A new national energy consensus for the post-Fukushima world – By Kevin Lynch

It is no exaggeration to say that, outside of Japan, the effects of the Fukushima nuclear disaster have been felt most strongly 9,000 kilometers away in Germany. On the government’s official website, bundesregierung.de, the most prominent link at the moment is “Japan and the consequences.”

Click on it, and a drop-down menu opens with the following options: Travel; Food and Imports; Radiation Protection; The Economy. There is information on every conceivable way in which Fukushima could impact Germany. Also prominently displayed are the numbers of two “citizen telephones,” hotlines to the environment ministry and to the foreign ministry, which concerned Germans, at home or abroad, can ring for advice.

Haggling over EU agricultural subsidies – By Wolfgang Mulke

Using Google Earth, you have no trouble recognizing the border between the former East and the former West Germany – even now, 20 years after it disappeared from political maps. The differing shapes of the agricultural areas are a dead giveaway. The east is dominated by vast swathes of acreage, the remains of giant Communist-era agricultural combines. The west is a patchwork of small farms. Both forms of farming have survived in reunified Germany and, looking down from space at the Elbe River that divides them, the difference is clear to see.

Tuna nigiri – stocks of the fish are severely depleted in European and Mediterranean waters.

Too few fish, too many fishermen – Europe plans to change its fishing quotas – By Ulrike Fokken

Everyone likes fish. The Spaniards consume 43 kilograms per person each year; the Japanese 30 kilos; Germans eat an average 17 kilos of fish annually. But the Baltic and North Seas off Germany do not produce enough to satisfy that appetite. And Spaniards currently consume around four times more than the fish stocks in the waters off their Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts.

Two-thirds of the fish consumed in Europe are imported from Africa, Asia and America. According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, 85 percent of the world’s known fish stocks are either “fully exploited or overexploited.”

The EU’s East continues to see atomic energy as a valuable option – By Luboš Palata

Europe is facing a new division – the Nuclear Curtain. The issue of nuclear energy fundamentally separates Germany and Austria on the one side from the new members of the European Union in East-Central Europe on the other.

Germany’s Fukushima-boosted exodus from nuclear energy represents a much more serious problem for Czechs, Hungarians, Poles, Slovaks and Slovenians than the Austrian “antinuclear hysteria,” with which they have long learned to live. One would think it should be the other way around.

France still considers reactor power vital to the national interest – By Rudolf Balmer, Paris

In the wake of events at Fukushima, several European countries have called a moratorium on nuclear energy. France is not one of them. On the contrary. Environmental parties somewhat hesitantly put out a call for a referendum on partially abandoning nuclear power and even that went almost unheeded.

France gets almost 80 percent of its electricity from its 58 nuclear reactors. The country’s state-owned nuclear energy industry leads the world in building nuclear plants and re-processing nuclear fuel rods.

On the way to becoming the biggest car manufacturer in the world? Daimler and GM failed. Will VW succeed?

Volkswagen is growing but ill-equipped for the future – By Hannes Koch

About a year ago, Volks­wagen CEO Martin Winterkorn made some big promises: By 2018, he claimed, the German company would produce more vehicles than any other car manufacturer in the world. In addition, VW would earn more than comparable companies, according to Winterkorn.

VW could indeed reach these goals. But the company is still far from well equipped for the future. It suffers from the autocratic leadership of its most important shareholder, Ferdinand Piëch, and lags behind in developing electric cars.