BOOZY POLITICS: Can great political decisions really be forged over mineral water? Seems so, at least in France, where alcohol consumption at the Assemblée‘s bars has dropped significantly since a certain earnest spirit settled there last July. In fact, Frances Robinson reports for POLITICO that millennials across the Continent and the U.K. are drinking less than previous generations and objecting to a clubby boozing culture.

POLICY HEAVY APRIL

With just two months to go before the Commission’s self-imposed deadline for new proposals, Playbook consulted the Commission’s work program for this year and spoke with a range of officials from different departments on what to expect. Here’s a preview of this April in policy …

Consumers: “A new deal for consumers” — that is, in a nutshell, the proposed introduction of collective redress for European consumers (think American-style class-action lawsuits); here’s an early draft of the proposal obtained by POLITICO. One of the main targets of such legislation, Volkswagen, recently told Playbook that the EU mustn’t create “a suing culture like in the U.S.”

The Commission will also put out initiatives on transparency and risk assessment for food products as well as on how to improve the food supply chain in the EU — that’s a proposal on tackling alleged unfair trade practices at the expense of farmers (not necessarily something the retail industry will like).

Trade: The Commission would love to send the last documents on the signing and conclusion of trade and economic partnership agreements with Japan and Singapore the Council’s way by the end of the month.

Digital: The Commission is going to put forward a long-awaited (at least in our newsroom) communication on how to regulate artificial intelligence this month. Also part of that package, among other things: an initiative on how to make information collected by the public sector accessible to companies and citizens (and, more importantly, decide which information ought to be made available). Not only will the Commission also formally propose a way to tackle fake news, which is contentious enough for Facebook et al., it’s also eyeing a revision of the current guidelines on how to assess their significant market power.

The next regular EU enlargement package is also due this month, along with reports on the state of play with different EU candidate countries (there’s a Western Balkans summit coming up in May). The most difficult report to draft, both on substance and politically, is the one on Turkey — Austria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, for example, has repeatedly called for the quashing of Ankara’s EU ambitions.

Security: It’s time for your 14th progress report on the Security Union; you’ve surely long waited for it. It’ll be accompanied by a review of an existing law on marketing and use of certain explosive precursors. Another initiative will deal with ways to improve the security of ID cards in EU countries and may attempt to introduce common standards.

MEANWHILE: Europe is losing the fight against dirty money, outgoing Europol chief Rob Wainwright told POLITICO’s Giulia Paravicini in a farewell interview. “Professional money launderers — and we have identified 400 at the top, top level in Europe — are running billions of illegal drug and other criminal profits through the banking system with a 99 percent success rate,” he said.

PLAYBOOK INTERVIEW

JAN PHILIPP ALBRECHT’S NEW JOB: We spent time in Germany’s southeast in Monday’s Playbook; let’s move to the north today for a chat with the Schleswig-Holstein region’s incoming minister for agriculture, environmental and digital affairs (or for “digital and the outdoors,” as he calls it). The Green MEP is well-known in Brussels, having shepherded the data protection law that enters into force next month through European Parliament. Albrecht, a 35-year-old father of one, will in the next few months move to Kiel to take over the ministry after the current minister, Robert Habeck, switches his focus to the party chairmanship (it’s a German Green thing that one has to chose between the two).

It took Albrecht a while to mull the offer of the ministership, “mainly because I have always been keen to take the work at the European Parliament seriously and to tell the outside world that the task is meaningful and responsible — and not something you would just do when you have nothing else to do,” he told Playbook. “But of course you don’t get such a chance every day to actually implement what we are discussing here.” It’s too soon to find a pattern of success (or otherwise) in recent examples of MEPs being given that chance — they range from German chancellor candidate and SPD chief Martin Schulz (it didn’t work out) to Banque de France deputy Sylvie Goulard (a mixed bag) and Austria’s agriculture (or, in the local jargon, “sustainability”) minister, Elisabeth Köstinger (too early to tell).

What made him eventually jump? “The decisive factor, above all, was the fact that digitization is included in the portfolio of this ministry, it is basically the only digitization ministry in Germany where funds and staff are there — and that incumbent Robert Habeck has not had the time yet to really roll it out properly. I think I’m good at filling that out.” Not much diffidence given the big shoes he’s to fill here — a point for Albrecht.

