Speeches

Mr President! Commissioner! Dear colleagues! In some respects, today's parliamentary debate has not always been a highlight. I rarely have so much disinformation, so much conspiracy theory – and dear Commissioner, I thank you for the fact-based answer that was indeed right. It does not examine one Member State, but 27 on the basis of the decision of 27 Member States, on the basis of a judgment of the European Court of Justice, which considered the corresponding regulation to be in order and adequately adapted to the Treaty of Lisbon, which was adopted by Parliament by a large majority. If a Member State like the Hungarian government, and I do not mean the Hungarians, I mean that the Hungarian government does not follow the rules that we actually want to see for the Hungarians in all equality in the area of corruption, in the area of tenders, in many areas. When I see that we are told as Committee on Budgetary Control that there is supposedly no fraud at all within Hungary, there are no cases at all. If there are cases of financial fraud here in Europe, they will be prosecuted by the European Public Prosecutor's Office. They are even published, and you can even watch them. Unfortunately, this is no longer happening in Hungary with the oligarchy. But this is not about Hungary, it is about our common values, about our common approach. That is why I am saddened when you see, for example, with regard to media freedom, that Mr Putin can continue his disinformation, influence elections in our country and that people here in the EU also partially defend it. It has nothing to do with the rule of law. But we have freedom of expression. If you were in Russia with Mr Putin, you would not be able to express that opinion. We in Europe are allowed to express opinions, even if they are so erroneous and confused and confused. That's what really sets us apart. But a liberal democratic rule of law must be able, even those who cheat it and who try to use taxpayers’ money incorrectly or enrich themselves personally – then you must have the opportunity to intervene. And we want to do that in the future.

Madam President, Commissioner! Dear colleagues! First of all, I would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to my co-rapporteur Jean-Marc Germain and also to the shadow rapporteurs for the good cooperation we have had and for trying to present the best possible implementation report to each other. First of all, it is important for me to say that, from the ground up, we are happy that we were able to enforce this conditionality mechanism, open after years of struggle, because neither the Commission nor the Member States, even less, were enthusiastic about it, but now we have at least one mechanism that works so far. So far, 8 billion are still being held back due to the fact that one has doubts. But: I have to say the other way around, although we consider this mechanism to be fundamentally functional, there are some problems: Parliament's ability to follow up on how the questions are asked to the Member State, how the answers are given, according to what criteria exactly, after a very careful examination of all the arguments, as the Commission emphasises. We would like to be able to see this better and, above all, not first learn from the press, as unfortunately so often has been the case. Then, secondly, it is also important for us – and I say this also for the future Multiannual Financial Framework – that I find it rather problematic that in the next Multiannual Financial Framework national governments should be given full responsibility for disbursing funds themselves, and then that costs should not be controlled in this way, either by the Member State or by the Commission. I see this as extremely problematic, because it is almost a free pass to almost override the conditionality mechanism. I have serious concerns about this and, in addition, the rules on conditionality will again be provided for in various legal regulations in the future. That may be well-intentioned, but they also need to be coherent and they need to agree. Otherwise, the approach is relatively difficult for those who want to submit an application. What is also essential for me when I look at regional policy, and we always have the issue of the last recipients, then it would also make sense to really give regions competence in regional policy and to go a step further and not just leave everything to the decision of the national government, so to speak, how much money goes to which region, but then there are keys, and they must be fair, because there cannot be a political key according to which the funds are awarded, but there must be visible keys, which are also transparent and correct, because there are not only problems in Hungary, there are also problems in some other Member States and there have been complaints of a similar nature. I am glad that the so-called single market has now been included in the guidelines and I would like to express my gratitude for this. Because I already understand many companies, especially medium-sized or even larger companies, which rely on the European single market, then invest many millions there and are then de facto exposed to expropriation and have been doing so for many years in Hungary. Access also, for example when I look at science and research – who gets what money anyway? It should be more scientific and objective, it should not be partisan and it should not be one in which the funds are allocated at will. We have a lot of questions that are open. We ask for much more transparency. At the same time, Commissioner, I would like to thank you for the good cooperation we have with the Directorate-General and you, and I hope that we can further develop the conditionality mechanism on the various points.

