What Dan-Ştefan spoke about.

Dear President Von der Leyen, I would like to welcome the announcement to propose a new strategy for the future of the Schengen area and remind you that my country of origin, Romania, has been fulfilling all the necessary conditions for the application of the Schengen acquis since June 2011. This has been recognised by Heads of State and Government in the Council on numerous occasions, as well as

Madam President, Commissioner, poverty in the European Union is not a marginal problem: 27 million citizens live in conditions of severe material and social deprivation. These realities are also visible among young people - young people not in employment, education or training. This is not only a social problem, but also one that affects long-term economic competitiveness and must be treated as a

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I begin by thanking the European Commission for the proposal to simplify the common agricultural policy and my colleagues in the AGRI Committee for their contributions. We managed to bring more flexibility in the application of environmental rules, to include animal diseases in the list of situations eligible for crisis payments, to reduce the loss

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I begin by thanking the colleagues responsible for the reports debated today, and I would like to refer to the need to simplify cohesion policy. There are still regions of the European Union where local authorities and small and medium-sized enterprises prefer to resort to bank loans or wait for government funds instead of accessing European fun

Madam President, Commissioner, colleagues, drought is already causing losses of around EUR 9 billion annually in the European Union. In Romania alone, over 2.5 million hectares of crops were compromised in 2024 due to drought and lack of modern irrigation systems. The recent Commission proposal on the revision of cohesion policy foresees the reorientation of cohesion funds towards a number of stra

Mr President, Commissioner, the absorption rate of cohesion funds for 2021-2027 is indeed low, but this does not reflect the lack of interest on the part of the Member States, but is caused by delays in the adoption of the European Union budget, the overlapping and completion of the 2014-2020 programmes and the implementation of the national recovery and resilience plans. The contracting rate shou

Commissioner, Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, desertification is already affecting 13 Member States and drought is causing losses of EUR 9 billion annually. In Romania alone, 400,000 hectares are affected by desertification. The adoption of the Nature Restoration Regulation requires Member States to restore 20% of degraded land by 2030. Unfortunately, the Regulation was not accompanied by addi

Mr President, Commissioner, free and fair elections are the foundation of our democratic process. Citizens must be able to vote freely, free from foreign interference, manipulation or disinformation campaigns. This is one of the biggest challenges facing our democracy in a digital age. The European Commission has already adopted a number of measures to prevent disinformation and cyberattacks durin

Mr President, dear colleagues, desertification is constantly affecting 13 Member States, and in Romania the drought has affected 2.2 million hectares of agricultural land this year alone. On the other hand, rainfall, as it has not occurred in the last 100 years, caused floods in only one county in Romania, affected seven thousand households, thousands of hectares of arable land and hundreds of veg

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the European Union has set out an ambitious strategy to reduce poverty by 50% by 2030, but failure to meet the previous targets makes this strategy to be viewed with restraint. The tense geopolitical context has prompted us to accelerate the enlargement process with nine candidate countries. I strongly support the enlargement of the European Union as an instrume

Madam President, Commissioner, dear colleagues, I begin by thanking our colleague Andrey Novakov for the detailed report on the implementation of cohesion policy and I share his vision that there are no net contributors or beneficiaries, but only advantages for the European economy as a whole. I see cohesion policy as the main instrument through which the European Union demonstrates its added valu

Mr President, Commissioner, responsible water use remains a challenge, a duty and a desideratum for all of us. Drought is already causing €9 billion in damage annually in the European Union, with 19 Member States already reporting an increasing trend in water scarcity in recent years. This phenomenon also jeopardises the Union's food security. This is why it is absolutely necessary to strengthen t

Madam President, Commissioner, drought causes damage of EUR 9 billion a year in the European Union, and this cost will increase significantly with the intensification of climate change. Yesterday we adopted in Parliament's plenary a resolution on ensuring food security, in which we imperatively call on the European Commission to set up a specific programme to support Member States in developing ne

Madam President, Commissioner, in September 2022, the price of fertilisers increased by 149 %, and a large number of European producers had to reduce or even stop their production. This, combined with the influx of cereals reaching the single market at low prices from Ukraine, but also with inflation, puts increasing pressure on our farmers and especially on farmers who receive lower subsidies. I

Mr President, Commissioner, as you are well aware, illegal shipments of waste have reached alarming levels also within the European Union and have serious and long-term consequences for public health and the environment. This situation needs to be corrected urgently, and I therefore express my strong support for the ambitious agreement reached in the ENVI Committee on the revision of the legislati

Mr President, Commissioner, 13 Member States are currently affected by desertification. However, this phenomenon is constantly expanding across Europe. In 2018, the European Court of Auditors concluded that the measures taken to combat desertification are inconsistent. The European Parliament supported me in December 2020 with an amendment tabled on an ENVI resolution calling on the European Commi

Mr President, Commissioner, today I express my support for the new common agricultural policy, even if it is not perfect, but I express this because it aims to improve the lives of each of us. The common agricultural policy is not just an environmental policy, it is much more than that, it is a matter for our whole lives. Those who doubt, I urge them to do just a simple exercise of imagination abo