Debate contributions by Nils UŠAKOVS

Madam President, Commissioner, Colleagues, the impact of this file is very concrete. InvestEU is the EU's main tool to help turn good ideas into real projects: a school that wants to renovate its building, a small company that needs a loan to expand, a town that wants to invest in new buses. I support strengthening the EU guarantee and adding EUR 200 million on top of the EUR 1 billion proposed by the Commission: this means more projects can go ahead – including in social infrastructure – and more risk can be taken on innovative investments that banks alone would not finance. We also insist that support goes to real small- and medium-sized enterprises, not large firms pretending to be small, and that municipalities get practical help to protect to prepare projects. For countries like Latvia, this can mean more renovated homes, more opportunities for young people, SMEs and local authorities. It is especially important that we cut red tape and give clear, stable rules so that smaller towns and social organisations are not left behind. Every year we mobilise to invest. The EU should create visible change in people's daily lives.

Mr President, colleagues, first let me sincerely thank our rapporteurs, Andrzej Halicki and Matjaž Nemec, as well as our fellow shadow rapporteurs and their teams for the hard work that led to this agreement on the 2026 budget, which wasn't finalised until 2 a.m. I would also like to thank Commissioner Piotr Serafin and the Danish Presidency for the result. After tough negotiations, we secured a budget of almost EUR 193 billion for 2026, and we reversed the cuts proposed by the Council to programmes that citizens know and rely on. That means more support for research and innovation, more money for our youth in Erasmus+, a stronger EU4Health, European Social Fund Plus and Creative Europe. It also means more investment in basic infrastructure in our regions. We reinforced funding for workers' organisations, civil society and key institutions that provide cybersecurity or protect the rule of law. For a student looking for a scholarship, for a worker who needs training to keep a job, for a small town waiting for a safer road or a modern school building, these are not abstract lines – these are real opportunities and real protection. This budget is never perfect; no budget is ever perfect. But this budget is more social, more future-oriented and more honest about the needs of our citizens in Europe. This deal is good, and I invite you to support it.

Madam President, Commissioner, Minister, colleagues, the 2026 EU budget marks key changes. It finally recognises the eastern flank for what it is: a strategic necessity. This is not just a win for eastern border Member States like my home country, Latvia; it is the only viable path for the stability and development of the entire Union. Let us be clear: a secure and prosperous eastern flank is a secure and prosperous Europe. This budget starts translating political solidarity into concrete financial decisions. It acknowledges the disproportionate burden carried by the eastern border Member States and reinforces our collective resilience. And I would like to thank the rapporteur, Andrzej Halicki, and my colleagues in the Budgets Committee, in particular those who visited the Latgale border region on a special mission this April. The resolution signals a paradigm shift. This House is finally accepting that EU funds can, and must, be spent on border and security, and we see enhanced support for the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund. This, in its turn, strengthens the migration pact, providing essential tools for the return procedures of irregular migrants. This is vital for regions like Latgale which are confronting weaponised migration head on. We see critical increase in investment in military mobility, which, among other things, may help my home country to complete the Rail Baltica project. This is a strong start, but as we look toward the 2027 budget and the new MFF, we must go further. Border infrastructure is vital, yet we must equally support the ordinary Europeans, municipalities and businesses in the border regions, who are absorbing the social and economic fallout of the war. Finally, we cannot preach collective resilience while maintaining a hypocritical discrimination against farmers in central and eastern Europe. The next MFF must guarantee equal support for all farmers across the Union. Dear colleagues, dear rapporteurs, Andrzej Halicki and Matjaž Nemec, thank you for your work and thank you for the budget, and let us have it voted tomorrow at the plenary.

Madam President, dear colleagues, when the COVID crisis struck Europe, the response was often shaky, leading to decisions that proved controversial or simply wrong. But out of that chaos emerged something truly new that seemed to be even revolutionary: that was the Recovery and Resilience Facility. Europe abandoned its playbook on austerity; it chose to borrow money together to help its Members to recover. It was a huge shift in approach. But red tape, lack of administrative capacities, peculiarities of domestic management or politics in various Member States and other reasons have resulted in implementation below 50 % or around 50 % in many Member States like Latvia. We have lots of questions about the effectiveness of this 50 % being spent. We have the overall feeling that the experiment flagship response programme is gradually failing. The failure of the RRF would mean for us the failure of our new approach – that means support instead of austerity measures – and that cannot be accepted. EU needs RRF type of instruments beyond the MMF to deal with future crises.

Mr President, Dear colleagues, These days, people across Europe celebrate the victory over Nazism, commemorate the soldiers of the anti-Hitler coalition, the participants of the resistance, the guerrillas, everyone who fought and fell, fighting against this absolute evil. The European Union was created precisely as a result of this victory, and everything that is good in Europe is thanks to the soldiers who won Hitler. Everything that is bad for us is already the result of our own failures and mistakes. Every time we do not succeed in tackling the challenges that the European Union is currently facing on a completely different scale, we remember those who, 80 years ago, sacrificed absolutely everything so that we and our children can live in peace and security. Building a better Europe, let us live and work in such a way that we are not ashamed of these soldiers that we did not do, we were not able. Thank you to the soldiers of the anti-Hitler coalition, the participants of the resistance, the guerrillas. You are and will always be our heroes.

