EU Approves Nature Restoration Law

Austria’s unexpected support means the flagship biodiversity legislation will pass despite opposition from farmers.

EU member states have approved the bloc’s central biodiversity policy, the Nature Restoration Law, after Austria made a surprise last-minute decision to back the legislation. As a result, EU members will now be subject to the most comprehensive set of biodiversity targets in the bloc’s history. The unexpected twist will,…

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Innovative Firms Core to ABN AMRO Emerging Markets Strategy

New fund looks to offer exposure to European investors amid growing interest for opportunities in developing economies.

Companies driving technological innovation in emerging markets (EMs) will play a central role in ABN AMRO Investment Solutions’ (IS) and Boston Common Asset Management’s (AM) new ESG equities fund, aiming to help investors diversify their portfolios. The ABN AMRO Boston Common Emerging Markets ESG Equities Fund is an EM equities-dedicated…

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What Europe’s Rightward Shift Means for Investors

The EU has engaged in a flurry of sustainable lawmaking in the past five years, but right-wing groups’ growing influence in parliament may imperil the achievements of its Green Deal.

As the European parliamentary election results trickled in on Sunday evening, it quickly became clear that the polls were correct: Europe had lurched to the right. Greens and liberals lost seats. Climate-sceptic far-right parties gained them, most dramatically in France and Germany. And while across Europe the dominant alliance between…

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ESMA Tackles Greenwashing with New Tool

The EU watchdog plans to ramp up scrutiny of sustainable financial products, warning providers not to make “unsubstantiated” claims.

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has developed a new tool that will enable it to better identify cases of greenwashing in the investment management industry. In a new report, the watchdog said it had recently increased its analytical efforts to detect mismatches between green claims and actual investment…

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Charted: EU Emigrants by Country

Published

12 seconds ago

on

June 9, 2024 Graphics/Design:

See this visualization first on the Voronoi app.

Charted: EU Emigrants by Country

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

Immigration into the EU has been a hot topic since 2011. In fact, in several EU countries, immigrants make up nearly one-fifth of the population. But what of the EU’s emigration patterns?

We chart out the number of EU emigrants by their country of citizenship in 2022. Data for this visualization is sourced from Eurostat.

Which EU Country Had the Most Emigrants in 2022?

Germany and Spain had the highest number of emigrants in the EU in 2022, both measuring more than half a million people.

Interestingly, while German emigrants prefer moving to Switzerland and Austria, Spanish migrants often end up in Germany.

Here’s a full list of 27 EU member states and their emigration numbers in 2022, both as number of people and as a percentage of the population. Data for Switzerland, Norway, and Liechtenstein has also been included for context, but is not part of the visualization, nor contributes to the overall EU number.

RankCountryEmigrants (2022)% of Population (2022) 1🇩🇪 Germany533,4850.64% 2🇪🇸 Spain531,8891.11% 3🇫🇷 France249,3550.37% 4🇵🇱 Poland228,0060.62% 5🇷🇴 Romania202,3111.06% 6🇮🇹 Italy150,1890.25% 7🇨🇭 Switzerland*122,1231.39% 8🇳🇱 Netherlands109,6160.62% 9🇧🇪 Belgium84,6270.72% 10🇬🇷 Greece80,3070.77% 11🇦🇹 Austria74,2710.82% 12🇩🇰 Denmark62,9271.07% 13🇮🇪 Ireland61,1331.19% 14🇭🇺 Hungary58,4080.61% 15🇸🇪 Sweden50,5920.48% 16🇭🇷 Croatia46,2871.20% 17🇳🇴 Norway*32,5360.60% 18🇨🇿 Czech Republic31,7640.30% 19🇵🇹 Portugal30,9540.30% 20🇸🇮 Slovenia20,9560.99% 21🇨🇾 Cyprus17,9581.43% 22🇱🇺 Luxembourg17,2272.64% 23🇱🇻 Latvia16,6800.89% 24🇫🇮 Finland15,6350.28% 25🇱🇹 Lithuania15,2700.54% 26🇧🇬 Bulgaria13,1750.20% 27🇲🇹 Malta13,1662.48% 28🇪🇪 Estonia9,6570.72% 29🇸🇰 Slovakia4,4680.08% 30🇱🇮 Liechtenstein*4801.22% N/A🇪🇺 EU2,730,3130.61%
*Not in the EU, but part of the European Free Trade Area or the European Economic area. Emigrants counted by country of citizenship, not birth.

