million people in its metropolitan area, is upping this ambition, promising to achieve net-zero carbon emissions two decades ahead of schedule.

The city's first Climate Action Plan was unveiled in March and was created in collaboration with the US nonprofit the World Resources Institute and global urban climate-action initiative C40 Cities.

Acknowledging the need for climate adaptation in a coastal megacity that is highly vulnerable to heat stress and flooding, the plan also calls for the decarbonization of an energy sector responsible for 72% of total city emissions. With an energy grid nearly wholly powered by coal, Mumbai will ramp up solar power in particular to reach a 50% renewables target by 2050. It will also focus on energy efficiency in buildings that make up most energy emissions.

Transport is another key focus, with plans to electrify Mumbai's extensive urban transport network. For a start, it will put over 2,000 electric buses on the road by 2023.

Mumbai is also establishing a zero-landfill waste management plan and planting urban forests throughout the city to mitigate the near 10% of emissions attributed to waste, especially landfills that spew methane.

3. Paris: The 15-minute city

Carbon emissions can be significantly reduced by eschewing high-emission urban sprawl and creating denser, more compact walkable and bikeable cities.

The idea is embodied in the concept of the 15-minute city, with experiments already taking place in the wake of the pandemic to reduce travel time and enable people to live and work locally, including Melbourne's 20-minute neighborhoods and the Paris 15-minute city.

The 15-minute city was central to Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo's 2020 reelection campaign. The traffic-clogged French capital is installing cycle paths on every street, in part by reclaiming 70% of on-street car parking. The aim is to cut air, noise and carbon pollution as part of Paris' 2050 carbon-neutral target.

By expanding co-working hubs and encouraging use of local shops and playgrounds, the city wants to facilitate "hyperproximity" in Paris neighborhoods whereby residents can access all amenities within a relaxed 15-minute stroll or bicycle ride from home.

4. Climate-friendly communities in Freiburg and Seattle

Though city and regional authorities are often beating national governments on climate action, even more can be done at the micro level of self-developed urban housing cooperatives.

In Seattle, an architecture and urbanism firm, Larch Lab, is focused on decarbonized, low-energy urban buildings and "ecodistricts" based on the German idea of "baugruppen," or building groups — meaning housing cooperatives.

Developed by residents rather than developers, the idea is that these sustainable districts will achieve superior building efficiency by employing net-zero energy Passivhaus building standards, which are expensive up-front but more affordable in the long term.

This dream is already alive back in Germany in the district Vauban, a model eco-neighborhood in the pioneering green city of Freiburg. At the forefront of ambitious climate targets, Freiburg is planning a 60% emissions cut by 2030.

Built on the site of a former French barracks in the late 1990s, about 5,600 inhabitants live on car-free, bicycle and pedestrian-friendly streets featuring brightly-colored Passivhaus buildings with rooftop solar power. A biogas power plant fed with local sewage complements electricity needs.

The zero-emissions town, dubbed the greenest in Europe, was developed by Passivhaus architects and a local community group with strong from a municipal government committed to investing in the planet.


EARTH DAY 2021: RESTORE OUR EARTH
Origins in California oil spill
In 1969, over 3 million gallons (11 million liters) of oil were spilled into the ocean in California following an accident at an offshore drilling platform. Inspired by media attention drawn to the pollution, as well as a growing public interest in green issues, US Senator Gaylord Nelson devised an environmental "teach-in" at college campuses in April 1970. This event became the first Earth Day.
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Edited by: Jennifer Collins

Europe saw hottest summer on record in 2021

Countries were hit with "severe and long-lasting" heat waves last summer, EU scientists have revealed in a new report. Experts believe the conditions contributed to wildfires and deadly flooding across Europe in 2021.

The summer heat wave of 2021 contributed to numerous forest fires in the Mediterranean region, including in Pescara in Italy

The summer of 2021 was the hottest summer Europe has experienced on record, EU scientists reported on Friday.

According to the annual report published by the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), the temperature in Europe was 1 degree Celsius above the 1991-2020 average.

Italy even recorded a provisional heat record for the whole of Europe, hitting 48.8 degrees Celsius (119.8 degrees Fahrenheit) in Sicily last August. A particularly bad heat wave in the Mediterranean helped to ignite severe wildfires in Greece, Turkey, and Italy.

Globally, the last seven years have been the warmest on record, C3S reported in January.

