Listen on * Spotify * Apple Music * Amazon Music Der Bundestag steckt mitten im “Haushalts-Ironman”. Während der Etat 2025 erst beschlossen wird, rollt bereits die Debatte um den Haushalt 2026 an. Rasmus Buchsteiner analysiert die Lage im Finanzministerium, spricht über Sparvorgaben, Schuldenbremse und die offene Flanke bei Subventionen. Klar ist: Die härtesten Einschnitte drohen nicht jetzt – sondern 2027. Gleichzeitig steht die Außenpolitik unter Spannung: Polens Präsident Karol Nawrocki ist in Berlin, ohne Presse und ohne Charmeoffensive. Hans von der Burchard erklärt, warum Berlin mit dem neuen Staatsoberhaupt hadert, welche Rolle Sicherheitsfragen nach dem Drohnenvorfall spielen und warum eine engere Zusammenarbeit trotz Nawrockis Reparationsforderungen unausweichlich bleibt. Im 200-Sekunden-Interview plädiert Paul Ziemiak für eine ehrliche Debatte über Verantwortung, Sicherheit – und die Frage, ob es in deutsch-polnischen Beziehungen überhaupt je einen „Schlussstrich“ geben kann. Außerdem: Vorwärts-Fest im Prenzlauer Berg und die Frage, ob NRW noch die Herzkammer der SPD ist? Und: Eine Einladung zum Dinner mit Jonathan Martin von POLITICO in Washington, D.C. Das Berlin Playbook als Podcast gibt es jeden Morgen ab 5 Uhr. Gordon Repinski und das POLITICO-Team liefern Politik zum Hören – kompakt, international, hintergründig. Für alle Hauptstadt-Profis: Der Berlin Playbook-Newsletter bietet jeden Morgen die wichtigsten Themen und Einordnungen. Jetzt kostenlos abonnieren. Mehr von Host und POLITICO Executive Editor Gordon Repinski: Instagram: @gordon.repinski | X: @GordonRepinski.

WARSAW — One-time Polish political wunderkind Szymon Hołownia is emerging as a weak link who could threaten Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s centrist pro-EU coalition. Tusk has been trying to give his coalition some fresh momentum after the nationalist Karol Nawrocki won a tightly contested presidential election on June 1, and is planning a cabinet reshuffle next week. Tusk’s big problem, however, is that the incoming right-wing president — backed by the Law and Justice party (PiS) — will be able to veto his key reforms, putting huge strain on the coalition. This is where Hołownia, now parliament speaker, is proving a problem for Tusk. His Polska 2050 party has a crucial 31 seats that help Tusk keep his majority, but he has been accused of flirting with PiS. Hołownia admitted to meeting top PiS officials earlier this month, including Chairman Jarosław Kaczyński, for unspecified late-night talks in an apartment belonging to Adam Bielan, a PiS MEP. This triggered intense speculation about his motives, but Hołownia denied claims PiS was offering to back him as a new prime minister in a government with PiS. “I am one of the few politicians in Poland who — I emphasize — regularly meets with representatives of both deeply divided camps,” Hołownia said on X after news of his meeting with PiS became public. “I firmly believe that — especially in times like these — politicians from different sides should talk to one another, or we’ll end up tearing each other apart. I consider this normal, not an exception,” Hołownia said. Despite his insistence he wasn’t plotting with PiS, the late hour of the meeting and the location in a private apartment of a PiS official mean the controversy has stuck and Hołownia’s party is now slumping in the polls. Polska 2050 came in at just 2.8 percent in a poll by United Surveys for Wirtualna Polska, a news website, published Wednesday. That is well below the 5 percent threshold a party needs to win seats in the parliament. Before turning to politics, Hołownia was a media figure, known for co-hosting Poland’s version of the Got Talent series and for his work in Catholic media. He launched a 2020 presidential campaign as a centrist outsider on a pro-European, socially progressive and economically moderate platform. He performed respectably in the 2020 election, gaining 14 percent of the vote and enough clout to start his own party. Szymon Hołownia was elected speaker of the parliament in November 2023. | Marcin Obara/EPA This year, he fared much worse in the presidential contest, winning less than 5 percent of the vote. That has weakened him ahead of the cabinet reshuffle, as he trailed not just the far right’s Sławomir Mentzen but also extremist Grzegorz Braun, who is now facing a criminal investigation into alleged Holocaust denial. In the 2023 general election, Hołownia’s Polska 2050 entered a centrist coalition with the agrarian PSL, forming the so-called Third Way group that contributed to the opposition bloc that unseated the PiS government. Hołownia was elected speaker of the parliament in November 2023. Polska 2050 and PSL have subsequently parted ways. Given that Hołownia is expected to hand over his post as speaker in November to a figure picked by fellow coalition party the New Left, the risk is that Polska 2050 will now be sidelined. If a new election were held now, polls show the coalition would lose its majority to PiS if the latter goes for cooperation with the far right.