Madam President, access to European Union funding for large-scale transport projects usually boosts mobility and economic development, but not in the case of my home country, Latvia. I will give you some illustration. Currently, electric trains form the backbone of domestic passenger rail transport. However, the state of the electrified rail infrastructure is so poor that probably in the next 5 to 10 years, electric train operations might stop fully. Latvia had access to nearly EUR 500 million to save the situation, but failed. Then the Latvian Government redirected funds to its flagship project: Rail Baltica. But before this, authorities managed to increase Rail Baltica's estimated costs from EUR 2 billion to EUR 10 billion without any plans to fund the gap and without any credible completion deadline. As a result, Latvians in 5 to 10 years will travel between their own towns on foot, because the government failed with EU money. But EU money will be spent on an international project that probably will not be completed in the next decades. As a result, EU money is spent and Latvians are worse off. The situation is not acceptable.

Mr President, after the United Kingdom left the European Union, a special support tool, the Brexit Adjustment Reserve, was created under the current MFF. It has provided assistance to municipalities along the western border of the Union, with total funding of EUR 5 billion. Recently, members of the European Parliament's Committee on Budgets visited the city of Balvi in Latvia, Latgale region, a region bordering both Russia and Belarus. The committee members saw firsthand the challenges faced by people and local authorities in these border areas: closed border checkpoints, severe economic and social problems. The three Baltic states, Finland and Poland are facing increased defence spending, at the same time urgently needing to support local residents and businesses struggling with various hardships. In the new MFF, a support tool for the eastern border municipalities must be established, mirroring the current Brexit adjustment mechanism used for western border municipalities.

Mr President, distinguished Commissioner, dear colleagues, apart from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, there are thousands of independent media outlets operating across the European Union in the Russian language. This means they are owned by EU citizens, they employ EU citizens and they produce content for Europeans, but they do so in Russian and they have no connection to Kremlin. The best way to simultaneously defend our values, freedom of speech and liberty, and also combating disinformation and propaganda, is to establish a transparent and effective support mechanism for free media operating across Europe and sometimes outside Europe in third country languages, starting probably with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Unfortunately, different Member States take different approaches. The current Latvian Government, for example, is actively undermining its own public broadcasting in Russian, which effectively serves local linguistic minorities for decades. That is why a united European approach and regulation are urgently needed.

Madam President, the previous mandate of the European Parliament and the Commission began with Brexit, and municipalities located at the western border of the European Union were particularly affected by the departure of the United Kingdom As a result, a special financial instrument was established, providing up to EUR 5 billion in support for these municipalities. This mandate starts with the continued war in Ukraine and municipalities at the eastern border of the European Union, like Latgale, in Latvia and now literally living by the wall, bearing significant economic and social costs. When you are forced to construct anti-tank infrastructure in your region, private investment obviously tend to avoid those areas. Eastern border regions currently receive no support comparable to what the western border regions have been granted. This glaring inequality must be addressed by the House and by the new Commission that will be presumably elected today.

Madam President, for the first time the European Union has a budget of EUR 200 billion, and it is an important increase in the Union's financial capacity. However, the European Union budget remains relatively small. A budget of EUR €200 billion is less than the budget of Denmark, and that means that we need to be clear with the priorities when we vote for the budget. Despite the pressure of repaying the COVID recovery debt, we have succeeded in protecting key programmes from cuts, that is when we talk about priorities, because taking funding away from youth or scientific research to cover interest payments would have been disastrous. In my own country, Latvia, the national government faces a similar challenge repaying debt. Unfortunately, the proposed solutions include several controversial measures, such as cutting funding for urgent medical assistance. Again, about priorities, we managed to provide additional EUR 3 billion to allocate to support European regions affected by natural disasters. It was crucial to find a solution that did not impact the Cohesion Fund – taking money from one part of Europe to assist another would have violated the very principles of solidarity. At the same time, we continue to struggle with the budget of the European administration. This is a never-ending story: increasing responsibilities every year, systemic underfunding and hundreds of transfers during the year to deal with the consequences of underfinancing. At this rate, we risk facing a significant crisis in our administration pretty soon. I would like to express my gratitude, when we talk about the budget, to rapporteurs Victor Negrescu and Niclas Herbst, and I would like also to express gratitude for five budgets we managed to adopt to our Commissioner Hahn. Good luck, Mr Hahn.

Mr President, dear colleagues, in Latvia, especially in the border region of Latgale, there are hundreds of apartment buildings that have had no central heating for the last three decades. This was cut off during the energy crisis of the 1990s after Latvia regained its independence. As a result, each room has a separate coal‑burning stove, with numerous pipes sticking out of every single apartment. Obviously, that's a disaster from the environmental point of view and from the energy efficiency point of view. Altogether, we are talking about thousands of buildings that need renovation, and Latvia needs roughly EUR 20 billion to deal with this challenge. What we have at the moment at our disposal, including money from Brussels, is roughly EUR 200 million – that is 1 %, approximately. Providing sufficient support for building new affordable housing, and at the same time providing sufficient support for renovating existing housing, especially in the eastern part of the European Union, should be two pillars of the European Housing Programme.