Debate: Preparation of the European Council meeting of - October
Date: WEDNESDAY, 20 OCTOBER 2021
Speaker: Maroš Šefčovič
Language: EN

Yesterday, we had a profound debate on these issues and the situation in Poland, and I can only reconfirm that the position of the European Commission on this issue is very clear and that President von der Leyen will present and defend this position in tomorrow’s debate.  Several honourable Members also raised the issues of migration, and rightly so, because recent events have reminded us that migration demands our continued attention and action. As you know, last month we presented a renewed EU action plan against migrant smuggling, and for the first time we are placing a special focus on state-sponsored smuggling of migrants. And I also would like to underline that in our forthcoming package on Schengen, we will also give particular emphasis to the phenomenon of instrumentalisation of migrants.  Honourable Members have been also referring to the vaccines, and I think it’s good to look at this in the wider perspective. And indeed, I think this is one area where we as Europeans can be proud about this success story. Not only did we secure enough doses for our citizens, but we’ve been very fair also to the global community because we exported the same amount of doses to more than 150 southern countries. To export one billion doses is no mean feat, it is a huge achievement for Europe and for our industry.  But I heard your calls, from Ms García Pérez, that we have to continue to play our leading role in COVAX and to make sure that distribution of the doses and the vaccines, especially in the lower income countries, is significantly accelerated.  But the topic which dominated today’s discussion, and all parliamentary leaders intervened in that respect, was energy, energy prices. And these clearly would be also the crucial topics for debate by the European Council members, European leaders, tomorrow. I would like to reassure you that we in the Commission recognise the urgency of the situation, and we must, as Mr Schieder just referred to, prevent energy poverty and negative spillover effects to the wider economy.  I was listening very carefully to Mr MacManus, Mr Kelly, Mr Mureşan, Mr Zorrinho, Ms Jongerius, Mr Buşoi, who have been making very important points in this regard. And I think that the urgency of this matter has to be translated to the steps for immediate relief to the most vulnerable families and businesses, which we can do now.  Under current rules, especially if you are talking about these categories of SMEs and vulnerable families, we can do a lot through state aid, through targeted support to consumers, to use these new windfall profits of the ETS, which were much higher, I think, by more than EUR 10 billion this year compared to last year. And we can work together with Member States on cutting energy taxes and levies, and I am glad that 20 Member States are already proceeding in that regard.  On top of this, I also want to tell you that we hear you loud and clear, and we will clamp down on speculation in energy, gas and carbon markets as was proposed by Mr Moreno Sánchez. As you probably know, we have already asked the European Securities and Markets Authority to proceed with an examination of the trading with all emission allowances.  Several of you called for assessment of the functioning electricity market design. Indeed, our market design never performed under such volatility of the prices. Therefore, we asked ACER, the agency of the European energy regulators, to proceed quickly to prepare preliminary findings, which I hope we will be able to share with you definitely before the end of the year, and then it would be up to us to decide how to proceed further.  On top of this, we know that a big issue in our energy markets is supply of gas. Therefore, we are reaching out to foreign suppliers. We are helping Member States to coordinate their global outreach. And as Mr Niedermayer said, and I think it’s a very valid point, we have to do better in how we manage our strategic reserves, how we manage our global storages, because this time this crisis is not caused by the lack of infrastructure, as it was five, six, seven years ago.  We have enough interconnectors. We have good pipelines. We have solid gas storages. We just need to manage them better, more responsibly, to make sure that Europe is more resilient, and for that, I think we can find inspiration in how we manage oil reserves with a three-month reserve, and I think we should proceed in the same way in the case of gas, and therefore the Commission will prepare a European framework for this type of approach in the future and for more regular stress testing of our energy systems before each winter.  Having said all this, I think it just underlines what is very important, and thank you very much to the honourable Members for highlighting how dependent we are on the imports of fossil energy and how important it is to focus more on development of truly indigenous European energy sources. Sun and wind are not only clean, but they are truly European and therefore also this crisis must just reinforce our ambition for COP26 in Glasgow, where I am absolutely convinced Europe will prepare the most ambitious approach on how to solve not only current energy prices, but how to tackle the challenge of our lifetime, and this is climate change.