Category: 3. Business

If we want to make our energy supply affordable, sustainable, and resilient now and in the future, renewables really are the only right choice. They offer domestic value creation, often directly at the local level and help free us from dependencies created by energy politics. In addition, renewables leave other energy sources behind in terms of power generation costs. They are not only central to climate action but also help stabilise Germany economically and increase its resilience to external shocks.

How would you generally rate the performance of the coalition government of chancellor Friedrich Merz in energy and climate policy so far? Where do you see promising approaches – and where do you identify notable shortcomings?

The recently adopted Economic Promotion Act for Germany, which is supposed to steer investments into renewable energy, is a good signal in my opinion, much like the commitments to faster planning and licensing set out in the Infrastructure of the Future Act. Apart from that, I welcome the fact that policymakers have begun to understand that grids, storage systems, and energy generation must be thought of as one integrated system.

At the same time, a clear signal from the government that the current expansion path for renewables will be resolutely continued is still lacking. One example for this is the mobility sector, where we would wish to see a clearer commitment to decarbonisation. A transformation as profound as the one that the German auto industry is faced with needs a reliable political framework. In Germany, the focus is largely set on protecting the status quo. This consumes resources needed for the necessary investment in future-oriented structures, which in turn makes it hard to safeguard value creation, jobs, and technological leadership in the area of renewable propulsion technologies in the long term.

Which topics and developments would you say are going to become relevant in 2026? And what conclusions do you think the government should draw from them?

The first months of the new year will clearly be focussed on the upcoming reform of the Renewable Energy Act (EEG) and the Building Modernisation Act (GMG). We urgently need clarity on the future course of the heating sector’s transition. For the coming year it will be important for the government to act both quickly and in a way that is viable in the long term. We need speed and substance – in grid expansion, in reducing bureaucracy, in the smart meter roll-out, and in digitalisation. Our call for action is therefore clear: We need system-friendly investments instead of short-term cost reduction measures.

In its recent ruling of 11 December 2025 (Case C-485/24), the CJEU clarified how to determine the law applicable to an employment contract when the habitual place of work changes throughout the relationship. Employers must thus be particularly cautious when dealing with employees in cross-border employment relationships within the EU in order to ensure compliance in the right jurisdiction, as a change of the employee’s habitual place of work may result in a change of the applicable law and, consequently, of the employee protections afforded.

The Locatrans case
Locatrans, a Luxembourg-based transport firm, hired a French driver in 2002 under an employment contract governed by Luxembourg law. Initially, the driver worked across multiple EU countries. Over time, the driver increasingly performed his activities in France, prompting payment of social security contributions in France in 2014. Further to a dispute over reduced working hours, Locatrans terminated the employee. 

The latter brought a wrongful dismissal claim before the Dijon Labour Court (Conseil de prud’hommes de Dijon), which applied Luxembourg law as chosen by the parties in the employment contract and dismissed the claim. The Dijon Court of Appeal (Cour d’appel de Dijon) overturned the first instance decision, invoking the Rome Convention and ruling that French law applied due to employee’s habitual place of work being based in France. 

Locatrans then brought the case before the Supreme Court (Cour de Cassation), which referred the matter to the CJEU, asking the latter how to determine the applicable law in a situation where the employee’s habitual place of work has evolved during the employment relationship.

The CJEU ruling

TheCJEU replied that if an employee, in the course of the employment relationship, performs his work activities in a different place, which is intended to become the new habitual place of work, this new place should be factored in when determining the applicable law. 

The CJEU reminded that the Rome Convention limits the choice of law made by the parties, in that such a choice is not to have the result of depriving the employee of the protection afforded to him by the mandatory rules of the law which would be applicable in the absence of such a choice. To determine the applicable law in such scenario, the Rome Convention focuses on the employee’s habitual place of work, unless it appears from the circumstances that the contract is more closely connected with another country, in which case the law of that country shall apply.

In this respect, the CJEU indicated that the place where the employee has carried out his work during the most recent period of the performance of his contract of employment, which place is intended to become a new habitual place of work, constitutes a relevant factor to be taken into consideration when determining the country most closely tied to the employment relationship; the same applies to the obligation to pay social security contributions.

