Debate contributions by Adam JARUBAS

Madam President, I'm sorry. Ladies and Gentlemen, Last night, Russia carried out a provocation on an unprecedented scale, testing the defense capabilities of NATO's eastern flank. We would like to thank all the countries that helped Poland to eliminate the threat, especially the Netherlands and Italy. I would also like to thank countries such as the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and Sweden, which have already declared their assistance to Poland after this event. If Putin wanted to test the unity of NATO countries, he already knows today that any such action will encounter a decisive resistance. Today, we can also see how strategically right the European Union's decision was to increase resources for security and defence. I am thinking in particular of the SAFE programme (which was established under the Polish Presidency) from which Poland will receive the most funds: 43 billion euros. One of the priorities of Polish investments will be drones and anti-drone defense. I remember that representatives of the Law and Justice party and the Confederacy often criticized the establishment of this type of program. Today we heard the disgraceful pro-Russian voice of MP Zajączkowska. Poland is in great need of significant investments in the arms sector and we are very much counting on European solidarity. Putin fears only the unity and strength of the West. Today he needs to hear a clear voice: A war from Poland, a war from the European Union!

Mr President, Commissioner, tomorrow we will be voting the Omnibus simplification of CBAM. This is a good day for businesses across the EU, particularly SMEs, who are dependent on importing materials covered under the CBAM. We, as the EPP Group, support the proposal to exempt over 90 % of businesses while keeping 99 % of emissions within the scope of CBAM. From the beginning, the EPP Group called for a mechanism that would protect European producers without being too burdensome for other companies in the market. While working on the initial regulation, the EPP Group called for the longest possible transition period during which there are no payments, only reporting. Although there were calls for a full implementation of CBAM from the beginning of 2025, we rejected that approach and we were proven right. Early implementation of CBAM would have been disastrous for many SMEs. The Commission made good use of the transition period to find weak spots in the regulation and propose the right solution. Imported goods under the thresholds of 50 tonnes will be exempted from CBAM. Furthermore, authorisation, data collection and emissions verification rules will be more streamlined for importers who are subject to the new rules. This practical change to CBAM makes sense and are a welcome step in the right direction. The EU's focus should be on hitting emissions, not businesses. The EPP Group has long called for introduction of a solution for exporters, as CBAM regulation does not prevent carbon leakage for exports but only secures domestic market. From the declaration of the Commission, we know that during the upcoming review of the CBAM by the end of this year, the Commission also wants to address this problem.

Mr President, thank you very much. Mr. Commissioner, I'm sorry. Rare diseases affect millions of people in Europe, and only 6% of them have treatments and not in every country. More than 6,000 diseases are completely untreated. These dramas, uncertainties, long-term diagnoses - an average of 5 years, the lack of data makes research difficult. Rareness prevents economies of scale and makes these therapies very expensive. The answer could be Europe. The pandemic has shown that cooperation is more effective than price-setting competition for scarce resources. By leveraging the European scale, the joint purchases proposed in the Critical Medicines Act, we can cut costs, for example by saying goodbye to community fundraising to save children. Together in the Union, we can collect more data. And here we pay tribute to the Polish Presidency for completing the work on the European Health Data Space. This will also facilitate the use of artificial intelligence. There is a need to harmonise screening standards in the Union, including for newborns. We need to strengthen and integrate European reference networks into cross-border care, educating doctors on their use to end the geographical health lottery, unequal access to experienced professionals. We need to secure the right funding in the post-2027 budget for You for Health, Horizon Europe, cohesion policy or digitalisation. In the SANT Committee, we have just completed the public consultation launched on Rare Disease Day. More than 4,000 people and as many as 60% of individual patients who should be at the center of our interest are happy to participate.

