Date: 2013-07-02
A Uachtaráin, cuireann sé áthas ormsa a bheith libh an mhaidin seo chun cuntas a thabhairt do Pharlaimint na hEorpa ar Uachtaránacht na hEorpa a bhí ag Éirinn le sé mhí anuas. of the European Parliament, President of the European Commission, distinguished leaders of the political groups and members of the European Parliament, as Taoiseach, I am very pleased to speak here at the European Parliament this morning in this review of the Irish Presidency and the MFF. Ireland's seventh Presidency of the Council concluded on Sunday. It was a hectic final week, ending an extraordinarily busy and productive six months. Through the support and partnership of the European Parliament, Ireland's Presidency did achieve very significant results. I want to thank you, the Members of the Parliament, for your confidence and your commitment as we discharged our Presidential duties. When I last addressed this Parliament it was to mark a new Presidency in a new year. I spoke of what we intended to do and of the urgent need to get results. Today I am proud to say in this Parliament that we have achieved those. Six months ago, I set out on behalf of our Presidency our objectives based on the three pillars of stability, of jobs and of growth. We set out to make good on our commitments, in particular those made at the highest level of the European Council. We could do no less since at this difficult juncture it was imperative that our citizens and the markets would see clear evidence that our Union could and would follow through on commitments made and entered into. Such follow-through has been the hallmark of the Irish Presidency. I believe that what we have achieved in that regard has bolstered the credibility of the European Union, its role and its work in the eyes of our people and of our citizens. Since we assumed the Presidency after a particularly torrid period, achieving and sustaining stability was an obvious and a key objective and goal. Banking union was of critical importance. We needed to repair, to restructure and to renovate our banks to do two vital things. Firstly to generate sustainable economic growth and secondly to prove to our citizens they could depend on us to do what we said we would do at the meeting of Heads of State and Government and that was to sever the link between banks and sovereigns. The follow-through achieved in the Irish Presidency was seen in three further developments. Firstly, the new single supervisor; secondly, stronger capital rules for banks; and, thirdly, just last week, in agreeing new rules for the winding-down of banks. These new bank resolution rules will protect taxpayers from having to bail out banks again in the future. Equally in our Presidency, we also worked to put in place positive drivers for growth and job creation right across Europe and, when it comes to those all-important jobs and sustaining our families and our communities, trade is absolutely crucial and fundamental. Therefore we concentrated on securing agreement on the mandate for negotiations for the EU-US trade talks. Such agreement is essential to what should be a game-changing transatlantic partnership one based on an equal and open relationship, and in the current circumstances I hope that that can be proven to apply. This will allow us to turn the enormous potential for jobs and growth into reality. You know that small and medium enterprises are the lifeblood of job creation, so we made Europe's small businesses a priority every step of the way. For example, we managed to achieve the political agreement that will make it easier for our small and medium enterprises to access the two trillion euro public procurement market of the European Union through a simpler and cheaper bid process and with this everybody wins: more bids, governments get better value for money; our small businesses can really compete and expand and that means jobs in your countries for your citizens. Research and development is something that this Parliament holds very dear. The EUR 70 billion Horizon 2020 programme agreed in principle last week is crucial in terms of research and development. The proportion of such funds taken up by small and medium enterprises should go up by one third. But we could have done little or none of this without the close cooperation of the institutions. Securing agreement with the European Parliament on the EU's common agricultural policy for the next seven years has been one of the more important achievements of this Presidency. It will greatly enhance our efforts to transform our agriculture and fisheries industries into sustainable, green sectors for growth and jobs in the future. I welcome the Parliament's strong support for the EUR 16 billion Erasmus+ programme. Like many here, I have read and understand the theories of Umberto Eco. We believe that it is indeed our culture and not war that cements our amazing 70-year peace. I am especially happy with work done on the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund. This will provide real support for an important sector of our society, namely our redundant workers. Can any politician here be happy with a situation where 26 million people are unemployed across the European Union? I know you are not happy with that; nobody can be and this is a small but important help in that direction. We, as politicians, can never underestimate the layers or the depth of