Implications for global employers
To stay compliant and minimise legal exposure, employers should regularly review employment arrangements for employees working either across several jurisdictions and/or whose habitual place of work is about to be changed in a lasting manner to ensure that mandatory rules of the country most closely connected to the employment relationship are being observed.

 

The Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD) is introducing a new veterinary medicines packaging surveillance scheme from 2 February 2026.

This will change how the VMD assesses and monitors veterinary medicine packaging to ensure proportionate oversight whilst reducing regulatory burden on the animal health industry. By monitoring products already on the market, the regulator can ensure proportionate oversight without unnecessary administrative burden.

What will the scheme assess

Every three months, the VMD will select a group of products for packaging assessment. These products will be sourced from wholesalers, and all packaging components will be reviewed. The assessment will verify that the packaging complies with the approved product information text (QRD) and the principles set out in the Product Literature Standards.

How will assessment findings be reported

The VMD will share the assessment findings with the Market Authorisation Holder (MAH) for the product concerned within the three-month assessment period.

Where non-compliance is identified, the VMD will outline the necessary corrective actions to the MAH. These actions may range from requiring the MAH to update packaging at the next regulatory opportunity for low-severity issues, to requiring submission of a formal variation to correct mock-ups, and in the most severe cases, tracking the issue as a product defect. The timeframe for implementing these actions will depend on the severity of the specific issue(s) identified.

Mock-up assessment changes

As part of the new surveillance scheme supporting regulatory compliance in the market, the VMD has revised its requirements for submitting mock-ups.

From 2 February 2026 mock-ups will no longer be required for G.I.18 Variations Requiring Assessment (VRA) and during a new Marketing Authorisation (MA) procedure.

The VMD will continue to review and approve mock-ups in the following scenarios via a G.I.15.z VRA: 

• To introduce mock-ups for the first time prior to marketing

• To undertake joint assessment of mock-ups between VMD and HPRA following granting of a new MA 

• To assess significant changes to the design or layout of the mock-ups that are unrelated to the summary of product characteristics (SPC) 

Where mock-ups are required, only those for the smallest marketed pack size are to be submitted for assessment.

The VMD will not routinely assess or annotate mock-ups for other variation categories. However, these may be requested on a case-by-case basis where we consider that the overall design and readability could be significantly affected. 

Ongoing applications affected by these changes

For ongoing G.I.18 VRAs and new MA applications as of 2 February 2026, the VMD will continue to assess mock-ups already requested or received, reviewing all submitted pack sizes. Where an application has not reached mock-up assessment phase, the application will be issued without requiring mock-ups.

Contact

For any queries relating to this news item, please email postmaster@vmd.gov.uk.

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There are many different techniques of bank supervision. Historically, the North American approach emphasises on-site inspections, while Europeans make use of regular supervisory reports and validation of internal models and controls. Comparatively little use, however, has been made of “dystopian collaborative fiction writing workshops”. Until now!

The European Banking Authority carries out a full-dress stress test every other year to establish the banking system’s resilience to an economic downturn scenario. In the off-years, the ECB often does its own exercise, somewhat less demanding in scope and focused on a specific area of immediate concern. In 2024, for example, it was a climate risk scenario. Next year, the theme will be geopolitical risk.

And it’s going to be a “reverse stress test”. Rather than being given a scenario to deal with . . . 

. . . each bank will be asked to identify the most relevant geopolitical risk events that could lead to at least a 300-basis point depletion in its Common Equity Tier 1 (CET1) capital. In addition to reporting on how the geopolitical risk scenario would affect their solvency positions, banks will also be asked to provide information about how it may affect their liquidity and funding conditions.

So it’s not quite “imagine the end of the world”, but rather “imagine something that would be quite bad, but not very bad, say about 300 basis points of capital ratio bad”. The ECB says that it will publish the main conclusions in summer of 2026.

Unfortunately for Alphaville we shouldn’t expect a compendium of horrific 28 Days Later fantasies. Banks will tend towards prosaic but nonetheless real possibilities, like “a big tariff war”, “escalation of the Ukraine conflict” or “Donald Trump might sue us”.

