Speeches

Mr President, I am pleased that the report states that protecting competition increases consumer welfare. There is little talk about it today. I am also pleased that he prefers foreign trade over protectionism. And that has to be repeated all the time. I am also pleased that an amendment has been introduced to the proposal, according to which problems with lack of competition can also be effectively eliminated by deregulation. According to new studies, regulation causes up to a third of the concentration of market power and can thus impair the quality of the competitive environment. However, I am afraid that, like banks or exchanges on the financial markets, competition authorities will find it difficult to differentiate firms according to compliance with environmental protection plans and, consequently, give them a proportionate advantage. Overall, I felt from the report that the authors agree that competition is a prerequisite, not an obstacle, for protecting the environment and achieving other important objectives of the European Union.

Madam President, the ever-changing labour market requires new skills from workers. The European Year of Skills aims to promote training, upskilling and attracting talent to the European Union. The success of this project is evaluated according to the number of events and other outputs, which is not sufficient. It should be measured how in-work productivity has increased thanks to the European Year of Skills. For example, it needs to be measured whether public money invested in capacity-building returns to the state budget through taxes and levies, such as successful graduates. Better-measured projects will also bring us more results.

Mr President, Europe has a serious problem ahead of it. In addition to the consequences of the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, energy prices, it is also burdened by an ageing population and relatively costly green policies, which, together with all this, will lead to an increase in public spending of more than three percent of GDP per year. As a matter of principle, Member States should therefore already generate budget surpluses if they are to be prepared to comply with the 3% deficit rule. In order to maintain it, the euro area needs clear fiscal rules, rules that are simple, efficient and strict. Policy objectives must be subject to fiscal constraints and not vice versa. Let us be reminded that the combination of ambitious targets, detached from the fiscal constraints that we have been cultivating, and not just us, since the beginning of the pandemic, has resulted in the accumulation of new public debts and the highest rate of inflation in the euro area.

Madam President, the shift from the use of fossil fuels to low-carbon technologies is increasing demand for the extraction of non-traditional raw materials. Opponents of the extraction of these raw materials argue that it destroys living conditions, especially the local community. The same is true for fossil fuels. The negative consequences of mining need to be addressed in both cases. However, the two cases in terms of greenhouse gas emissions are fundamentally different. We don't always have to replace the wrong solution with the perfect one. All you have to do is find solutions that are better than the current situation. One of these could be to improve the set-up of the system so that the local community has a larger share of the revenues from the fees for the extracted raw material.

Madam President, interest rate increases are finally bearing fruit in the form of falling year-on-year inflation. High inflation is a serious economic problem, also a social problem, it destroys the purchasing power of money, destroys savings, increases uncertainty, makes planning impossible, discourages investment. Reducing high inflation to persistently low levels must therefore remain a top priority. Secondary objectives should, in my view, be largely sidelined for the time being because the primary objective is still at risk. While not everyone acknowledges that inflation in the euro area has mainly monetary causes, they all recognise that inflation needs to be eliminated mainly by monetary means, including rising interest rates. As we are still far from the inflation target, I consider it important that the European Central Bank maintains its current restrictive monetary rate.

Mr President, the fight against climate change is humanity's largest publicly funded project. That is why we must do our best to focus on its effectiveness. Contributing to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is an excellent goal, but it would be quite expensive to achieve through electromobility compared to other alternative solutions. Therefore, I cannot agree with the proposal to ban even the sale of new combustion engine cars across the Union in the short term. While removing one tonne of CO2 through a system of purchasing emission permits costs less than €100, switching to zero-emission cars costs up to ten times as much. Reduce emissions, but where it is most effective.