Dear President, Commissioner, Minister, dear colleagues, first, I would like to present the best regards, the best greetings of Johan Van Overtveldt, who will join us again when he can be back in Strasbourg and in Brussels, but he is on a good way of recovering. First, I would like to thank the Minister that he is coming personally because we are not always used to the Ministers doing like this, so thank you very much for your presence. Secondly, the Council suffers under a situation that the Council produced: the MFF until 2027 is too small. The problem is that the challenges have changed a lot. First we had COVID-19 and suddenly then we were facing a war, we were facing trade problems, we were facing totally new geostrategic constellations. So this means that this MFF has to fulfil duties that were not foreseen in 2020. This gives to me one question that the Commission already has raised. The Council is talking about competitiveness, about innovation, about boosting industry for more taxes, for more possibilities, for better competitiveness and then you are cutting horizon. This is contradictory. The Council is taking decisions in the area of security, border control – explicitly migration, stopping illegal migration or regular migration. But then we need Frontex and then we need the growing up – as the Council has decided it. This is a decision of the Council, together with the Parliament, on the proposal of the Commission. So I think we are facing huge challenges in the area of defence. The Parliament was very flexible in this area in the help to Ukraine, so we were accepting Article 122, we were accepting everything, but I don't see the quick reaction of the Council in the area of defence. What is with our future common missile defence shield? If we start with this in 2029, Putin perhaps is already here. So – I am saying it in a sarcastic way – we need to be quicker, and I hope that our Member States will remember that the MFF is too small to tackle all these challenges. So this is the reason why I would ask the Member States to guarantee not future outside funds, new funds, like the COVID-19 fund. We have an MFF, we have here Parliament, we have here democratic scrutiny, we have here codecision, we have a treaty. Please guarantee that we take the decisions together because the Parliament is ready to do so.

Madam President, Mr President, Commissioner, Mr Minister! This time I have not forgotten the Presidency of the Council, as I did last time. First of all, I would like to thank the Court of Auditors very warmly for the excellent cooperation and for the fact that we always get very good advice, as well as – even with different views that we have – the shadow rapporteurs, with whom we normally agree very reasonably. What I am concerned about is one point that Commissioner Serafin raised: Not every mistake is fraud, but we often have such complicated regulations that even with serious efforts by so many an organization and many a university or a medium-sized company, it is difficult to know all the regulations that we have adopted that have to be followed. For this reason, I also share your view that we need to bring some things a little bit closer together, simplifying them. But a warning ahead of time: National plans are not the goal, because if we make national plans, then this Parliament would de facto become a kind of breakfast parliament, and we would go back to 1979. We then look at what the Member States are doing, and at the same time there are no longer any European programmes, there are no longer any cross-border programmes, and if there is a bit of CO2 If he saves money in his house, then this is immediately declared a European project. It can't be like that. We must finally implement a wide range of European projects that have been waiting for years to be implemented. A final point on a colleague who said that the NGO contracts could not have been seen. However, all colleagues from the CONT Committee were able to consult them. You have to stop it. If the Greens didn't do it, then we can't do anything for it, or the S&D wouldn't have done it, then we can't do anything for it. But they were publicly visible to CONT members, so to speak, and everyone had to or could do it, and whether or not they did it is the decision of the individual. What is important to me about NGOs is the fairness of the distribution, that the concentration of funds stops and that it is transparent and that there is no more lobbying.

Mr President, Commissioner, dear Mr President! One, two, three – all presidents and presidents and commissioners. I am extremely pleased that we are meeting together today for the discharge. There is a novelty in the European Parliament that, following a request from AFCO in CONT, the Greens and the Social Democrats have decided that they do not want a resolution at all. It just said that it was Ethics body must be based on legal principles of a proper nature and can only be proceeded with accordingly. But I see this as relatively relaxed because I say: We have an excellent President, Roberta Metsola, and a very good Secretary-General, who obviously does his job very well. We also have a good report from the European Court of Auditors. I greatly regret that democracy does not mean that you can only get away with your own opinion, but democracy means that you may have to approach each other. This has not been possible for you today, Daniel, in this case, obviously, after I offered you that we generally renounce the topic, but it is just as it is. I see it as relaxed. However, I see discharge in this respect against a background that is extremely important and I would like to emphasise explicitly that the European Parliament's right of codecision in budgetary matters must not be called into question. It must not be questioned that we have a budgetary discharge right at all, that we still have the possibility to check what expenditure is being made, which is obviously not the case with the RRF. Trying even more constructs in the future to make national plans through Article 122 as well as in an RRF would mean that neither the Court of Auditors has direct insight nor that Parliament can actually make use of its task of budgetary discharge. In the second place: We also have a necessary and important discussion about so-called non-governmental organisations and the transparency with which they appear here in public or influence legislative procedures. After all, we have found a lot of work programmes in which some networks believe that they can engage in non-transparent lobbying, and the special report of the European Court of Auditors, contrary to what the press release has also been about green and red, finds very clear shortcomings and also criteria that explicitly point out that non-transparent lobbying has not been explicitly mentioned. We can't put the Kaili case behind us and then say: Certain do not have to be transparent and certain do not have to justify and spend their funds accordingly or state in the transparency register that they have no economic interest at all in reality in a mass of legislation in areas that affect the economy intensively or even promote economic interests, act accordingly and even formulate in wording how they intend to influence parliamentary decision-making flows here as non-transparently as possible or those in the Council or even those in the Commission. Nor can the Commission lobby the Commission through non-governmental organisations. This is not necessarily the smartest and best way If we are in the process of preparing the multiannual financial framework, the consequences must be drawn from it. In the case of NGOs in all areas, not only LIFE, by the way, the appropriate consequences must be drawn. I would like to thank the Commission for being on the way and for finding a sensible way to increase transparency accordingly and to steer the whole thing in a meaningful way, without being against NGOs. I am for NGOs, but I am against political lobbying only covertly about NGOs.