Hopefully there will be some wacky ones in there too though. The ECB plans to administer this reverse stress test to 110 banks, so surely there will be some of them that employ wannabe Tom Clancy types in the risk management department. It could kick off a new genre of fiction; in these stressful days, it might be nice to be able to pick up a low-stakes thriller where you know that the eventual outcome will only be three percentage points of Common Equity Tier One capital won or lost.

But, of course, in this case the published results are not actually the important thing. One of the great fallacies of scenario analysis is attempting to get the exact right result. (This is in many ways an original sin of the discipline; scenario analysis really caught on after Shell was able to prosper in the 1970s because its earlier exercise had included something like the 1973 oil shock. This cemented the use of scenarios in corporate planning, but left lots of people hoping they’d be able score a hole-in-one like that every time).

The real purpose of reverse stress testing (and all kinds of scenario analysis) is twofold. First, to instil flexibility and responsiveness in the management system and to choose strategies which are robust to a wide set of possibilities rather than super-optimised for current conditions. And second, to test reporting and information systems, to be sure that they are capable of representing the variety of possible outcomes.

It’s this second function that the ECB is probably most interested in. As well as writing their nightmare journal, each banks is going to have to show how it produces a 300bp hit to capital. Which is not necessarily a trivial task. All the banks which are significant enough to be directly supervised by the ECB are meant to have “risk data aggregation and risk reporting” (RDARR) systems that are capable of carrying out scenario analysis, but this is the first time they’ve all been asked to prove it.

Of course, delegating the task to the banks also conveniently means that the ECB itself gets out of having to design a “geopolitical risk” scenario, which is more or less by definition a piece of work that’s going to annoy somebody powerful. And it acts as a distributed brainstorming session across the industry, potentially identifying geopolitical problems that hadn’t reached Frankfurt.

Most importantly, it might give us all something fun to read over the summer. More supervisors should do this!

Solar power in Germany generated significantly more electricity last year, with its share of domestic power production rising to around 18%, up from 14% in 2024, the German Solar Industry Association (BSW) said on Monday.

That meant photovoltaic power overtook lignite, which accounted for about 14%, and natural gas, at roughly 16%, as sources of electricity generation, the association said.

The figures are based on data from the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems.

Wind power remained Germany’s largest source of electricity, with a share of 27%.

According to preliminary annual figures, more than 5.5 million installed photovoltaic systems generated around 87 terawatt hours of electricity last year. That was about 15 terawatt hours more than in 2024 and marked another record high.

Despite the strong increase in electricity generation from solar modules, the pace of expansion has stalled, the BSW said.

In 2025, additional photovoltaic capacity of around 17.5 gigawatts was installed – roughly the same as in the previous year. That level of growth is insufficient to meet Germany’s legally binding expansion targets for 2030, the association said.

Raw hemp plants from farms near and far come in by the super sack to Sweetwater Hemp Company in rural Nebraska.

The hemp is weighed, placed on pallets and then spends a few weeks in an industrial freezer before it goes through an ice-water extraction process to produce concentrates. Those concentrates will go into a variety of products from topical creams and tinctures to edibles.

It’s a business model that became legal after the 2018 Farm Bill removed hemp – a type of cannabis plant from the same genus as marijuana – from the federal Controlled Substances Act. That made hemp and all its derivatives legal, so long as it contains less than 0.3% of delta-9 THC, the main psychoactive compound in marijuana, by dry weight.

Often referred to as the “hemp loophole,” the law change inadvertently legalized a host of intoxicating and non-intoxicating hemp-derived THC products, and created a multi-billion dollar industry.

Now that industry is at risk.

Without legislative intervention, the vast majority of the products sold by Sweetwater Hemp and companies like it will become illegal in November. The bill that ended the longest government shutdown in U.S. history contained a provision to close the loophole. It would redefine hemp to limit the amount of any THC – not just delta-9 THC – to 0.3%, and limit the total amount of THC to 0.4 milligrams per container.

“The federal hemp bill would basically eliminate full-spectrum products,” said Brett Mayo, Sweetwater’s chief extraction officer, as he walked through the warehouse. “You would be working with broad-spectrum products with no THC, which with my process you can’t really do. Everything we do takes everything from the plant – and the plant, naturally, is gonna have some THC in it.”

