Debate contributions by Bruno TOBBACK

Mr President, my congratulations to Commissioner Jørgensen on having done what needed to be done, which should have been done a long time ago. Because even after the aggression in Crimea in 2014, after the invasion in 2022 and to this day, as Europeans, we continue to contribute billions to the Russian war machine that threatens us. It gives a whole new meaning to the concept of ‘digging your own grave’ and it is high time that it stopped. But now let us also learn the lessons from this. Trade with other countries is good, dependency is wrong. Building our economy on imported raw materials is the shortest path to dependency. And expensive natural gas is not only responsible for the lack of competitiveness in our industry today, it is also a weapon with which Europe itself is still being blackmailed today. So true independence for Europe means independence from all imported fossil fuels. Hopefully we will have the courage to do so in the near future.

Mr President, Commissioner, our citizens are seeing negative electricity prices and high energy bills at the same time. Member States are shutting down electricity production because it cannot be connected to the grid, while in others energy prices are unreasonably high. Companies that want to invest are on waiting lists because they can't get a connection and in some streets you can't charge a car anymore because someone else has just bought a heat pump. This situation damages our prosperity, our security and our future. Stronger, smarter, better connected power grids are therefore the most necessary and the most profitable public investment Europe can make today. We can invest in cables, made in Europe, transporting electricity, made in Europe, and supplying energy to citizens and businesses producing here. made in Europe. Or we can continue to import fossil energy for EUR 100 billion a year and make others rich. The creation of this report shows that there is a broad coalition in this Parliament that wants to make the right investments: in a common European prosperity. I would therefore like to thank the colleagues with whom we have built that coalition and call on the Commission to work with us on this.

Madam President, Commissioner, colleagues, anyone with common sense knows that electrification is Europe's only realistic road to affordable energy and to competitiveness. And events like the blackout in Spain and Portugal make it crystal clear that robust grids are as essential to that as highways are to road transport. In that sense, the obsessive debate between renewables and nuclear today is simply ridiculous. It is a circus aimed at polarising and distracting people. If some people here think that nuclear is cheaper than wind or solar PV, let them present their business case to the taxpayer. Grids, in any case, don't see any difference between the electrons they transport, and both technologies were producing at the moment of the blackout. Those of us that really want to build a secure energy future for European families and businesses should, in the meantime, focus on building solid, reliable connections, because essentially the blackout shows how fragile isolated systems are. It shows that a deliberate effort to integrate, interconnect and manage our energy systems together in a true energy union is the only effective way to keep the lights on in the whole of Europe.

Mr President, the Commission puts its finger on the wound in its action plan for the steel sector, but real action will not be taken for the time being. Keeping scrap in the EU for recycling is a justified ambition, but its implementation will depend on circular economy legislation, which we can expect at the earliest by the end of next year. Electrification is rightly put forward as the only way to competitive energy prices. However, the Commissioner for Climate, Net-Zero and Clean Growth does not come up with clear ideas for lowering energy prices, for example by reducing the impact of gas prices on electricity or building infrastructure to avoid the reduction of renewable energy, but instead chooses this very moment to launch a completely useless and technically contradictory debate on lowering climate targets. Now more than ever, we need to be clear to ourselves. Looking forward with one eye and with the other to the past will not help us to put investors in these heavily besieged sectors on a credible path to the future. Clarity, speed and above all real action is what we need now.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, even worse than having half a billion Europeans held hostage by Vladimir Putin is having half a billion Europeans held hostage by Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. The best way to escape this is to build our prosperity with the energy we produce and control ourselves. This is also the basis of your action plan. Let's take action now. The European Energy Union must be more than a collection of 27 separate energy markets with overpriced prices, where citizens not only have to pay for expensive electricity because we have to produce it with gas, but even have to pay when they produce green electricity themselves and supply it for free, because our networks are unable to bring it to the companies that beg for it. In a market that is screaming for cheap energy, it is absurd that hundreds of projects that can produce cheap electricity are waiting for a connection today. Commissioner, every politician dreams of connecting. Well, maybe not everyone in this hemisphere, but still many. Multiplying connections today is the best guarantee for lower energy prices for our families and for our businesses. Don't miss that chance.

Mr President, Commissioner, colleagues, Europe has performed a remarkable feat in reducing its dependency on Russian gas and oil after the attack on Ukraine. But the work is only half done. Not only are we still importing Russian gas, but by simply switching to other suppliers, we have found little more than a quick fix. Because if depending on Vladimir Putin was naive, then repeating the mistake by making our economies dependent on a gas cartel between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump would be outright irresponsible. Some in this Parliament do not like the idea of reducing fossil fuel use; it reminds them too much of Greta Thunberg, and she scares them. And since we are all woke, we must respect their feelings. But we cannot change geology, and that means that any European economy dependent on gas or oil will eventually find itself in the shoes of President Zelenskyy – facing blackmail and extortion, whether it be in the Oval Office or at the end of a very long table in the Kremlin. So, colleagues, let us at least spare our economies, our businesses and our citizens that fate by making the transition work.

Madam President, Commissioner, colleagues, high energy prices are a social issue that today leaves millions of families struggling to afford basic comfort in their homes. And yet millions of those homes are leaking heat as if it were for free, because owners cannot afford a renovation. With energy prices higher than in competing markets, they are a burden on our industry's competitiveness. Yet at the same time, on this windy and breezy day, we probably see negative prices on the European market because we lack the infrastructure to get that abundant renewable production to factories and families that could put it to good use. So what we need now more than ever is a sustained and coherent strategy to deploy all the cheap, renewable production that we can, to use instruments like the Social Climate Fund to improve homes and lives of families that are unable to do it for themselves, and to invest in the infrastructure that gets electricity to homes and businesses, because electricity grids are to our prosperity what highways were to our parents. Let us be as daring to invest in that as they were in their time.

Mr President, dear colleagues, besides agriculture, the Budapest Declaration rightly highlights the importance of industrial renewal through decarbonising as an absolutely key objective. We have actually reached a point where it makes little difference if you do it for the planet or you do it for the European steel industry, because without an effective net-zero policy, neither of them has much of a future left. But those of us that have some knowledge of Europe's Christian heritage know that faith is nothing without the works. As people see all their industries fade, they need to see new ones grow. As they see windmills and PV panels go up, they need to see electricity prices go down. Recyclers need to see us put an end to exporting scrap and e-waste to be recycled outside the EU, and steel companies need to see the power grids and the green hydrogen capacity to be funded and built, so they can lock in their own investments in future capacity. I will end on the same theme, colleagues: we can choose between building a decarbonised future or rebuilding Noah's Ark. That should be a simple enough choice to make.

Mr President, let's be very clear on what crisis we are actually talking about here today in this debate, because European car manufacturers have, in recent years, followed a very deliberate strategy of building fewer but more expensive cars. This has created record profits for all of them in the past years. But it has come at an obvious cost for their workers and for European consumers – European consumers who will now pay again, when otherwise justifiable import tariffs on Chinese cars will make affordable cars that are available actually more expensive. They will pay for the very lucrative dead end into which our car industry has manoeuvred itself. And while industry in the rest of the world is racing ahead, some in this Parliament now want the EU to slow down even more, hoping in vain that time can be stopped while we revise our directives and hang on to the past. Well, colleagues, Europe already has more than enough very beautiful museums where we preserve the past. The industrial deal that we need is one that builds a sustainable future and quickly, because if we keep turning in circles, museums will soon be all that we have left.