It started with an email. On 23 October, members of the European Parliament’s industry committee (ITRE) found a message headed “URGENT” in their inboxes.
“We – as Coordinators representing a majority in the Committee – have agreed to make these attributions…” reads the message to ITRE’s political leaders. In straight terms that translates as: “I will be in charge of designing €409 billion in research and industry grants.”
The email was sent by Christian Ehler of the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), with its formal tone making a mockery of its politically explosive implications.
Ehler, a 62-year-old German Christian Democrat, had effectively seized the right to steer parliamentary negotiations over a €400 billion research and industry cash pot that is central to the EU’s next long-term budget, as Brussels tries to keep pace in the global industrial race.
The coup – pulled off with cover from fellow coordinators Dan Nica (S&D) and Christophe Grudler (Renew) – cements Ehler’s influence over how the resources will be disbursed. Rival groups blasted the “dangerous precedent”, calling it “undemocratic collusion”.
As a consequence, Ehler will lead negotiations on the design of EU research grants in the coming years, and a planned new industrial policy “superfund” that could be worth hundreds of billions of euros.
Europe is on the cusp of a new era of industrial policy – moving from decades of debating the merits of creating such a fund (some say it began with the eponymous 1988 report authored by Italian economist Paolo Cecchini) to earmarking a massive chunk of EU cash for the purpose.
The industrial superfund is new and its outline remains, for now, vague. But one thing is clear: The European Parliament and its newly-appointed German “mastermind” will have a major say in how it develops, said Andrea Renda at Brussels-based political think tank CEPS. Ehler will work on the €234 billion European Competitiveness Fund, together with Nica, and be sole executor of €175 billion research grants.
Ehler’s political ascent is the product of 20 years of gruelling legislative work within the corridors of power in Brussels, involving backroom deals with rival politicians and, crucially, his own centre-right party chief, Manfred Weber.
“No one is ever free to do whatever they want in politics,” a member of the ITRE committee, who did not want to be named, told Euractiv. “But he is quite free.” The lawmaker was one of more than a dozen of Ehler’s colleagues, backers and political opponents we interviewed to get a sense of how the new industrial finance kingpin thinks.
Brussels man
Christian Ehler fancies himself an emissary of the “real economy” – anybody speaking to the German lawmaker for longer than five minutes will be reminded of his pre-politics career as a CEO with hundreds of employees.
Since then, however, he has become a bona fide career politician. In 1999, he won a seat in the state parliament of Brandenburg before getting elected to the European Parliament in 2004. He promptly joined the industry committee – and has never left.
“It was obvious to me that I didn’t want to rise through the ranks of my group. I was more interested in being in the machinery room of politics,” he told Euractiv. Since 2014, he has been the EPP’s point man on the industry and energy committee.
Two decades in the committee trenches – often the public face of EPP for industrial policy – has given Ehler an invaluable network of contacts.
Knowing the ropes
The Brussels policy machine is an opaque, labyrinthine superstructure. Knowing your way around is power and Ehler has the map.
“I have a structural understanding of who’s who in the Parliament, I know how DG RTD [the Commission’s directorate-general for research policy] and DG GROW [economic policy] work,” he says.
At the same time, he has a direct line to powerful figures in industry and academia. And unlike many of his colleagues, the German lawmaker understands that true influence over EU policy comes from unity. “Without strong leadership, a file becomes a messy battleground for special interests.”
This is especially true for the parliamentary negotiations over the EU’s trillion-euro seven-year budget. “You need to quickly hammer out a rock-solid cross-party position, because both Commission and Council historically try to play MEPs against one another along national lines,” Ehler says.
Harnessing the changing winds
Ehler’s control of the industrial cash pots has been aided by the 2019 “political turn” that followed von der Leyen’s first mandate, where a “green wave” of environmentally conscious voters shifted the balance of power and culminated in the Green Deal.
“Historically, the role of the EU was to regulate the market every ten years, but the Green Deal meant intervening in the economy in a way we had never done before,” Ehler says.
The Green Deal shift put the EPP on the back foot. “We were the strongest political group, but we didn’t have a majority in parliament.” Ehler found himself relegated to working on the bloc’s lacklustre response to the US Inflation Reduction Act.
But he knew his time would come once the green wave had subsided, with industry again becoming the Commission imperative. Whilst the environment committee was in the spotlight, Ehler and EPP party chief Weber agreed to consolidate their hold on ITRE to put them on the front foot once the political tide turned.
The EPP’s hand was further strengthened from 2024 on, as it suddenly held an unprecedented two potential majorities: one with centrist left-wing and liberal parties, and one with those to its right.
The conservative group has leveraged this position to roll back corporate sustainability rules. More strategically, the EPP leaned on its far-right majority to ensure that ITRE – and thus Ehler himself – would have sole jurisdiction over the two industrial competitiveness cash pots.
“Now we are in a much stronger situation,” he says. With the Greens and Socialists kicked out of many governments across Europe, the EPP and its political allies also have what Ehler calls “a dominant majority in the Council”.
ITRE through and through
Ehler’s playground remains the industry committee. Some MEPs shun nitty-gritty policy work in the pursuit of a higher profile and wider influence. Ehler does both.
For much of the current term, he has devoted himself to developing the small print on the classification of hydrogen in European energy regulations. But he has not let that get in the way of consolidating his influence.
Concentrating power is central to Ehler’s management of ITRE, said one former committee member.
By all accounts, Ehler is smart, knowledgeable and strategic – although some say he tends to bloviate at times. In his words: “I’m neither shy nor without self-esteem”. Either way, his will be a key voice as a champion of Europe’s ailing industry.
But while Ehler’s €400 billion political heist is impressive, he now faces the Herculean task of securing Europe’s industrial future.
(rh, ow)