Debate contributions by Aurore LALUCQ

Madam President, Mr Vice-President, ladies and gentlemen, the single market must be finalised, because its standards are our best lever for establishing a balance of power, particularly vis-à-vis the United States. So yes, absolutely. But sorry, we are not even able to complete the banking union or the capital markets union. And this is not the fault of the bureaucracy, the European Parliament or the European Commission; It is the fault of the Council, the fault of the Member States. This is because we are constantly trying to tinker with arrangements because, on the Council's side, it does not work. In the end, we end up with species of legislative monsters, legislative "Frankenstein". The Council is moved and, all of a sudden, tells us that everything must be done away with. Obviously everything must be deleted, because the result is inconsistent. Whose fault is it? I therefore deplore the fact that bureaucracy is being used to excuse the Council and the Member States. If we want simplification and a genuine single market, we will need one thing: Federalism. I would remind you that the banking union alone would save us EUR 40 billion each year. I would therefore like to twist my neck to two preconceived ideas. Firstly, if things are slow, it is not the fault of Parliament or the Commission, but the fault of the Member States. Secondly, legislating through regulations rather than directives, as advocated in the Draghi report, would allow us to move much faster and finally complete the single market.

Mr President, Commissioner, today's debate is not so much about taxation as about our courage, our sovereignty and our ability to accept reality. What is it today? We have accepted that Trump withdraws from the agreement on global taxation, on multinationals, thus thinking to calm him down to get a good deal with the United States. Is our trade deal good? Did he calm down? The answer is no. But we sold it thinking that it brought certainty, a stable horizon, to companies. Is their horizon stable? The answer is no, since the very next day he attacked Ørsted, then Novo Nordisk, then he challenged us to dare to implement a digital taxation. What did we do then? Still nothing, thinking there too to calm him down. And now it is his very support for the OECD that he is questioning. When are we going to understand? When will we understand that Donald Trump will never stop and that, yes, obviously, we must put in place a taxation on digital since the GAFAM, the big American technology companies, do not live on the European market? But we have to go even further. We must defend our companies by defending our regulations, by implementing a policy of digital sovereignty, a real one. Not just words, as Ursula von der Leyen said today, because what she said was words so far. We must give priority, through purchases, to our European digital players. And it starts today. So love is good, proofs of love are better. We will now ask the European Commission for proofs of love, especially for digital players who feel today, at European level, totally neglected. And a tip to Mme Ursula von der Leyen: Read the Draghi report again, because she betrayed it today, and more than once.

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, first of all I would like to thank you, particularly the pro-European groups, for the quality of the debates and for their constructive nature. I believe that if we have differences, perhaps in the details, we all want to send a very clear message to the Council. The European Commission has given its roadmap. I hope that the European Parliament will adopt its own in a few days' time. But, indeed, as some of my colleagues have noted with a little bit of bitterness and disappointment, the ones who are missing today are the Council and the Member States. However, they were the ones who told us at the last Eurogroup: "speed, speed, speed", when it came to implementing reforms. The Commission has returned its copy. Parliament is about to do so. This 'speed, speed, speed' will therefore now be addressed to the Council, because we have been waiting ten years for the Capital Markets Union, and we are here for a moment that must absolutely be seized. I will use the words, I think, of Gilles Boyer: "In the area of the Capital Markets Union, there are many believers, very few practitioners." I believe that the Commission has proven that it is a practitioner. I hope and am sure that Parliament will prove in the coming days that it is practising. What about the Council today? Is he practising or is he only made of beautiful words and beliefs? Thank you to all of you, in any case, for these meetings, these discussions, and for this report, which is a collective work and which I hope will be adopted.

