What Gilles spoke about.

Madam President, today we are too dependent on non-European, particularly American, means of payment, and this dependence, ladies and gentlemen, must stop. Private solutions are developing, and that is fine, but we also need to provide the EU with a digital, pan-European, sovereign public currency that will be the digital equivalent of our cash – an additional and guaranteed means of payment avail

Madam President, Commissioner, rapporteur Ódor, this text is an important founding text to enable our SMEs, mid-caps and innovative players to operate fully on the scale of the single market, limiting red tape and obstacles to development within the European Union – all companies wishing to operate in more than one EU country must be able to do so without hindrance. By facilitating access to capit

Mr President, our ambition is to implement the Draghi reports, the Letta report and the Noyer report. Now is the time to take action by developing this securitisation market, as they all advocate. We promote access to credit for our SMEs and for our European households and I believe that this is an objective that all pro-Europeans share here: a balanced text that allows the development of this mar

Mr President, Commissioner, Mr President of the Court of Auditors, the discharge procedure is a key moment of democratic truth. This is a precious moment. This year again, some groups have tried to divert this exercise behind calls for more performance or better cost-effectiveness. In reality, there is a political questioning of European action. Good management of EU funds cannot be defended while

Madam President, Commissioner, we have worked a lot with the three rapporteurs on this file, with Kira, Irene and Luděk, whom I thank. We've worked a lot and, in fact, I hope we've worked for nothing, because that would mean that the next financial crisis we've prepared here will never happen. If it happens in spite of everything, it is possible, I believe that we have here valuabl

Mr President, Mr President of the European Court of Auditors, Commissioner, the Court of Auditors' report illustrates the need to bring more simplification and flexibility to the next multiannual financial framework, without, of course, abandoning the requirement of transparency and traceability of every public euro spent. This is emphasised by the Court of Auditors in performance-based instrument

Mr President, Commissioner, this lucid report confirms the diagnosis made in the reports by Mr Draghi and Mr Letta: the complexity and fragmentation of our tax rules is a major obstacle to the competitiveness of European businesses. We need to address this. The proposal for a Directive on the taxation of business income in Europe, BEFIT, is a first step towards simpler, fairer, more integrated tax

Madam President, Commissioner, I would like to thank our rapporteur for this report, which presents an analysis of the situation, but above all of ways of improving the real savings and investment union. The famous Draghi, Letta and Noyer reports go further and detail precisely the measures they consider urgent. These three reports are broadly approved in theory, but we are, as often, slow to take

Mr President, Commissioner, Mr President of the European Court of Auditors, the discharge report confirms that the European Public Prosecutor's Office has become a key player in our anti-fraud architecture, with more than 2 000 investigations under way, EUR 19 billion of damage identified and EUR 1.5 billion already recovered. But this success also highlights the structural challenges facing the E

Mr President, Commissioner, the reports we have - those of Mr Draghi, Mr Letta and Mr Noyer - all propose concrete measures to build a genuine Savings and Investment Union, a genuine Capital Markets Union, to finance our green and digital transitions and our European defence, but also to strengthen our strategic autonomy. However, as soon as it comes to finalising the banking union or strengthenin

Mr President, Commissioner, rapporteur, President Lagarde – thank you for your presence and for your comments – we believe that the European Central Bank must be able to react with the necessary flexibility, obviously respecting the mandate established by the Treaties, to ensure monetary stability within our Union. The principle of market neutrality therefore has its place in the monetary policy o

Madam President, Commissioner, cryptocurrencies are clearly gaining popularity. They operate outside any financial legislation and in complete anonymity. Like any instrument of speculation, they will make the fortunes of some and the misfortunes of others, without ever contributing to the real economy. But let us not forget, and this is our role, that it is above all for the public authorities to

Madam President, Commissioner, this is always an important moment and it is always a step forward when an independent institution decides to entrust the supervision of its ethical rules to an external authority. This is always a step forward for democracy and we must recognise that our self-monitoring has shown its limits and that we are, in essence, always the worst judges of ourselves. That is w

Mr President, Commissioner, the banking union we are calling for remains unfinished, but we are making progress on this banking package, which I hope we will vote on this evening. We made sure to reconcile some major concerns: first, to ensure the security of our financial system; secondly, to safeguard the competitiveness of European banks on the world stage; finally, ensuring the financing of th

Mr President, Commissioner, we have, as has been said, begun to respond to the various scandals that affected our institution last year by increasing the transparency of our relations with interest representatives: private interest representatives, but also, as we have seen, public interest representatives, whether they act within the European Union or outside. We also tried to better define cases

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, we must constantly question ourselves and I must say that we will all be judged on our collective capacity to take quick, concrete and effective decisions. In this sense, the work done here is particularly valuable. Our decision-making processes are limited to 27. We experience these limitations every day in our operation. And if the European Union were to expan

Madam President, Commissioner, we have placed this mandate under the sign of the Green Deal and the green transition, and this transition we must finance. And with this new instrument, European Green Bonds, we are creating an additional tool for this financing. An ambitious standard with strict criteria, which allows those who respect them to proclaim themselves objectively green or sustainable in

–Mrs President, following the 2022 scandals, it was our duty to improve our internal rules. That is the meaning of the proposal by President Metsola and the political groups, and that is the meaning of this report, to which my group is proud to have contributed. Thank you to our rapporteur, Gabrielle Bischoff, for her work. This report will allow for stricter checks on declarations and conflicts o

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, in the face of the challenge of tax fraud and tax evasion, Europe must show its capacity to act and lead the world. For that, of course, she must first be blameless at home and give herself the means to do so. The use of shell companies for tax avoidance is a real challenge for Europe that has been revealed to us in recent years by the Pandora Papers. These comp

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, in September 2021, our Parliament adopted its position in favour of the creation of an independent ethics body for the EU institutions. Since 2019, since the Commission's programme, we have been waiting for a proposal to that effect. We have received it and it is far from our ambitions. We want independent members, and you offer us representativ

Madam President, Commissioner, President of the European Court of Auditors, every year, the granting of discharges is not, contrary to what one might think, a purely technical matter. On the contrary, it is an eminently political subject. European citizens have the right to expect us to verify and certify whether or not the EU budget is being properly managed. And this assessment is not just an ac

Mr President, Commissioner, the European Union must be at the forefront of the profound transformations in the payments sector and remain there. The world is not waiting for us. Our sovereignty is at stake, as is the preservation of an essential prerogative of the public authorities: the issue of money. We therefore welcome the upcoming Commission proposal for the creation of a digital euro, compl