Also impacted by the change would be the small but growing contingent of farmers who have adopted hemp into their crop rotations. Jonathan Miller, an attorney for national hemp advocacy organization U.S. Hemp Roundtable, said about 65% to 75% of all hemp farmed in the country is used for cannabinoid extraction. Most of the remaining hemp is grown for fiber and seed.

While those smaller markets for hemp are emerging, Texas Hemp Business Council President Cynthia Cabrera said growing the crop for extraction keeps hemp farming profitable.

“Everyone loves the idea of, you know, hemp world, where all the sidewalks are made out of hemp and all the houses are made out of hemp,” Cabrera said. “Realistically, however, that’s the future, right? If you want to keep farmers around so they can survive and contribute to that hemp future, you have to be able to allow them to be able to sell into these end markets.”

Alternate markets? 

While most hemp is grown for extraction, that isn’t the case in South Dakota, which has emerged as dominant in production of hemp fiber.

Ken Meyer is the former president of the South Dakota Industrial Hemp Association, and he owns and operates a hemp processing facility outside of Winfred. The facility contracts with hemp farmers to process the raw bales into fiber and hurd.

“The fiber, the stringy material from the outside of the plant, is used for textiles,” Meyer explained. “It’s also used for bioplastics, biocomposites, and also as a building material. It’s used to make insulation. And then the hemp hurd is sold and used for animal bedding and used also for building materials.”

Meyer said South Dakota could be somewhat insulated from the impacts of the new highly restrictive hemp laws because of its dominance in the fiber market. But he worries that any large-scale prohibition on hemp would have trickle-down impacts on the parts of the industry that remain legal. And it comes at a time where farmers across the U.S. are showing increased interest in growing hemp for fiber – the amount of fiber hemp harvested across the country jumped by 56% between 2023 and 2024.

With two full-service hemp processing centers, South Dakota is strides ahead of other states in its hemp processing capacity. For three years straight, the state grew the most industrial hemp of any state in the country. That faltered last year after farmers grew more hemp than processors could handle.

Meyer said that shows that there’s still a long way to go before a robust supply chain is built up for the production of hemp goods.

“It’s not like taking your corn or soybeans to the local elevator,” he said. “Whether you like the price or not, at least there’s always a place to go with it. We’re building those supply chains, and we’re optimistic, but it’s not perfect and all ironed out by any means.”

Hope for a fix

Few people in the hemp industry believe that the ban will go into effect as written.

“I don’t think [hemp] is going to be eliminated,” Mayo, of Sweetwater Hemp, said. “It’s just not feasible that you’re going to get rid of a multi-billion dollar business, and the taxes and everything that it brings in – especially since the administration that made it legal took it away.”

In addition to the thousands of shops and hundreds of companies that would be forced to close under the ban, much of the hemp currently grown by farmers would become illegal overnight under the new total THC limit. U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), a consistent opponent of the ban, said in a November hearing that every hemp plant and hemp seed would have to be destroyed under the provisions.

That’s at the same time as hemp acres – for seed, fiber and floral hemp – are rebounding after years of smaller harvests. Between 2023 and 2024, there was a 64% increase in hemp acres harvested across the U.S.

The recent executive order from President Donald Trump rescheduling marijuana also includes language that hemp advocates see as promising. It orders Congress to update the definition of hemp-derived cannabinoid products to allow people to continue using “appropriate full-spectrum CBD products.” It also says agencies will work to develop a “regulatory framework” and expand research into the products.

Many in the industry have been urging both state and federal lawmakers to enact basic regulations, like age restrictions and testing requirements, for years. Miller said federal lawmakers are already working on bills that would ensure good manufacturing practices like truth in labeling and third-party testing. One bill, introduced in early December, would set a cap of 50 milligrams of THC per container and 5 milligrams per serving.

“We’re hopeful that one of those vehicles – or maybe a vehicle to be named later – will be helpful in getting this ban reversed and replaced with a full regulatory system,” Miller said.

This story was produced in partnership with Harvest Public Media, a collaboration of public media newsrooms in the Midwest and Great Plains. It reports on food systems, agriculture and rural issues.

Precious metal prices have risen after the US capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro increased investors’ concerns about geopolitical risks.