Minister for everything: Albrecht will have to convince the party, ministry staff and voters of the perhaps inconvenient truth that digital politics aren’t just an add-on to classic Green issues such as sustainable farming and environmental policies. “Digital is not simply one of five thematic areas,” he said, “but a horizontal topic that will become massively relevant in all fields and especially in the energy transition, agricultural turnaround and environmental protection.”

He’ll try to make Kiel the center of gravity of the German debate on how to regulate digitization, automation and AI-ization: “I have to disappoint all those who hope that I will now disappear in Schleswig-Holstein and only talk to farmers there. I want to shape the debate in Germany and Europe on how we can really shape digitization in society,” Albrecht said.

Coucou, Microsoft, watch out: Albrecht plans to ask some tough questions: “How can we break Microsoft’s monopoly in public administration, how can we regulate robotics and digitization ethically, how can we achieve sustainability and global fair digital trade?”

The federal government’s minister of state for various things digital, Dorothee Bär of the CSU, may be his counterpart — but “her current position doesn’t leave much room for manoeuver,” Albrecht said, as Bär’s position doesn’t include the leverage a portfolio minister, albeit a regional one, has.

But first things first: “Right now I have to learn what crop rotation is in Schleswig-Holstein.”

Farmers to profit from his digital policy skills? “Agriculture will be one of the first areas where the consequences of digitization and automation will be much more pronounced — and faster to implement than in many other areas where we are more familiar with this as science fiction,” Albrecht said. “I think there is a lot to be gained in terms of agricultural efficiency and economy, especially for smaller farms. They can now create efficiency on a small basis, for example in seed calculation.”

“I also believe that the issue will play a major role in the agricultural turn [toward Green goals] — think the targeted use of plant protection products, the precise calculation of soil values for certain crop rotations. It may make it possible for smaller farmers to calculate weather conditions much more precisely, and will be of great importance for ecological, sustainable, organic farming.”

HEIMAT IS THE NEW GERMAN LEITKULTUR, and Albrecht doesn’t want to leave that untranslatable and much-stressed German concept of cultural identity to conservative politicians such as the new Interior and Heimat Minister Horst Seehofer from the CSU. “I don’t mind being called Heimatminister,” Albrecht said. “In Schleswig-Holstein we have begun to redefine and embrace the concept of Heimat for us Greens. It means, for many people, that they want to feel a sense of social cohesion and security again, in a world that creates a feeling of uncertainty caused by globalization and digitization.”

Define Heimat, Mr. Albrecht. It’s “where you live, it is a feeling of solidarity and togetherness. The concept of Heimat has changed again and again over the centuries,” he said. Today, “home is my direct living environment in a globalized and digitized world. It’s a huge task to fill this with life.”

QUOTABLE

“[There’s] a lot of talk about a ‘cold war,’ about the situation being worse than it was during the classic Cold War, because then there were some rules, and some decency was observed.” — Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in an interview with the Times.

On that note: Researcher Anthony Cho argues in POLITICO that as Europe frets over Chinese influence on the Continent, it’s missing the real threat: “The fact that Slovakia, the Czech Republic and even Hungary, are nearly wholly reliant on Russian gas imports to fuel their economies — an arguably far greater risk.”

IN OTHER NEWS

APRIL FOOLS JOKE GONE WRONG: Elon Musk was joking (we think) about Tesla’s bankruptcy on Sunday. Hot tip: Don’t openly invite investors to sell if they already have concerns about a fatal car crash and doubts over whether you’re a visionary or an actual carmaker who can produce, and hence sell, tangible goods. Bloomberg is keen to unveil Tesla’s best-kept secret: How many Model 3s is it actually able to make?

FACEBOOK RECOVERY WILL TAKE ‘YEARS’: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg gave an interview to Vox in which he acknowledged digging Facebook out of its fake news, electoral interference, privacy violation and smartphone addiction hole will take years. “I wish I could solve all these issues in three months or six months,” Zuckerberg said.

OLD ENEMY, NEW SANCTUARY: POLITICO’s Zia Weise writes that fleeing Turks are finding safe haven in a country they were told hated them: Greece.

MORE UNEXPECTED FRIENDS: Saudi Arabia’s Prince Mohammed bin Salman told the Atlantic in an interview that Jewish people have a right to “their own land” next to a Palestinian state — something no Arab leader has ever done, according to the magazine.