The European Commission on Tuesday lowered its proposed tariff on imports of Tesla cars made in China, while largely maintaining other planned punitive tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles it set in July.

In the European Union’s highest-profile investigation into allegations of Chinese subsidies, the Commission published the draft final findings of its anti-subsidy investigation, prompting threats of retaliation from Beijing.

The Commission set a new reduced duty rate of 9 per cent for Tesla, lower than the 20.8 per cent it set in July.

According to the Commission, Tesla had requested a recalculation of the rate based on certain subsidies it received.

An EU official said on Tuesday that China believes its electric vehicle production benefits from extensive subsidies and proposed final duties of up to 36.3 per cent. This is slightly lower than the maximum provisional tax of 37.6 per cent set by the Commission in July for companies that do not cooperate with the EU’s anti-subsidy investigation.

Tesla was one of the companies that co-operated with the EU investigation.

The Commission said it was conducting an investigation, including sending a team to Tesla’s facilities in China to verify what subsidies the company had received.

A Commission official said that compared to the Chinese electric car makers Brussels investigated, it concluded that Tesla received fewer subsidies from China.

Last month, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser announced that she had decided to ban the nationalist magazine Compact, which she described as ‘the central mouthpiece of the far right’.

On Wednesday, however, a higher court overturned the ban and Compact was allowed to continue publishing. The court stressed that the decision was ‘temporary’.

The decision is a major blow to the ‘traffic light’ coalition, which has defined ‘right-wing extremism’ as the greatest threat to ‘German democracy’ and is determined to ‘eradicate it’.

Wednesday’s ruling by the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig appears to have frustrated the government’s efforts for the time being.

We will not give up our fight against the enemies of the constitution,’ Faeser said after the ruling.

Faeser said the decision in Leipzig was ‘a completely normal process’.

Compact editor-in-chief Jürgen Elsässer told reporters in Berlin on Thursday that the August issue had been printed before the ban and was available.

According to Elsässer, however, distribution and subscription records are missing because they were confiscated by various state police forces when the ban was imposed.

Until the necessary equipment is returned, Elsässer said, the online format ‘Compact TV’ is likely to resume broadcasting.

Elsässer stresses ‘peaceful revolution against the GDR’

Elsässer described Wednesday’s verdict as ‘a victory of democracy over dictatorship’ and a success of ‘the people against the regime’.

Speaking later at an AfD event in Sebnitz, Saxony, Elsässer said that there were still judges who ‘do not let themselves be persuaded by politics and make completely objective judgements’ and argued that this was an important decision for ‘freedom of the press’.

Junge Welt also reported that Elsässer, who spoke of ‘regime collapse’ and cited the ‘peaceful revolution of 1989/90’ in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) as an example, was ‘holding up a reactionary, anti-communist mirror to the government and the right-wing institutions of the Federal Republic of Germany’.

Elsässer, 67, was formerly editor-in-chief of the left-wing Junge Welt. After leaving the left-wing Junge Welt, he moved to Jungle World, which he co-founded, and eventually founded the new right-wing media project Compact, which is close to the AfD and the fascist ‘Identitarian Movement’.

AfD calls for Brandenburg intelligence chief to be sacked

In Brandenburg, on the other hand, the AfD sees the failure of its first attempt to ban Compact magazine as an opportunity for its state election campaign.

The tide has turned,’ said Hans-Christoph Berndt, the AfD’s top candidate and parliamentary leader, at a joint press conference with Elsässer in the state parliament in Potsdam on Thursday.

Both sharply criticised Brandenburg’s domestic intelligence agency.

Berndt called for the immediate dismissal of its head, Jörg Müller.

In 2021, the state’s domestic intelligence agency was the first in Germany to classify the magazine Compact as ‘right-wing extremist’.

Our first demand is that this person be dismissed immediately,’ Berndt said, adding that Compact had no problems with the agency before Müller’s appointment. Berndt added that Faeser, the CDU’s Michael Stübgen and Müller should be held accountable.

“The BSW will only join a state government that explicitly rejects the US missile plans, which greatly increase the risk of war for Germany,” said Sahra Wagenknecht, leader of the BSW, in an interview with Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland.

The deployment of US intermediate-range missiles in Germany from 2026 has sparked a new debate in German politics. The sites of these missiles, which could be equipped with nuclear weapons, could become targets in the event of war.

“These weapons do not close a defence gap, but are offensive weapons that would make Germany a prime target for Russian nuclear missiles,” said Wagenknecht, declaring that his party would only join a coalition government if it took a “clear position in favour of diplomacy and against preparations for war”.

Elections will be held in the states of Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia this autumn. Polls show that the Alternative for Germany (AfD), together with the BSW, is likely to cause a major surprise.

“Georg Maier, Thuringia’s interior minister and the SPD’s top candidate, criticised Wagenknecht in the Tagesspiegel, saying, “These are blackmail attempts aimed specifically at testing the CDU and weakening it”.

The CDU’s top candidate, Mario Voigt, accused Wagenknecht of using the state elections as a “football for her own national political profile”.

“The CDU has been the biggest peace party in Europe not only since Helmut Kohl,” Voigt claimed.

On Monday the SPD leadership was forced to take a public stand. According to Der Spiegel, the Social Democrats are in favour of stationing the missiles in western Germany rather than in the east.

“As the SPD, we take responsibility for ensuring that no child born in Germany today will ever have to experience war again. The agreement between the SPD-led federal government and the US administration on the stationing of long-range US missiles in Germany from 2026 is an important building block in this direction,” the SPD statement said.

The Social Democrats argued that this deployment “does not mean a confrontational arms build-up, but rather a strengthening of Russia’s defence capabilities with weapons systems that have been available for years,” stressing that the missiles will be equipped with conventional warheads and will be stationed at existing US military facilities in West Germany.

According to the SPD, the systems will not be nuclear-armed.