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, a year ago the Draghi report was published. It alerted us to the collapse of the European economy, to the very survival of the Union as an economic power. The causes? Too little overall demand, a lack of investment, too many barriers in the single market, a guilty preference for directives rather than regulations, too complex legislation, a lack of a capital markets union or a lack of a digital industrial policy. Two figures then emerged in the context of these debates: 600 billion and 300 billion. 600 billion is what we need to invest to avoid this stall. 300 billion is the savings of Europeans that go every year to finance foreign economies, starting with the United States. I will come back to these two figures later. Many of us immediately understood that, in the more than 400 pages of the Draghi report, only two paragraphs, a few of them, were going to be retained: those on simplification and those on securitisation. We knew that the issue of public and private investment was not going to be simple to defend, but we were ready to fight. In the meantime, the Commission – and thanks to it – has put the Capital Markets Union on the agenda, which then became the Savings and Investments Union. This is very good news for some of us, because very few of us have heard of the Capital Markets Union in the last term. We had forgotten this subject, despite the pugnacity and work of some Members, and I would like to commend the work of Isabel Benjumea, who stood firm on the Capital Markets Union (CMU). The European Parliament therefore immediately took up the work on the CMU and immediately began to work on the details, because it is well known that there is a political will to make the Capital Markets Union. But when we go on the steps, there, the points become extremely blocking. I believe that we agree with the European Commission - excuse my English friend - that today there is a "window of opportunity", but that this window of opportunity can quickly close. That is why we wanted to go fast, fast, fast - as the Council had requested, but what it is often unable to do - to discuss the single supervision, which is a real debate, the harmonisation of the law, which is also an essential step, but also the issue of clearing houses, etc. There, we could see that, finally, what we suspected, the differences between political groups exist, but that there are also legitimate differences, moreover, between delegations, between nationalities. Despite this, we have managed to return our copy and I hope that we will be able to vote on this copy in the near future in order to be ahead of the Council and to be able to print our line. I would like to thank the rapporteurs, who have done an absolutely incredible job. I would like to thank Isabel Benjumea in particular, again, because, as a former rapporteur on the Capital Markets Union, she has been very helpful. So, despite intense debates, despite disagreements, we still arrived at a common copy that talks about the need for reinforced supervision at European level. We talked about the need for public investment, private investment. We talked about simplification, while at the same time making sure that it is not deregulation. We also talked about the European savings account or the idea of a label, a safe asset, the European Investment Bank. I believe that everything is there and that we do not have to blush from this copy, and I hope that it will be adopted. Now we're going to get to a more political point. I just have one question. And this question is not addressed to Commissioner Albuquerque, because I know her commitment on this point. It is addressed to the entire College of the European Commission. I will finish on this important point: 600 billion, 300 billion. We were told that it was essential, 600 billion investments at European level. We were told that it was essential to bring the 300 billion Europeans' savings back to European soil. And, in this context, I do not understand the agreement with the United States, that is to say how we can, on the one hand, make us work morning, noon and evening to find compromises to make the capital markets union, to say that we must apply the Draghi report and, on the other hand, make this agreement, in which - I do not know by what miracle, moreover - the European Union says that it will finance and therefore make the success of American policy. So I finish on these two issues – and I will slow down on my conclusion if you will, Madam President –: What has the Commission done with the Draghi report and what is the coherence of our policy today? These are not provocative questions, it is that, sincerely, I ask myself the question.

Mr President, Commission, ladies and gentlemen, who can want to deprive Europeans of a free digital payment method? Because I remind you that your credit cards are not free. Who would rather have our data stored in the US – because that is the reality – than in Europe? Who can refuse that we are independent of American means of payment? Because I remind you that almost all of our payment methods are American. Who can want to give up our monetary sovereignty? Who can refuse to defend the euro, our currency now competing with American stablecoins on our own soil? Who can prefer American actors close to an administration to which the European Union poses a problem, as it has made clear, which seeks to destabilize our farmers, our industry, our winegrowers? Who? Who, in other words, can deny us this freedom to create the digital euro, our means of payment, independent of the Americans in particular, who? I will tell you, they are not people who defend the interests of Europeans, they are not people who defend the interests of the middle classes, they are not people who defend our sovereignty, they are not people who defend our democracy, and history will name them. In a period of populism, you're going to hear a lot of false things about the digital euro, that the ECB wants to take power over everyone, that we're going to do crazy things with your data. It'll be wrong. It is an eminently political, eminently civilizational struggle that is being played out here. We'll have to hold on. It will also be necessary to go fast, because today, the euro has a major role to play, that of competing with the dollar, that of being the currency of one of the strongest economies in the world. Everyone will have to be on the right side of history and, again, history will judge them.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, our savings are now financing the United States. €300 billion per year: this is our participation in financing the economy of a government that is unfortunately no longer our ally, which seeks to stifle our agriculture, our viticulture or our industry through tariffs that are as arbitrary as they are unfair. How long are we going to be stupid enough to finance the Trump administration's economy? Repatriating our savings is obviously an economic issue – you said it perfectly, Commissioner – because it could help us invest in industry, rearmament or the ecological transition, at a time when Europe is living below its means. Above all, it is now a political issue. We therefore fully support the European Commission’s proposal, perhaps with some nuances – for my part, I consider the issue of securitisation to be out of the question. Perhaps we can go further by asking asset managers to invest a minimum in the European Union. I agree with Mr Ferber's conclusion: it is time for Member States to stop blocking this project, and their absence today is quite significant.

Mr President, Mr Vice-President, where the Draghi and Letta reports speak of investment, innovation and reindustrialisation, through this compass you are responding far too much by simplification, deregulation and even securitisation. But on the ground, companies don't tell us that. They tell us, firstly, about the price of energy, secondly, about unfair competition, particularly from China, and, thirdly, about industrial policy. And that's where you're expected, especially through the Clean Industry Pact. We can certainly make simplification, but killing the CSRD and CS3D will not change anything if the Chinese market decides to flood our European market with Chinese cars, quite simply. If we want to simplify, we can stop with directives and go through regulations. If we want industry, we prefer industrial policy over competition policy, because it is no coincidence that we do not have a big tech European. It is simply because we have remained in a logic of defense of the consumer, rather than in a logic of defense of workers and industry. I think we're going to have to move a little bit more to industrial capitalism and get out of financial capitalism. We're counting on you.