trauma and despair and disappointment of a hard worker being made redundant in any of your countries. Throughout our Presidency we retained and maintained a strong focus on all those important high-potential sectors, like the digital sector. Equally, we made major progress on data protection and on e-identification legislation. Both of which I know are central to your own parliamentary agenda here. We made headway too on issues like the European Protection Order, on access to lawyers in criminal proceedings and on insolvency. We concluded, successfully, the historic negotiations that will allow this Union to accede to the European Convention on Human Rights, extending the same standards of protection to our citizens in their dealings with the European Union institutions as when dealing with their own governments. We have also shown significant leadership in the area of CSDP and in addition we have laid the initial groundwork for the thematic discussion on defence at the December European Council. But there has been one signal issue of Ireland's Presidency, and that was our absolute commitment to ending, insofar as is possible, the blight of youth unemployment. It is an abomination against our young men and our young women, too many of whom have reached working age and have yet to know what it feels like to get up and have a job to go to every day; who have yet to realise the sense of purpose and pride and dignity of a job well done and being well done. Our Union has to be 100% sure that we will not allow unemployment to lock our young men and women out of their futures, out of the happy and successful lives that they could and should have with this initiative and that they could now be living. I am heartened then that in just the second month of our Presidency we managed to secure the commitment of all the Member States to the Youth Guarantee. When implemented effectively, this will give young people under the age of 25 the opportunity and the chance of training or a new job within four months of their becoming unemployed. It is clear to all of us that to tackle the scourge of unemployment among young people we must press ahead with adapting our education and training systems to 21st century norms, including partnerships with employers. To boost employment and employability we have taken important decisions on cross-border mobility, including a stronger EURES job-search facility. Presidency agreements on the expanded Erasmus+ programme and on professional qualifications recognition will make an important contribution to this area, as indeed will agreement with Parliament on the proposal on portability of pension rights. In all of this, and in particular in front-loading for the Youth Guarantee, we worked with you, Mr President, and your Parliament. Everybody knows there was one other fundamental issue here and that was the MFF the multiannual financial framework and the budget. Our work on the MFF has underpinned so much of our Presidency endeavours and achievements. It was just last Thursday in Brussels that President Schulz and the Presidency, along with President Barroso of the Commission, reached a long and eagerly-awaited agreement on the multiannual financial framework. As a parliament you vote on this agreement and resolution tomorrow. You cast your vote on a complex series of texts dealing with important technical and financial matters that affect every citizen in our Union. You know that the negotiations to this point were long, were difficult, were highly sensitive for both the Council and Parliament and indeed the Commission. The results identified the best way to ensure that the almost EUR 1 trillion for the MFF is released as soon as possible into the real economy. I might say, Mr President, that from the outset you made it clear you made it very clear that the priorities for this Parliament were the arrangements for flexibility, for review, for revision, for own resources and for the unity of the budget. In many ways, those priorities shaped the agenda for subsequent negotiation. The Parliament's insistence on greater flexibility in how we manage our resources was a very significant step forward and I welcome that. This will help to ensure that we get the maximum out of a budget at a time when every single euro counts. But there were times when the Council and Parliament differed sharply: times when it was very difficult to make any progress on the negotiations; times when there was frustration, deep frustration, and deep disappointment on both sides. We refused to be daunted or to remain divided on the issues and we built on the sense of trust which is very important for this Parliament and in political negotiations; we built on that sense of trust between the Commission, the Parliament and the Presidency and on those relationships that we had developed. We did not give up on this. We kept at it and because we did, we got there with you and now the detail of what we did agree is before the Members of the European Parliament. I want to say here that we did listen to this Parliament. We did listen to the membership of the Parliament and, by listening actively, I believe we did manage to address the main issues of concern which were identified by you, the Members, in the resolution of 13 March. As in all good negotiations, the outcome struck a balance. Not everyone in the Council was happy; let me assure you of that. Let