Speeches

Madam President, I was informed there would be additional speaking time because my colleague Ernest Urtasun cannot come, so it will be a bit longer. The Recovery Fund negotiations were extremely intense – and I can still feel parts of this mini—trauma when I see the colleagues here, because of all the all—night sessions that we spent – but they have also been extremely successful. For the first time ever, the European Union decided to take up common debt of such as size to invest us out of the Corona pandemic crisis and all the horrible social and economic effects that ensued. With a large majority in this House, we decided that we wouldn’t just build back in any way, but that we would build back better, that we would build back by fuelling the green transition, by fuelling the digital transition, by making sure that we have new standards for green investment when we do that, and that we also apply this new standard for green investment to cohesion funds. Since then, actually, a lot of remarkable things have happened. We have seen countries implement reforms that have not been tabled for years. We have seen a lot of countries with very good and innovative ideas of how to actually do this green and digital transition. And we have seen that and we have also fought for the fact that no euro should actually go into any form of spending that would harm the environment. That’s the positive side. But we have also obviously seen some issues and I think it’s really important that we point them out so that we can address them and also learn for the future. Some countries still did greenwashing, and I can name Germany with their hybrid cars is one example. Some Member States refuse to adhere to the necessary safeguards for our European taxpayers’ money when it comes to, for example, the rule of law. We have talked about this in the last session, obviously in the case of Poland, but also when it comes to corruption.

Mr President, I think the first thing that a reformed Europe should do is improve our train system. Colleagues, I want to take one second to thank those individuals who had the foresight to build this Union that we are currently debating in. I think it’s a huge achievement that we have this chance to debate here together. But since the founding, a lot has changed and we have discussed it and heard it here. There are a lot of topics that we need to work on here together in the European Union so the ‘what’ has changed. But also we realise the examples of the ‘how’ that need to be improved. We have heard about the veto. I would add, in general, that we should also improve the Council as a whole, maybe abolish it and replace it with a more functioning body. But I just want to say one thing. This debate is not about left or right. It is not. It is about giving citizens the chance to choose what kind of direction their Europe should take. It’s about empowering a government that is elected by a parliament to make decisions and to be able to act. And if the citizens don’t like it, in the next elections they can vote this government out. So let us not make it about left or right. Let’s make it about daring more democracy.

Mr President, dear colleagues, you all have said – and I think it’s absolutely clear – that we need the right to initiative. I just want to make this very haptical. This whole House is built on the trust of citizens in their elected officials. We need to live up to this trust. That means that we can do two things that all parliamentarians should be able to do: one is that we are actually able to propose laws and also amend laws that already exist; the second is that we can vote for the European Commission. Then we can transfer the trust that citizens gave us into the actual representative democracy that we should be. I think tomorrow we have a good chance to start this process of Treaty change to bring all of these ideas of a better parliamentary democracy into the European Union. I’m very happy that we are going this way.

Mr President, similar to Mr Oetjen, when I talk to SME founders or start-up founders, what I often hear is that they really need talent as one of the key success factors. Talent is a key success factor for European competitiveness, but we punch way below our weight. Why is that? Because we have 27 completely separate labour markets still. It’s not as attractive as if we had one big labour market because we have these harmful and hurtful narratives that we just heard again here in this House, and the very closed idea of what an identity can actually look like in Europe. And we have an insufficient equalisation of rights which needs to be strengthened. So I want to thank the Commission to bring forward this new package. I think there are very good elements in there when you look at the long-term residence directive. We need to increase European mobility. We need to make it easier to get access to a long-term residence permit. And I want to especially thank you for the talent pool, because this is an idea that I brought to the Commission two years ago, so I’m very happy that it has now been taken up. I think it’s really cool that international talent now has the chance to express their interest to work in Europe and then be matched with European employers. We have to work on that, make it interoperable with what the private sector is already proposing so that we can really attract talent to Europe and make Europe more attractive. So let’s get to work.

