What Niels spoke about.

Mr President, dear colleagues, dear Commissioner, I think this debate has been fruitful and it shows that we are in this House very much aware that we need to act and we need to act now. These legislative proposals that are on the table – I hope they will get a majority, all of them, because we need certainly stronger rules to deliver on our climate ambitions and our energy independence ambitions. Some of you have talked about whether this Energy Efficiency Directive is binding, to which degree it is binding. Well, for the first time, we have an Energy Efficiency Directive which is binding for the EU as a whole. Previous directives on energy efficiency have not been binding. They have been indicative. Also for Member States individually, they will have to deliver on these measures that are in the Directive. They will have to make plans and show how they can increase energy efficiency and reduce energy consumption. We have actually, in this Directive, given the Commission, the tools to, if Member States do not act, if they are falling behind and they are not showing how they will catch up on energy savings, then the Commission has the mandate to infringe them and to take them to court. I think this is an important part of the Directive. We don’t wish for anyone to be taken to court, but we wish and mean that this Directive needs to be implemented. Everybody, all the Member States need to take it serious. They need to increase the energy efficiency, and if they do not, well, there can be legal consequences. I think that is important because we have seen that in previous efforts have not been sufficient. Actually, we are not delivering on our ambitions as it is right now. So we need to take more actions, and I think I am convinced that this Directive will lead to exactly that point.

Madam President, dear colleagues, over the last couple of years, remarkable changes in Europe’s energy system have taken place. Our dependency on Russian natural gas has fallen significantly. In just four months, from August to November 2020, natural gas consumption fell by 20 % compared to the same period the year before. Three Member States even managed to reduce natural gas consumption by more than 40 %. This was something that experts said could not be done. We proved them wrong. We did it. And, friends, now we need to do it again because the energy crisis is not over, the climate crisis is certainly not over and we are looking at hard times ahead, when we look at the climate but also if we just look a couple of years ahead when it comes to our energy system – the prices might rise again, hitting the most vulnerable people in our society. That is why we need to make some structural changes. We need to make sure that our energy system is efficient. And that is what we set out to do in this directive. I think we have proven here in Europe that we have been able to react swiftly when it comes to our energy system, and we need to prove that one more time. This Energy Efficiency Directive that we have agreed on – the broad majority in the European Parliament, the main groups of the European Parliament – sets out for some significant changes in our energy system. First of all, we agree that we need to reduce energy consumption by 11.7 % in 2030. That is a big challenge, but it can be done if we make sure to insulate our homes, make sure to roll out more district heating and make sure that we use the excess heat which is created from factories and data centres that use much electricity but also create a lot of heat, which is now often being wasted, we need to use that heat in our district heating systems to make sure that it will be benefiting consumers and not wasted. In this directive, we set a yearly energy savings obligation standing at 0.8 %, going towards 1.9 % each year. That means the Member States will have to do an effort to save 1.9 % of their energy consumption each year. It’s a huge effort that this requires, but we can make it happen and we need to make it happen. We set out in this directive to have a 3 % renovation rate of public buildings, so 3 % of the public buildings need to be renovated to become nearly zero-emission buildings every year. We make sure that we prioritise the people who suffer from energy poverty and we strengthen the energy-efficiency-first principle, which means that when you do make an energy project, you have to make the analysis to see can this actually be solved by increasing energy efficiency instead of increasing energy consumption and building more energy. We also say that municipalities with more than 45 000 people living in them have to make heating and cooling plans to analyse where can we have district heating, where do we need heat pumps and how can we make that as efficient as possible? We set a whole lot of targets and a whole lot of effort is being required by this directive. This will not come easily. It will not be achieved with business as usual. But we know that we can make it happen and we need to make it happen for the climate and for our energy security. This directive will be good for the climate and bad for Mr. Putin. I would like to thank the groups in the European Parliament, in particular. Ms Weiss, Mr Danti and Ms Paulus, who negotiated and secured a broad majority. Let’s make it happen, let’s vote for the Energy Efficiency Directive and let’s do this.

