Debate: Commission Work Programme
Date: TUESDAY, 17 OCTOBER 2023
Speaker: Maroš Šefčovič
Language: EN

One thing I would like to clarify, because those who work with me already for quite some time, you know that the European Parliament always comes first for me. Therefore, the Commission work programme, which was adopted this afternoon at 3 p.m., was firstly presenting to you. Straight from the college room, I went over here to the Hemicycle to share it with you. I think that when the State of the Union address was presented by the President of the Commission, it was also very clear when the date for the adoption of the Commission work programme will be announced, and we respected the schedule of the European Parliament proceedings. Of course, with all this, I think it is also very important to go into your very substantial remarks. I appreciate the calls of several honourable Members – Mr Mureșan, Mr Agius Saliba, Mr Azmani – with clear calls on focusing on delivery. We need to use every single day, every single week, every single trilogue to make sure that we will deliver to our citizens. I can assure you that on our side in the European Commission, we will do our utmost to achieve as much progress as possible. Ms Niebler was referring to the importance on reducing administrative burden, as was Mr García del Blanco. Just to give you two additional figures – the fact that we are focusing on this one-in, one-out approach, it allowed us for 2022 to reduce administrative burden by EUR 7.3 billion. I think it is quite a significant sum, and since the announcement that we are going to focus more on reducing reporting obligations since March of this year, we already reduced the cost related to these obligations by EUR 3 billion. The same we are doing with focusing on the SMEs. Now, SME test competitiveness checks are regular and obligatory parts of any impact assessment we do, and we are working very closely with the SME network across Europe and before the end of this year we will also have the new SME envoys. So I believe that here the promise, the political undertaking and commitment to be presented to you are respecting and I think in concrete numbers we are also delivering. If it comes to several points on what you are missing in the Commission work programme for 2024, I just would like to recall that if a proposal was already announced in a previous Commission work programme, it is not re-announced in the current one. Once it is there, it is planned and we are working on it. So indeed the pending proposals, which we have already announced in the Commission work programme in previous years, they are all planning, work in progress and we are working on all of them. Mr Eickhout and others have been asking about our ambitions if it comes to the Green Deal. I think that we had rather sort of debate on that during the hearing of Commissioner Hoekstra and myself and I believe that we reassured this House that there will be relentless effort to keep the Green Deal ambitions at the highest possible level. We are working on this in very concrete terms, be it on policy side, but be it also in delivering, talking to our citizens in the form of the Green Dialogues, but also talking to our industry through the Clean Transition Dialogues. Several of you – Mr Guerreiro, Mr Hojsík, Mr Cormand, Mr Castaldo – have been referring to the animal welfare. As you know, the Commission has been acting to improve animal welfare for over 40 years, progressively improving the lives of animals and adopting welfare standards in legislation that are amongst the highest in the world. I would like to reassure you that we respect the voice of citizens, we respect the European Citizens’ Initiative, and that the animal welfare is and will remain a priority for the Commission. An example of that is the adoption in early 2023 of new rules on transport of animals by sea. The farm to fork strategy also foresees the revision of the EU’s animal welfare legislation, and the preparatory work is ongoing, covering the legislation for the welfare of animals at farm level, during transport, at the time of killing, and to establish a voluntary European label for animal welfare. We are now reflecting and carefully assessing the important aspects, including the related costs and the appropriate length of the transition period, because it is important to have support of all involved to make this proposal success. As I said, the proposal on the protection of animals during transport is the most advanced and will be presented already in December of this year. The same level of interest and concern was voiced on the legislation on REACH. As again, all of you know, REACH is the most comprehensive legislation of chemicals in the world, and you also know that amending REACH is a complex undertaking. Changes to the legislative framework would need to achieve a complex balance, significantly reduce health hazards and environmental damage from chemical pollution, but also address the chemicals of very high concern while ensuring the availability of chemicals that are essential for the key green transition technologies, guaranteeing the level playing field vis-à-vis our international competitors. We are discussing all these issues in great detail – how to find the balance we need to make sure that we would be leaders in the future-oriented technologies, in wind power, in battery storage, in chip making, in all these very important technologies important for the green transition. Given the complexity of the file, indeed, it is possible that the REACH amendment will have to be taken forward in the next mandate. What we want to do is to prepare this file in great detail, to make sure that we would complete all the necessary preparatory work, and also to find the best possible timing for this proposal so this proposal – which would take several years, I am sure, to approve – that it would be supported by the proper momentum, and I would like to reassure the honourable Members that we will discuss all this in great details with you, but also with the chemical industry, as it was suggested by Mr Hojsík. If you allow me the questions which were linked with migration before our session started, there was quite comprehensive discussion with my colleague Vice-President Schinas. So I would just underline one very important element that we will continue to support the work of both legislative and operational strands of managing migration. What is indeed essential is to finalise a new pact on migration, and an asylum pact, but it is also indispensable to continue taking operational action to advance the EU collective response to the migration challenges. I can assure you that we are working on that very, very hard. There have been a few, quite a few remarks on the social aspects of the Commission work programme for the next year. So all the initiatives in that regards, of course, will continue. But as a novelty, we are going to work very closely with the Belgian Presidency on the Val Duchesse Summit, where we want to make sure that we would discuss with social partners, in particular the challenges facing the EU labour market, workers and businesses, including the skills and labour shortages stemming exactly from what these new future-oriented technologies, including artificial intelligence, are bringing to Europe. What we can do together as Europeans, where we can streamline our processes and collaborate more on the European, national and regional level. I believe that it would be important for the future of the European labour market. If you allow me just two last remarks, and thank you very much, Mr President, for being so generous with my speaking time. Several of you referred to the importance of the Green Dialogues and the Clean Transition Dialogues, and we are going to work on all of them. We already had the first one on hydrogen, and I think that if you look at the pattern of what is the challenge in front of our advanced, future-oriented industries, first and foremost, these are energy prices. We need to push them down. Second one is the lack of proper skills: we have to boost them. Third is the massive investment which is needed, and we have to look at every single euro we have in the European budget. How can we cumulate our funds? How can we leverage these investments with our promotional banks like the EIB, KfW and others? And how can we make sure that also private investment will be flowing into this sector much more than in the past and we will be working in that regard with you, but also with the industry. To conclude, honourable Members, I really would like to thank you for very close collaboration, very intense interactions with the UN. I know that also the next month we will be working with our intense commitment because it is eight months to go before the European elections. So I can assure you that we will really do our utmost to use the remaining time to deliver on as many files as we can, that we will be pushing all the key files to be completed if possible under this mandate, if not to prepare them in the best possible way for the next European Parliament and for the next European Commission. But until we get there, I am very much looking forward to the close cooperation with all of you.