To respond in a completely Christian way – Christian means respecting people as they are and accepting each other as they are, rather than enacting rules that force people to go on the defensive, to stop expressing their opinions, to stop showing what they really are and who they really are. This is what I mean by European free values, which – frankly – are currently not respected in Hungary.

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen! Several colleagues from the Hungarian side or from the right side have mentioned that it would allegedly go beyond European legislation and competence. I want to make it clear here where one definitely does not comply with the European rules. We have the free movement of goods, we have the free movement of capital, we have the freedom of establishment, we have the freedom of people to move wherever they want and where they want to take up their profession and where they want to go. What are you doing under your government? Kleptocratically tackle one sector at a time, and that consequently means what the colleague has just described – Hungarian workers pay the price by losing their jobs because companies are no longer competitive. Secondly, a free internal market also requires compliance with the rules of the free internal market. This means that one must also be prepared to have an independent judicial system. An education in which every person can decide what he wants to study, how he wants to study, what education he wants to do and since does not have to be subject to corresponding regulations of an ideological nature. Above all, I call on you to finally stop with your stupid price caps, because this entails huge import-export difficulties. This creates huge difficulties in raising prices for people, and in the end you have a huge inflation rate, high unemployment – and the Hungarian population suffers from high prices. Finally, take note of the European single market, and Commissioner, go to the CJEU when new infringements take place in this sector.

Dear Daniel, I am accustomed to denunciations from you by now, but to say it dryly, you are against the entry in the transparency register. Organisations are promoted without being listed in the Transparency Register. Haven't we just called for this as an EU Parliament? Secondly: We do not demand the cancellation of funds, but we only demand transparency for the expenditure and that here not indirectly the Commission sends us covert NGOs as lobbyists, who put pressure on MEPs shortly before voting with mass mails via Commission platforms and thus practice lobbyism within the institutions. I want her to be a Honest broker to be. Do you think the principle is not valuable?

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen! In terms of budget relief, we discovered massive problems with LIFE contracts. The contracts were awarded by CINEA, under the responsibility of the Directorate-General for the Environment, then by Commissioner Sinkevičius. We had received hints from whistleblowers, and there are many questions: How can Commission Treaties provide guidance on the manipulation of legislative procedures, with content and number of amendments for trilogues and votes for Members and Council officials? It is astonishing that a Directorate-General supports intensification of Commission proposals through activist networks. Lawsuits against farmers, authorities, companies and infrastructure were among the project programs. Fundamental standards of the rule of law should be dismantled. Fighting free trade agreements such as Mercosur was also one of the objectives of the promotion. The goal was to organize mass protests, mass e-mail campaigns, in order to publicly pressure MPs who took a different view than the networks. I am already receiving wild suspicions, dear colleague friend, that have been distributed from your network.Bubble, This discussion does not deserve that. It cannot be the case that the Directorate-General for the Environment has other parts of the Commission lobbying under the guise of certain NGOs. Two of the activist networks are not even in the EU Transparency Register. Others do not name their large donors, although large donations from third countries and companies also flow. Why were problematic contracts not detected during internal audits? If it were Frontex, you'd be asking for tens of special sessions, investigative committees, and whatever. Firstly: EU funds must be spent on clearly defined objectives that are in line with EU legislation. Secondly: We must be able to track the transparency of the spending of the funds. Thirdly: We call for an examination of these contracts by the Internal audit service. Promote the diversity, Commissioner, of civil society organisations – we fully agree – and the constructive commitment to a forward-looking society. We are in favour of a fair distribution of EU funds. Only support organisations registered in the EU Transparency Register that identify key sources of funding and respect EU values. Prohibit covert lobbying within the Commission and ensure a clear separation of powers.