Madam President, Commissioner, colleagues, thank you. I think we had a fruitful debate today. I think it shows that, of course, we have ideological differences in this House. We are from the left to the right, and we might disagree on how the tax levels should be. Should the tax be higher or lower? We disagree, probably. But I think it also shows the debate today that we agree that no matter what the decision will be on how the tax level should be, we must agree that it should be the same rules for everybody. The tax rules that democracy decides should apply to everybody. And as it has been said from this floor today, that’s not the case today. We have seen in the Pandora Papers that we have two systems. We have two sets of rules, one for the 99 % of those who go to work and pay their taxes, and one for the top 1 % who are able to use offshore accounts, hire tax advisers, hire lawyers that help them create shell companies and fake trusts so that they can avoid paying their taxes. And that is basically what we need to do away with. As Udo Bullmann, the DEVE rapporteur, said, this is something which harms, in particular, the developing countries, those who are poorest, those who have less than the rest, they are not the ones who are benefiting. They’re the ones who are being harmed. And those on the top are the ones who are benefiting. So why are we not doing more? Mr Botenga asked. We cannot just complain. We need to act. I think he is absolutely right. And I think in this report we have a number of proposals. We have discussed them here today. So let us just agree that we have talked sufficiently. Now it is time to act and to do away with these tax schemes.

Madam President, colleagues, dear Commissioner, thank you for being here today, and I look forward to this hopefully fruitful debate on a very important issue, namely the Pandora Papers and the lessons learned from the Pandora Papers. So the obvious question is what have we learned from the Pandora Papers? Well, the way I see it, we have learned that some people simply refuse to play by the rules, some people at the very top of our society when it comes to wealth and fortune. Colleagues, I have to ask you, did anyone on this floor count on the extent to which this system is rigged? Absolutely rigged. If you look at the Pandora Papers, well you have two systems, not one system but two systems, one applying to the 99 % of people going to work every day, contributing to society, paying their fair share of taxes and another system applying to the top 1 %, those who can, if they wish to, refuse to pay their taxes, refuse to contribute to society because they hire tax advisers to create offshore shell companies and fake trusts where they hide their wealth and hide their fortunes so they don’t contribute and they don’t pay taxes. That has to change. That is what we see in the Pandora Papers that these two systems of rules are applying, that the system is basically rigged. That is why we have proposed, in this report that we are voting on tomorrow, a number of proposals on how to fix the system. And I hope that we can stand together. I am very proud of the result that we achieved in the committee, where not a single member voted against these proposals. It was a broad majority from left to right, agreeing that we need to do more, and we need some new rules to fix this system. I would like to highlight three basic proposals that we have. We have a lot of proposals, but among those are, well, one, we need to look at the possibility of having a minimum tax on capital gains. We know that those who have capital gains, those who have stocks, those who have real estate, those who have other forms of capital and earn money from that, that is the people at the very top of our society. And they should also contribute. And they are not always doing that, according to the Pandora Papers, these are the people who are moving this kind of wealth, this kind of capital offshore in shell companies and avoiding contributing. That is why we need a minimum level of capital gains. We need to look at that. We need to have that analysis to see if that’s feasible, because that would be something which would make sure that no country would have 0 % tax on capital gains. Second, we need to look at the advisory companies, the audit companies that make this show go on. Those who advice on how you can create shell companies and move fortunes overseas. Those companies are often both audit companies and financial advisers, and obviously that’s a conflict of interest. If you first give financial advice on how you can move wealth offshore and then next you ordered the companies or the person’s accounts, you’re not going to find any trouble because you have a conflict of interest, so we propose in this report to separate the audit departments from the financial advice departments. Third, we need to look at the shell companies and have rules against empty shell companies. That has been proposed by the European Commission, that is being negotiated here in Parliament, we have agreed that we should have these rules, but in the Council among the Member States, they are stuck, they cannot agree on it and we urge the Council to continue the work and agree on rules that will ban the shell companies. That’s what we want in the European Parliament. I look forward to this debate. We have a lot of proposals and I look forward to hearing from you what we can do and what we have learned from the Pandora Papers.

I would like to ask the speaker whether he is familiar with the methods that exist in order to determine whether the sex of a chick is male or female. They already exist and can be used and will not cost more, neither for the producer nor for the consumer. Thus, is the speaker aware of these methods?

