What Pernille spoke about.

Madam President! The Commission’s February 2024 annual report on EU competitiveness addresses many relevant factors and challenges. Therefore, energy is mentioned 43 times, critical raw materials 16 times, semiconductors 2 times and hydrogen also 2 times. Water is not mentioned at all. Despite the fact that in several parts of the EU we are feeling painfully how floods or droughts are knocking off

Madam President, thank you all so much for the debate. Thank you, Commissioner Schinas, for your closing remarks – very appreciated – and also thank you for saying that the Parliament took the proposal from the Commission. We preserved what was strong and good in it, but we also developed and made more value into the Commission’s proposal. Thank you for acknowledging that. That’s very much appreci

Madam President, dear colleagues, today we will vote on the Parliament’s position on the revision of our general pharmaceutical legislation. A revision which is vital for patients, the industry ecosystem and our wider society. With today’s vote, we take a step towards addressing current and future challenges, as well as opportunities of our healthcare ecosystems. Europe is increasingly falling beh

Mr President, I am very satisfied and I am very, very grateful, and so we actually all can be, with the result of this revision of the waste shipments regulation, because it reflects a good balance between environmental protection and supporting our recycling industry for a circular economy. The new waste shipment regulation will help Member States to combat waste crime, support digitalisation, si

Mr. President! As the Commission may well hear, many of us are looking forward to the "water resilience" initiative, or as it is called in English: Water Resilience Initiative. But when we hear a little on the water pipes, what it is we get in March, then sounds a little like we are going to have a debate from June to September, where we talk further about all the challenges we have with the water

Madam President! In 2023, the European Year of Skills highlighted the problems, which are precisely about 74% of all EU SMEs lacking skilled labour. It affects everything from restaurant opening hours in the high season and the time patients have to be on hospital waiting lists to operations that can bring them back into the workforce – paradoxically! Two thirds of all EU companies search in vain

Madam President! Geothermal energy, it lies down in our underground and is just waiting to come up and contribute the huge amounts of renewable and really very stable energy that is actually involved. We just haven't taken geothermal energy seriously in a timely manner and secured the necessary frameworks and tools to use it. This means that now that we really lack it, we could have spent a lot of

Mr. President! Where you, with an understanding of how to use your time optimally and create results, have said that once you have written your to-do list, you should start with what you wrote at the end. Because that is usually also the most important thing, and I would actually like to suggest that we do so with the recommendations on the EU-China relationship. Let's start with what is about min

Mr. President! If something has to go fast in the EU, it can also go fast, and it has to. The EU urgently needs to get out of its dependence on being able to source critical raw materials on the world market only from far too few suppliers, who thus have the footing of the EU’s green transition and industrial growth. We have to buy from more people and collect more ourselves from our own subsoil,

Mr President! Water is the gift that keeps on giving. Especially as a topic on the plenary agenda. This is the third time I've said anything about water. Even if the title is about energy. The logic is that water is mostly related to energy, and that in the way we use water, there is plenty of energy. Water is used for the production of energy, for cooling, in energy production and for the transpo

Mr President! This summer, the Commission launched a major and much-needed initiative to strengthen the EU's innovation power. There is nothing wrong with the ambitions, and it just lacked. The innovative ecosystem in virtually all industries has too much trouble, so there is enough to address, which in many ways will remind of both cleanup and systematization. Something women are traditionally sa

Madam President! Mental health is the most important form of health. If your mind is heavy. If the vitality disappears and if the individual goes around in permanent error that it is his own fault and his own task to find mental health, then Europe has lost the DNA of neighbourly love, knowledge and willingness to understand mental health as something that happens most between people. Therefore, t

Mr. President! Then we debate water again here in the European Parliament. We did that two weeks ago, and we did it last month. But it is as if we are not really getting to the bottom of the challenges and opportunities we have with water in Europe. The challenge is that in some places there is too much of it and in others there is too little. The challenge is that water resources are not used wel

Mr President! This parliamentary term is coming soon, and that is good, especially for the water agenda. Okay, the Drinking Water Directive has been fully revised, as has the regulation on the reuse of waste water for irrigation. And with a little luck, we will finish revising the Groundwater Directive, the Directive on industrial discharges and now also the Waste Water Directive. But otherwise, w

Mr President! Thank you for the debate. Of course, we must have a crisis-ready European Union, and we must discuss this thoroughly. And so do we this morning. But we must act, first and foremost. Crises, they have many causes, and they have many actors. Water is one of those that is pretty much involved in it all. Either as a gossip handle that can tell us that something is coming and that somethi

Madam President! Congratulations on a very, very good report on the importance of our groundwater being well and our surface water also being well. I would like to suggest that instead of using the rest of the debate to pay tribute to the good report, we should also use the opportunity to promise each other that the collection of signatures that is going on around the European Parliament right now

Mr President! 99% of all businesses in the EU are small and medium-sized. These are what we call SMEs and they form our economic backbone. A backbone to carry us through the transformation of our society towards true sustainability. The backbone carries our economic muscles. The backbone and muscles are Europe's body of health systems, universities, schools, nursing homes, infrastructure and much

Madam President! In recent weeks, the left has weeped our ears and social media full of claims that biodiversity stands with one leg in the grave if the Nature Restoration Act is not voted through. We who are bourgeois and want sustainable solutions have heard a lot of nonsense. Nonsense that, together with populism, spin and personal attacks, can actually destroy our democratic biodiversity. So w

Madam President! It is worse elsewhere than in my own country, Denmark. But when my otherwise rainy little country in the north has not seen a single drop of water for more than two weeks, which has not actually happened in 17 years, it says something about the catastrophic state of the European Union in the form of a decided drought. A drought we have actually been able to measure since 2018, tha

Mr President! We have promised to reduce the EU's CO2 emissions by at least 55% by 2030. The promise it must be kept. That is why this debate is as serious as it is long. But there is also something funny about the title of the package with the many directives. "Fit for 55", which is not about menopause, but about the transition from a fossil to a green EU. We know that. But we've done it every on

Mr President! Iran can stand at the point of no return now. We are right there in history where the situation in Iran, with everything it does to human dignity, the position of women and the future of young girls, can change. Especially because of the redress that the people themselves are mobilising and the connection to the outside world and the Iranian diaspora that our digital era offers. That

Madam President! It has been said so many times. The energy we do not use, it is the best for the climate and for our wallet and for our security. Because with the inclusion of energy policy in security and big politics after Russia's hostile invasion of Ukraine, we have to take it very seriously. Therefore, it also makes perfect sense for the EU Building Directive to get into gear. This is what w

Madam President! Dear Presidency, dear Commission, dear colleagues. It became clear in yesterday's debate on cars of the future that the supply challenges for raw materials for batteries are sloppyly underestimated in the EU. The debate is somewhat similar to the logic of those who mistakenly believe that more taxes, more loans, more rules and more state aid are the way forward to the climate goal

Mr President, colleagues, according to Rule 59 of the Rules of Procedure, I therefore now request referral back to the committee to enter interinstitutional negotiations. Thank you so much.

Mr. President! Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, dear Commission. Thank you in particular for a very, very fruitful debate. We have been all around, and it seems that we will hopefully see tomorrow that we will have a very, very large majority behind the compromises. So we are very strongly faced with the Council in our debate, which I hope will also start very soon. I share the Commissio