The EU scientific information agency's records date back to 1979, but it also uses records from ground stations, balloons, aircraft and satellites going back to 1950.
Record rains led to disaster in Germany

The climate researchers also took a closer look at the flood disaster that hit Germany in mid-July 2021, which claimed the lives of more than 180 people in the western states of Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia.

Record rains were recorded on July 14, 2021 over Belgium and western Germany. According to the C3S report, the previous weeks had seen extremely heavy rainfall in the region, so the soil was no longer able to absorb sufficient water.

Following heavy rainfall in July 2021, the Ahr River in western Germany burst its banks and flooded entire villages, including Dernau (pictured above)

The report also found that sea surface temperatures last year in parts of the Baltic and Mediterranean Seas were the highest since satellite records began in the early 1990s.

"Parts of the Baltic were 5 C above average, which is quite a lot," said the report's lead author, Freja Vamborg.
World needs to reduce emissions

Scientists believe that the most catastrophic consequences of climate change can only be averted if global warming is limited to a maximum of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times, as countries pledged under the 2015 Paris Agreement.

"We are facing a lot of challenges," said Mauro Facchini, head of the Copernicus Unit at the EU.

According to Facchini, record-breaking temperatures in 2021 and extreme weather made it clear that countries urgently need to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to avoid further warming that would trigger even more destructive weather events.

dh/nm (dpa, Reuters)

EU agrees deal to tame internet 'Wild West'
AFP - Yesterday 

The European Union early Saturday finalised new legislation to require Big Tech to remove harmful content, the bloc's latest move to rein in the world's online giants.

The Digital Services Act (DSA) -- the second part of a massive project to regulate tech companies -- aims to ensure tougher consequences for platforms and websites that host a long list of banned content ranging from hate speech to disinformation and child sexual abuse images.

EU officials and parliamentarians finally reached agreement at talks in Brussels early Saturday on the legislation, which has been in the works since 2020.

"Yes, we have a deal!," European Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton tweeted.

"With the DSA, the time of big online platforms behaving like they are 'too big to care' is coming to an end. A major milestone for EU citizens," said Breton, who has previously described the internet as the "Wild West".

"Today's agreement on DSA is historic," European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen tweeted.

"Our new rules will protect users online, ensure freedom of expression and opportunities for businesses. What is illegal offline will effectively be illegal online in the EU."

The regulation is the companion to the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which targeted anti-competitive practices among tech behemoths such as Google and Facebook and was concluded in late March.

The legislation had faced lobbying from the tech companies and intense debate over the extent of freedom of speech.

Tech giants have been repeatedly called out for failing to police their platforms -- a New Zealand terrorist attack that was live-streamed on Facebook in 2019 caused global outrage, and the chaotic insurrection in the US last year was promoted online.

The dark side of the internet also includes e-commerce platforms filled with counterfeit or defective products.

- Obligations for large platforms -

The regulation will require platforms to swiftly remove illegal content as soon as they are aware of its existence. Social networks would have to suspend users who frequently breach the law.

The DSA will force e-commerce sites to verify the identity of suppliers before proposing their products.

While many of the DSA's stipulations cover all companies, it lays out special obligations for "very large platforms", defined as those with more than 45 million active users in the European Union.

The list of companies has not yet been released but will include giants such as Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft, as well as Twitter and probably the likes of TikTok, Zalando and Booking.com.

These players will be obliged to assess the risks associated with the use of their services and remove illegal content.

They will also be required to be more transparent about their data and algorithms.

The European Commission will oversee yearly audits and be able to impose fines of up to six percent of their annual sales for repeated infringements.

Among the practices expected to be outlawed is the use of data on religion or political views for targeted advertising.

Former Facebook employee Frances Haugen caused a huge stir last year when she accused her former bosses of prioritising profits over the welfare of users.

She hailed in November the "enormous potential" of the European regulation project, which could become a "reference" for other countries, including the United States.

However, the European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) fears the text does not go far enough.

It wants a ban on all advertising based on the surveillance of internet users, and random checks on online vendors' products.

aro/mad/lth/mtp/leg

E.U. Takes Aim at Social Media’s Harms With Landmark New Law

The Digital Services Act would force Meta, Google and others to combat misinformation and restrict certain online ads. How European officials will wield it remains to be seen.

Margrethe Vestager and Thierry Breton, top European officials, were among the main policymakers behind the Digital Services Act.

Credit... Thierry Monasse/Getty Images

By Adam Satariano
Adam Satariano, who is based in London, has covered European tech since 2016 and previously reported on Apple and Silicon Valley from San Francisco.