Dear Mr President, dear Commission! But a very warm greeting goes to the European Court of Auditors, to President Tony Murphy and his entire team, and to rapporteur Jan Gregor and his team! Thank you very much for this really valuable report, which is an excellent basis for us. I want to address three key points that go through my mind. Firstly, with regard to the Corona Recovery Fund: I am fascinated that Daniel Freund mentions Italy in particular, but forgets Spain and the ruling Greens and Social Democrats there, that he does not mention that Spain was not able to give an overview at all, let alone explain the corrupt conditions whose cases are now known to the media. It makes no sense to look only at the opposing party, but we want to control the budget and not party politics. bashing operate here. Therefore, for this reason quite clearly: Member States have an obligation to fully reflect the final beneficiaries of the Corona Recovery Fund. We then agreed on 100, but they don't either. Particularly funny is, for example, the Slovak case, where the Ministry of Environment has received 573 million for adaptation to climate change. Or in Bulgaria, where you simply give 22 million to a ministry, and we have no idea where the money is really going. This is not the way to deal with taxpayers' money, it is not acceptable. Secondly: The Court of Auditors has revealed that there are national recurring budget expenditures in the field of human resources, as well as exchanged national projects, which are now suddenly reflected in the Corona Recovery Fund. That is, we are simply replacing national spending so that national budgets can save money, so to speak, and that is called the Reconstruction Fund. I know that not everything is like that, but these cases must not exist, and the Member States should abide by the rules of law that they themselves have agreed with us. The last and short third point is: Hungary always complains that allegedly the expenses would inexplicably not go to them. But it is explicable: massive violations of tendering rules, massive violations of internal market rules, wanton and arbitrary damage to European companies as well as to Hungarian workers. Dear Hungarians, that's enough! Finally, stick to the common European rules, in all fairness!

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen! What bothers me about the debate here is the undifferentiated nature of – I'm really saying now – the outside left and the outside right. Firstly, the Commission for the most part does not finance terrorist organisations, to be clear, but the vast majority are normal means. But we have problems in reviewing some organizations that, under the guise of justice and beautiful, beautiful headlines, are actually and in reality planning the exact opposite. I have called on the Commission on several occasions to scrutinise this matter more strictly, to cooperate more closely with the relevant authorities in the Member States and, in future, to ensure that a Turkish university, which in reality does not seek a peaceful neighbourhood association at all, but does exactly the opposite, is not financed. Such funding, in the context of pre-accession aid to the European Union, simply cannot be true. Secondly, I cannot accept that there are people here who trivialize Hamas. The reason why we have this situation today is that Israeli citizens – civilians – have been massacred and murdered and tortured in a way that simply cannot be reversed here. On the one hand, I would ask that, when it comes to UNRWA, we are of course aware that we need support for the Palestinian civilian population, but on the other hand, we must also note that people have moved within UNRWA who clearly belong to terrorism and who must not be financed.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen. The Green Group loves to submit morally high-quality proposals. There must be transparency everywhere, ethical standards must be raised to paradisiacal heights of infallibility. Of course, the controls must be carried out mainly by green NGOs, and EPP MEPs are particularly keen to be subjected to green audit standards. That is why we women from the EPP - or at least a large part of it that we have discussed - once thought about what the just-successfully voted motion would be if it had been tabled by the Green Group. That is why we have written an oral amendment on a very serious incident that leaves us women really stunned and on which the Greens have not been replying to our questions in a letter for weeks. Here is the oral amendment: ‘Deplores the double standards of the Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament appointed calling for stronger official EP anti-harassment policies but failing to implement the necessary procedures for such policies within their own Group; is astonished how, in a particular alleged case concerning a former Greens MEP, the Group has failed to report these cases to the relevant internal EP committees and structures; calls on the Greens/EFA Group to deliver all information and complaints to the official bodies;’