Mr President, I would like to thank the Minister and President von der Leyen for coming here in person for this crucial moment for our Union. Madam President, I said this to Prime Minister Morawiecki when he was here, and it has to be absolutely clear. Our Union is based on Treaties, and treaties need enforcement by a functioning justice system. If we have political puppet courts in our Member States, the laws that we write here are worth nothing. Now, you caved in to the pressures and blackmailing of the Polish Government, and we have seen absolutely zero improvement on the Polish side when it comes to their justice system, and yet you still recommended the recovery plan for approval. The majority of this House, and some of your commissioners, believe this to be a huge mistake. We have little trust that the milestones you negotiated will prevent the Polish Government from sanctioning and dismissing judges, or flooding Polish courts with political appointees; I think this actually falls behind your own criteria. Colleagues, to ensure that the rule of law is upheld, we have to do two things. First, we need to ensure that our national governments do not approve the Polish recovery plan until the judgments of the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights are implemented. Second, it needs to be clear that we will use all the tools available to us to make sure that the Commission does not approve any European taxpayers’ money, as you have said, flowing to Poland without real reforms taking place. And yes, this also includes the tool to force the Commission to resign. We have to ensure a Union where the Treaties are upheld and a rule of law is in place. So, Madam President, please do the right thing.

Apparently it’s my democratic right to ask questions, so I will make use of that. I wanted to ask you, if you, as an Italian running on a French list, believe there is something like a European identity?

So I think it’s very good that you made the effort to go out there. And I think it’s also okay to have a different vision of how Europe should go, which is a vision of where prime ministers and chancellors sit in backroom deals and battle all the deals out on how Europe should work. I just believe that we should fight and I’m fighting for a Europe, where you have a parliamentary democracy, where we can have these debates and where we can fill the government that can then be dis—elected if people don’t like it. I think this gives more voice to citizens also if they’re critical about different policies. But I’m having these conversations and I’m happy to see your study results as well.

Madam President, fellow Europeans, earlier today, Vladimir Klitschko, who is the mayor of Kiev, wrote that, for Putin, Ukraine is a provocation because it is a democracy. Democracy is a provocation for some people. And we can also see this, sadly, in this Chamber. So what do we have to do? We have to dare more democracy. That’s exactly what they fear. Let us dare more democracy. I said this also on Saturday at the conclusion and I say it now after we voted positively on the transnational list, we need to dare more democracy. If you look at the conclusions that all these citizens that actually dared more democracy came up with, you see that there’s a lot of very positive stuff in there: abolishing the veto, making the Council more transparent, calling it a Senate to make it a real second chamber, and giving more rights and powers to Parliament, including the right of initiative, budgetary powers and so on. So we need to seriously follow up on this. I am very happy that from the Constitution Committee we already requested to trigger Article 48, to trigger Treaty change, and I hope that the countries will follow up, but I also hope that we can follow up on all the other ideas that don’t need Treaty change. (The speaker agreed to take a blue-card speech)

I just have a very simple question. I was here on Saturday and saw the conclusions, I also read the conclusions and my question is: why are you misrepresenting what’s in there, which is actually that we want to strengthen regional parliaments and that we want to strengthen cooperation between national and the European Parliament? So there’s nothing about abolishment of the national regional parliaments, so why are you misrepresenting the results?

Mr President, Executive Vice—President, dear colleagues, first of all, I also want to thank you for the great collaboration. I think we had long hours trying to figure out what the best use of AI in Europe is. But let me go one step back. When we hear AI, I think – and this is thanks to the movie industry – we often think of bots and of holograms of all of us, MEPs, of the Executive Vice—President to be just replaced by AI in this kind of futuristic scenario. But that’s not what AI really is about. In all seriousness, it’s about an objective function. It’s about probabilistic models, and very often our companies are still trying to grapple with what AI is about. So they’re making their way from a very analogue life to an AI—based business model. In this struggle, we see that we have some issues. For example, one is that there’s a strong tendency to market dominance, and that is just the case because you still need a lot of data to train your AI algorithms. I think Europe is trying to find its way in this struggle, and we’ve seen that if you give too much market dominance, there can be abuses of that. We need to find ways to counter that. And we have seen that, for example, maybe in the Chinese model, AI is used to control society. We have to also fight against that. So what can help us to make these steps correct? I think it’s crucial that we make our algorithmic function focus on human agency, and this has been said before. So we need to safeguard fundamental rights, but we also need to find markets concentration. That can be done if we enable our start—ups, our companies, to enter these markets so there’s no closed markets, and there’s no market dominance. I think this is a struggle that is worth fighting and that is also very much represented in the report. Let us continue the struggle, in the Data Act and all other files that are still being discussed in the AI world, so that we create a European way of looking at AI and make it possible for our companies to thrive.