Madam President! Commissioner! Honourable colleagues! I wrote two speeches today. They're similar. On one, there are a few spelling mistakes and maybe a few passages that are not suitable for this room, so I curl it up and throw it out. We wouldn't do the same with animals, would we? What if we did it? It would be barbaric for us, curling animals together, to kill them because we think they had a mistake in one way or another. But, dear friends, that's exactly what we're doing, and it's terrible to think about. There are 330 million male chicks killed in the EU every year. Either by gassing them or by putting them in a meat crusher because they have the mistake of having the wrong gender. They're male chickens, and we can't use them for anything. It's barbaric. Honestly. What does that say about us? What does that say about our values? What does that say about our ethical compass? Nothing very good for me to see, and that's why it should stop. That is why we should have a ban on this at European level. The Commissioner mentioned two reasons why consideration should be given to refraining from such a ban. One of them was cultural justification. The culture of the Member States should be respected. I don't see any point in that. Well, what kind of culture is it that says that you have to do a lot of killing of male chicks every year? It's not a culture I can support. The second was for economic reasons. And there it is that it is absurd that, in fact, this will probably not cost us anything. At least not that much. There are methods today to determine whether the chicken is male or female before hatching the chicken, so let's use those methods. It's not necessarily more expensive, but that would prevent us from doing this barbaric massacre of the rooster chickens. So let's use those methods, and that's why I want to say: Commissioner, would you not give me a good reason why we should not ban the mass killing of newly hatched male chicks in Europe? I don't see any reason, and that doesn't suggest you can either. So let's get that ban, and let's get it now!

Mr President! Today we are discussing a ban on trade in shark fins. We are doing this on the basis of a citizens' proposal in which more than 1.1 million people have signed up. ‘Finning’, as it is called, is a brutal practice where sharks are caught and their fins are cut off and then dumped at the bottom of the sea because you only need – you only want – you are only interested in their fins, which can be sold at an expensive price. It's animal cruelty to the utmost power. It doesn't belong anywhere. Fortunately, finning is banned in the EU, but many fins are sold, including on the European market. We should put an end to this, and that is why I support a ban on trade in these fins. I am one of the people who signed the bill. There are some colleagues who say that it will be of no use to stop the trade. They're wrong. Of course it will be useful. The European Union is a major market for these Finns, which is why we should stop trading. By doing so, we can also put an end to this terrible practice.

Mr President! Imagine this: As we fight to shut down coal-fired power plants and replace our gasoline cars with electric ones – yes, with a fingertip, the US President is putting two million polluting gasoline cars on the streets and opening 76 new coal-fired power plants. Will we accept it? Will we not approach our American friends and protest against such a policy that would so obscure the Paris Agreement that both parties have signed up to? I think we will protest, and that is why we should also raise this issue with the Americans, because what the Americans are doing is equivalent to sending millions of polluting cars onto the streets and opening up lots of new coal-fired power stations. According to President Biden's own administration, the Willow project in Alaska will generate so much oil that it is equivalent to having two million new petrol cars on the streets. It will produce so much extra CO2 over the next 30 years that it is equivalent to 76 coal-fired power plants. We are in the midst of a climate catastrophe! Far too far to approve new oil drilling. The International Energy Agency has made it clear in black and white: We have plenty of oil! We don't need any more oil projects. What we need is more green energy, less CO2 emissions – not more oil drilling! I have to ask: What are we doing here? The Arctic is warming four times faster than the rest of the world. The vulnerable nature of the Arctic is being harmed! Indigenous peoples' habitats are being destroyed. This is not going to be good for getting more oil here and now. It is a project that will not benefit in terms of independence in relations with Russia. This will only benefit the oil industry. We should stop that. It is our clear duty to send a signal to the United States. This can't go on. The Willow Project must be stopped! President Biden, roll the Willow Project back and stick to your climate pledges!

Mr President! While China has become increasingly autocratic in recent years, we in Europe have become increasingly dependent on China. We've seen how crucial raw materials for our industry come from China, and we've seen how critical infrastructure lands in Chinese hands. I am thinking, for example, of China's acquisition of Greece's largest port, Piraeus, and China's current plans to buy into the Port of Hamburg. It is time to stop this development. Enough must be enough. I have two suggestions. Firstly, we in the European Union must adopt a common definition of what counts as critical infrastructure and give each other a handshake that we do not sell it to foreign powers. Secondly, we should repatriate industries that are vital to our society. I am thinking, for example, of mining, but also of production in the green sector, for example. It is time for the EU to take a more critical role vis-à-vis China. We must be vigilant about our values, and we must realise that freedom requires independence.

