State of the Union (debate)
Speaker: Manfred WEBER (Germany, Group of the European People's Party (Christian Democrats) / Christlich-Soziale Union in Bayern e.V.)
Date: 2022-09-14

  Manfred Weber,  on behalf of the PPE Group. – Madam President of the European Parliament, Madam President of the European Commission, Madam Zelenska, Czech Presidency, dear colleagues, last week the hemicycle in Brussels was full of young people. We organised this EPP Group 4 Youth week at the beginning of the autumn session and during the discussion, Eva Maydell, a young colleague of ours, spoke about a moving encounter during summer. She was in Bulgaria, at a supermarket checkout, and there was a young lady. She didn’t speak Bulgarian very well. She talked with her and she was a Ukraine refugee. Young, talented, she was excited to start her university studies and then war, fleeing, losing loved ones, she was from Mariupol and ending up in uncertainty. That is the brutal reality of Putin’s war. And, on the other hand, in my constituency, I received a letter from a small bakery: after decades of baking Bavarian bread, he wrote to me saying that he cannot survive with the high energy costs. The baker told me, ‘Putin is a war criminal, no doubt about this, but how can I survive?’.
These two stories mark the challenge in front of us, and our EPP answer is: we need a winter of solidarity. Solidarity, first of all, with Ukraine. More weapons, more money, more solidarity. Putin must lose; Ukraine must win. Great news from Ukraine is that they are pushing back the Russian troops from their soil. And, Madam Zelenska, we admire what your soldiers are doing there on the front line. Thank you for this. And dear friends, solidarity among Europeans, nobody left behind. We care for the poor in our societies and help our economies, especially the SMEs.
Crisis times means now, leadership, and the EPP supports the proposal of the Commission presented today on support for Ukraine but also to give an answer on the soaring energy prices.
But there is more to do. The markets are obviously speculating against European solidarity when winter will really be hard. Let us be concrete. It is not normal in a market that Scholz has to call Macron to open a gas pipeline and we will be more independent if Spain would be better connected to the European gas market. If it is true that the winter will be hard, then we must use all our energy resources. Germany cannot stop producing nuclear electricity and, on the other hand, ask the Dutch to ask for gas solidarity. That’s not the case.
And let’s be honest, it was a lost summer. The EPP has been asking for an extraordinary Council meeting to give certainty, to structure things, to show everyone that we are united and you cannot split up Europe. And the signal would have had already lowered the prices. People are paying because politics was and is for the moment, among Member States, not strong enough.
And on inflation – not only driven by energy, first, it is an ECB task that’s clear – I think we also can contribute. One example, we have a global food crisis, and that is also increasing the prices for our citizens. And the Commission is now presenting new regulations, which will limit food production in Europe and produce more bureaucratic burden for our farmers. For new legislation, the Commission promised the principle of ‘one in and one out’. If we continue like this, then at the end of the mandate we will arrive to ‘five in and only one out’.
We have war in Europe and parts of the Brussels community are continuing to make new laws and new burdens as if nothing has happened. That’s why we as the EPP Group are asking for a moratorium on new legislation. Let our businesses, especially the SMEs, do their work without burdening them.
And for creating growth and, having a recession now in mind, the EPP stand for creating a union of democratic economies on a global level. Europe is a trading continent and if we want to limit our dependency on the autocracies, on China and others, and that is a lesson we learned out of the Russian gas war, then we must speed up on trade deals with other democracies. And, as EPP, we always did so, but I just want to remind ourselves about the CETA debate in this House where the Left, Greens and part of the Socialists, were are opposing doing a trade deal with Canada. Canada, dear friends! You frightened Europeans with misleading arguments and even with lies. And, until now, Scholz and Macron are not ready to ratify CETA at national level. But they are great at doing pictures with Trudeau. That is not serious, dear friends. That is not serious.
And about democracies, yes, Madam President, you spoke about defending the rule of law and with you as Commission President – and I have to say, I was in Poland with friends like Donald Tusk – we as the EPP, we are fighting for rule of law, you stopped the money as EPP President of the Commission to Poland and Hungary. That’s why we are very, very proud about this. The rule of law must be judged and based on clear criteria and fair procedure. It must be blind like justice without looking at party books.
Speaking about democracies, I have to come back to the energy proposals. And Madam President, we spoke about this, you have our full support on the content but on the procedure, I have to say, we have to respect the European Parliament as a people’s Chamber. Can you imagine a windfall tax and a price cap being decided at national level without a vote in the national parliament? We would call this a democratic problem. But now we have proposals on the table, we are doing this in Europe and that should not be the new normal at European level. So decisions without the European Parliament should not be the new normal in Europe. And that is why please consider again the legal basis for the proposals on the table. The EPP stands for a democratic Europe and that means a Europe where all legislation is voted in this Chamber.
Finally, during the COVID-19 crisis, we were ready for doing bigger steps. The CRRF proposed by Ursula von der Leyen is bigger than the Marshall Plan was. So we changed the architecture of Europe. That was great. But today, war is back in Europe. There was no Council meeting on coordinating our defence activities, only votes. There is no initiative to stop a unanimous vote on foreign affairs, only a speech from Chancellor Scholz in Prague. No convention to strengthen the European democracy requested by this Chamber and the Conference for the Future of Europe, only, I have to say, campaigning and campaigning in Paris.
The Commission has to launch now until December a European Defence Action Plan as a concrete initiative in this field to invest together to build up a European missile defence system and a cyber brigade to make Europe stronger on this and we need – and thanks for your clear statement – a convention now.
The EPP stands for a more ambitious Europe. The times of Sunday speeches are over. Europe will not be saved by university pulpit speeches but by political leadership. And the Ukraine refugee in Bulgaria and my baker, they believe in this and they understand this. That’s why leadership and leadership now.