Speeches

Mr President, (inaudible) keep on addressing me with one question. How come that EU money is used to buy a new piano for almost EUR 200 000 for the Presidential Palace, at a time when, for example, healthcare or education are still under-financed? Quite a few Latvians also believe EU money is used to pay for increases in salaries for ministers. This House did a great job achieving an ambitious EU budget 2022 that covers various financial needs across the continent and also serves as an example for at least some Member States. Just some figures from the new budget: an additional EUR 86 million for healthcare, EUR 35 million for education, EUR 47 million for the environment, and it’s a clear message for Latvians and all Europeans, your healthcare and education systems can always rely on support from the Union, but there will never be any money from the EU for pianos or salaries for national ministers. Thank you, and a special thank you to colleagues, Karlo, Damian, Johan, Commissioner Hahn and the Council.

Mr President, I would like first to express gratitude to my colleagues, co-rapporteur Monika Hohlmeier and shadow rapporteurs for their support for the united position on what this House wants to see from the targeted revision of the Financial Regulation. We have the new MFF package that includes now NGEU and it’s a new reality for everyone. We need a regulation that’s in line with these changes to the whole EU budget. But revision of the Financial Regulation is not about technicalities only. Well-designed, ambitious revision shall make our Union stronger and better capable of protecting both its values and its money. It’s our opportunity to ensure everyone respects the rules of the game and introduce clear costs for anyone who fails to follow this regulation, from beneficiaries to top national government representatives. Talking about costs, we can assume there is a relationship between respect for the rule of law and the efficient implementation of the European budget. The Commission must consider the Rule of Law Conditionality Regulation adopted at the end of 2020 as part of the MFF 2021-2027 agreement, and provide a proposal with a view to fully aligning the Financial Regulation provisions to the conditionality regulation. I should outline that we don’t want to launch a new debate on the rule of law principles. It is clear the agreement we have right now was not that easy to achieve. But if it’s prohibited to cross the road at a red light, no one should be ashamed of repeating this ban in any piece of traffic rules. We want results of previous debates to be implemented in real life. We want alignment of principles that were previously agreed on in every piece of European regulation. That is it. Nothing else. Rule of law, social issues, protection of environment, gender equality, these are questions of utmost importance not for this House only, but for every European. The EU budget is obviously our main tool. That’s why we need to use EU funds to promote climate and biodiversity mainstreaming, social conditionality or gender budgeting, and track the impact of EU policies on them. In order to be successful we must align EU spending with our objectives and values, and the Financial Regulation is exactly the right place to do that. Up to now we’ve use the committed appropriations only for Horizon Europe. Extending the possibility to reuse the commitments in areas other than research and innovation is important. We cannot allow this targeted revision of the Financial Regulation to become a missed opportunity, ending up getting a set of awkward and sophisticated requirements. It takes political will to achieve success, so it cannot be easy. But lacking political will could result in creating bad opportunities to abuse the European budget across the continent and for the devaluation of core European principles. And this would undermine all the efforts done before – I’m referring to NGEU and the introduction of European bonds. It is said that the Commission will not publish its proposal this year, but only in the first trimester of 2022. Such a delay is worrying. This delay also implies we might not have enough time to complete revision before May 2024, and that would be a major failure for all European institutions. Apart from timing, even more worrying is the possible content of the proposal, with messages that issues like externally assigned revenues, borrowing and lending, rule of law conditionality, gender, climate and social mainstreaming may not be included in the proposal. Here I would like to bring an illustrative example from my home country, the country I obviously know the best. One of the ministers recently publicly assumed that municipalities would face problems to get access to NGEU money if they’re run by the wrong political party. By the way, that was the minister of welfare. Isn’t it a shame? This is a particular example why we have to do more to protect European Union values through a sound Financial Regulation and even assumptions like this should be a no-go for any Member State. Commissioner Hahn, you are well known as a highly experienced pro-European politician. You can rely on the full support of this House if the ambitions of the proposal of the Commission will meet the needs of all Europeans. Our goal is to create a regulation that guarantee transparency and budgetary overview and which would serve any other instrument being possibly introduced to fight new potential crises our Union can face. Thank you and good luck to all of us in getting the regulation done.

Madam President, addressing you about the Union Budget 2022, I will start with a story from my country. Latvia is entering full-scale lockdown tomorrow, including a curfew after 8 p.m. The Latvian Government failed to take control of the COVID pandemic. As a result, Latvian citizens are depending more and more on various forms of support, both from the Union budget and different ways of financing. At the same time, we see that the Council is cutting Budget 2022 and the Commission is planning to reallocate finances from its crucial programmes vital to citizens of the Union, both in Latvia and in other Member States. For instance, a new health authority, HERA, is getting established and the Commission plans to finance it by taking money from Horizon Europe, EU4Health and rescEU. This is a controversial example about policy concerning the budget of the Union. As for good examples, voting for the budget, we support providing more information by this House about the Union and the European Parliament in the languages of national and linguistic minorities and regional languages. By the way, one of the reasons why the Latvian Government failed to fight the virus was its inability to communicate effectively with the country’s linguistic, primarily Russian-speaking, minority. This vote should serve as an important message for Member States. Thank you, rapporteurs, fellow shadows and colleagues.

Mr President, what we are experiencing in Poland is a test for the Union and it’s a temptation for quite a few politicians and probably even some governments across Europe, so that is exactly why we adopted the regulation and rule of law conditionality, designing it as a tool capable both to curb and prevent temptations. Now we need to go further. We need effective and timely implementation in cases of breaches of the rule of law, like in the case of Poland, and it will be probably very complicated to do it without aligning all European instruments available. When adopting rule of law conditionality regulation, the Parliament, the Council and the Commission agreed to consider including the conditionality into the financial regulation upon supervision. We expect and we want to see the proposal by the Commission in the targeted revision of the financial regulation set to be presented already this year. Let’s act in a consistent way. I believe the recent events in Poland are a very good example and an argument for the Commission to include rule of law conditionality in this proposal as from initial stage, so we can combine our efforts to protect both the values and financial interests of the Union.