BRUSSELS — Friedrich Merz’s arrival as German chancellor in May rekindled the fading Franco-German love affair — and the lovebirds have already found a shared interest: killing Europe’s ethical supply chain dream. Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron joined forces this month to hobble new European Union rules aimed at boosting supply chain transparency, agreeing to mutual concessions that critics say have left the bill toothless.  The bilateral deal highlights a new era for the historical Franco-German relationship focused on a sharp pro-business agenda, some argue, thanks to a budding bromance between the two leaders. Adopted last year, the EU’s supply chain oversight law requires companies to police their supply chains for possible environmental and human rights violations. But the bill has yet to be implemented, having been selected as part of a whole set of EU rules currently subject to a massive simplification effort to cut the regulatory burden for businesses.  EU countries on Monday agreed on a dramatically watered-down version of the revolutionary rules in record time. Initially presented by the European Commission in February 2022, the new version — if endorsed by the EU as a whole — will only apply to a fraction of the European companies initially targeted. The new text “is possibly one of the first policy [deliveries] that is going to be restarting the Franco-German alliance,” said Alberto Alemanno, an EU law professor at HEC Paris. Amid escalating trade tensions and geopolitical turmoil, the European Union is on a mission to reinvent itself as a prosperous, pro-business, anti-red tape powerhouse. Macron and Merz are leading the charge in that mission. “It is a first success for the Franco-German couple,” said a French economy ministry official who was granted anonymity in line with the French government’s communication practices after the agreement among EU countries was announced.  That’s because Macron, a staunchly pro-business liberal, and Merz, an equally pro-business conservative, agreed on mutual concessions to make the text more palatable for the two countries, the same official explained. The affinity the two leaders share has not gone unnoticed. “There’s a bit of a honeymoon between Macron and Merz,” Alemanno said. “They really get along well because they have a very similar style of leadership. They are both very charismatic. They also say things that are quite unpopular, but they just say it.”  Last month, Macron told an audience of business executives that the due diligence directive ought “not just to be postponed for one year, but to be put off the table.” Emmanuel Macron told an audience of business executives that the due diligence directive ought “not just to be postponed for one year, but to be put off the table.” | Pool Photo by Benoit Tessier via EPA His comments followed a similar statement from Merz, who had called for a “complete repeal” of the law during a visit to Brussels.  As their leaders were making bold public statements about scrapping the rules altogether, behind the scenes the French and German delegations in Brussels negotiated to effectively hollow out the file. After the agreement was reached, Paris hailed the outcome as a joint win for Europe’s most powerful leaders, while Berlin stayed mum. “The German government will not publicly comment on statements made by other governments or information based on anonymous sources,” a German government spokesperson said. Civil society groups, meanwhile, question whether Europe’s supply chain oversight rules still make a difference. “We’re getting to the point of, is it even worth having this law?” said Richard Gardiner, interim head of EU policy at the ShareAction NGO, arguing that if “badly written” rules are then enshrined in law, companies will have no incentive to do better. A LONG TIME COMING The French and German positions come on the back of a tumultuous start to Ursula von der Leyen’s second term as European Commission president, during which she pledged to answer EU leaders’ calls to cut red tape for business. One of the first concrete measures the new Commission took was an “omnibus” bill, an “unprecedented simplification effort” that watered down several green laws from the previous mandate, including the corporate sustainability reporting directive and the supply chain law. The Commission wanted these changes to be fast-tracked. “I have never seen them move this fast on a piece of legislation,” said ShareActions’s Gardiner, describing the policymaking process in Brussels as having gone from a “technocratic [process] to essentially a personality-based, knee-jerk reaction.” Among the key changes to the rules is the number of companies that will be impacted. While the Commission’s proposal was to exclude 80 percent of European companies from having to comply with both the sustainability reporting and the supply chain rules, EU countries ultimately backed a French proposal to limit the scope of the latter to companies with more than 5,000 employees and €1.5 billion in net turnover. In other words, fewer than 1,000 European companies would be subject to them. Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron joined forces this month to hobble new European Union rules aimed at boosting supply chain transparency, agreeing to mutual concessions that critics say have left the bill toothless. | Olivier Hoslet/EPA And that’s what the French wanted. “I think that this alignment between France and Germany allowed [us] to progress,” said the French official quoted above. In particular, the French agreed to concessions on civil liability — a main concern of German companies, which did not want to be liable for breaches of the law at the EU level. In exchange, Berlin agreed to back the higher threshold that determines which companies are subject to the new rules to ensure they align with those that already exist in French law.  On the French side, there was a “prioritization of the topic of the threshold,” said a Parliament official familiar with the details. THE BACKSTORY Berlin especially has long been at the forefront of the political war against the supply chain oversight law, with liberal and conservative politicians turning their opposition into a core component of electoral politics at a time of economic downturn, warnings of de-industrialization and global trade wars.  Even well before the Commission presented its rules, Germany was pressing Brussels to follow its lead and exempt companies with fewer than 1,000 employees. Back in 2022 the bill was already falling short of what progressive lawmakers and green groups were requesting.  After all three EU institutions managed to clinch a deal in December 2023 — overcoming an attempt by center-right European People’s Party (EPP) lawmakers to kill the file, and having already agreed to carve out the financial sector to win France over — the horse-trading intensified. Germany’s liberals, back then the smallest party in the three-party coalition of former Chancellor Olaf Scholz, launched a last-ditch push to kill the heavily lobbied and controversial file altogether, despite major disagreements within the national coalition government. France and Italy both jumped on the bandwagon.  Despite all this, the measure made it through.   Now, the survival of EU supply chain oversight rules is part of the new coalition agreement between the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats (SPD) in Berlin. In principle, the agreement binds the German chancellor to protect the bill, albeit with a promise to trim the bureaucratic burden in the text. But tensions are simmering beneath the surface. Now, the survival of EU supply chain oversight rules is part of the new coalition agreement between the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats (SPD) in Berlin. | Filip Singer/EPA “Many people would have benefited from the law, but their voices were not loud enough — while the bureaucracy debate overshadowed the debate,” said one German government official, granted anonymity to speak freely about internal political dynamics.  THE FRENCH U-TURN Macron’s position was far less consistent than Merz’s. He performed a spectacular U-turn to become the No. 1 opponent of a text he and his governments had advocated, at least publicly. Having been one of the first countries to enact a national law banning human rights abuses and environmental breaches from supply chains, France initially cast itself as a top supporter of the text and made it a priority when it held the rotating Council presidency back in 2022. Then, last year, Paris piggybacked on Berlin’s opposition, requesting that the law apply to fewer companies. Fast forward to 2025, and the French have become fierce critics of the text. Earlier this year, POLITICO revealed that Paris had asked the European Commission to indefinitely delay the text. That was before Macron told a roomful of business CEOs gathered in Versailles from all over the world that the text should be thrown out altogether.  While the president’s shift is music to the ears of France’s industry lobbies, it has also triggered an internal revolt from his allies who warned against sacrificing green and anti-forced labor rules under pressure from business.  And unlike about a year ago, Berlin and Paris are facing barely any pushback.  Last year, the Greens and the Social Democrats in the former German coalition government voiced their opposition to Berlin’s attempts to kill the bill, before giving in to pressure from the liberals. Now, the Social Democrats co-governing with Merz’ conservative party are mostly quiet. On Wednesday, the SPD-led labor ministry finally broke its silence, saying it was in “favor of reducing the administrative burden on companies and at the same time effectively protecting human rights.” Calls to alleviate the burden for businesses, it seems, have become the new political consensus. “The whole narrative has gotten out of hand. And no one is still up against it,” Gardiner said. Marianne Gros and Antonia Zimmermann reported from Brussels, Giorgio Leali reported from Paris and Laura Hülsemann reported from Berlin.