Debate: State of the Union
Date: WEDNESDAY, 16 SEPTEMBER 2020
Speaker: Manfred Weber
Political group: PPE
Country: Austria
Language: EN

It was for sure a challenging year, but you managed it, and together with the whole Commission team, I want to thank you. I also want to thank the colleagues in the European Parliament, because in the last year we have shown unity and good cooperation in the house, despite all our political differences. We have shown Europeans that we speak with one voice when it matters most. The State of the Union speech is an important point in our agenda, and we as the EPP fully support the main line of your speech. It is about health, migration, the rule of law and a Europe without hate.  I want to focus my contribution on our main title – how can we address the fears of Europeans after the crisis, or during the crisis? How can we answer this? And our main message is that we have to now show credibility.  For the European People’s Party, the headline of the upcoming weeks is jobs, jobs and jobs. Take Italy, where 40% of young people are still unemployed. We can never accept another lost generation in today’s European Union. When we insist on a 5G network for Europe, and a project to fight against cancer, and the idea of a new battery technology, it’s not just about showing EU flags on billboards and how much money we spend, it’s about delivering on jobs.  You can spend recovery fund money only once, and our priority is the future of Europe’s young generation. Let us now use one-third of the recovery funds to finance a pact for European jobs. For us, credibility means immediately starting the digital catch-up. You spoke about this. But, I must ask, where are the initiatives from the Commission? We have had green papers, we have had white papers, but no real progress has been made. And that is what we need. We can probably even have a kind of Digital Act like we do the Climate Act, to prioritise things – investment in infrastructure and investment in technologies.  For us credibility means finalising an ambitious but realistic Green Deal to stimulate new and innovative jobs. For us credibility means screening all EU legislation to check if it stimulates jobs or not. Now is again the time to cut the bureaucratic burden and to reinforce the single market. And credibility means that the recovery fund must protect and support European interests and – let me be frank – not Chinese ones. That’s why we need clear rules. No money from European taxpayers in the pockets of State-owned companies from China. The second point I want to underline concerns the external dimension. Because credibility means that we have to speak with one voice in the world.  Belarus and Russia. 30 years ago, people in Budapest, Dresden and Warsaw went out and fought for democracy and freedom. 12 years ago Kiev and now Minsk. Lukashenko said in an interview a few days ago that if Belarus falls, Russia will fall. I say it in my words: the idea of free people is going to the east and no-one can stop it, neither Lukashenko nor Putin. We are credible, and the people out on the streets in Minsk see that Europe is on their side. After the Navalny case, all options of further sanctions must be on the table: as you yourself said, even stopping the Nord Stream 2 project.  And one word to our colleagues from Front National, Salvini and Syriza. We are here to serve European citizens. A true patriot is never Putin’s puppet. And Turkey is the second subject for External Affairs. While the Greek government is ready to accept the decision of the International Court of Justice on the gas dispute, Turkey is sending warships, is breaking international law in Syria, suppressing free media and stoking religious tensions with its decision on Hagia Sophia.  So I ask, are we credible when Turkey still wants to join the European Union? I say no, that is not credible, and when Erdoğan attacks our family, we – especially the German Presidency – cannot be a fair mediator. We have to be close to our friends in Cyprus and Greece. That is why we are a union of values. And finally, on Brexit, here too the need for credibility is really, really big. It makes no sense to negotiate a future agreement in the face of a British Prime Minister who is throwing out of the window the agreement that he himself signed. Great Britain, you are losing your credibility on the global level. What I can say is that the European Parliament can never vote for any trade agreement with Great Britain if we cannot trust each other.  So the upcoming months will be extremely challenging. They will shape Europe. Let’s show our citizens that Europe shows solidarity and first of all credibility.