My question is in regard to the European parties. I mean, how many of your voters really know the EPP? That’s my first question. And the second question is: if you don’t like the transnational list system, what is your idea of improving the European Union? Because we have already lost one Member State, the United Kingdom. We need to get more democratic. What’s your idea of improving the European Union?

Paolo, there’s no animal like the EU, so you won’t find any comparisons in other systems. The second point, on bringing European citizens closer; you change nothing by just giving them a second vote. How can that bring citizens further away from the European Union the first time they can actually vote for a European party that you’re part of? And third, on the Spitzenkandidat, there is no system on this earth where the Spitzenkandidat is actually registered in the law. So this is in Germany – I don’t think in any other system – this is by practice, so why do you think that this is worse than, for example, the German system?

Mr President, 18 years ago today, 10 countries joined the European Union in enlarging the ‘original club’. And I think what we have learned and seen over the last 20 years is that basically, the backroom deals between chancellors, prime ministers and presidents do not work anymore. And why is that? Because they are too non—transparent, and they’re inefficient. And so what we need to do now in this mandate as well is to give a voice to European citizens. And this is exactly what the second vote does. It gives a second voice to citizens, allowing them to actually express what kind of Europe they want. Is it a more restrictive Europe, a conservative Europe, where migration is a bit curbed, where you have more money for small and medium-sized businesses, and money for Europol? Or is it a more social Europe, where you have minimum wages and I don’t know what? Or is it more liberal, or is it more bold, whatever kind of Europe they want. So you dare more democracy, you don’t take a single thing away from citizens – you give them a vote. So don’t listen to those people who tell you it’s otherwise. Don’t listen to those who say, ‘28 people, they are so far away from the citizens’. That’s not what this is about. It’s about bringing European parties closer to citizens; that they can, actually, for the first time in their lives, vote for them, say: I like this European programme, I like this European candidate, I like this European party, I want this. Currently, they can’t. And so this is what this is about. Don’t listen to the people who say, ‘oh, the small and medium—sized Member States, they won’t have a voice’. This is not true. In the first place, if you look at Europe, small and medium Member States field the biggest and most prominent figures already. But it’s not only that. In the file, as Verhofstadt also said, there are enough conditions in there to ensure that this is not the case. So don’t listen to them. This is really about all of us thinking, as a Parliament, how can we ensure that we can make the step towards a European parliamentary democracy, how we can dare more democracy? And that’s why I would really ask you to vote in favour. There are other positive elements, we have heard about them. There’s voting age 16, and this is an indication which is positive. There’s a better gender representation with quotas and zipped lists, and there’s a lot more positive in there that is in regard to minimum standards. But there’s also one really negative element in there and I have to mention this. We introduce a threshold of 3.5% for Germany, which, from my perspective, is really sad and bad. I have not heard a single sound argument why this is needed. There’s not a single sound argument out there, and it does take away five million votes from European citizens. That is as much as the smallest five Member States together. I would still ask you to vote in favour, even though it reduces my likelihood of getting re—elected, because I think it’s so important that we give citizens a voice, and that we dare more democracy with the second vote.

Madam President, dear Commissioner, dear colleagues, I travelled to Greece recently and I saw – and have heard this before – that a systematic violation of the right to seek asylum in Greece is happening. I will try to outline it to you. Basically, since March 2020, no-one has been returned from Greece to Turkey, and that is Turkey’s fault. But just a year later, the Greek Government still imposed a law, which is the inadmissibility procedure or joint ministerial decree, which basically says that everyone who comes through Turkey, and who comes from Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, Pakistan or Bangladesh, has to be returned to Turkey. But as I just explained, no one is being returned to Turkey. So this was, from the beginning, absolutely trying to stop the right to seek asylum. And so we have a Kafkaesque situation, where people are being told to go to police stations to be returned, to then ask Turkey whether they would take them, and Turkey doesn’t even answer this. Then the people are being told: okay, you have to wait for a year. They don’t have access to food; they don’t have access to accommodation. We really have to stop this. I ask the Commission to do something about this to guarantee the right of asylum in Europe.