Mr President! So, now to the end. First of all, I would like to thank my colleagues who have made the report with me and, once again, the Commission, the European Court of Auditors. Now I can answer a few things. First of all, to Daniel Freund: I think it's great when a Member talks about ethics, then comes shortly before his speech, goes shortly after his speech and otherwise is not present in the debate and only gives an election campaign speech for North Rhine-Westphalia – because that's where he comes from. The CDU’s North Rhine-Westphalian list has long since been completed and Markus Pieper had a firm place on it – fifth place, which would not have changed. He then decided to go for it, but dryly said: That was a blatant lie. Secondly: Ursula von der Leyen has made a careful assessment of what the Commissioner for Budget knows best; This is customary in the Commission, but it is not customary in the case of the Greens in Germany. I would once recommend to Federal Minister Habeck that his entire family, whom he has housed in eco-institutes, receive the millions, the groomsmen who have become his state secretaries, posts under the auspices of family and friends The Greens were awarded without any assessment, without any tender, and on a scale that even led to resignations in Germany, such as the Secretary of State Graichen, because the millions were so cheerfully distributed in the area. I have to say soberly and dryly: Setting ethical standards but not sticking to them is disgraceful, dear Daniel Freund. Personally denouncing a truly respected colleague who has been a specialist in the field of small and medium-sized enterprises for years is simply abhorrent and actually belongs on the very, very lowest ethical floor. The Greens like to make proposals that they do not adhere to themselves. I would like to remind you here of the case of Mr Malte Gallée and the resounding silence of the Green Group about the fact that they did not give the cases of the victims and the information to the official bodies of the European Parliament, but rather kept them cheeky under the table. We wrote to Chairman Reintke and Lamberts; So far, there is still a resounding silence and no answers. I find it quite embarrassing when Daniel Freund always presents himself here as the moral supreme guardian and in reality the Greens are exactly the opposite and represent the opposite. Dear Mr Flanagan: The Commission's report was drawn up before the reports came from the Gaza area, with which it had to be established that there were things which were not desired by the Commission and all of us, but which we have to deal with and which we also have to pursue. I must say dryly that anti-Semitism from the left is no better than anti-Semitism from the right. We should take care of the problems of the Palestinian people and not that Hamas – we want to build hospitals, we want to build schools, but we don’t want to support terrorists. That is the question that is ultimately at stake here and with us in the motions. I hope that the political culture, dear Heidi Hautala, will not be completely swept under the carpet by the Greens and that perhaps within the Green Group you will also talk about what is still allowed in the election campaign and what you should not do in the election campaign. Denunciation of colleagues is, I believe, not one of them.

Mr President! Dear Commissioner, dear President of the Court of Auditors and also the rapporteur of the Court of Auditors, dear Jan Gregor, I am very pleased; Dear President, thank you very much for your presence! Indeed, the 2022 budget discharge has presented us with various challenges. First of all, on the Commission budget: Of course, the coincidence of discontinuing cohesion funds from the old MFF for the first time, then starting cohesion notification from the new MFF and at the same time coronavirus recovery fund money was particularly striking. I say quite honestly that the increased error rate of at least 6.4% - one can certainly talk about individual details, but nevertheless I believe that since the European Court of Auditors has already put its finger in the wound, in particular in the wound of the tenders, which are always a gateway for abuse and fraud - is therefore particularly striking in Hungary; But if you look at the new figures or the investigation of the Guardia di Finanza in Italy, where certain new mechanisms of fraud have been discovered nationwide by the Guardia di Finanza, in the case of the RRF. Nevertheless, we have to deal intensively with this kind of systemic fraud and also systemic errors. What I have to say is that the N+3 rule has not contributed to an increase in the quality of the projects, but to a further delay in the implementation and programming of the projects. I know that we failed in the last MFF, but I am still advocating an N+2 rule and that not a lot of money, a lot of good projects are produced – as we see from the coincidence between the Corona Reconstruction Fund and the Cohesion Fund, where projects are happily pushed back and forth, because simply in certain countries such as Spain or Italy, or also in the Polish and French areas, you can see that only a lot of money is not enough if you do not have enough administrative capacity, if you do not have enough control capacity and if you do not have enough technical experts to really implement things and make good projects out of it. This is not to say that all projects are nothing now and that all this is nothing, but to say that we already identify clear weaknesses in the whole. With regard to the Corona Reconstruction Fund, I have to say that the number of projects that turn out to be cases of abuse and fraud is significantly higher than that of cohesion. I'm worried about that. We had the European Prosecutor with us, who has now arrived at 233 active cases, and this is only the tip of the iceberg, to be honest, because we have not yet arrived where all the money has really been spent. There remains the important task of our Committee on Budgetary Control, together with the Court of Auditors, to draw attention to the fact that final recipients are not, for example, a Slovak Ministry of Agriculture or the Ministry of the Environment, which allegedly receive 573 million as final recipients, which is simply not true. Expenditure is then simply stated as ‘biodiversity’, ‘climate’ and thus general wording – i.e. this is not a list of final recipients. The list of final recipients is still not available. I would like to thank the Commission for taking a step forward in interoperability, though arduous. The obstacle in this case is not the Commission, but unfortunately the Member States, which openly show a real snail's pace when it comes to interoperability. The willingness of the Member States to think about how to use faster, more effective, less bureaucratic digitalisation in the administration, I would like the Council to adapt the speed of thinking a bit to the capabilities of a digital age. I do not take my own Member State at all, but I take Germany expressly with me. Our subsidiarity and federal principles do not always help us to solve things perfectly. I would also like to reply to Mr Flanagan regarding Hamas and UNRWA. There are credible reports that UNRWA had employees who were involved, and there are now investigations into them. This means that UNRWA clearly has problems here. But that does not mean that one does not think with the Palestinian population and that one does not feel with the Palestinian population when the conflicts are so far-reaching that there are many deaths. This blanket one-sided position makes no sense at all and does not bring us any further in the conflict. Israeli women have also suffered unspeakably, and I would like the European External Action Service to do the same with sexual violence against Ukrainian women or Belarusian women – one of which I am the godmother: What these women experience as sexual violence in the course of war violence against a population or what Hamas terrorists have done to Israeli women must also be formulated equally clearly in full range. If I also demand that other organizations be deployed in addition to UNRWA, it is simply inspired by the desire that you finally help the Palestinian population and not build any terrorist tunnels, that you build hospitals, that you build schools, that you help children, that you help women, that you simply help the civilian population and that this terrorist organization, which it is, finds no support or consideration. On the one hand, I would like to refer to our report again in relation to non-governmental organisations. However, I would also like to draw attention in particular to the CINEA agency in the context of the agencies, where I have the very clear impression that the contracts concluded there do not comply with the statutes to which they should comply, and that, in particular, it is not acceptable for taxpayers' money to also be used to influence legislative procedures, to support local protest groups, to bring lawsuits against coal-fired power plants and the like. I am in favour of a very lively civil society discussion, but I do not have the impression that it is a civil society discussion from different constructive sides, which are willing to approach each other, but firstly I have a very one-sided impression, and secondly I have the impression that this is more about creating discord than making peace. Above all, it is unacceptable to want to influence MEPs or to make proposals to the Council during the trilogues, in order to express myself only shortly. I think this is an unacceptable process. In this respect, I would like to thank the Court of Auditors for the good cooperation, Commissioner Hahn and his team for the good cooperation and the Council; Even if we argue, again and again, but I have to say, we always manage to find a few solutions in the end. It is important to me in this context that the budgetary discharge and also the work of the European Court of Auditors should be seen as an instrument for improving our work and not just for criticism.