As a percentage of the population, Malta and Luxembourg had slightly more than

Mapped: The Top Export in Each EU Country

Published

13 seconds ago

on

May 20, 2024

See this visualization first on the Voronoi app.

The Top European Union Exports by Country

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

The European Union (EU) exports over $6 trillion in products annually. The bloc boasts a diversified economy that encompasses fuel and mineral industries, cars, vaccines, and technology.

In this map, we display European Union countries’ top exports as of 2022. Data for the map was sourced from The Observatory of Economic Complexity.

Cars and Petroleum Dominate EU Exports

Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Finland, Greece, Lithuania, Sweden, and the Netherlands have petroleum gas or refined petroleum as their top export product.

The Netherlands exported $68.1 billion worth of refined petroleum in 2022, ranking third among the largest exporters globally. The country is home to BP Rotterdam Refinery, the biggest oil refinery in Europe.

CountryTop Export (2022)Value (USD Billions) 🇦🇹 AustriaCars$7.7B 🇧🇪 BelgiumPetroleum Gas$54.7B 🇧🇬 BulgariaRefined Petroleum$3.5B 🇭🇷 CroatiaRefined Petroleum$1.5B 🇨🇾 CyprusPassenger and Cargo Ships$1.3B 🇨🇿 Czech RepublicCars$25.5B 🇩🇰 DenmarkPackaged Medicines$15.9B 🇪🇪 EstoniaElectricity$1.1B 🇫🇮 FinlandRefined Petroleum$6.9B 🇫🇷 FrancePlanes, Helicopters, and/or Spacecraft$26.6B 🇩🇪 GermanyCars$149.0B 🇬🇷 GreeceRefined Petroleum$16.4B 🇭🇺 HungaryCars$12.3B 🇮🇪 IrelandVaccines$47.3B 🇮🇹 ItalyPackaged Medicines$34.4B 🇱🇻 LatviaSawn Wood$1.2B 🇱🇹 LithuaniaRefined Petroleum$5.5B 🇱🇺 LuxembourgIron blocks$1.6B 🇲🇹 MaltaIntegrated Circuits$1.1B 🇳🇱 NetherlandsRefined Petroleum$68.1B 🇵🇱 PolandCars (parts & accessories)$15.3B 🇵🇹 PortugalCars$4.4B 🇷🇴 RomaniaCars$6.7B 🇸🇰 SlovakiaCars$26.9B 🇸🇮 SloveniaPackaged Medicines$12.5B 🇪🇸 SpainCars$33.6B 🇸🇪 SwedenRefined Petroleum$12.9B

Besides petroleum, automobiles (and automobile parts) significantly contribute to the EU economy. Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Portugal, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Spain have automotive products as their top exports.

With well-known car brands such as Volkswagen, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, and Porsche, Germany alone generates around $150 billion per year from car exports.

Other products help diversify the EU economy. France’s top export is planes, helicopters, and/or spacecraft, while Italy and Denmark excel in the packaged medicines industry. Ireland has a

EU Sparks Controversy on Energy Charter Treaty Drop

European Union will withdraw from ‘anti-green’ treaty on environmental grounds, but sources warn of impact on renewable investments.

The European Parliament’s vote last week to withdraw from the controversial Energy Charter Treaty has been interpreted as a near-certain ‘death blow’ to a decades-old agreement that is widely perceived as outdated and anti-green.

But the decision, which lawmakers say is necessary to protect the European Union’s climate policies against litigation from fossil fuel companies, may not be as positive for the energy transition as some believe.

James Rogers, an international arbitration lawyer and partner at law firm Jenner & Block, said the EU’s withdrawal – which he said left the treaty “dead” – could inadvertently harm the bloc’s green energy ambitions by reducing investor protections against policy changes.