Mr President! Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen! Animals are sentient beings, as we write in our treaty, and that is absolutely true. We should also act on this when we legislate in the EU and in relation to the way we run agriculture in the EU. We have problems in agriculture with animal welfare, that is clear, and it should be clear to us when we make the new legislation that will come in the coming years. I am talking here about the transport for days of animals that have too little space and lack water and food. I'm talking about animals that live most of their lives in small cages where they can't move. And I'm talking about chickens that have been bred so that they grow so fast that they break their legs. Therefore, in terms of ensuring animal welfare in the long term and ensuring some change, I believe that it is crucial that we have an Animal Welfare Commissioner. We should have a Commissioner responsible for animal welfare, also in his title, for several reasons. First of all: We need someone who takes responsibility. Animal welfare, it is all too often a subject that is pushed back and forth between different chairs. We have seen it often when there are animal welfare scandals. A few years ago, while Members of this House were elected to this House, we had a case where a ship from Spain was on its way to Libya with two thousand bull calves, but they were rejected in Libya on suspicion of disease. This ship, it then sailed around for months in the Mediterranean – and no one would take responsibility for it – until the animals they suffered and fell ill and died. Neither Spain nor any other European country or the European Commission wanted to take responsibility, but pushed it back and forth. That is why we need someone who is responsible, who is also an animal welfare commissioner in name, in order for us to be able to change this in the future. In addition, I welcome everything the Commissioner is talking about, namely all the new legislation to improve animal welfare. We are talking about new legislation for transports, new legislation to phase out cages, and a completely new animal welfare law in general. All this legislation needs someone who stands behind it and enforces it and pushes for it to be good legislation, which is why we need an animal welfare commissioner. We will take the lead in the area of animal welfare in Europe. We must show that, and we can do that by also making sure that the title of Commissioner for Animal Welfare is given to one of the Commissioners that we have. It's not just me who means it. There are 191 Members of Parliament here who have signed it in the ‘EU for Animals’ campaign and 230 000 people who have signed it here. So I hope the Commission will say a little about whether it sees the purpose of having an animal welfare commissioner in the future.

Madam President! Ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, Minister. When I listen to the debate this evening, I actually get optimistic, because it sounds like most of the colleagues here have become aware that we have slept an hour. We have relied blindly on globalisation, and we have ended up becoming dependent on foreign powers that do not share our values. We gave Russia control over much of our natural gas supply. It had fatal consequences and created the biggest energy crisis since the 1970s. China is heavily involved in the processing of critical raw materials. 90% of rare earths and 60% of lithium are processed by China today. We must change that, and we must enter the new globalisation 2.0, where we must not be protectionist, but at the same time must be realistic in terms of the fact that we cannot just leave it here to the free market, that we become dependent on a foreign power that does not share our values at all. And that is why we need to start making strategic trade agreements with the countries we can trust, so that we spread out our imports of raw materials and thus become less dependent on those we do not want to be dependent on.

Madam President! On 29 November – just two weeks ago – Germany reached an agreement with Qatar for 15 years to supply two million tonnes of liquefied gas per year. Earlier this year, the EU signed an agreement with Azerbaijan. By 2027, they will deliver 20 million cubic metres of gas to the EU. A doubling compared to today. I recognise that right now, when the cold hits Europe, we have no choice. It's tragic that we ended up like this. But it is tragic that for decades our leaders have tied us to natural gas from a rogue state, and we must get away from that as soon as possible. Therefore, it is in our common interest that we get rid of Russian gas, that we do not bind ourselves to new rogue states. It is in our common interest that we expand renewable energy as soon as possible, install heat pumps, strengthen our electricity grid, install solar cells and wind turbines. We have to take on that responsibility. Let's do it as soon as possible. Let us adopt a new law on renewable energy to kick-start the green transition.