Madam President, thank you very much. Mr. Commissioner, I would like to thank you. In October last year, we talked in this room about the crisis in the steel industry and this crisis, unfortunately, has not disappeared. Its causes have not disappeared either. The development of an action plan for the steel and metals sector is a step in the right direction. It is pleased that the new European Commission has recognised the problem of the lack of protection by the CBAM carbon border levy for exported products, as well as the problem of resource juggling, and has decided to address these problems in the revision of the CBAM. Shifting resources, however, is not the only way to bypass the CBAM mechanism that needs to be tackled. There are also others, such as declaring the share of non-emission materials in imported goods, which is difficult to verify. It also seems necessary, in line with the recommendations of the Draghi report, to rethink the pace of phasing out free allowances combined with the implementation of the CBAM and to allocate these allowances to investments in sectors that lose these allowances. It is also pleased that the Commission has addressed the issue of the availability and export of scrap metal from the Union. This issue requires immediate action and the introduction of export restrictions at least to those countries that block the export of scrap metal to the European Union.

Madam President, I'm sorry. Mr. Commissioner, I'm sorry. Thank you for this proposal. The Critical Medicines Act is the missing part of the European Commission's response to shortages of medicines following the list and the Critical Medicines Alliance. This increases the drug safety of Europeans. What about the fact that a drug has been invented, that we may even have funds for it if it is not physically available in Europe, because it goes to other markets, is the subject of work, pressure in international politics or supplies are cut off due to pandemics, geopolitical tensions, sanctions or open conflicts. Today, Europe imports 80% of medicines or substances into its production. In some cases, it does not produce them at all and is 100% dependent on imports. What if, as with energy from Russia, we have to face the day-to-day cutting off of imports of these drugs. We need an ambitious Critical Medicines Act, which will benefit as widely as possible from the proposals of the Alliance on Critical Medicines. There is a certain level of medicine production on which the health and lives of Europeans depend, which draws the line between simple business and safety. We need a critical medicines fund to secure this level in the Union, for example by making unused cohesion policy funds more flexible or by contributing a percentage of liberalised national public aid from EU countries, as called for in Enrico Letta's report. Such a fund would strengthen European autonomy and resilience against future crises, trade wars and offset the disruption of the Single Market. I fully support the idea of the Critical Medicines Act.

Mr President, thank you very much. Mr. Commissioner, I would like to thank you. UNICEF estimates that more than 11 million children and adolescents suffer from mental disorders. In 2024, suicide was the second leading cause of death after traffic accidents among young people. The COVID-19 pandemic has left its mark, taking out two important years of social development of young people at different stages of their adolescence, pushing them into the digital sphere. It has intensified previous negative trends, such as pathological content, bullying, and addictive platform algorithms affecting brain function. Yesterday's debate about the personnel crisis in health care showed the magnitude of the problem, including most intensely here, where there was always a shortage of specialists. Therefore, we need to educate more, increase the availability of help in a coordinated way, we need to use digital technologies wisely, optimizing resources, reaching with online help where it is more difficult, using in a trustworthy way artificial intelligence or properly programmed games and other applications. The need for broader education, soft skills of children and young people, their loved ones. It is good that there are civil society organizations ready to support from the bottom up, such as the Czepczyński Family Foundation in Poland, educating from empathy and emotions. We need to improve and effectively apply the law passed in the last legislature, such as the Digital Services Act or the Artificial Intelligence Act, to eliminate the pathologies of the digital sphere.

Mr President, thank you very much. Commissioner, I'm sorry. Already in her 2023 State of the Union address, the President of the European Commission drew attention to the record millions of vacancies in the Union, economic losses, unfulfilled services. In health care, it is often literally a matter of life and death. According to the OECD, there is a shortage of 200 000 workers in the EU. According to WHO, 40% of doctors will retire in the next five years. The COVID pandemic has put older workers at particular risk. Subsequent waves overburdened, traumatized, burned out professionally, increasing the transition to early retirement or leaving the profession. It puts more pressure on the others. And the wheel closes. For example, in oncology, 77% of people work overtime, and more than half complain about overload and bureaucracy. We need to make more use of digitalisation, support artificial intelligence and increase efficiency in a safe way. We need to educate more medical staff and doctors, both in college and in further specializations. Coordination within the Union is needed to solve a problem in one area but not to exacerbate problems in another. In the Health Committee, which I have the honour to chair, the EPP Group's proposal for a report on this crisis was the first to receive broad support. I am counting here on the rapid pace of work on a similar subject and the openness of the Commission and Parliament in this regard. We often talk about critical resources in the Union. Human resources in health care are such critical resources for the security of health, life, us, our loved ones, preparedness and resilience of the European Union.