Madam President, I wanted to start by thanking Angelika Niebler for the very constructive cooperation that we had on this file. It was very nice working with you and very fact-based. That was exemplary. I think today’s vote shows that we have actually advanced quite far in our digital policy. You will hear that my voice is still a bit deep because I have jetlag from coming back from the US and talking about data policy to the different stakeholders over there. I realised how close we are to the sweet spot of personal data protection and still enabling innovation at the same time. This is built on the fact that we had a European success with saying that there is a philosophical right of your own data being your own, in a sense, of having that right. Now, we need to transfer that to the industrial data space. We also need to get to a situation where the usage rights for industrial data are equally clear. The Data Governance Act is really helpful because it basically makes it possible to have neutral platforms and data intermediaries if you want data stock exchanges that you can trust and actually share and trade your data. And then, when we get to the data act, I think we have the obligation to ensure that basically we are now applying what we learned from GDPR to the industrial data space in clarifying who is able to trade co-generated data sets. The whole idea behind this is that we can really unlock the innovation potential that we have in our start—ups and that we have in our industries with a lot of very innovative and new concepts and new business models that, as the Commissioner said, will create a lot of jobs.

Mr President, every morning when we wake to the live documentary of this terrifying war on social media, I feel helpless when I see the images of bombed streets, burning nuclear plants and lines of people fleeing. I feel helpless. But while our options within Ukraine are limited, our options for helping those who are fleeing the war are not. That’s why I wanted to thank you very much, Commissioner, for your swift action and for bringing all the countries together to grant legal protection so fast. And that’s why I want to thank everyone who’s opening their doors currently in Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania, but also all across the continent. But much more needs to be done and we have to adapt to the situation and every moment. So, I would ask you, Commissioner, to also ensure that everyone who’s fleeing is protected, no matter their skin colour or nationality – also the Russians and Belarussians fleeing their crazy tyrants. Even if we decide that some can’t stay, please make sure that they’re all covered by health protection so that they can go to the hospitals to tend to their mental and physical wounds after fleeing. And please ensure that we have a new approach to the European asylum system, so that we can learn from this humane reaction to the fleeing refugees, in our new asylum system.

Mr President, thank you to Anna, and on behalf of Erik, I would like to thank everyone – the rapporteur, shadows and technical staff, for the great collaboration on this report. It’s a very timely report indeed. The recent intensified crackdown on civil society in Belarus and Russia shows one important truth: an organised civil society is a horror for any form of autocratic leadership because it shows if and how they fail their societies. But we don’t need to look that far. Sadly, we see civil society organisations also being targeted and limited in our own Member States. Some leaders don’t want to allow societies to correct their mistakes. I’ve witnessed systematic persecution and criminalisation in the field of migration, an area where all our governments are currently failing. And the recent events in Ukraine show another and more humane face for Europe in that matter. So let us build on this humane Europe and show that every human being is worth saving, no matter how far they’ve travelled and no matter what their skin colour. Let us build a humane Europe, Commissioner, by supporting civil society organisations, ensuring sufficient funding for CSOs and developing a green strategy for safeguarding civic spaces in the EU.

Madam President, I also want to start on a positive note because I think we have achieved a lot when we look at this year. I think there was a lot of work done, both at Member State level and by the Commission, but also obviously within this Parliament, trying to hold you all accountable in this work. If we think about the adoption of the RRF Regulation, the preparation and also approval of some of the plans, at least the payment requests, the scrutiny that has been done, a lot of work was done. So congratulations on that. But, obviously, now we are entering the next year and so the question is what kind of ambition and what kind of control is necessary for the next phase of the RRF? And here I want to ask us to really try to stay on top of this ambition because we still need to stay strong when it comes to Hungary and Poland and some of the other elements in the plans – we need to ensure that they are corrected. We need to ensure that the operational arrangements are of high quality and fair to all Member States and ensure especially that we have agreed on spending and where it is supposed to go. I would also say that some of the Member States, like Germany, can be ambitious in re-routing some of the money. I mean, there are still EUR four billion, under the new German government, going to hybrid cars, so I think if we have a change of government, this can also be reflected. And this is true for Bulgaria as well. And then we come to control, and here I think we have a couple of elements, which really mean that we need to step-up our game. The first one is we promised to green bond holders that the money will really be spent on green spending. So we need to keep this promise by actually sample-sizing, by testing, by scrutinising in detail the projects that are supposed to be green. And we need to keep the promise to EU citizens that we will use this money to really build solidarity and a strong Union when it comes to economic governance. So I wish us all a restful and great break to be able to do that well.

