Debate contributions by Raúl DE LA HOZ QUINTANO

Mr President, we of course support the content of the Budapest Declaration. It is a text very much in line with the Commission's programme and also with the Letta and Draghi reports which, for the most part, we share in this House. We are already clear about our weaknesses, we are already clear about our threats, we are also clear about our strengths, and we even agree on generic objectives. Now, six months after the elections, it is time to get to work as a matter of urgency. Every day we let go is a day we lose to the rest of the world. Our economy depends on European industry and European industry needs our support now more than ever. It needs us to be by its side and to be flexible, to be tangible, to be, of course, agile and, above all, to be effective. We can only make our industry competitive if we are able to encourage innovation, boost productivity, cut costs, cut red tape; But above all, we can only make our industry truly competitive if we do not subordinate industrial policy to climate policy. Decarbonisation and competitiveness are two objectives that we must achieve together and hand in hand, not at all sacrificing our industry for the achievement of any of the decarbonisation objectives. If we are clear about this and if we also work in dialogue, on the basis of consensus, our industry will do well, our economy will do well, and therefore the Europe we believe in will do very well.

There is no question, but I will give you an answer. Do you know what happened after you, the Galician left, grossly used an ecological misfortune that occurred in Galicia? That the citizens, who are very intelligent, sent you and your socialist partners to the streets. That is what happened in Galicia and that is, perhaps, what will happen also in the future in our country. Ladies and gentlemen, when the will of the citizens is manipulated, they react and I am sure that here too they will react to those who try to manipulate misfortune solely and exclusively to benefit politically and electorally. Ladies and gentlemen, you should be ashamed.

Madam President, I come from a country where, when there is a misfortune - and there are a few - some have the sole objective of generating a story that favours their political and electoral interests. It happened with the Prestige. It happened recently with COVID-19 and, of course, it had to happen now too, it could not be less. Thus, while the media and political satellites - as we have just seen - are determined to generate a story that makes the Popular Party responsible for this and any misfortune that happens in Spain, we find a Government whose minister responsible for the management of the river that overflowed has not yet come forward, no longer to ask for forgiveness or to assume any responsibility, but only and exclusively to side with the victims, so as not to harm their career here in Brussels. Only in this way is it understood that a president of the Government refuses to assume the national emergency, simply to not show his face and assume his responsibilities. Only in this way is it understood that aid from other States should be refused. Only in this way is it understood, ladies and gentlemen, that the President of the Government of my country dares to publicly state that "if anyone needs something, let them ask for it", while people died in the streets. Meanwhile, of course, the delivery of humanitarian aid to Valencia is conditioned on the approval of the General State Budget. Ladies and gentlemen, it would be very naive to think that there will be no more catastrophes in my country. It would be very naive to think that the left is not going to behave in an unworthy way as it is doing. I am in a position to ask for the involvement of the European Union, the Community institutions and the Member States, so that this misfortune can serve as a turning point and so that, once and for all, we take seriously the need to prevent natural disasters.

Madam President, yes, of course, and although there has been no question, I will try to give an answer. In the European People's Party we are extremely clear that the industrial policies, the development policies and the industrial future of the European Union, must always be compatible with climate policies and always be coordinated with them, and never be subordinated to them.

Madam President, the crisis in the automotive sector is no longer a threat. It is an absolute reality. Faced with this reality, citizens, especially those millions of workers in the automotive sector who today do not see their future work clearly, demand urgent and forceful actions from all of us. Therefore, it is absolutely essential that we get down to work to promote reforms and reorient our policies and our strategies, including climate, if we do not want to be dragged down by a doped foreign competition. The extraordinarily ambitious climate policy is one of the burdens of the automotive sector. The emission reduction targets we set for the sector today are far from being achieved. The response of the Community institutions can in no way be to punish producers and impose extraordinarily high and unjustified fines on them. The review of the Emissions Regulation needs to be undertaken now – ahead of 2025 – in order to revise the interim targets and also to honestly introduce the role of biofuels and synthetic fuels and thus ensure the principle of technological neutrality. We must also address the future in 2035 and beyond 2035 and the role that plug-in hybrids will play thereafter. If we do not do it now, if we do not act urgently and forcefully, we will pay for it in terms of employment and in terms of the destruction of what is still the European Union's flagship industry today.

Madam President, we agree, of course, to a large extent with the analysis made by Mr Draghi in his report, as well as with the need to adopt measures as soon as possible to curb this process of loss of competitiveness and to address as soon as possible the measures to put it into effect. It is necessary, of course, to take action and change our political priorities by bringing to the forefront those that allow us to recover competitiveness and simultaneously initiate a necessary process of reindustrialization of our economy. I would like to draw attention to one of the flagship sectors of European industry: the automotive sector. A sector that is now under threat, undoubtedly weighed down, among other things, by the loss of the balance between industrial policy and climate policy and by the limited flexibility we have given it to achieve the objectives we have entrusted to it, without even knowing or properly assessing whether these were feasible or not. The achievement of the objectives of competitiveness of the automotive industry expressed in the Draghi report, with which we mostly agree, requires that beforehand all, absolutely all, including all the members of the College of Commissioners, assume the non-subordination of the same to the principles of decarbonization and understand the strategic character that has had, that has and that must have the automotive sector from the point of view of both economic and social.