Madam President. If we want to protect European money effectively, we need to improve a lot of things. I'm going to mention two that are less talked about than they deserve. Firstly, transparency. Let's start publishing all contracts with public administration in the Union, as Slovakia, for example, does. At the same time, we also need to control who benefits from public contracts as the beneficial owner. This is recommended, for example, by the World Bank in the 2020 Anti-Fraud Report or also by the International Monetary Fund in the 2022 Handbook on Ownership Control. Second, we need to measure results, not outputs. It is not enough to measure the number of kilometers of roads built. If the result does not improve the flow of traffic, reduce travel time or reduce the number of accidents, then we have probably invested inefficiently. And even in the best system, there will be failures. And it is difficult and expensive to detect and correct them. It is more effective to detect and correct failures in the system.

Mr President. The Single Market has boosted economic growth in the European Union. However, the impact of the Single Market on people’s lives goes far beyond the economy. The single market then helps maintain peace, improves relations between countries, improves freedom and tolerance, protects law and democracy. Completing the single market would make many of today's problems much easier to solve in the future. The completion of the single market, for example, in Slovakia, in my country, would increase gross domestic product by three and a half to 5.7 billion euros each year, roughly as much as Slovakia gives out of public spending on all education. And it's almost as much as we put on the whole health care system. But let us not forget that the success was, and probably will be, a common market in the European Union, not a common centrally planned economy.

Madam President, the report on the vision for the Union's rural areas by 2040 did not please me. Nor does it propose appropriate solutions and, in particular, does it have properly identified reasons why rural areas are lagging behind. Trying to put young people in unproductive jobs in rural areas cannot be part of the strategy. Why do we want to sacrifice them? The OECD study gives us clear recommendations. It is not enough to redistribute money to poor regions, structural changes are needed. Inefficient grants hamper innovation and productivity growth. At the same time, differences in productivity are the main reason for lagging behind. We should give regions autonomy in local taxes and promote fiscal decentralisation. These solutions are missing from the report and I think we will not make progress without them.

Madam President, it is undoubtedly good that we are setting ourselves targets for digitalisation. Unfortunately, we don't have them well-chosen. They do not measure the results for the citizen. For example, the objective of making key public services available online. It is not enough that the service is available online, because the online service can be done in such a way that citizens lose more time than if they visited the office on foot. Who does not believe, read about how the online Covid vaccination registration service worked in Slovakia, my Member State. Instead, targets such as how much time saving has increased, costs have fallen or labour productivity has increased thanks to digitalisation would be more appropriate. Such objectives are mostly lacking in the proposal and I think it is a pity. I'm convinced of that.

Madam President, while the borrowing strategy has been conducted without major difficulties, new European debt also brings many hazards into the future which the report overlooks: higher inflation, increased indebtedness of Member States and resistance of Member States to fiscal consolidation and structural reforms. I think it is a mistake that the Commission does not set fiscal consolidation as the main condition for drawing the recovery funds. Borrowing strategy is the easier side of the coin. The harder one is the not-borrowing strategy, the growth strategy that has been missing so far, fiscal consolidation and structural reforms in Member States. Without them NextGenerationEU risks to be a missed opportunity that we cannot afford.

Mr President, the solution to today's energy and inflation crisis should not be taboo or austerity in the Union budget. Even a citizen in difficult times cannot solve his problems without saving in his budget. Therefore, part of the resources needed to cope with the crisis should be redeployed as a matter of priority from inefficient funds where we help the vulnerable in a targeted way. There is scope for more efficient use of public funds. Inefficiencies in several funds have long been highlighted by the European Court of Auditors. In difficult times, people are also looking for ways to increase their income. We too should once again focus more on the real sources of economic growth. It's as if we've resigned to them during years of reliance on the bank's cheap money and on public debt.

Madam President, the presenters of the material call on the Commission to consider creating an exception in the rules of the Stability and Growth Pact for public expenditure on cohesion policy. But black is simply black, white is white, deficit is deficit and debt is debt. Excluding cohesion policy expenditure from the deficit will not lead to a lower spirit at the end of the day. This only increases the risk of further deterioration of the already poor state of public finances. This increases the risk of young people not being paid to work, do business and live in the EU. Member States need clear and simple fiscal rules to comply with. No other exceptions by which fiscal discipline will be circumvented.

