What Ana spoke about.

Mr President, Commissioner, Council, colleagues, a competitive economy and strategic autonomy: two top priorities for Europe in this uncertain world. For both, we need critical raw materials like lithium, cobalt and copper – ingredients we need for everything from our phones to our car batteries, wind turbines, data centres and defence equipment. Our continent is not as naturally rich in these mat

Mr President, 66 days left until Christmas, the most important season for so many of Europe's small businesses. Their survival is on the line if the EU does not suspend the new packaging rules that have switched off their cross-border sales since August – rules that demand a paid legal representative in every country a business sells to, as if they were big corporations with legal services at thei

Madam President, Commissioner Virkkunen, we all agree that we must make children safe online. We are all concerned about the very alarming risks that we are discovering with the passing of time. Most of us agree on a number of solutions that haven't really been tried yet, like limiting infinite scrolling, digital curfews – namely in schools, and digital literacy for parents. How many parents acros

Mr President, Commissioner, colleagues, the ideal of the single market is that anyone in a Member State can sell across all 27 Member States without borders. I can only imagine the perplexity of so many Europeans with small businesses, when they realised in the middle of August that yet another bureaucratic barrier was raised for them to operate in the single market. Realising that it is now easie

Madam President, Commissioner and colleagues, the EU's single market is bigger than the US's, with roughly 100 million more consumers. Yet our businesses struggle to grow because the market is really a patchwork of 27 fragmented legal systems that suffocate any small business that attempts to navigate it. We often boast about having more start-ups than the US. Yet 1 in 3 of them move abroad – main

Honourable Member, southern Europe, including Portugal, has been one of the largest beneficiaries of European funds to manage water resources. In fact, it is thanks to the mismanagement of these funds that we have not performed well in the management of these resources and in the availability of water to our citizens. So yes, we must better manage our resources, European resources and national res

President, Commissioner, Colleagues, I will address you in Portuguese. More than 1,300 Europeans lost their lives, more than usual, between 21 and 29 June due to the heat wave. It is estimated that around 44,000 lives are lost each year due to the high temperatures in Europe. Fire prevention and climate resilience are one of the most important agendas of this mandate and I want to focus on one par

Mr President, Commissioner, colleagues. As we all know by now, the EU was faster to regulate AI than it was to invest in it, develop it, and widely adopt it across our economy. It was refreshing to see this report on AI strategy for EU trade acknowledge that 'premature or excessive regulatory intervention risks undermining innovation, investment and competitiveness'. Now we are too dependent on a

Mr President, Commissioner, colleagues, since around the year 2000, incomes in Europe have grown more slowly than in the United States. The rise in energy prices since the invasion of Ukraine has, of course, played a role in this, after decades of depending on Russian gas. Even as we've recovered that energy shock, the energy bill remains twice as high for Europeans than it does for Americans. Sou

Dear colleague, our single market has about 450 million consumers. The American market has around 350 million. So, our market is pretty sizeable. It's a big question 'how come we have dwindled in our economic growth?' We know – and I wonder if you can test that – that a big reason for that is that SMEs struggle with administrative burden. Up to 25% of their resources is spent on administrative bur

Madam President, Commissioner, colleagues, connectivity is a basic need for Europeans – 85 % of them have said so, and over 60 % of small and medium-sized businesses need 5G to grow. Reform is an urgent need for Europeans to safely thrive and meet global challenges in the unpredictable world we live in. The Digital Networks Act rightly identifies connectivity as essential for European competitiven

Madam President, Commissioner, with this resolution, the European Union has gone further than other international organisations since the military coup of 26 November in Guinea-Bissau, which unlawfully suspended the electoral process started days earlier. It does so by explicitly calling for the immediate publication of the election results of 23 November. Neither the CPLP, nor the African Union,

How can we truly keep our nation safe and protect ourselves from the desires of our enemy, Putin, if we give in to his demands? Is it not the lesson from 2014 that Europe's weak response to the annexation of Crimea led to the encouragement of Putin invading Ukraine? Is it not the lesson from the Second World War that when we stand up and show that we will not capitulate, in the end we are safer an

Mr President, Commissioners, colleagues, our single market has over 450 million people, 100 million more than the US market, which means that our market is a third larger than that of the US. Yet, the number one complaint I hear from ambitious people willing to take risks – especially in the tech sector – is that they can't operate in the single market. Why is that? Because on top of excessive EU

Madam President, Commissioner, colleagues, over six million vehicles reach the end of their lives across Europe each year. Right now we are treating valuable materials like waste when we should be treating them like assets. Many of the metals, plastics and critical minerals that Europe needs are contained in these vehicles. Letting them disappear into landfills and incineration plants makes no eco

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the Portuguese people are well aware of the cost of unpreparedness. In 2022, more than 120 000 hectares burned, almost twice the average of the last decade. We have lost more than 30% of the treated water, well above countries like Denmark and the Netherlands, which lose 10% less and do not face regular droughts like us. Increasingly extreme wea

Madam President, Commissioner, colleagues, Europe controls the largest maritime area on Earth, yet we treat the ocean as a blind spot rather than our competitive advantage. The Ocean Pact is an important first step to deliver change, and we must ensure that change means targeted action anchored in strategic investments and measurable results. The Ocean Pact correctly identifies six essential prior

Madam President, Commissioner, colleagues, innovation in water infrastructure and its management should be the cornerstones of the water resilience framework. This is a strategic policy for Europe, crucial for our defence, for human and environmental well-being, as well as for our competitiveness, especially as agriculture, AI, energy systems – just some examples – depend heavily on water. Europe

Mr President, Commissioner, an ocean at risk is also an economic risk and a struggling economy is also a threat to the environment. The ocean is a key climate regulator, capturing 90% of the excess heat from carbon emissions, hosting 80% of global biodiversity and generating half of our oxygen. Despite this vital role, the ocean has not been prioritised in the European Union’s climate policy, when

Mr President, dear Commissioner, dear colleagues, let us be clear about what's really at stake with the Mercosur agreement. It's not just Europe's economic future. It's our international credibility after stalling this deal for more than 20 years. It's about where we stand in a world where the global balance of powers is shifting and Europe is struggling to defend its interests. Some warn of threa

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, Venezuelans have bravely resisted and fought to defend their democratic rights and the electoral result which elected Edmundo González as its legitimate president, and which the European Union has rightly recognised as such. The appeals of Venezuelans, supported by the international community, were ignored with the illegitimate inauguration of Nico

Mr President, dear Commissioner, dear colleagues, in the early days of social media, there was hope that millions of people living under oppressive regimes would be empowered with different points of view and even inspired to fight for their freedoms. Now, social media is considered one of the main threats against democracies because they are wielded as a weapon by those who wish to destabilise an

Ladies and gentlemen, if you look at the latest report published by the European Commission, which mentions precisely that increased competitiveness and liberalisation, especially on high-speed connections, have contributed to lower fares, to improving the quality of service and, above all, to increasing the percentage of use by consumers. So, yeah, I think that's the way to go. I think we also ha