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By JAKOB HANKE VELA
with ZOYA SHEFTALOVICH
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DRIVING THE DAY: OMICRON 
HOPING FOR THE BEST, PREPARING FOR THE WORST: Health ministers of the G7 countries convene today to coordinate action to contain the spread of Omicron, the new coronavirus variant of concern. The U.K., which holds the G7 presidency, called the urgent meeting after South Africa alerted the world to the rapidly spreading, heavily mutated variant on Friday. The EU and the U.S., among other countries, have restricted travel from countries in southern Africa and imposed quarantines on arrivals.
THE BAD NEWS: The spread of the virus in South Africa — where a very large proportion of the population has recovered from COVID — is fueling fears the virus could evade the current crop of vaccines. The EU’s health agency, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, warned that Omicron “is the most divergent variant” of the coronavirus so far, “which raises serious concerns that it may be associated with significant reduction in vaccine effectiveness and increased risk for reinfections.”
It’s here: People have tested positive to the new variant in Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Italy and the Netherlands, with France, Portugal, Austria and the Czech Republic testing several patients who may also have it. The U.K. has also recorded Omicron cases (which hasn’t forced Prime Minister Boris Johnson to roll out his pandemic “Plan B,” as Annabelle Dickson reports). The ECDC said the risk of spread in the EU was “high.”
THE GOOD NEWS: No severe cases or deaths linked to Omicron had been reported at the time of writing. South African Medical Association Chair Angélique Coetzee, who first spotted the new variant, said the patients she had seen with it had “extremely mild” symptoms compared with those she had treated before. But she cautioned the variant may still be dangerous for older people or those with co-morbidities.
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Christmas miracle? Epidemiologist and SPD politician Karl Lauterbach, who is one of the candidates to become Germany’s next health minister, said it would be an “early Christmas gift” if Omicron was indeed milder (since a mild variant could bring about the end of the pandemic). But he cautioned that Germany, like much of Western Europe, had totally different demographics to South Africa, where only 6 percent of people are over 65 years old.
Hold your breath: The world will be watching over the coming 14 days whether South Africa reports a spike in hospital admissions — to gauge whether Omicron is indeed a Christmas present … or a harbinger of another lost silly season.
NOW READ THIS: Activists who want to scrap vaccine patents are pointing to the new variant to support their argument that the EU must stop protecting its intellectual property. The World Trade Organization has postponed its ministerial summit planned for Tuesday, but that does not mean countries such as India and South Africa will let the EU and U.S. off the hook in their bid to get free access to vaccine recipes. Our colleagues Barbara Moens and Sarah Anne Aarup have more on how Omicron is turning up the heat over vaccine access.
HAPPENING TODAY — WHO TO LAUNCH PANDEMIC TREATY NEGOTIATIONS: Meanwhile, World Health Organization member countries are today set to launch negotiations for a pandemic treaty, after a concession by the U.S., which long opposed the move. The worldwide treaty is meant to coordinate pandemic preparedness and response. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Council chief Charles Michel will both attend today’s World Health Assembly. POLITICO’s Ashleigh Furlong has more.
EU MEDIA ACT
BRUSSELS PREPARES MEDIA LAW: European Commission Vice President Věra Jourová and Commissioner Thierry Breton will present plans for EU-wide media rules at the European News Media Forum today, according to three officials and Breton’s draft speech, obtained by Playbook.
‘Media Freedom Act’: The law will include rules on cross-border functioning and ownership of media inside the EU to prevent government interference. Think of Warsaw’s attempt to ban an American-owned news channel in Poland, which the Commission sought to prevent via EU rules on investment — for lack of binding rules on media freedom. “We want to act against all types of unjustified interferences in the activities of our media companies,” Breton will say at the forum, according to his draft speech. The new rules will also attempt to prevent “interferences from hostile foreign actors,” Breton will say.
Preventing media monopolies: Brussels also wants rules to prevent excessive concentration of media ownership. “We need to make sure that there are media pluralism safeguards, including online, so no one grows too big to care about public debate,” Breton is expected to say.
WAIT A MINUTE: Growing “too big to care” is not only a problem online. What about the acquisition of French TV channel M6 by market leader TF1? The tie-up is favored by French President Emmanuel Macron, who coincidentally is gearing up for a reelection campaign. France’s then chief antitrust enforcer Isabelle de Silva was critical of the tie-up, but she was replaced — just a coincidence, right? — in October. “With 70 percent market share in the field of audiovisual advertising, this operation, in principle, seems impossible,” de Silva warned in an interview. Political support for the deal “doesn’t make my work easier,” she added. Now, she’s the antitrust chief no more.
Double standards? Unlike in the Polish case, the Commission has been very quiet on this one. France, which ranks below most Western EU countries and Ghana, Namibia and Trinidad and Tobago in the World Press Freedom Index, could certainly do with more, not less media pluralism.