Madam President, thank you very much. Ladies and Gentlemen, Commissioner, I'm sorry. The problems of the steel sector are another element of the industrial crisis in Europe – the most dangerous so far. The decline in steel demand is due to a slowdown in other industries around the world. This is compounded by the increasing steel production capacity in third countries and the often banned subsidies they use. And the collapse of the steel sector would entail further branches of the economy. Tariffs to protect European steel must be introduced. It is necessary, like other countries with strong metallurgy, to introduce a ban on the export of steel scrap. In addition to short-term solutions, we also need to eliminate threats to industry for the future. As the EPP, when negotiating the Fit for 55 package, we advocated a slow and gradual phase-out of free ETS allowances for sectors covered by the CBAM. Unfortunately, we did not have a majority, which is why today this demand is repeated by the Draghi report. Unfortunately, we cannot close our eyes to what is happening, and in order to protect European industry, not just steel, we need to revise the ETS Directive in this regard.

Mr President, thank you very much. Mr. Commissioner, I would like to thank you. More than 80 million Europeans suffer from mental health problems and 50,000 commit suicide every year. These are the tragedies of these people and their loved ones. But if this did not appeal to someone, experts note that serious mental illnesses are responsible for losses of more than 4% of GDP per year. Parliament recognises this crisis situation. One of the two reports adopted on the initiative of the standing subcommittee SANT was the report on mental health. We hope that SANT will soon become a full committee in order to be able to address more strongly the issue of the Union's involvement in the mental health of Europeans. We in the European People's Party, including in our election manifesto, stress the importance of mental health and call for a European action plan to reduce inequalities between and within EU countries, between cities and smaller towns. We need to ensure that Europeans have access to psychological help at European level, while countering stigma. We welcome the attention given to mental health by Ursula von der Leyen – especially the mental health issues of young people in the digital age, for whom suicide is becoming the leading cause of death. We support pan-European research into the influence of social media, the fight against cyberbullying and action against addictive algorithms of online platforms. It is good that these announcements have been translated into concrete tasks in the mission of the Commissioner for Health. The situation of psychiatric and psychological care has always been difficult compared to other specialisations, so the current personnel crisis in the Union, caused by demographic trends and burnout or insufficient expenditure on the education of young professionals, is hitting the spot all the more forcefully. At SANT, we have decided that the first issue we will address will be the contingency plan for health workers. This will be a good opportunity for Parliament to also look at the situation in the field of psychiatrists and psychologists.

Madam President, thank you very much. Commissioner, I'm sorry. Ladies and Gentlemen, Most of us have used or will use some of the more than half a million medical devices or products currently available in the European Union. We're talking about products here, from simple contact lenses and patches to pacemakers and dentures. Unfortunately, fewer and fewer of them are produced in the Union, and even the desire to export them to the European Union is decreasing. Once a leading market, today only 30% of manufacturers consider the Union to be the first market for their products, and 30% of current products may disappear from sales. Doctors see this problem – the lack of availability and lower effectiveness of substitutes, or the lack of them at all. In the last term, we have placed great emphasis on Europe's pharmaceutical sovereignty in the face of, among other things, international instability. A certain level of availability of medicines draws the line between doing business as usual and ensuring safety. This is no different for medical devices. Today, it is not about lowering security standards, but about unlocking the system, ensuring predictability and legal certainty, the ability to adapt to changes, reducing bureaucracy, costs or increasing the ability of Commission notifying bodies to complete certification procedures more quickly. We call on the European Commission to swiftly complete the evaluation of the legislation as planned in 2025 and to include the results in the relevant legislative proposals. At the same time, we call for the adoption of temporary measures in advance for small and medium-sized enterprises, which, unlike large corporations, cannot afford to wait years for certification. These European national innovators need support in the face of global competition.