Gold was about 2.2% higher at $4,424 (£3,292) an ounce, while the price of silver was up by 3.9%, as money was moved into so-called “safe-haven” assets.

Meanwhile, crude oil prices fell back and share indexes in Europe and Asia were mostly higher.

Both gold and silver hit record highs in 2025 before losing ground in the last few days of the year.

Despite dipping at the end of last year, gold still saw its best annual performance since 1979 after rising by more than 60%, reaching an all-time high of $4,549.71 on 26 December.

Those gains were driven by several factors including expectations of more interest rate cuts, major purchases of bullion by central banks and investor concerns about global tensions and economic uncertainty.

Oil fluctuated in early trade before slipping back as investors weighed whether Washington’s intervention in Venezuela would affect crude supplies. Brent crude was down 50 cents, or 0.8%, to $60.26 a barrel.

US President Donald Trump has vowed to tap into Venezuela’s vast oil reserves after seizing Maduro and said that the US will “run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition”.

But industry analysts have said the move is unlikely to have an immediate impact on how much people and businesses pay for energy.

Experts have also said it would cost billions of dollars to fix Venezuela’s oil infrastructure, which has been in sharp decline since the early 2000s.

Venezuela’s crude production has been “lacklustre” for years and now only accounts for around 1% of global oil output, said investment strategist Vasu Menon from OCBC bank.

The former chief executive of BP, Lord Browne, told the BBC’s Today programme that for Venezuela to revive its oil production would take “a tremendous amount of skill investment and time”.

While there might be a “quick pick up” of some production, he added, output might actually fall while the industry is reorganising.

Stock markets in Europe opened higher, with the UK’s FTSE 100 index up 0.3% and close to the 10,000 mark that it hit for the first time on Friday.

Following the events of the weekend firms involved in the defence industry saw some of the biggest gains, with BAE Systems up 4.5% and Babcock International 3.6% higher.

Mining firms also rose following the gain in precious metals prices, with Fresnillo up 3.6%.

Share markets in Asia made gains as investors focused on news unrelated to developments in Venezuela.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 was up by 2.6% on the first day of trading of the year and new data showed that manufacturing activity stabilised in December.

Major indexes in South Korea and China were also higher.

The jumps reflect confidence that the fallout from events in Venezuela will remain distant, said Zavier Wong from investment firm eToro.

Distinguished guests, partners, and friends,

Introduction

1.               I am really happy to open the T5 in the Making exhibition today.

The Changi Story

2.               Prime Minister Wong was here just six months ago to break ground for Terminal 5, or T5.

a.               In his speech, he said that the Changi story is a reflection of the Singapore story – where we continue to defy the odds, exceed expectations, and to keep striving to reach new heights.

3.               The T5 in the Making exhibition brings this story to life.

a.               It takes us back to the decision that our founding leaders took to move the airport from Paya Lebar to Changi.

b.               It is an obvious decision now; but in the 1970s, no one could have foreseen how international air traffic would grow so rapidly.

c.                Paya Lebar’s capacity was then only 8 million passengers per year. Today, Changi already handles about 70 million. And T5 will increase Changi’s existing capacity by about 50 million passengers per year. And no expansion of Paya Lebar could have met these needs.

d.               That was of course a lot of work to make this happen. It would have been easier to expand the airport at Paya Lebar because The infrastructure was already there, and it would have been more cost effective. To create Changi Airport, we had to reclaim land along East Coast and Tanah Merah and reshape our geography. Doing so gave us the potential to expand further in the future, as we are doing now.

4.               Over the decades, Changi has fulfilled its potential, and more.

a.               It has expanded in step with the growth of global aviation

b.               New terminals were added, existing ones regularly refurbished, to maintain Changi’s world leading standards

c.                We built Jewel, which set a new bar in passenger experience.

d.               I have no doubt that the world is watching to see what T5 represents for the future of aviation.