Mr President, for the third year in a row now, I was locked away on a rainy November weekend with my colleagues and with the national diplomats to battle over the annual budget, while surviving on very bad sandwiches and bad coffee. For the third year in a row, I have left these negotiations with a curious realisation. Some EU capitals fundamentally reduce these negotiations to how much they have to pay and seem very often to disregard what they actually get for it, their return on investment. In light of this, it may be worth going back to why we actually have a European Union budget. We have it because, some time ago, Presidents and Prime Ministers made a confession, collectively, rationally and out of political self-interest. They made the confession that, in the past, conflicting national interests have led us to radicalisation and, ultimately, war. They made the confession that every nation, however grand and historically powerful, is too small to tackle the issues of our time alone. I would say they made the confession that all our individual nations lost part of their sovereignty exactly because, alone, they cannot safeguard or represent their citizens’ rights when it comes to climate change, healthcare, rising energy prices, leadership and research, global trade, national security and so many other fields which we see represented in our budget. This is why we have a common European budget, and this is why we have a common European institution that helps us thrive and regain some of the sovereignty that our individual nation states have lost. But let’s get back to the content of next year’s budget. From Parliament’s side, the final outcome, as Karlo Ressler has said, is a success. We have barely ever seen such a focused budget underlining our priorities, be it in the fight against climate change, in our solidarity via vaccination campaigns and in supporting our research excellence, just to name a couple of examples. So big congratulations to Karlo and all his colleagues and shadow rapporteurs for the great work. On my side of the table, when it comes to strengthening the institutions of the European Union, I believe we have also achieved quite a lot. First of all, this is true for the European Court of Justice. Justice is always on the side of the weak and the persecuted. Strengthening the Court with additional staff and funds therefore means safeguarding the weakest in our societies against those abusing positions of power, and that is always worth it. Second, we were able to reinforce the Court of Auditors to scrutinise the correct spending of the billions flowing by the European Recovery Instrument. A common responsibility requires hard checks and balances, and the Court is crucial in this regard. Third, I’m also very happy that we were able to reinforce the capacities of Parliament, of this House. After years of increased workload, we have finally managed to strengthen our core legislative capacities, which will improve the quality of legislation for all European citizens. Let me close by thanking the Council Presidency for their fair negotiations and the Commissioner for very creative solutions, Karlo for the great collaboration, Johan for the calm advice, and my shadows for the continuous support throughout the negotiations, but also to my team – Caroline, Zita and Johannes – for their hard work over the last year.

Mr President, one day after the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, I hear today: walls, walls, walls, fences, barriers, border guards, police, hybrid threat and weapons. It feels like no one cares about the people, the individual stories on the ground anymore. Compassion, colleagues, is not something that we should lose once we become politicians. Let us make sure, first and foremost, that we care for the lives of those in need, and then we can care, secondly, about everything else. But first, we need to care about the lives of the people in need. Once people are safe, we should stop being naive. The weakness that Lukashenko is trying to exploit is not compassion. The weakness he is trying to exploit is that we do not have a European asylum system. None of this would happen if we had a good and decent procedure for people to go through, across Europe, while we find ways to stop Lukashenko from engaging in human trafficking. High Representative, I have two questions. First, will you ensure that there is access for the UNHCR to the European side of the border with Belarus? Second, do you believe that the right to seek asylum in Europe is still intact for the people at the border?

Madam President, after two years of absence, I will be going back to the Greek islands in a couple of weeks, and I’m a bit afraid to go because I’ve just promised myself two years ago that I would improve the situation. But Fortress Europe is still a reality. We build wires and walls and a few of our guards hunt and beat people up, take away their phones and throw them back over the borders. Over the last year, 300 illegal explosions have been recorded in Greece. Two weeks ago, we learned how Croatia is using shadow armies to push people back. And just today, as Sophia has also said, lawyers are suing Frontex – an EU agency – for its role in human rights violations. Commissioner Johansson do not waiver in your defence of asylum law. Help Europe to live up to its values of compassion, law and human rights and let us turn Fortress Europe again into a shelter. For that, let’s set up independent mechanisms to monitor our border guards, make EU funds for migration conditional on safeguarding human rights and trigger infringement procedures against all countries that don’t follow European laws. And please, by all means, never, never, ever legalise pushbacks.