Mr President! Once again, we have a debate on Hungary and the rule of law. I have followed many debates closely; What surprises me to some extent, dear Hungarian colleagues – and I think Commissioner Reynders will be equally astonished – is the tenacity with which, on the one hand, one wants to have as much money as possible from this European Union and, at the same time, to introduce almost autocratic and oligarchic structures. And I have to say very clearly that I strongly support the Commission in actually tracking the deficits that are there. I have serious concerns that, on the one hand, we have to release 11 billion - or 10 commas - in cohesion, while at the same time finding that the problems in the judiciary actually persist; that the Integrity Authority still does not receive the information it should receive. And what is of great concern to me: Since the oligarchic structures in Hungary are taking on one sector after another – with rather harsh and crude methods vis-à-vis the companies concerned, where de facto expropriation is taking place – it would be of great concern to me, Commissioner, if compliance with internal market rules were included in the rule of law conditionality mechanism and the rule of law mechanism, which should also be an essential task in order to protect the European Union.

Madam President, As I said, once again a thank you to the Commissioner and for the good cooperation we had. Mr Körner expressed it so nicely that the Financial Regulation seems to be something very dry. One cannot even guess what emotional outbursts there have been in part in relation to this actually very dry matter, because if one addresses the Member States to digitalisation and to their administrative instruments and to modernisation, then they are remarkably reluctant. This is a very exciting process that we have carried out. Thanks again for the support! I have just had to smile that two colleagues have spoken on the European Semester, but not on the European Financial Regulation. So, we have just been talking about the Financial Regulation, and it is just the instrument for our own budget and, above all, for the possibilities that we as Parliament have to follow up: Is the money spent properly and sensibly? We wanted to strengthen the instruments.