Madam President, Commissioner, colleagues, this climate summit in Egypt was indeed a disappointment, taking into consideration that we did not manage to agree on the reduction targets that we need, we did not manage to increase the speed of the climate action sufficiently. We did manage one positive thing, which was the compensation fund that the rich countries have to pay to the less rich countries, compensating them for the climate damage which is being done, which is mainly our responsibility in the rich world historically, in a historical perspective. The EU has been much criticised. I think the EU did play a positive role. I think the EU was really the only actor who took responsibility to increase among few actors, but one of the greatest powers that increased its reduction target and also put the fund on the compensation question on the agenda. That was the EU’s contribution. I think we need to see much more of that positive contribution from the European Union because we need to speed up action. The climate targets that we have are way too low. If we also look out in the world, Russia climate neutral by 2060, China 2060, India 2070 – 20 years too late. That’s not good enough. The EU needs to inspire. The EU also needs to push by saying we want to trade with you, but only if you also increase your reduction targets and do more. And that’s the legislation that we work on now and we will need to get that done as soon as possible.

Madam President, today, I feel embarrassed. Today, I feel ashamed. Today, I feel sad. I feel embarrassed, ashamed and sad because what might very well be the darkest moment in the history of sports is taking place right now as we speak – the World Cup in Qatar. And we should not be silent about that for the next 3 000 years as somebody wants us to be. Because since Qatar was handed the World Cup, more than 6 500 migrant workers have lost their lives, because it’s illegal to be in a union or to be homosexual in Qatar, because human rights are violated every single day, and FIFA and the Qatari regime don’t seem to care at all about it. Today, I feel certain that if we want things to change, we need a fundamental reform of FIFA. Mr Infantino, do us all a favour, step down now.

Mr President! For decades, we have known that we are moving towards a climate catastrophe. We know the consequences, but we have refused to face them. We can see that climate change is not just about the future, it is about the present. It's a reality. Forest fires, floods and droughts clearly show a planet that has begun to speak out. But what we are experiencing these years is only a foretaste of the all-encompassing catastrophe towards which we are heading if we do not change direction and if we do not do so now. When the countries of the world meet at COP27 in Egypt, that is exactly what it will be about. How do we keep climate change at a level that does not result in a climate catastrophe? The Paris Agreement sets a goal of a maximum of one and a half degrees of global warming. We know that anything above that level will have fatal consequences. That is why our task in Egypt is to make sure that climate change does not increase any more than that. “Keep 1.5 alive” for the sake of the planet and for the sake of our children and grandchildren.

Madam President, I thank you, colleagues, for backing this deal with a broad majority. Thank you to the shadows. We have made an agreement, which is good for the climate and bad for Putin. And I would like to request the referral back to the committee for interinstitutional negotiations according to Rule 59(4).

Mr President, thank you very much for this debate. I think it has been extremely positive, really. I think the debate shows that there’s a great consensus amongst the political groups that we need more ambition on energy efficiency. And I hope and I also think that it will result in support for the text which is on the table, which has some broad appeal, I think. I want to thank, in particular, Pernille Weiss from the EPP, Nicola Danti from the Renew Group, and not least, Jutta Paulus from the Greens. They are the people that also backed this agreement, along with me, and I think that if we stick together like we’ve done – I mean, we have our different points of view on different aspects, but I think we’ve managed to make an agreement where we take into consideration the different perspectives that we have and we’ve managed to increase the ambition level, basically. I think it was a good proposal that the Commission put on the table. I think our agreement is even better. The Commission proposed, originally, to have a target of 36% then raised the target to 39%, in relation to REPowerEU, and we raised it another notch to 40%. Now these percentages might seem like a small deal, but actually, a 40% target will have the effect that we can cut gas emissions by 190 billion cubic metres annually. We can cut gas imports by that number. That equals three and a half times Nord Stream 1 capacity. So, three and a half times Nord Stream 1 capacity, less gas imports – this is the potential of this deal. I think we have a good result here and I look forward to voting on Wednesday and to the further negotiations with the Council.

