What Irene spoke about.

Mr President, so we talk a lot about competitiveness. We've heard this word a lot this morning. Let me give you just two pieces of data. Every year, Europe imports more than EUR 300 billion in digital services; we are overly dependent on US big tech for our digital infrastructure. And at the same time, our industrial companies face energy prices that can be two or three times higher than those of

Mr President, dear Commissioner, dear colleagues, when the Socialists and Democrats first called for action on housing, many, including in this House, did not see it as a significant problem. They said it was not even a European problem. But I think that today nobody would dare to say so because everybody can see it's an emergency, everybody can see it's affecting millions of European citizens, an

I have no problem in saying that I would have wanted more. Yes, we always want more. When we entered this process in the budget, I would have loved to have a full, dedicated fund exclusively for that. But I'm happy that this priority has been recognised; it's been included; resources have been identified in the different programmes. Of course, this calls on the Member States and their responsibili

Mr President, the outcome of the interim report on the MFF marks an important step forward. I think we have built an ambitious yet responsible position, strengthening the EU budget to better address social challenges, the green transition and Europe's competitiveness in a complex geopolitical context. But let me focus on one specific thing: I'm very pleased that, for the very first time, housing e

Madam President, as I said earlier, I think that CMDI is not an end point, it's a decisive step towards completing the banking union. I think that what these reforms make clear is that the more we operate within the current architecture of the banking union, the more its structural limitations come up and become apparent. So we have addressed many of the technical obstacles; what remains now is a

Madam President, Commissioner, colleagues, on CMDI we have delivered a strong, balanced and genuinely European result. This agreement is not only a technical improvement of the framework, it is above all a political sign. It shows that when we choose integration over fragmentation, we can strengthen financial stability, better protect depositors and significantly reduce the likelihood that taxpaye

The report reflects, of course, the majority of the consensus of the committee and of the different ideas. We are in a democracy. We have a dialogue. It reflects most of the work that we have done, in the sense that it contains many things that at the very beginning of the committee were not even on the table. Leila, you know that. The fact that now we have a report that addresses the issue of pub

Madam President, today is a very important day. It marks the recognition of the housing problem as a major priority of this Union. It's been the result of long work based on four points. First, what we've done trying to mobilise as many financial resources as possible for Member States and local authorities from the mid-term review of cohesion funds to dedicated financing for housing provided by t

Madam President, sorry for my low voice but this doesn't take away my enthusiasm for what's been done today. Housing affordability has become one of the most urgent challenges facing Europe today. For millions of citizens, access to affordable housing is no longer a marginal issue because it directly affects their lives, the opportunities they can access, and also their trust in our ability to del

Madam President, Executive Vice‑President and colleagues, I think that this debate showed us how important, how essential InvestEU is, and above all, how important it is for Europe to equip itself with a real investment strategy. The interventions highlighted very clearly the importance of investing in sustainable infrastructure, research, innovation, digitalisation, SMEs, social investments and s

Mr President, Executive‑Vice President, dear colleagues, today, Europe faces a decisive challenge. We need to boost productivity, to support innovation, to complete the twin green and digital transition, and at the same time, ensure greater social cohesion. All of this requires a clear strategy to invest more and to invest better because without investment there is no growth, no competitiveness, a

Madam President, the meeting of 23 October was the first time that the issue of housing was brought into the European Council, and I really want to thank President Costa for having brought this issue at the core of the debate. It's essential that heads of state and government recognise the house emergency that is spreading across Europe, and for sure the conclusions are a first step. But let's be

Madam President, Mr Vice-President Fitto, ladies and gentlemen, I speak Italian, so we understand each other immediately. The theme of housing is now a huge theme and cohesion funds are often the few resources and tools that local administrators have on the territories, in the regions, in the cities, to give some relief and answers to citizens, and therefore they are very important. However, as on

Mr President, the European Semester coordinates economic and social policies across the Union, ensuring alignment from fiscal discipline to social policies. But this is not an abstract exercise. It has to be adapted and aligned with emerging priorities. So let's not forget two priorities that we have today that entail the security and safety of our citizens. The first type of security, of course,

It's very simple: I don't have a lack of knowledge of what people go through, but maybe you have a lack of knowledge of how the Union functions and what competences the Union has and the powers and the resources. If we don't give the Union – our Union – the powers, the resources, the budget to support investments, our citizens will continue to suffer from lack of competitiveness. Single Member Sta

Mr President, now, there are two issues that concern me in the debate on competitiveness. The first one is nostalgia, this idea that back then everything was working, while at the same time the entire world goes forward accelerating. The US, China, they are investing for the future and we are here thinking maybe how great we were and how we can protect our past. The second issue is the belief that

Madam President, dear colleagues, let's face it, while we've been pretty good in overcoming the pandemic and the energy crisis, we are not as successful in relaunching our economy in the context of the great transitions that we are facing. This is linked in part, of course, to persistent geopolitical uncertainty, but also to our own policies. Extraordinary measures such as the NextGenerationEU, SU

Mr President, I'm glad that at last housing has been recognised as a European issue. We have millions of European citizens that can no longer afford a house, or they have to spend more than half of their income to pay rent or a mortgage. Beware; it does not simply affect, as in the past, lowest income households, but is increasingly affecting the middle class. And this has heavy social consequence

Madam President, in a changing geopolitical landscape, Europe must step up to compete with China and the US, we keep reminding ourselves of this. And we’ve been reminded by leaders like Draghi and Letta of the path forward: the necessity for increased investments at the European level, which implies a bigger budget and the fiscal capacity at the EU level – but these are needed to address the big c

Mr President, among the many things included in the report that we will vote on tomorrow there is a reference to the opinion that the ECB gave on the Commission’s proposal on the reform of economic governance, which President Lagarde earlier also referred to. In the same opinion, the ECB says something very important, which I would like to underline today, namely – and I’m quoting – that further p

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, I believe that many of the current discussions on inflation stem from a misunderstanding. In the Treaties it is written that the ECB must maintain price stability, but it is not written that price stability is an exclusive task of the ECB and in my opinion the problem today arises from here. The EU and its Member States could do more to combat the cost of liv

Mr President, a good economic governance must have two characteristics – ambition and credibility – and credibility does not rhyme necessarily with the severity as many claim. Credibility is measured by the economic, social and political sustainability of those rules. And if rules are not sustainable over time, governance is not credible. So the old governance was perhaps ambitious, but not partic

Madam President, thank you Commissioner for being with us for this important debate. The failure of Silicon Valley Bank teaches us some lessons. Commissioner has already outlined several of them, but I want to stress two of them in particular. The first is that an ambitious prudential regulation is a necessary condition not only for having healthy and solid banks, but also for preventing financial

Madam President, last year, when we debated the Semester report in this House, war had just broken out in Ukraine. The war had, and is still having, a devastating impact on the Ukrainian population. To a completely different extent it had, and it still having, an impact on us as well. The EU was one of the most exposed advanced economies to downward risks, given its proximity to Ukraine and also t

Madam President, recently a Minister of an EU Member State said, complaining, that the ECB is not accountable to anyone except herself. This is simply not true. Not only is this debate proving that is not true, but so do all the practices that we have. The ECB President regularly comes to discuss ECB actions in the ECON Committee of this Parliament, and we scrutinise the ECB actions very seriously