Mr President, Commissioner, colleagues, at the beginning, I would like to thank all my colleagues first; Nils Ušakovs is my colleague who has worked together with me as Co-rapporteur excellently, thank you very much, and all the shadow rapporteurs. The Financial Regulation is a single rulebook for budget implementation and can be considered one of the backbones of the EU budget. The recast of the Financial Regulation was necessary to provide more flexibility, offer simplified cost options, reduce administrative burden for small and medium-sized companies and grant applicants, and build on the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic. We also saw that there is a strong need to increase transparency about beneficiaries, and lay down the foundation for an IT system that allows the tracking and tracing of EU funds appropriate for the 21st century. It also was the time to expand the level of protection to shared management, making sure that criminals and fraudsters cannot easily apply in one Member State and then try it in another one. The negotiations were not easy at times, and may I say thank you very much to the Commissioner and to General Director Stéphanie Riso who supported strongly the Parliament and the negotiation team to get to finalise the talks. Let me go a bit into the detail of what we have achieved. First, it is the interoperable IT system. The first step is the mandatory data feeding of ARACHNE in an interoperable IT system for targeted data search, tracking of funds and risk assessment for programmes. The use of the system remains voluntary; however, many Member States are already using the system, so in a few years they will provide the required data for the practical reasons. The administrative burden on Member States’ authorities will decrease a lot, bringing transparency up and allowing the Commission to effectively track beneficiaries. Simplification was a second goal, introducing a very low value grant up to EUR 15 000 with simplified documentation, and reducing significantly documentation for small grant requests. We are asking the Commission to implement it quickly. Then the EDES system, a targeted extension of the EDES system to shared management as of 1 January 2028. It was astonishing that the Member States were so reluctant to support this idea. Secondly, the next point was increased transparency in Article 38 by expanding the financial transparency system, explicitly stating the respect of the values of the EU Charter Article 2 in the horizontal principles, in Article 6 when implementing the EU budget. While this should be an obvious point, it has been missing from the Financial Regulation. Then, the last point – recital on ‘gold plating’ – we have so much bureaucracy created by Member States because they are overregulating and their over-bureaucratisation. On a final note, I want to stress that some of these changes will only apply from the new MFF onwards. But it is really a good step in the right direction. Thank you again to the Commissioner and Stéphanie Riso for the support and for the really qualitative, very good work.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen! I believe that in the European Union, even when the time is ripe for crises, we need an extremely large amount of money and, in fact, more money for research and innovation, for Horizon Europe. I am actually very saddened by the fact that the Member States are always cutting horizons in principle on everything – that is, science and research, what makes us more independent, what makes us stronger, what makes us better, that is being cut by the Member States. This is a pretty frustrating process that I disagree with. Secondly: We must indeed invest more money in defence, in our security and in our foreign policy. We will only be able to ensure sufficient synergies through the European budget and provide Ukraine with the support it needs. And also a word about the Palestinian aid agency UNRWA: Of course, we need a UN agency that works there. But honestly, to write in the guidelinesThe fact that there are supposedly no indicators to show that there has been abuse is simply mischief and untruth. We must ensure that the Palestinian people receive adequate food, help and support. And that is what we as the European Parliament should be able to agree on.

Mr President, Commissioner, dear President-in-Office of the Council, ladies and gentlemen! It is already worrying what you get from Spain in the Koldo case. It is probably about orders of magnitude that affect European funds of up to almost 18 million – and that is already a lot of money. And I now have three very concrete demands. First of all: The Spanish government should work much more closely and better with the European Public Prosecutor’s Office. It cannot be that the European Public Prosecutor’s Office does not get it from the Spanish Public Prosecutor’s Office, but through journalists and whistleblowers – this is unacceptable. We have the European Public Prosecutor’s Office to protect the financial interests of the European Union, and there is a legal obligation to pass on such cases to the EPPO. I expect the Spanish government to do that. The second question that arises for me comes from the delegation with which we travelled to Spain: We want to know the final recipients. And we don't want to read from the Spanish government or from other governments that the Ministry of Transport gets so many millions for mobility. Or that in relation to an agency that has already been noticed by corruption, you only get the information: It receives 957 million or 954 million – no project, no company, no final recipient. I expect that we will finally get to read the final recipients and not the intermediate stations that redistribute. And last point: Infidelity should not be worth it. Legislation must punish infidelity and fraud instead of making it amnesty.

Mr President, Commissioner Šefčovič, ladies and gentlemen! First of all: The rule of law, democracy and the economy are going down the drain in Hungary and thus also the social security of many people. Instead of finding solutions together with the EU's partners, Viktor Orbán plays a double game. He wants billions of European funds on the one hand completely conditionless and at the same time denigrates the EU, its institutions and their president. With regard to the 10.2 billion money now released, I look to Commissioners Reynders, Schmit and Ferreira, who have been in charge here, to bring about this decision. I tell Mr Körner that, exceptionally, this was not Ursula von der Leyen – all three Social Democrats, nor are they under suspicion. But I do not understand how the Commission could come to the decision that the independence of the judiciary was restored, so that the funds could be released in cohesion. If there is no possibility of a fair trial and the government can reverse judicial decisions because it simply makes new legislation overnight that turns every judicial judgment upside down, then such decisions are simply eyewitnesses and they help Orbán to continue his autocratism and oligarchism. Then I would also like to know from the Commission whether it is indeed true what is reported in the media that as the first act out of REPowerEU and the funds made available to them potentially goes as the first money to a Chinese e-car manufacturer, whom the Commission just recently accused of excessive Chinese state subsidies. I would ask the Commission to clarify this matter. That's intolerable.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen! First of all, I should like to say to the previous colleague: In our report, we first express our appreciation for non-governmental organisations. I myself belong to tens of non-governmental organizations on a voluntary basis and am involved in various social, cultural areas. So it's not about the question of appreciation, it's about the question: In principle, how do we deal with transparency rules and what problems have arisen? I have a little doubt, Commissioner, that you really identify all of them or identify most of them. Every year, when I see money flowing to Islamist organisations, terrorist organisations and their sub-NGOs, for example, because they hide under beautiful titles that give the impression that they stand for rights and for European values, it is simply necessary to introduce better controls. Secondly, I doubt that the European Commission always distributes the funds fairly. In the Member States, they are often smaller organisations or diverse. For the European Commission itself, it is often organisations that it builds up itself, supports itself and even provides lobbying services – I just read through such a contract again. I find this rather difficult if, for example, it is expressly stated that:Lobbying of policy makers“ for some political objective, where even the Commission decides against it. I think this is a rather problematic matter when it comes to direct political decision-making. In this sense, I simply ask that we take the issue of transparency seriously, that we also want to know who finances certain NGOs. And thirdly, that we actually apply it to the EDES system. There is no one on the EDES list. There's zero on it so far. I would also like to know definitively, Commissioner, how much money the NGO No Peace without Justice actually spent on. That's 4.6 million. I still haven't gotten an answer as to where the money went.