April 22, 2022

The European Union was nearing a deal on Friday on landmark legislation that would force Facebook, YouTube and other internet services to combat misinformation, disclose how their services amplify divisive content and stop targeting online ads based on a person’s ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation.

The law, called the Digital Services Act, is intended to address social media’s societal harms by requiring companies to more aggressively police their platforms for illicit content or risk billions of dollars in fines. Tech companies would be compelled to set up new policies and procedures to remove flagged hate speech, terrorist propaganda and other material defined as illegal by countries within the European Union.

The law aims to end an era of self-regulation in which tech companies set their own policies about what content could stay up or be taken down. It stands out from other regulatory attempts by addressing online speech, an area that is largely off limits in the United States because of First Amendment protections. Google, which owns YouTube, and Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, would face yearly audits for “systemic risks” linked to their businesses, while Amazon would confront new rules to stop the sale of illegal products.

The Digital Services Act is part of a one-two punch by the European Union to address the societal and economic effects of the tech giants. Last month, the 27-nation bloc agreed to a different sweeping law, the Digital Markets Act, to counter what regulators see as anticompetitive behavior by the biggest tech firms, including their grip over app stores, online advertising and internet shopping.

Together, the new laws underscore how Europe is setting the standard for tech regulation globally. Frustrated by anticompetitive behavior, social media’s effect on elections and privacy-invading business models, officials spent more than a year negotiating policies that give them broad new powers to crack down on tech giants that are worth trillions of dollars and that are used by billions of people for communication, entertainment, payments and news.

“This will be a model,” Alexandra Geese, a Green party member of the European Parliament from Germany, said of the new law. Ms. Geese, who helped draft the Digital Services Act, said she had already spoken with legislators in Japan, India and other countries about the legislation.

A deal was expected to be announced by European policymakers in Brussels on Friday, though some warned that the agreement could be delayed if negotiators needed more time.

Since Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation took effect in 2018, little action has been taken against the data-collection practices of large internet platforms.

Credit...Gabriel Bouys/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The moves contrast with the lack of action in the United States. While U.S. regulators have filed antitrust cases against Google and Meta, no comprehensive federal laws tackling the power of the tech companies have been passed.

Yet even as the European authorities gain newfound legal powers to rein in the tech behemoths, critics wondered how effective they will be. Writing laws can be easier than enforcing them, and while the European Union has a reputation as the world’s toughest regulator of the tech industry, its actions have sometimes appeared tougher on paper than in practice.

An estimated 230 new workers will be hired to enforce the new laws, a figure that critics said was insufficient when compared with the resources available to Meta, Google and others.

The staffing figures “are totally inadequate to face gigantic firms and new gigantic tasks,” said Tommaso Valletti, a former top economist for the European Commission, who worked on antitrust cases against Google and other tech platforms.

Without robust enforcement, he said, the new laws will amount to an unfulfilled promise. Mr. Valletti said that even as Europe had levied multibillion-dollar antitrust rulings against Google in recent years, those actions had done little to restore competition because regulators did not force the company to make major structural changes.

“You need skills: engineers, computer scientists, data scientists and the like,” said Mr. Valletti, who is a professor of economics at Imperial College London. “You need a cultural change, both among regulators and regulated firms. That’s the real challenge.”

Lack of enforcement of the European Union’s data privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation, or G.D.P.R., has also cast a shadow over the new laws.

Like the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act, G.D.P.R. was hailed as landmark legislation. But since it took effect in 2018, there has been little action against Facebook, Google and others over their data-collection practices. Many have sidestepped the rules by bombarding users with consent windows on their websites.

“They haven’t shown themselves capable of using powerful tools that already exist to rein in Big Tech,” said Johnny Ryan, a privacy-rights campaigner and senior fellow at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, who has pushed for tougher enforcement. “I don’t anticipate them showing themselves suddenly to be any different with a new set of tools.”

Amazon declined to comment. Google and Meta did not respond to requests for comment. The companies and industry trade groups have warned that the laws could have unintended consequences, harm smaller businesses and undercut Europe’s digital economy.

Backers of the new laws said they had learned from past mistakes. While enforcement of G.D.P.R. was left to regulators in individual countries — which many felt were overmatched by multinational corporations with seemingly bottomless legal budgets — the new laws will largely be enforced out of Brussels by the European Commission, a major shift in approach.

The final text of the Digital Services Act is not expected to be available for several weeks, and final votes must still be taken, a step largely seen as perfunctory after a deal is announced. But policymakers in the European Commission and European Parliament involved in the negotiations described details of what would be one of the world’s most far-reaching pieces of digital policy.