me assure you that it is something of an under-statement to say so. But indeed not everyone in Parliament is 100% satisfied either. I am happy to say today here that it was Parliament that championed many of the important measures. Not least of which was jumpstarting the research and innovation resources earlier than planned; the flexibility you introduced allows us to advance more money for youth unemployment; you worked to ensure that aid for the most deprived people stays at current levels and is not reduced which we support. No one institution has a monopoly of wisdom and the Parliament has made the MFF a better instrument. The signal that we now send to our struggling peoples, our struggling businesses and especially to our young men and young women, is that, yes, Europe is capable of rising to meet the challenge; that Europe is and has proven to be competent and it is a Union that is worthy of their trust and it is a Union that is deserving of their confidence because it can, it does and it will make its decisions when it focuses with a sense of conviction and belief and trust among leaders. Today, 500 million members of the European family face what are, for all of us, unprecedented challenges in our economies and in our society. The MFF is the single, biggest investment tool we have at our disposal and we need to come together and use it forthwith and immediately. At the New Year, I described the Parliament as our partner on our six-month Presidency journey and at the height of this summer we can look back and say 'what a journey we have had'. We have invested considerable time and effort in growing and tending to that relationship. From the outset, we worked closely and intensively with you in fact, since long before our Presidency started the long hours of negotiations at all levels and across the full spectrum of the Union's work was in our sights. I believe, Mr President, that we have respected the role of this Parliament, your Parliament and of its mandate. That respect has been a characteristic of the Irish Presidency. As we say in Ireland: give respect, get respect. Equally we have done our best to represent and to always faithfully fulfil the role and the mandate of the Council. We have come to know each other better and to be more familiar with each other and to value each other's perspectives. I want to pay tribute to my Deputy Leader, an Tánaiste, and particularly our Minister for European Affairs here, Minister Creighton now well known to you all in this Parliament; she has been a regular attender here in this Chamber representing the Council and listening to the many diverse views of your Members. I want to thank you, Minister, for your invaluable contribution in bringing the MFF to a conclusion. Yes, for all of us the Presidency, the Parliament and the Council the work has been challenging, the work has been daunting but, individually and especially as a team, we have been equal to that challenge because we are strengthened and we are uplifted in what is our common cause: our proud people and their proud and prosperous and peaceful future. As you know, managing a Presidency places very considerable demands on any administration and this is particularly so in the case of smaller countries like Ireland. As my government first came to office over two years ago we began to plan for this Presidency. We believed a country making a journey in difficult waters to recovery would be well placed to lead a Union committed to that same destination and I believe that we were right. Our Presidency has been good for our country; good for Ireland and I hope it has been good for the Union, and very good for our urgent agenda of stability, of jobs and of growth. Today I am proud to say to this Parliament that I am, as the saying goes, very deeply European. I believe in the idea of Europe as our home and because I do I believe, as Europeans, we do ourselves an injustice by failing to marvel at what we have made and above all what we have made together from the wreckage of war and of atrocity and of chaos. Lithuania, a new and an old European, has now assumed the Presidency. I am drawn indeed to the words of the man who called himself the last citizen of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Nobel laureate who was perhaps best known as a Polish writer. I refer, of course, to Czesław Miłosz, so beloved of our own Nobel laureate in Ireland, Seamus Heaney. Miłosz wrote: 'Undoubtedly, I would call Europe my home. But it was a home that refused to acknowledge itself as a whole. Instead, as if on the strength of some self-imposed taboo, it classified its population into two categories members of the family and poor relations.' Today we Europeans are what we must strive to be, very much a whole and very much a one family. Our shared identity exists beyond the realms of mere economics or currency or money. It is in our literature, in our music, in our culture and above all in our people, for we are the early generations lucky enough to be, not merely Europeans, but European. In Ireland we have an old saying that a wound heals from the margins in. I hope that what we have achieved at the Western margins will bring a new healing with it and a new hope and a new prosperity to our European people, to our European home. Indeed, one where there is always room for God's goodness, for human kindness, for dignity and for joy.