Mr President, Europe’s energy system is under severe pressure. We have to go back to the 1970s to find a comparison to what is happening right now. The combination of Putin’s chokehold on gas supplies, the most severe drought on record, and the failing of the conventional power fleet are creating the conditions for a perfect storm. Businesses, households, governments – they are all being hit. What can we do about it? Well, for years, some of us have been saying that the safest, cleanest and cheapest energy is that which you don’t use. Today, this is truer than ever, but Europe has been sleeping at the wheel. Yes, there have been EU—wide energy—saving goals for the past decade, but they have been voluntary and with mixed results at best. Investment in energy efficiency increased, but energy use fell by only 4% between 2010 and 2019. Without realising, this continent has been cruising on autopilot into deeper and deeper dependency on imported energy. Now we have the crisis, and governments are acting. They are increasing efforts to ramp up renewables and energy efficiency. At a dramatic speed, they’re rolling out urgent energy—saving plans. These policies are needed. These policies can address the immediate challenges of price spikes and inflation and import dependency. But what about the longer term? What will happen next? Well, that is up to us, my friends. We have the opportunity now to set a straight way out of energy dependency, creating a solid way of getting rid of Putin’s natural gas well before 2030, because this is what an ambitious energy efficiency directive can deliver. I believe that we have such an agreement on the table this week that we can adopt: a directive setting a 40% target for energy efficiency in 2030 compared to the 2017 baseline scenario, a target which will be binding for both the EU as a whole and for the individual Member States. To deliver on these ambitious targets, the negotiating team have strengthened the directive in many aspects. Let me outline some of the core issues. We have yearly energy savings on 2%, raising the energy—savings obligation from the Commission’s 1.5% proposal. We have two milestones: in 2025 and 2027, measuring our way towards 2030, so we can see if we are on track and if we’re not, we’d better act on it. We have agreed on a 3% renovation rate for public buildings. We have an agreement to prioritise the people who suffer from energy poverty, as they are the ones that need energy—efficiency measures the most because they have the hardest economic situation. We’ve strengthened the ‘energy efficiency first’ principle, creating more comprehensive governance, and we have agreed that all municipalities with more than 35 000 inhabitants need to make heating and cooling plans to get the most efficient solutions. Furthermore, we have agreed on energy—efficiency schemes for datacentres, making sure that they don’t waste the heat but use it to warm up buildings. Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have an ambitious text on the table. I look forward to the debate here tonight. I look forward to hearing from the negotiating team that I have negotiated with because they are the ones that are making the difference.

Madam President! Today, in the European Parliament, we say 'yes' to the introduction of a minimum pan-European corporate tax rate of 15%. We say yes to stopping the race to the bottom and the extreme tax speculation that takes place under the guise of just being free competition. We have discussed this before, but now it is serious thanks to Aurore Lalucq's report, for which we will vote 'yes'. The European Commission is with us. 137 countries are with us. It is historic, which is why I would like to ask the last countries that are still hesitant to back it up. It is Poland that we are talking about here, and I would like to say: Dear Poland, last year we signed up to the need to introduce a minimum corporate tax. Don't you think it's time to live up to that intention now? The longer we take time, the more it costs us. The aggressive tax juggling costs us between 1200 and 1400 billion kroner annually. This is money we could spend on green transition and recovery. So, dear Poland, please do not block. Let's get started on adopting the minimum tax now.

Madam President, the EU is the world’s biggest loser when it comes to losing money to tax havens. Actually, we lose around EUR 380 billion a year, according to international studies, because multinationals and wealthy individuals are shifting their wealth to tax havens around the globe. But these tax havens are not just distant palm islands as you see in the movies. Actually, three out of four euro are lost in tax evasion to countries inside the European Union. Some say this is just competition, but is it truly fair competition that a few gigantic companies can choose freely themselves how much they want to pay in tax, because surely it’s not the German or the French or the Danish or the Dutch Parliaments that decide their tax rates. They decided themselves. Imagine how much we could invest in schools, hospitals and green transition. No one is benefiting from this but the tax evaders. This is why we must have a minimum tax level and we should have it now.

Mr President! Commissioner, please! Honourable colleagues! We have been discussing the gas market for a long time in this Chamber, and whether Russia is playing by the rules that the rest of us are playing by, or whether they are manipulating gas prices. An important discussion, but it seems completely superfluous and obsolete now, because it has become clear to all of us that Russia does not play by any rules whatsoever. Neither in the energy market, nor when it comes to the most fundamental rules on the territorial integrity of nation states. We need to move away from Russian gas, and things need to move fast, and today the Commission has put forward a plan. I think it's good. In one year, we can reduce gas dependency by two-thirds. We have to do that. It is about investing in renewable energy, and it is about increasing energy efficiency by insulating our houses and exploiting surplus heat, so that we can save energy instead of importing Putin's black energy.