The law, which would take effect next year, does not order internet platforms to remove specific forms of speech, leaving that to individual countries to define. (Certain forms of hate speech and references to Nazism are illegal in Germany but not in other European countries.) The law forces companies to add ways for users to flag illicit content.

Inspired by the war in Ukraine and the pandemic, policymakers were also considering giving regulators additional power to force internet companies to respond quickly during a national security or health crisis. This could include stopping the spread of certain state propaganda on social media during a war or the online sale of bogus medical supplies and drugs during a pandemic.

Many provisions related to social media track closely with recommendations made by Frances Haugen, the former Facebook employee who became a whistle-blower. The law was expected to require companies to offer a way for users to turn off recommendation algorithms that use their personal data to tailor content.

Meta, TikTok and others would also have to share more data about how their algorithms worked, with outside researchers at universities and civil society groups. The companies would have to conduct an annual risk-assessment report, reviewed by an outside auditor, with a summary of the findings made public.

Policymakers said the prospect of reputational damage could be more powerful than fines. But if the European Commission determined that Meta or another company was not doing enough to address problems identified by auditors, the company could face financial penalties of up to 6 percent of global revenue and be forced to change business practices.

New restrictions on targeted advertising could have major effects on internet-based businesses. The rules would limit the use of data based on race, religion, political views or labor union membership, though there was consideration of allowing a company to continue doing so with a user’s consent. The companies would also not be able to target children with ads.

Online retailers like Amazon would face new requirements to stop the sale of illicit products by resellers on their platforms, leaving the companies open to consumer lawsuits.

Europe’s position as a regulatory leader will depend on enforcement of the new laws, which are likely to face legal challenges from the biggest companies, said Agustín Reyna, director of legal and economic affairs at the European Consumer Organization, a consumer watchdog group.

“Effective enforcement is absolutely key to the success of these new rules,” he said. “Great power comes with greater responsibility to ensure the biggest companies in the world are not able to bypass their obligations.”

NEWS ANALYSIS

As Europe Approves New Tech Laws, the U.S. Falls Further Behind

Federal privacy bills, security legislation and antitrust laws to address the power of the tech giants have all failed to advance in Congress, despite hand wringing and shows of bipartisan support


By Cecilia Kang
Cecilia Kang, who reports from Washington, has covered tech policy since 2007.
April 22, 2022


In just the last few years, Europe has seen a landmark law for online privacy take effect, approved sweeping regulations to curb the dominance of the tech giants and on Friday was nearing a deal on new legislation to protect its citizens from harmful online content.

For those keeping score, that’s Europe: three. United States: zero.

The United States may be the birthplace of the iPhone and the most widely used search engine and social network, and it could also bring the world into the so-called metaverse. But global leadership on tech regulations is taking place more than 3,000 miles from Washington, by European leaders representing 27 nations with 24 languages, who have nonetheless been able to agree on basic online protections for their 450 million or so citizens.

In the United States, Congress has not passed a single piece of comprehensive regulation to protect internet consumers and to rein in the power of its technology giants.

It’s not for lack of trying. Over 25 years, dozens of federal privacy bills have been proposed and then ultimately dropped without bipartisan support. With every major hack of a bank or retailer, lawmakers have introduced data breach and security bills, all of which have withered on the vine. A flurry of speech bills have sunk into the quicksand of partisan disagreements over freedoms of expression. And antitrust bills to curtail the power of Apple, Amazon, Google and Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, have sat in limbo amid fierce lobbying opposition.

Only two narrow federal tech laws have been enacted — one for children’s privacy and the other for ridding sites of sex-trafficking content — in the past 25 years.

“Inertia is too kind of a word to describe what’s happened in the United States; there’s been a lack of will, courage and understanding of the problem and technologies,” said Jeffrey Chester, the executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a public interest group. “And consumers are left with no protections here and lots of confusion.”

Antitrust bills to curtail the power of Apple, Amazon, Google and Meta have sat in limbo amid fierce lobbying opposition.

Credit...Callaghan O'Hare for The New York Times

The prospects that any legislation will pass imminently are dim, though regulations at some point are almost inevitable because of the way tech touches so many aspects of life. Of all the proposals currently in front of Congress, an antitrust bill that would bar Apple, Alphabet and Amazon from boosting their own products on their marketplaces and app stores over those of their rivals has the best shot.