Mr President, Madam President, Commissioner, moments of crisis are telling: revealing the quality of people, their courage, their integrity, their reliability or not, revealing the political lines and deep values that animate us, moments when masks fall. And we're in exactly one of those moments. If Democrats criticize, sometimes debate, struggle, populists always attack. They attack both democracy, institutions and ultimately sovereignty. Our currency, our central bank, will not escape it. It is the European Central Bank that we have been able to count on in every crisis. It is the European Central Bank that anticipates crises. And we, will we anticipate them one day? We must defend the European Central Bank and our currency, our institutional pillars of sovereignty by giving them two tools. The first tool is the digital euro – I do not understand what we expect, ladies and gentlemen – the second, the budget to take over from monetary policy. I expect us to be responsible, not populist. Let us pay close attention to what we are saying about the European Central Bank and the euro at the moment.

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, because without regulation, the market for crypto-assets is not a currency, it is not a technology, it is a financial asset. It would be made of scams, financing, illicit practices of all kinds, including the financing of terrorist groups such as Daesh. We chose to regulate them in a hostile, violent, toxic climate, made of threats and cyber-harassment. So it's funny to see today that the very people who were harassing us at the time and yelling that they were going to go to the United States because of us, are complaining about the current practices of the Donald Trump administration, which destabilized the market with the launch of its "corner". They are experiencing what the law of the strongest is when it is not favorable to them. So yes, obviously, as we have always said, we need regulations at the international level. We must also protect ours, strengthen ourselves on the issue of financial stability, but above all, for pity's sake, let's not waste too much time with this debate. We know what to do in the field of cryptos. On the other hand, we must make progress on the digital euro and the creation of our own "big tech".

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the Trump system is much more 'extortionist' than transactional. Basically, it is: You will do what I want, when I want; You will even pay for it, and all this without any guarantee for your security or defense." We, in the face of this, in Europe, cannot be the system of contempt or scorn. That would be a double mistake. We will have to do two things that the European Union does not like to do: strategy and balance of power. The strategy, first of all: We need to create our industrial independence, stop doing poetry and think that cutting red tape will be enough. We need a European industrial policy with precise objectives, a precise timetable, precise timetables. It is an obligation of result that we must have in the fields of large technology companies, clean technologies, energy, but also chemistry. Then we have to be in a balance of power. I tell you clearly: the slow reaction of the European Commission towards Elon Musk is unacceptable; It can't happen again. This administration will go fast, very fast, it will hit hard, it will have no limits. We are still talking about a so-called ‘liberal’ government that risks expropriating 50% of TikTok, and we are investigating this. Investigations are very good, but they have to be concluded, concluded quickly and ended with actions, and sometimes even sanctions. We will have to stop being afraid and use our single market also as a weapon that allows us to be in a balance of power. I know it's unpleasant to be in a balance of power, I know it's scary, but when you don't want to do it, you just don't want to do politics. The world has changed. Action is needed to protect Europeans instead of protecting the image of a world that unfortunately no longer exists.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I have actually prepared a speech, but I am going to change it, because I am listening to you and I am quite surprised. Who would have thought, a few months or a few years ago, that there could have been even a debate on the taxation of the super-rich in this Chamber? No one, I think. Hearing each other come to a consensus on supporting the G20 position and Gabriel Zucman – because I feel that is what emerges – I think we have made an absolutely incredible step forward. Good, because we get to something reasonable and it is absolutely the sense of history to return to a fair taxation. We only ask for fair taxation, so that everyone pays their taxes correctly. Now, I don't think we should get trapped either. That is to say, we support this whole G20 process, very well, let us make ourselves heard firmly on this subject, but we must also do it immediately in Europe. We have to do it right now in Europe, but why? Because we need money and we know very well that this money will not only come from private finance and that we must mobilize, as the Draghi report says, a massive amount of money. For the general interest, let us bury our deleterious ideology and privilege the general interest, taxing the super-rich and capital.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, the Draghi report is very clear: EUR 800 billion of investment per year is the amount needed to ensure that the European Union does not lag behind economically and politically. The question now is how we're going to fund this. And there, there is a kind of primary reflex that falls on us and tells us: we will not talk about public money, it is taboo, on the other hand, we will say that we will be able to finance everything by private finance. And back on the table is the Capital Markets Union. I do not have a problem with the Capital Markets Union, but first, it is extremely difficult to do – I remind you: we need harmonisation, a single supervisor, etc. Secondly, if we manage to achieve this, it is, by the way, a third of the funding we need. Thirdly, I would also remind you that in the United States, where there are extremely large and very deep financial markets, when you doInflation Reduction ActThis is not done with private money, but with public money. So the question is whether the European Commission will be wise and follow the G20 when it says, I quote, that it will 'seek to cooperate to ensure that wealthy individuals are really taxed', or whether we will, again, be ideological and, in the end, lag behind economically and politically?