‘EU NEWSROOM’: Also at today’s media event, Jourová and Breton will pledge EU money for the development of a “European newsroom” bringing together 16 news agencies. “It will be a hub for news correspondents to work together on EU affairs,” said a person involved in the plans.
Who’s involved: Under the coordination of German agency dpa, the following news agencies are participating: AFP (France), ANSA (Italy), Agerpres (Romania), APA (Austria), ATA (Albania), Belga (Belgium), BTA (Bulgaria), EFE (Spain), Europa Press (Spain), FENA (Bosnia-Herzegovina), HINA (Croatia), MIA (Macedonia), STA (Slovenia), Tanjug (Serbia) and TASR (Slovakia).
What’s next: The consortium will launch in January, officials said, and the integrated newsroom is expected to begin work next summer. The aim is to encourage cooperation at the EU level and news about the EU in several languages. The project was selected following a €1.76 million open call for proposals.
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MIGRATION UPDATE
EU SEEKS AGREEMENT WITH UK OVER CHANNEL MIGRATION: Interior ministers from France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands on Sunday held an emergency meeting after 27 people drowned last week trying to cross the Channel from France to the U.K. in a small boat.
Not present: The U.K. — which is key to solving the issue, according to France. French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said he wanted to “work with Britain” to prevent migrants from attempting the dangerous journey and insisted the U.K. must make itself “less attractive for migrants” — arguing the country was too lenient on irregular workers. “Everyone knows that there are more than a million illegal immigrants in the U.K. and that English employers use this workforce,” Darmanin said.
So where was the UK? France uninvited Britain’s Home Secretary Priti Patel from the meeting, supposedly after Boris Johnson’s Twitter diplomacy angered Macron — not that France would ever do such a thing.
In the meantime, the EU ministers agreed to boost cross-border police operations to stop migrants from reaching the Channel in the first place, with Frontex to deploy a surveillance plane to the Channel.
What’s next: Darmanin said France and the U.K. would hopefully soon announce “a new framework of cooperation” including plans to fight human traffickers and possibly allow British border officials to work on French soil.
Council meeting: EU interior ministers will discuss secondary migration and “the irregular flow of migrants towards the Channel and the North Sea” at their next Council meeting on December 9, the declaration also said.
EU AND NATO STRESS UNITY ON RUSSIA AND BELARUS: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg presented a united front Sunday against pressure on the EU’s eastern borders from Russia and Belarus. “It is important that the European Union and NATO work hand in hand,” von der Leyen told a news conference in Vilnius. “We are testing and coordinating our crisis responses during regular exercises; and we are stepping up our coordination, cooperation on resilience, on situational awareness and on fighting disinformation.” More here.
More money: Von der Leyen said Lithuania was receiving €37 million in emergency assistance to protect its border and that “border management funds” to Lithuania, Poland and Estonia would be tripled to €200 million in 2021 and 2022.
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IN OTHER NEWS
SCHOLZ PLANS EARLY DECEMBER VISIT TO FRANCE: His first foreign trip as German chancellor will lead Olaf Scholz to Paris, a close official told POLITICO’s Hans von der Burchard. By making his inaugural visit to France, Scholz is keeping in tradition with his predecessors Angela Merkel, Gerhard Schröder, Helmut Kohl and Helmut Schmidt.
POLAND CALLS ON SCHOLZ TO RETHINK NORD STREAM 2: The new government in Berlin should “do everything possible” to prevent Russia from using Nord Stream 2 as a weapon against its neighbors, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said. “Nord Stream 2 is becoming a tool to blackmail Ukraine and Moldova. It is also a tool for the manipulation of energy prices,” he told German news agency DPA in an interview.
Good luck with that: “I would expect the new German government to do everything possible not to allow Nord Stream 2 to be an instrument in the arsenal of President Putin,” Morawiecki added. Playbook wouldn’t hold its breath. Scholz, who has served as Germany’s vice chancellor and finance minister in the outgoing government, is expected to follow in Merkel’s footsteps in backing the pipeline.
OPINION — THE ‘MERKEL BRAKE’ IS OFF: “The German coalition deal, Koalitionsvertrag, at times reads not like a weak compromise but more a pre-election party manifesto — and of a party I would vote for,” writes an enthusiastic Guy Verhofstadt, an MEP and the former liberal leader in the European Parliament, in an opinion piece for POLITICO. He argues that the “Merkel brake” that held up progress in the EU is now off.
PARIS ‘READY TO TALK’ ABOUT AUTONOMY FOR GUADELOUPE: The French government said it’s open to talks on granting autonomy to Guadeloupe following riots on the Caribbean-island territory. Read more by our colleague Paola Tamma.
THE BIRD IS THE WORD: The presidential campaign of far-right French TV pundit Eric Zemmour looks like it’s becoming unhinged even before it officially starts, with Zemmour facing allegations that his 28-year-old de-facto campaign director is pregnant with his child, groups of leftist protesters hounding him — and a picture of him giving a woman the one-fingered salute from his car. Our colleague Clea Caulcutt has the details.
