Debate: Presentation of the programme of activities of the Croatian Presidency
Date: TUESDAY, 14 JANUARY 2020
Speaker: Ursula von der Leyen
Language: EN

First of all, where the budget is concerned, I think, dear Prime Minister, it is very important that Croatia and the Presidency convinces the Council to stick to its own strategic agenda, because – and I’m emphasising this – we need the modernisation of the budget, why this? The budget we have right now was agreed in 2013. You remember the year 2013 because it was the year when Croatia joined the European Union. The world was completely different. In the year 2013, we did not have any idea of Daesh. It existed already but we didn’t know anything of it. There hadn’t been the migration crisis yet. Russia had not annexed Crimea and had not yet started the hybrid war in the Ukraine. At that time, we had no Paris climate agreement. We were not speaking of 5G or artificial intelligence. These few highlights show that the world is completely different and that we do need a completely different budget – that means modernisation. One message from my part, and I think I have the support of the Parliament on this: if the overall ceiling is too low, if the budget in itself is too small, the only way out is our own new resources at European level. There is an opportunity to introduce that with an emission trading system. The revenues of the emission trading system will grow, so we will not take anything away from the Member States. On the contrary, they’ll have more. But we can also allocate at European level the revenues from the emission trading system to serve the European Green Deal. The second topic is Brexit. Your Presidency comes at a crucial time for the Brexit negotiations because we have to make enormous progress. This is decisive until the summer, until the end of your Presidency, and here we have to decide on – or it’s the UK’s choice to decide on – how close or how distant they want to be from the European Union, but that also means from the single market. In other terms, you cannot have no free movement for people and then expect to have free movement for goods, capital and services. It’s either all four have free movement or none of this is possible. You cannot accept to have a level playing field if there’s a huge divergence in taxation or social standards or environmental standards. So it is the choice of the UK how far they want to align or diverge, but this is decisive for how good access to the single market will be or not. In short, it’s the old proverb: you cannot have your cake and eat it at the same time. And the very last point, the Western Balkans. Ich glaube, beim Thema des Westbalkans dürfen wir eines nicht unterschätzen: Es ist in unserem strategischen Interesse, dass der Westbalkan so nah wie möglich bei uns ist. Wir sollten nicht unterschätzen, wie stark China bereits präsent ist, wie stark Russland dort präsent ist, wie stark die Türkei dort präsent ist – alle mit der Intention, den Westbalkan und die Staaten des Westbalkans so stark wie irgendwie möglich auf ihre Seite zu ziehen. Es ist in unserem Interesse, sie so nah wie möglich an uns heranzuführen, und deshalb mit dem Blick auf Nordmazedonien und Albanien: Wir haben viel von ihnen verlangt. Nordmazedonien musste seinen Namen wechseln, um die Möglichkeit zu haben, die Beitrittsgespräche mit der Europäischen Union zu eröffnen. Und ich glaube, wir können es schaffen, einerseits den Beitrittsprozess zu modernisieren, aber andererseits auch treu im Wort zu bleiben zu dem, was wir Nordmazedonien und Albanien gesagt haben. Es ist in unserem Interesse, und in diesem Sinne wünsche ich Ihnen alles Gute für den Vorsitz.