Debate: Commission Work Programme
Date: TUESDAY, 19 OCTOBER 2021
Speaker: Maroš Šefčovič
Language: EN

Indeed, as Mr Olbrycht has said, currently we are in a much better situation than we were a year or two years ago because now we have the necessary instrument like the multiannual financial perspective and Next Generation EU at our disposal.  If I look back in retrospect how difficult the discussion just before the COVID crisis struck was on our common budget, I think the fact that now we have at our disposal more than two trillion, more than EUR 2 000 billion, to tackle the challenges which lie ahead for the European Union, is very good news.  But, of course, I understand that we need to spend this money well. We have to target the attainment of proper priorities. We have to increase the resilience of the European Union and the priorities which you mentioned, in particular the importance of the rule of law. We had a very important debate on this this morning. Continuation of tackling the consequences of the COVID crisis, tackling corruption, and of course, thinking first and foremost about our citizens and how we can deliver for them, are the priorities which we very much share with you, with the Members who are directly representing the people in our Member States.  We are going to make sure that we will be working very closely with you on some of the concrete proposals you mentioned. When it comes to issues like the brain drain, this is a new but very important phenomenon, and therefore we also decided in the Commission that we would tackle this issue because if somebody is gaining, somebody else is losing brain power, and therefore we want to make sure that we develop proper proposals and proper initiatives to tackle this issue.  Mr Olbrycht, but I think also Ms Rafalska, have been making very important references to the issue of security, cyber security, but also to the importance of the migration policy. I would also like to tell you that, with regards to the reform of Schengen, we still plan to deliver this year. We are continuing under the leadership of my colleague Margaritis Schinas to build the genuine security union developed with aspects which this initiative is covering. We want to make sure that the security union would indeed be future-proof, that we would not only be tackling the threats of the past, but the threats of the present also those in the future.  Ms Bonafè was making strong reference, together with Ms Aubry, to how important it is, despite the fact that we are hopefully now in a post-pandemic stage and are experiencing economic recovery, not to forget about our commitment to fighting poverty and to making sure that no one in Europe is left behind. I would just really like to reassure you that the action plan to make sure that we fulfil the European Pillar of Social Rights, adopted in March of this year, is something that we are going to be working on because it’s not only an issue for this year. It has to be our, I would say, longer term ambition, otherwise we would not fulfil what the Commission wants to deliver with regard to reducing the risk of poverty or social exclusion by at least 15 million people by 2030. We want to use the MFF, the Next Generation EU, also for these very important goals and therefore we are proposing a very important number of initiatives to achieve these goals, including a proposal of minimum wages, a child guarantee, affordable housing initiative, and to make sure that we will not forget about the regions which are going through very difficult social or environmental or industrial transitions. Therefore we will see that this will be properly reflected in a lot of proposals, which will find their way to the European Parliament during the course of next year.  Mr Azmani was making a very important point about taxation. Here I am very glad to say that the support that the European Union was clearly demonstrating to international efforts in this field actually was successful and that we see that now we have 136 jurisdictions worldwide, including all EU members and the G20 members and OECD members to reach an historic agreement of global tax reform, establishing a global minimum level of effective taxation and the reallocation of taxation rights. Therefore, the proposal which we wanted to make in this regard next year can be accelerated and we still want to present it to you this year, most probably in the fourth quarter and I think that’s good news for everyone because this is one of the issues which were on our desks for many, many years, and I think that European taxpayers especially would very much welcome the outcome of this solution.  I also would like to assure you, Mr Azmani, that ‘one in, one out’ is the concept which we have been working very hard on and now all our services across the Commission have a proper toolbox. We are introducing really novel techniques how to measure administrative burden and we will be informing you continuously. You will see the first administrative burden report about the pilot phase of this in the spring of the next year, but the first full year where we are going to make sure that any new administrative burdens will be offset, preferably in the same area. We will come to you a year later because next year will be the first year of the full implementation and we discussed it at length with my fellow Commissioners just to make sure that there are not only services but also political oversight and that we have to deliver also on this very important goal.  Issues of migration are always very, very sensitive and therefore I can tell you that we are in permanent contact with the Council to make sure that we have more progress and faster negotiations and possibly better results in the discussion on the migration pact. I agree with you, it’s an issue which has been with us for too long. It’s extremely sensitive, it’s dangerous and it’s endangering people’s lives and therefore we need to act here, the EU, as a united actor.  To Mr Waitz I would like to say that indeed, despite the fact that this year, there are very important initiatives linked to the Green Deal, what I think would be very important – and there was total agreement in the college – that what we need to do, and I would really very much hope for your close cooperation, we need to deliver on the proposals we made this year. This was the most ambitious political and legal package probably for the whole legislature of the von der Leyen Commission. It’s an enormous amount of work we had to do, and therefore I think that close cooperation on delivering this on time would be very, very important because indeed, these proposals have the transformational potential which would clearly put Europe on a safer and better path, and we again would continue to be a pioneers in tackling climate change.  Mr Campomenosi was referring to the importance of competitiveness and I would add also the issue of open strategic autonomy which we want to guarantee not only through the technologies which we are missing right now in Europe. I’m now making a point about the European Chips Act, which we need to have, we need to be strong in that regard because we see how many industries are depending on that. We also are making sure that when we make the proposals, we also measure the impact of these proposals from the point of view of making sure that they have these very important social and green, but also competitiveness elements in them.  If you allow me to close on Ms Aubry’s very important point on energy prices. This is indeed a very important issue and you have seen that what we proposed last week was very much focused on how to help the most vulnerable, how to protect the most vulnerable businesses, how to use the new windfall profit, I would say, from the ETS which is now with the Member States and where compared to last year, more than an additional EUR 10 billion was generated and how we propose to the Member States how we can deal with this money.  We propose more flexibility on taxation, more flexibility on tariff setting and I’m sure that after the very important discussions the leaders will have on this topic this Thursday and Friday, we will again look at what we, as a united EU as a concerted action, can do. I agree with you that in the long run we need to be autonomous, we have to be more green and we have to be less dependent on energy imports from outside the Union. Madam President, I really would like to thank you for being so patient with me, for giving me the time to not only present the programme but also to respond to the honourable Members, to their questions, because we’ve been working with all of them very closely to make sure that our programme for next year is ambitious and to the liking of the European Parliament, because without your support we will not be able to make it a reality and I really would like to thank you for this once again.