Keeping Singapore Aviation on the Map

5.               We first announced the decision to build T5 in 2013.

a.               Not too long ago, but I was at MOT then as a public officer, not directly working on aviation, but on land transport. But I remember discussing with the airport officers the future taxi operations and being bewildered by how many more taxis we would need, with the sheer scale of T5.

b.               The decision to build T5 was one of confidence and conviction. Confidence in our future, and conviction in our ability to secure our place in a competitive world.

c.                That confidence was shaken when global aviation demand collapsed during the COVID-19 pandemic. For a moment, we were not sure what the future of aviation would hold. And we reconsidered deeply whether to proceed with T5. In the end, we decided to go ahead.

6.               The strong post-COVID recovery for global aviation shows that we made absolutely the right decision.

a.               Last year, IATA announced that the airline industry had fully recovered from its worst crisis in history. Changi’s passenger volumes have also surpassed pre-COVID levels.

b.               And the future looks bright. By 2050, global air traffic is expected to double, with Asia-Pacific leading this growth.

T5 and the Changi East Development

7.               With T5 in the Making, we will be part of this growth story.

a.               When T5 opens in the mid-2030s, we aim to increase our number of city connections from around 170 cities to over 200 cities.

b.               With T5 and the Changi East Industrial Zone, we also have the opportunity to grow our air cargo capacity, and solidify Singapore’s role as a logistics hub.

c.                And the Changi East Urban District will create a new lifestyle and business hub for both Singaporeans and visitors to connect, work, and play.

d.               You will see some of these exciting plans at the exhibition.

T5: A Terminal for the Future

8.               T5 represents the future of aviation for us. As we build T5 over the next ten years, we have to make sure that it will meet the needs of the airlines and passengers tomorrow, not just today.

9.               First, we have designed T5 to be technology-intensive – empowered by automation and AI

a.               For example, autonomous vehicles and robotics are already being trialled for labour-intensive processes, such as baggage and cargo handling

b.               To optimise airport operations, AI can be used to improve flight planning and passenger services, and respond quickly to disruptions like changing weather conditions.

10.            Second, T5 is designed to show the way for aviation sustainability.

a.               T5 will support our efforts to catalyse the use of Sustainable Aviation Fuels and new energy sources to decarbonise air travel.

b.               T5 will  also be fully electrified, and will be powered by one of Singapore’s largest rooftop solar panels.

11.            Third, T5 is designed to put the customer first.

a.               It has incorporated ideas from passengers, airlines, and airport tenants, from the layout of lounges to the design of retail spaces.  

b.               For example, passengers will have a seamless journeys from immigration to security to boarding, with personalised recommendations for dining, retail, and transit along the way

c.                And although T5 is a  bigger airport, its design reduces walking time, and consequently, transit passengers can make their connections more quickly.

Jobs and Opportunities for Singaporeans

12.            With T5, the number of jobs in the aviation sector will only continue to grow. Many of them will be new jobs, such as in data science, systems operations, and sustainability. These are areas where future Singaporeans will want to work in.

a.               Annually, there are more than 2,000 students graduating from aviation and aerospace-related courses in our Institutes of Higher Learning.

b.               It is imperative that the  sectors continue to attract its share of talent and work closely with the IHLs to make sure that the skills of our workforce remain relevant and future-ready.

Building a Next Generation Air Hub Together

13.            The construction of T5 is advancing steadily.

a.               I visited the Changi East Project Office just last week. I met the team working on the project, several of whom have been involved in the project since the very beginning  in 2013.

b.               I told them that they deserved great credit for bringing the project to where it is today.

14.            Changi Airport Group has awarded contracts, including to local contractors, for the T5 substructure, tunnel works, and early remote stands. A few days ago, you might have read  media reports on the progress of the T2 to T5 inter-terminal connection tunnel. In the next few weeks, Changi Airport Group will also be launching the superstructure tender.  

15.            Changi Airport is regarded by many as one of the best, if not the best, airports in the world. This success is thanks to the hard work and collaboration of all our OneAviation family. 

16.            Delivering T5 will require a whole-of-ecosystem effort. I am glad that Changi Airport Group and CAAS have been working closely alongside airlines, ground handlers, contractors, tenants, technology partners, and crucially, our unions and workers to make Changi what it is today – a beacon of Singapore’s excellence.

17.            Through the exhibition T5 in the Making, I invite all Singaporeans to join the One Aviation Family, as we build T5 and the future of aviation together.

Thank you.