Madam President, I will try to remember it, thank you for the floor. I welcome the European Parliament's call in this report for the Commission to evaluate the efficiency of the budget for the years 14 to 20 in order to learn lessons from the results achieved with European money in the past when drawing up future budgets. However, the report lacks the idea that the zero condition for evaluating effectiveness is that we determine in advance precise criteria and measurable result indicators against which we will assess whether we have been successful in our objectives. The European Court of Auditors also points out in its report on the performance of the budget for the years 14 to 20 that it was mainly output-oriented and that there was no significant shift towards measuring results. I think measuring results is also the best protection against fraud and corruption.

Mr President, Croatia is joining the Eurozone in very tense times of record inflation and great uncertainty. Slovakia, where I came from, which introduced the common currency in 2009 during the financial crisis, experienced something similar. We know from experience that the introduction of the euro in itself does not, in principle, make it more expensive and may be more advantageous for a small country in difficult times for reasons of greater monetary stability. Let us not forget, however, that the guarantor of the stability of the single currency is not the number of members, but its fiscal rules. Therefore, joining the euro area must not be the end, but the beginning of the path towards budgetary responsibility. Let it be a reminder to us 19 members of the eurozone that the fiscal consolidation and reforms we expect from Croatia are also a necessity for ourselves. Only fiscal responsibility will ensure that the euro benefits all, not a burden for those responsible.

Madam President, Croatia will become the twentieth member of the euro area next year, and this is an opportunity not only to wish Croatia success, but also to say a few words about the euro area, which was intended as a club of countries with low debt, sound public finances that will share a stable currency. But with the advent of the financial crisis, this paradigm has changed to a great extent. Purchases of government bonds by the ECB turn the euro area into a transfer union. Fiscal rules are regularly breached and have actually been de facto abolished with the advent of the pandemic. Public debt has risen, inflation is hitting records. Perhaps these are the reasons why sound academic research suggests that a number of new and older eurozone members would have a higher economic performance today if they kept their own currencies. And I say this as a supporter of Slovakia, my country, joining the eurozone. I wish Croatia and the eurozone a success story for both parties.

Madam President, it is a scientific consensus, and therefore a great responsibility of scientists, that humanity cannot afford to slow down in stopping global warming. The task of politicians is to achieve an agreed halt to warming with the least possible negative impact on people's living standards. We must therefore choose the most efficient methods, that is, those that reduce the production of one tonne of CO2 in the cheapest way. According to an OECD study evaluating the effectiveness of various emission abatement methods, but also the twenty-eight Nobel Prize winners in economics, they are the most effective solutions based on market mechanisms. Thus, an alternative to the market-based ETS is only the removal of greenhouse gases by less efficient methods. This means higher taxes, higher negative impacts on people's living standards. At first glance, it looks exactly the opposite. But in such a fateful matter, the victory of populism simply cannot be afforded.

Madam President, at the beginning of this initiative, there was a correct attempt to address the problem of economic activity escaping from the European Union. And this happens for two reasons or two forms. On the one hand, it is an escape of taxation of economic activity to tax havens, and on the other hand, it is an escape of economic activity due to a worse business environment. We are now trying to tackle the first one by introducing a global minimum tax. However, we should be careful not to accept it as the only one, otherwise economic activity will continue to escape from the EU, for example, to the United States. The latter should be addressed by structural reforms, otherwise economic activity from the Union will continue to elude us, i.e. investment, of course, not in tax havens, but in countries with more efficient systems. In any case, with such a huge step, which will, of course, have a lot of positive effects, the Commission should have both positive and negative effects well analysed, and in this, in my opinion, we have reserves today.

