What Jan spoke about.

Mr President, Commissioner, of course I support these agreements. This is one of the last ways to add something to the European Union's package of agreements with the rest of the world. But let me take this opportunity to take stock of the general state of the European Union's trade policy, because the truth is that our outcome for the period 2019 to 2024 is somewhat lean compared to previous legi

Madam President, Commissioner, the time is up because that deal has been already concluded in June 2022. And of course, it deepens our relations with the Indo-Pacific, it strengthens ties with a like-minded ally, bilateral trade is expected to increase by up to 30% and the estimated EU investment increase could be over 80%, and so on and so on. So all this is good news, but unfortunately also rare

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, dear colleagues, let’s be very frank to ourselves: EU-China relations are not good. They could be better and they should be better. Let me make three points on that. First, I think that we need to find a new equilibrium with China because, like it or not, China is here as a global player and it will remain so. We have to adjust ourselves to that new multipolar s

Madam President, let me use this point to briefly evaluate the Czech Presidency of the Council, because this was the last Council under the Czech Presidency. Let me say that the Czech Presidency, and I hope we all agree on this, was a successful Presidency. That the Czech Republic proved to be a patient negotiator of compromises, a seeker of consensus, a facilitator, not a country that would promo

Madam President, I, too, found myself on the latest sanctions list of Iran as the only citizen of the Czech Republic with some of my colleagues. This is, of course, more of a curiosity, because nothing is happening to us, but to tens of thousands of people in Iran it is happening. We have more than 600 protesters who have already been killed by security forces, 30,000 detainees. And it's not just

Madam President, Commissioner, Tunisia is the country which started the Arab Spring, a very promising movement at the beginning, which later on, in most cases, ended up in vain. I still believe, however, that Tunisia is one exception, a country which started to build genuine parliamentary democracy with a full-blooded spectrum of well-defined political parties. Of course, it is a country which fac

Madam President, Mr Vice-President, Minister, this is like a small Czechoslovakia. But I think the Czech Presidency is doing well that we are doing good advertising here. Of course, the agenda is dominated by Ukraine and the energy crisis. I have two points about the upcoming Council: on the one hand, Iran – I think we need to talk about Iran, either as a formal item on the agenda or informally. N

Madam President, Commissioner, it’s my great pleasure indeed to introduce this report to the Czech MEP only few days after the Czech Republic took over the Presidency in the EU Council and also as a Vice-Chairman of the International Trade Committee, only a few days after you successfully concluded trade negotiations with New Zealand, and indeed we have had a number of national strategies vis-à-vi

Madam President, I would like to return once again to the Conference on the Future of Europe, the results of which were presented with great pomp by European Union leaders on Europe Day on 9 May. On the contrary, I would like to say that the Conference has completely failed in its intentions and missions. Like the Convention, the Conference became a pre-prepared Eurofederalist exercise, where care

Madam President, rapporteur, we may not have realised, even in some European countries, how important the Arctic has become in recent years, both from an environmental, geopolitical and energy point of view. I am glad that the report prepared by my colleague Anna Fotyg describes this with great precision, with a great sense of detail, and I would therefore like to support this report. Various impo