A co-author of the bill, Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, said Democratic leaders had promised it would go to a vote by this summer. But even that bill, with bipartisan support, faces an uphill climb amid so many other priorities in Congress and a fierce tech lobbying effort to defeat it.

If history is a guide, the path toward U.S. tech regulation will be long. It took decades of public anger to regulate the railroads through the creation of the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1887. It took nearly 50 years from the first medical reports on the dangers of cigarettes to the regulation of tobacco.

There’s no single reason for the sludge of progress in Congress. Proposals have been caught in the age-old partisan divide over how to protect consumers while also encouraging the growth of business. Then there are the hundreds of tech lobbyists who block legislation that could dampen their profits. Lawmakers have also at times failed to grasp the technologies they are trying to regulate, turning their public foibles over tech into internet memes.

Tech companies have taken advantage of that knowledge blind spot, said Tom Wheeler, a former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.

“It’s what I call the ‘big con,’ where the tech companies spin a story that they are doing magic and that if Washington touches their companies with regulations they’ll be responsible for breaking that magic,” he said.

In the vacuum of federal regulations, states have created a patchwork of tech rules instead. California, Virginia, Utah and Colorado have adopted their own privacy laws. Florida and Texas have passed social media laws aimed at punishing internet platforms for censoring conservative views.

Amazon, Alphabet, Apple, Meta and Microsoft said they supported federal regulations. But when pressed, some of them have fought for the most permissive versions of the laws that have been under consideration. Meta, for instance, has pushed for weaker federal privacy legislation that would override stronger laws in the state

Tech’s lobbying power is now on full display in Washington with the threat of the antitrust bill from Ms. Klobuchar and Senator Charles E. Grassley, a Republican of Iowa. The proposal passed its first hurdle of votes in January, much to the tech industry’s surprise.

Amazon claimed in television and newspaper ads that an antitrust bill would effectively end its Prime program.

Credit...Roger Kisby for The New York Times

In response, many of the tech companies mobilized an extensive lobbying and marketing campaign to defeat the bill. Through a trade group, Amazon claimed in television and newspaper ads that the bill would effectively end its Prime membership program. Kent Walker, Google’s chief legal officer, wrote in a blog post that the legislation would “break” popular products and prevent the company from displaying Google maps in search results.

Ms. Klobuchar said the companies’ claims were hyperbole. She warned that by fighting the proposal, tech companies might be choosing the worse of two difficult options.

“They are letting Europe set the agenda on internet regulation,” Ms. Klobuchar said. “At least we listened to everyone’s concerns and modified our bill.”

The inaction may appear surprising given that Republicans and Democrats are ostensibly in lock step over how tech companies have morphed into global powerhouses.

“Consumers need confidence that their data is being protected, and businesses need to know they can keep innovating while complying with a strong, workable national privacy standard,” said Senator Roger Wicker, Republican of Mississippi. “The U.S. cannot afford to cede leadership on this issue.”

Lawmakers have also forced many tech chief executives — including Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Tim Cook of Apple, Sundar Pichai of Google and Mark Zuckerberg of Meta — to testify multiple times before Congress in recent years. In some of those televised hearings, lawmakers of both parties have told the executives that their companies — with a combined $6.4 trillion in market value — aren’t above government or public accountability.

“Some of these companies are countries, not companies,” Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, said in a January antitrust hearing, adding that they are “killing fields for the truth.”

But so far, the talk has not translated into new laws. The path to privacy regulations provides the clearest case study on that record of inaction.

Since 1995, Senator Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, has introduced a dozen privacy bills for internet service providers, drones and third-party data brokers. In 2018, the year Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation took effect, he proposed a bill to require a consumer’s permission to share or sell data.

Mr. Markey also tried twice to update and strengthen privacy legislation for youths following his 1998 law, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.

With every effort, industry lobbying groups have denounced the bills as harmful to innovation. Many Republican lawmakers have opposed the proposals, saying they don’t balance the needs of businesses.

“Big Tech sees data as dollar signs, so for decades they’ve bankrolled industry lobbyists to help them evade accountability,” Mr. Markey said. “We’ve reached a breaking point.”
Reining In Big Tech



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April 20, 2021

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July 28, 2020

Lawmakers Grill Tech C.E.O.s on Capitol Riot, Getting Few Direct Answers
March 25, 2021

Cecilia Kang covers technology and regulation and joined The Times in 2015. She is the co-author, along with Sheera Frenkel of The Times, of “An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination.” @ceciliakang

A version of this article appears in print on April 23, 2022, Section B, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Lags As Europe Promotes Tech Laws.