Set up in 1994 in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union, in part to open up gas imports from Russia and eastern Europe, the ECT provides energy investors with legal protection against the policy whims of national governments. Governments that expropriate assets or arbitrarily change rules may be taken to arbitration under the treaty. More than 50 countries across Europe and Asia have signed up to the treaty since, with Japan its easternmost member.

But as climate change became a key policy concern in Europe in subsequent years, the ECT progressively turned into a weapon for fossil fuel companies to fight against green policies that harmed their interests. It was under the ECT that German utilities RWE and Uniper, for example, sued the Dutch government for €2.4 billion over its plan to phase out coal-fired power back in 2021.

Critics say the threat of a legal challenge under the ECT alone has a “chilling effect” on green policy – which is real but difficult to quantify.

Some of its members pushed to modernise the framework. But these efforts largely failed, and a growing number of European signatories have already left or plan to leave the treaty, including the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Poland. The EU’s departure now turbo-charges that trend.

“Finally, the fossil dinosaur treaty is no longer standing in the way of consistent climate protection, as we no longer have to fear corporate lawsuits demanding billions of euro in compensation brought before private arbitration tribunals,” Anna Cavazzini, Member of the European Parliament and Rapporteur for the Trade Committee, said following the vote last week.

Not anti-green

According to

The Most Valuable Companies in Major EU Economies

Published

36 seconds ago

on

May 1, 2024 Graphics/Design:

See this visualization first on the Voronoi app.

Most Valuable Companies in the EU, by Country

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

In this graphic, we mapped out the most valuable corporations in 11 major EU economies, based on their market capitalizations as of April 15th, 2024. All figures are in USD, and were sourced from Companiesmarketcap.com.

Novo Nordisk is currently worth more than $550 billion, making it Europe’s most valuable company by a wide margin. The pharmaceutical giant specializes in diabetes and weight-loss drugs. Demand for two of them, Ozempic and Wegovy, has surged due to their weight-loss capabilities, even causing nationwide shortages in the United States.

The following table includes an expanded list of the most valuable publicly-traded company in larger EU economies. Many of these were not included in the graphic due to space limitations.

CountryCompanySectorMarket Cap 🇩🇰 Denmark💊 Novo NordiskPharmaceuticals$562B 🇫🇷 France👜 LVMHLuxury Goods$422B 🇳🇱 Netherlands🔧 ASMLSemiconductor Equipment$382B 🇩🇪 Germany💼 SAPEnterprise Software$214B 🇮🇪 Ireland🖥️ AccentureIT Services$197B 🇪🇸 Spain👗 InditexRetail$147B 🇧🇪 Belgium🍻 Anheuser-Busch InBevBeverages$116B 🇸🇪 Sweden🛠️ Atlas CopcoIndustrial Equipment$80B 🇮🇹 Italy🏎️ FerrariAutomotive$76B 🇫🇮 Finland🏦 Nordea BankBanking$40B 🇦🇹 Austria🔌 Verbund AGEnergy$26B 🇱🇺 Luxembourg🏗️ TenarisOil & Gas Equipment$22B 🇨🇿 Czech Republic💡 CEZ GroupEnergy$20B 🇵🇱 Poland⛽ PKN OrlenEnergy$20B 🇵🇹 Portugal🔌 EDP GroupEnergy$16B 🇬🇷 Greece🏦 EurobankBanking$7B 🇭🇺 Hungary⛽ MOL GroupEnergy$7B 🇭🇷 Croatia🏦 Zagrebacka BankaBanking$6B 🇷🇴 Romania⛽ RomgazEnergy$4B 🇸🇮 Slovenia💊 KrkaPharmaceuticals$4B
Note: Figures are rounded and last updated on April 15th, 2024. Countries with top publicly-traded companies worth under $4 billion are excluded.

Luxury supergiant LVMH—which owns brands like Tiffany, Christian Dior, and TAG Heuer to name a few—is Europe’s second largest company by market cap, at $420 billion.

Rounding out the top three is ASML, which produces equipment crucial to chip manufacturers, worth $380 billion.

When looking at the region, there is a vast disparity between EU member states and their most valuable companies.

For example,