Madam President! I fear that we will not be able to start producing green electricity fast enough. I am simply afraid that if we do not really speed up, then over the next many years it will be black, expensive power from coal power plants that reach our sockets. Fortunately, we have the options and solutions. I myself come from Denmark, from Northwest Jutland, a place called Thy. We call it Cold Hawaii because there are a lot of windsurfers playing around on the waves up there, and I can sign that there is plenty of wind that we can use. We are in the process of building energy islands out at sea to produce power, but also to distribute the green power among the countries. I think we are sending out two clear signals with our strategy. First, we need to speed up the pace. We need up to 79 gigawatts, more than the 60 gigawatts proposed by the Commission by 2030. Secondly, we need to expand the infrastructure so that we can distribute the green electricity to all the countries of Europe. Let's put my fear to shame. Let's show that we mean it now.

Madam President! Extremely high temperatures, no room to move, no access to food and drink, broken legs, constipation, illness and stress. These are the conditions today for a large proportion of the over one billion animals transported on long animal journeys every year in the EU, often in densely packed lorries. Honestly, is there anyone in here who can look in the mirror and have a good conscience if you put your teeth in a pork roast, where you know that the pig has been out on transport for days under these conditions? At least I can't. And this is simply cruelty to animals in many cases, and that is why it is so important that we get a new law for animal transport in the EU. First of all, we must demand a ceiling of eight hours as the maximum limit for the transport of animals. Much can be done to improve animal welfare during the journey, but ultimately the length of the journey is crucial, which is also why many, both experts and animal welfare organisations, support the eight-hour proposal. Secondly, we must demand that neither pregnant animals in the latter part of their pregnancy nor young animals that have not been weaned from their mother should be transported. Very young animals, like newborn animals that can't drink themselves, rely on their mother for nourishment. They will starve and thirst on animal transports if you send them on long animal transports where they cannot eat themselves. We have to stop that. Finally, we should not export animals – live animals – to countries where we cannot guarantee animal welfare. We must have a list of the countries to which animals can be exported and the countries that are not on the list, we cannot guarantee animal welfare. Exports have to stop. This will, of course, mean that agriculture will have to do it differently today. Obviously, that is why we are making new legislation in the European Union. We want some change. Let us start that change today and let us adopt an ambitious proposal on animal transport.

Mr President! Commissioner, please! Did you see Disney cartoons, Dumbo, when you were a kid? The story of the little elephant cub with the big ears makes a big impression on many children, and especially the scene where Dumbo is separated from his mother. Unfortunately, it's not just in cartoons that little baby elephants are separated from their mother. This is also the reality in many of Europe's circuses. The wild animals in the circuses live in sad conditions. Little cubs are removed from their mother far too soon, and like Dumbo, who was dressed as a clown and forced to perform, many of the animals live a stressful life with hard training and long performances. Many also live in overly small cages and in an environment that is very far from their natural habitat. In the travelling circuses, the animals are forced out on far too long journeys. As a result, the animals become stressed and sick. Some of the animals react to the stress by becoming aggressive and thus also dangerous to people - both the employees of the circus and the spectators. It's not supposed to be like that. We need a ban in the EU on keeping wild animals in circuses. 18 countries in the EU, including my own country, Denmark, have already introduced such a ban. And a majority of Europeans think a ban is a good idea - 65% support a ban. A ban could help to prevent the illegal trade in wild animals. That is why I urge - and many of us here in the European Parliament and in the Commission do - to come up with a proposal prohibiting the keeping of wild animals in circuses. The circus animals, the wild animals, deserve better.

Mr President, I would like to congratulate the Commissioner on a great speech. Madam Commissioner. You were right on the money with your priorities. Becoming energy-independent, increasing renewable energy and increasing energy efficiency are the main priorities, and you were spot on. Then we can discuss if the glass is half-empty or half-full, reading your report. We have increased the renewable energy and, right now, the electricity production from renewables is larger than that from fossils – that’s great – but only by 1%. That could be better. Also, when it comes to energy efficiency, we do not reach the goals that we have set. In the current directive we must do that better. Friends, that’s up to us. We are negotiating the Renewable Energy Directive (RED) and the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) right now and in the coming months. Let’s make it better. We have the opportunity now.