Madam President, I would like to thank colleagues, the Minister and the Commissioner for these exchanges. I think we can see this as a start of our formal negotiation to really try to come to the best outcome for our institutions. I just wanted to quickly react to some of the comments that have been made, so I didn’t really fully get the translation of what you were saying, but I’m very thankful for the cooperation we have had so far, and also for you mentioning the potential differences or implications that the Polish situation might have on the budget, because I think that’s actually also relevant if you think about it. How can we transfer money to a country that does not accept the treaties? How can we actually believe that the judges will follow up with due diligence if they’re not bound by our common order? And I think that’s a question that we had discussed this morning, and that the Commission also is currently looking into. Mr Kuhs asked what he should tell his grandchildren and I actually quite enjoyed this question because I think the first answer would be to tell them that, you know, a Europe of segregated nations with closed borders to each other is not a Europe that they want to live in. The second thing, though, which has more to do with the budget, is the question of how we should invest in the future. My colleagues have mentioned many of the points that we believe are relevant for future investment: climate youth programmes, digitisation, ensuring the future competitiveness. I think to get out of this crisis well, the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) is a good tool, but the whole budget is very important to actually build back better. In terms of institutional changes that we can also consider to have in the future better working mode, I think it’s important that when we talk about the budget, we also see the context of the overall architecture of our financial and fiscal framework. And here I’m very happy that we are starting this process of understanding that the RRF was a one time tool, but we have an ongoing understanding or issue with the fact that we have a currency union, but not yet a fiscal union, and that is something that we also need to get to. To end, let me close with what I started with. I think it’s important that we come to a good conclusion for our institutions, for our European Union, to strengthen them, to strengthen the Ombudsman, the Court of Justice, the Court of Auditors, all these institutions that make up our European Union, and I also very much look forward to then, at some point, coming to a conclusion on this budget.

Madam President, I am still in shock from this morning’s attack on our rule of law, and also on our institutions by extension, so excuse me if I’m still grappling with this, especially also because good institutions are really the solid rock on which we stand. They are extremely important and a source of – and the first line of defence for – the prosperity and progress of our continent. Good institutions allow us all to negotiate our different ideas, our different interests and preferences, and decide a common political direction. They provide judgments, solve conflicts, discover fraud and fight villains who selfishly seek to profit off the community. Whereas bad institutions, on the other hand, allow a small number of foul apples to put their own power and money above the progress of the many. Bad institutions turn a blind eye to fraud and corruption and bad institutions open the door to state capture, inaction and inequality of citizens in front of the law. Bad institutions allow politicians like Prime Minister Morawiecki to act against the interest of his own people. So what is a good institution then? It’s, quite simply, one that is up to the task, that has the legal means, the people and the political backing to do its job, one that is independent and that can’t be corrupted. Do I think that our current institutions are up to the task? To be honest – and this is quite sad – I don’t think they fully are. We ourselves are completely to blame for this. Despite massive changes in the world and great new challenges for the EU, national governments have not reformed the EU since the treaty change in 2007, and the Council continues to block better decision-making. The EU institutions are not given the means to do their jobs well. We have had the stable staffing policy and cuts of staff for the last years, and somehow this golden calf of austerity really is hurting our institutions and endangering the progress and prosperity that I have been talking about. So we can’t really continue as we currently are. There are many reasons why this has become more of a problem today. First, let’s look at the recovery plan. We have an unprecedented amount of money that is flowing through the different budgets to the Member States. Hundreds of people are needed to really look in the various institutions, to supervise the planning, to monitor the spending of money and to organise the flow of it. Corona has also seen a vast increase in capacities to try to basically grapple with the situation, we have Brexit and other difficult procedures at our borders, and we obviously need to fight climate change, where more resources are needed. So Mr Ressler and I have been tasked to defend the Commission’s budget, but also the other institutions’ budgets, against indiscriminate and horizontal cuts. I wanted to use the opportunity here to thank the fellow shadows for the great cooperation that we had in coming up with Parliament’s position on these matters. Despite all these challenges that I have been outlining, the Council did not come up with a better and more, let’s say, detailed view on where we stand, but really tried to just go for stable staffing, austerity and always the same old narrative. But today, Madam Minister, when we also formally start our discussions about the budget, I would ask you to potentially take into account all these factors that I’ve been mentioning and not just see these numbers, but also the tasks that stand behind them because they are quite important and we need to save our institutions. To say it with slightly more fun words: to stop villains getting fatter, let’s make our institutions matter, to rebut the Polish letter, let’s make our institutions better.