Debate: EU Recovery package
Date: WEDNESDAY, 27 MAY 2020
Speaker: Maroš Šefčovič
Language: EN

First, I really would like to thank you for what I felt was very strong, overwhelming support in most of the interventions for the ambitious proposal the Commission has tabled today. And I really would like to thank you for the inspiration, which on many occasions we have drawn from this House, from your resolutions, from the debates that we had with you, when we’ve been looking for ways to best respond to your calls for demonstrating more solidarity, for using this crisis as an opportunity to modernise the European economy and for consolidating the position of Europe as a global actor and global player. We put forward proposals, which was never done before. It’s really without precedent, because what we wanted to do was to adapt the initial multiannual financial perspective proposal to the current needs and because we fully realised that the economic crisis is so sharp and so deep, we knew that we need to come up with a new instrument, which we named Next Generation EU. Altogether, we are talking about EUR 1.1 trillion of the proposal for MFF, an additional EUR 750 billion for the Next Generation instrument, which would be divided between grants and loans, as you suggested in your resolution. I very much appreciate that Mr Weber, Ms García Pérez and Mr Cioloș supported this approach and I would like to reassure you that we know that the success of the results – if we invest the money in the right areas, and we definitely want to do that – we fully realise that if we want to modernise the European economy, we have to invest in green, sustainable technologies. We have to be much more digital than we are right now, and we have to learn our lessons for improving the resilience of the European economy, because we learned how difficult it is to be dependent on some global value chains or single supplier of such sensitive health materials as we have seen over the last few months. So what we have put on the table is that the proposal has to not only overcome the crisis, but has to modernise, has to respect the important social aspects of our policy and has to make Europe really ready for the post-COVID 21st-century world. A lot of questions – and some of them presented with a great vigour – have been linked to debts and also to own resources – Mr Meuthen, Ms Aubry, Mr Van Overtveldt. Here again, I would like to tell you that we did our homework. We studied the issue very carefully and we have come up with different options for own resources, which you want to, of course, explore with you and with the Member States. We want to use the new ETS revenues, which will be coming eventually from the aviation and maritime sector, to use them for financing parts of the MFF in the future. We are considering the so-called ‘single market tax’, especially from those companies which are benefiting from the fact that the single market is so big and functions that well. We will be following carefully how other countries and powers on this planet are respecting the Paris goals and if they are really reducing the carbon footprint of their products and their economy, and we will be ready to proceed if necessary with a carbon adjustment tax which, again, could be revenue for the European budget. And we are, of course, not forgetting about the possibility of digital taxation where, of course, we want to have a global agreement, preferably within the OECD or G20, but if this did not work, we are ready to consider to go alone. And Ms Szydło and Mr Azmani have highlighted the importance of tax evasion and unfair tax practices. This is, of course, one of the priorities upon which we are going to focus, and for us, the proper execution of the European budget and proper tax collection is, of course, one of the key priorities. To be quite honest, I didn’t quite get the comment of the honourable Member, Mr Gyöngyösi, who was criticising us for lack of transparency. At 12 o’clock, we in the College adopted these very important proposals, and at one o’clock the whole College was here. The European Parliament was the first audience where we presented our proposals, where our President went into great detail about what we want to do and how we want to accomplish it. And therefore, I think that that tradition where we fully respect the democratic scrutiny of the European Parliament would be, of course, maintained in the future, and we will be debating with you all of the legislative proposals, which are very complex and where we need close cooperation and very close consultation. There’ve been several questions linked with state aid. I have to say that my colleague, Executive Vice-President Vestager, is known for her vigour in reviewing and assessing every single application, and we also have to agree that these last three months have been totally exceptional. At first, we had to fight for the lives of our citizens, then for the livelihoods and for jobs, and this is what we’ve been, with your help, doing since the beginning of this year. If you allow me, Madam President, to conclude with a plea, with a request. Because I think that we are at a truly historic European moment where we need – all of us – to show clear political leadership. We would very much appreciate the strong support of the European Parliament, as Mr González Pons has highlighted. But we also need your help to convince your compatriots back home. Therefore, I’m also addressing this request towards the Council and towards the Member States, because we need a good decision. We need a quick decision, and of course we need to work very closely with all national parliaments as well, because in the end, when we are talking about the head-rooms, ceilings and own resources, we need also the positive ratification of the national parliaments. Therefore, what we need is true political leadership, which would help Europe to overcome the crisis and really to prepare it for the next phase. So my last sentence would be directed to all of us: let’s do this effort for the European Union. Let’s do it for the next generation, and let’s do it to demonstrate to our citizens that we know how to overcome the crisis and how we can prepare Europe for the 21st century.