Mr President. Healthy competition is part of the European Union's golden treasure. It is important that the Commission and the states, i.e. politicians, fight against abuses of dominant position, against cartels. But sometimes we forget that it is we, the politicians, who limit competition in a systemic way. As an example, I can cite various systemic restrictions on trade in services, some subsidies to the economies of the Member States or tax exemptions. If we want to build a successful Union, if we want to overcome the current crises, we must also have the courage and the strength to tackle the barriers to competition that stem directly from the rules of the game, which are therefore part of the system.

Madam President. At a time of high, rising inflation, at a time of war, at a time of great kovid problems and others, it is even more important than usual to spend taxpayers' money efficiently. The Court has long drawn attention to problem areas in the budget, such as cohesion policy and the common agricultural policy. For example, the Court found that the one hundred billion euros spent between 2014 and 2020 to combat climate change in the agro-sector had little impact on the volume of emissions in agriculture. I therefore consider it crucial that the results we want to achieve and the ways in which they are measured are clearly identified before the programme is launched. Also, so that those programs and funds that do not achieve results effectively, receive less and less money.

Madam President, the petitioners wanted to help the environment with these proposals, and that is a good goal. However, when extending the lifespan of products, we should not only take into account that if old products have a longer lifespan, we will not harm the environment by producing new products. We should also take into account that, according to expert studies, repaired old products often do more harm to the environment than new products of the new ecological generation. Imagine if fifty years ago there were a right to fifty years of repairs and fifty years of guarantees, what cars we would probably see on the road today. It is therefore important that such proposals are analysed today and in the future and their environmental impact accurately quantified. So that we do no more harm to him than we do to him.

Madam President, one of the consequences of the Russian aggression is also related to the environment. After this experience with Russia, armament spending in the world will be higher than before. We know from expert studies that higher spending on armaments is associated with higher greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, we are in a situation where the developed world has high public debts. The starting point for this mix must be the modification of the Green Deal. It must be more efficient, it must be truthfully communicated to the public. Some measures need to be changed. For example, nuclear energy is essential, we need to import liquefied gas, to produce electricity from coal. Unfortunately, we can't stop as fast as we expected.

. Mr President, I have long argued that if we want to be successful as a country and as a union, we must open ourselves up to competition, not protect ourselves from it. The free movement of goods works well in the Union, but if I wanted my house to be designed, for example, by an Estonian architect, it is no longer without obstacles. Indeed, the free market for services still has many restrictions in the Union, mainly due to various protectionist measures favouring domestic providers under the pretext of preserving the quality of services or the public interest. If restrictions on services were lowered to the level of the three least regulated states in the Union, the productivity of firms across the Union could grow by about three percent. I therefore agree with the call for the Member States to extend mutual recognition of diplomas and qualifications as soon as possible.

Mr President, I agree that we should uphold the principle: What is not prohibited offline should not be prohibited online. With the Digital Services Regulation, we, but in my view, are at risk of creating many new rules that have a cost and not achieving an adequate improvement. We also risk doing this because we do not do a good cost-benefit analysis in advance, we do not rely on expert sources. Despite a number of criticisms by the European Court of Auditors and commitments in its own resolutions, the European Parliament often fails to carry out impact assessments of its own substantive amendments. This is also the case with the intended restriction of targeted ads. The complainants in the European Parliament have not, in my view, submitted convincing studies to confirm that targeted advertising is harmful and that limiting it will be effective for the benefit of the consumer. We should only introduce regulations whose benefits outweigh the costs and stick to the practices agreed in Better Regulation.

Madam President, the main drawback of the present Digital Market Act is the very definition of a gatekeeper. The size of the platform and the number of users do not in themselves demonstrate that a market failure is taking place. We should stick to the best practices defined in the competition legislation, i.e. choose criteria that show whether a market failure is actually occurring. In parallel with the questions in the DMA, we should open a debate on why it is that none of the current giants of the digital industry has emerged in the European Union. Enabling market entry is a better strategy than letting monopolies grow without competition and then regulating them. In addition, the proposed regulation also contains bans and obligations for platforms, which may be inefficient.