CALL FOR BAN ON ‘FALSE SELF-EMPLOYMENT’: Ministers from Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium and Portugal will today call on the Commission to ban what they say is fake self-employment on platforms (think of Uber drivers and Deliveroo food delivery). In a joint letter with the European Trade Union Confederation and MEPs to be published in newspapers across the EU today, they call for “rules to ensure digital labour platforms cannot exploit loopholes in the law to make big profits through falsely self-employing their workers.”
Unfair competition: The practice of fake self-employment is “not only unfair to workers, but also to the vast majority of businesses who do follow the rules and to society as a whole,” the signatories write.
THE BRITS DO TECH: Over the next two days, the great and the good of the digital policymaking world will descend on London for the inaugural (and likely only) Future Tech Forum, our colleague Mark Scott writes in to report. It’s effectively a G7-backed conference aimed at building bridges between the West’s largest countries on everything from social media regulation to artificial intelligence rules to how to reduce the dominance of Big Tech giants.
So what’s on the agenda? That was harder to find out than expected after British officials failed to inform invitees about the agenda. Still, our Morning Tech colleagues pieced it together. There are panel discussions on tech’s roles in combating climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic, as well more hard-nosed topics like platform regulation and making it easier to share data across borders. London hopes to use the two-day event to showcase its own digital regulation, including plans to rein in social media companies and improve digital competition.
One off: The U.K. holds the G7 presidency until the end of the year, with Germany taking over in January. And a German official said there weren’t currently plans to continue the Future Tech Forum into 2022. In part, that’s because Berlin has its own digital conference — the Internet Governance Forum. Also: German officials reckon the U.K. bit off too much during its G7 presidency, and tackling tech policy was an example of London stretching itself too far.
In attendance: It’s a who’s who of digital policymakers. The American antitrust duo of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s Lina Khan and the Department of Justice’s Jonathan Kanter will be in town, as will the European Commission’s competition chief Margrethe Vestager and top digital Commission bureaucrat Roberto Viola.
**Philippe Roux, from the European Commission’s directorate-general for health and food safety, Agostino Di Ciaula, continental vice-president for Europe at ISDE will speak at the last event of the Evolution of Health Care series focusing on “Facing the health consequences of climate change: what path for Europe?”. Register today.**
AGENDA
— Commission President Ursula von der Leyen delivers speech at European Hydrogen Week 2021 (9:30 a.m.).
— World Health Assembly. Ursula von der Leyen and Council President Charles Michel to deliver addresses from 10:50 a.m. Watch.
— Education and Youth Council. Press conference expected from 6 p.m. Agenda.
— Commission Vice President Maroš Šefčovič in Budapest. Signs memorandum of understanding on the Hungarian National Reskilling Program under the European Battery Academy, followed by Q&A (4 p.m.).
— Commissioner for Culture Mariya Gabriel holds press point on the announcement of an online guide for the culture and creative sectors to get better access to funding at the Natan Boutique in Brussels at 1:30 p.m.
— European Parliament President David Sassoli meets Speaker of Moldova parliament Igor Grosu. Press point to follow at approximately 3:30 p.m. Watch.
— Regional Forum of the Union for the Mediterranean in Barcelona. EU High Representative Josep Borrell to attend. Begins at 9 a.m. Press conference expected at noon. Details. Watch.
— EU-Southern Neighborhood Ministerial meeting in Barcelona.
— Future Tech Forum in London.
— Eurogroup chief Paschal Donohoe in Paris for series of bilateral meetings to prepare for the French presidency of the Council, including with Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire and central bank chief François Villeroy de Galhau.
BRUSSELS CORNER
SLOVENIAN FUN AT SCHUMAN: As the Slovenian presidency of the Council of the EU draws to a close and the country celebrates 30 years of independence, the presidency is gearing up for a weeklong festival, with a series of events planned today in the Schuman area. Among the guests are Slovenia’s Eurovision contestant for this year, Ana Soklič, who will kick things this evening. Full program and more details here.
BREXIT COMMISSION: A group of academics, journalists, businesspeople and others have launched what they’re calling the “Independent Commission on UK-EU Relations,” with the aim of finding solutions to repair the relationship. Among those involved are a few names known in Brussels, including former FT Editor Lionel Barber and Chairman of the EU-UK Forum Paul Adamson. The co-chairs are Mike Clancy, the general secretary of the Prospect trade union, and Janice Hughes, CEO of Graphite Strategy.
BIRTHDAYS: MEPs Catherine Chabaud and Biljana Borzan; Former MEP Lynn Boylan; International Crisis Group’s Alissa de Carbonnel; Rud Pedersen Public Affairs’ Nora Lawton; Christine Hollner from the Swedish EU representation.
MANY THANKS: Mark Scott, Suzanne Lynch and our producer Grace Stranger.
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