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen! Developments in Slovakia are worrying. Together with his new Social Democratic government – these are not right-wingers who come from Social Democracy – Prime Minister Fico has decided, first of all, to significantly reduce penalties for corruption, to make limitation periods so short that convictions are ultimately no longer possible – especially of his special nepotismists – or that they will get back to freedom. These weakening of the rule of law, decided by Fico and his government, represent, in my view, a fundamental break with the efforts of recent years in which, following the murder of journalist Ján Kuciak and his wife, strenuous initial progress has been made against the mafia structures in Slovakia. Fico himself, along with some of his combatants, was suspected of having favoured this nepotism. I would like to make it very clear that the RRF – in terms of disbursement of the corresponding funds – is in the so-called milestone 15.5 ‘Fight against corruption and strengthen the integrity and independence of the judiciary’ and in milestone 16.1 ‘Reforms to effectively fight corruption and money laundering’. Fico did the opposite. For this reason, I urge the Commission to reverse the allocation of these funds accordingly, because I cannot understand why EUR 662 million will be released at this stage if exactly the opposite of what is in the milestones is done. They cannot be considered fulfilled. I ask the Commission to act.

Mr President, Commissioner, dear President Tony Murphy, dear Jan Gregor, a cordial greeting to the whole team of the European Court of Auditors. I would like to begin by expressing my sincere thanks for the fact that the Court of Auditors has once again provided us with a very valid and very good basis for our work in the Committee on Budgets. The report, of course, already presents us with a few challenges. In fact, we will have to deal more intensively with these issues of calls for tenders in the field of cohesion. Secondly, it is amazing to me that in the field of agriculture, despite all the satellite systems, there is still the possibility that you have a lemon farm that does not exist at all, where not a single lemon tree grows. This can be seen by satellite everywhere, is easily verifiable. The fact that this is still happening is extremely astonishing to me. Which for me is always amazing: we have been complaining for years that the issue of eligible personnel costs in the field of Horizon – in particular for small and medium-sized structures – clearly raises major problems, but is still not solved. I hope that this can now finally be solved within the framework of lump sums or the like, so that this does not happen any more. But the biggest concern for me is the ARF. Firstly, we have difficulties with the fact that the European Court of Auditors does not even have full access to Phoenix, which I do not think is acceptable. Second, that at least five per cent of the milestones – not even the milestones – have been met. Thirdly, for the first time, double funding is emerging between cohesion and the RRF. That recurring national tasks are partly financed, as happened in Spain. That there are also problems with us meeting milestones, but ultimately not measuring performance. Last point: It is actually a crisis instrument and the crisis instrument will not be fully implemented by 2026. That's what's bothering me. It is not a crisis instrument.

Mr President, Commissioner! The 2024 budget is under considerable pressure and difficult circumstances. And because the colleague complained earlier that the EPP was allegedly against humanitarian payments: The statement is simply wrong – but frankly, I don’t expect anything else from the left either. What we demand, and what I also demand in my motion, is that we acknowledge or condemn the most serious crimes committed against babies, against children, against families, against the elderly and against disabled people. That's too hard for you, and that's why you want to put a key vote on it. I am curious and I wish you a lot of joy with this, because this also makes it very clear to the public how you deal with terrorism. Secondly, our request that the payments be reviewed – as the Commission itself has proposed – is that they cannot in fact go to Hamas under any circumstances. This is necessary and important, and we strongly support humanitarian aid, but in the form that there is in fact no way to abuse it, but that it really benefits the civilian population in hospitals, in old people's homes and the people who really need it.