What Andrus spoke about.

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EN Written Statement

Russian aggression against Ukraine (continuation of debate)

I fully support the resolution but it is not enough. I feel that I am also guilty for what is happening in Ukraine. We are heating our family house with the Russian natural gas. As we are paying a high price for Russian natural gas, we helped Putin to collect USD 600 billion as governmental sector reserves. And now he is using this money to kill innocent people in Ukraine. It was a huge mistake to…

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ET Written Statement

State of the Union (continuation of debate)

The speech was realistic and focused on the most important – vaccines and digital development. Vaccines and a digital certificate have been a success story for Europe this year, despite the difficult start. Estonia is lucky to be in the EU, we do not have to fight for vaccines like many other countries in the world. As a former Digital Commissioner, I am delighted that digital issues are crucial f…

11 Mar

2024

EN Speech

Substantiation and communication of explicit environmental claims (Green Claims Directive) (debate)

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Mr President, Commissioner, colleagues, I would like to thank you for this debate. The Green Claims Directive is about commercial green claims. With this proposal, we are not reshaping the carbon market or taxing businesses. Companies can use green claims or not. It is up to them. It’s their free choice. Anyway, I am sure that we can’t talk about happy consumers if every other green claim is false…

11 Mar

2024

EN Speech

Substantiation and communication of explicit environmental claims (Green Claims Directive) (debate)

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Mr President, dear Commissioner, dear colleagues, the overall goal of the Green Claims Directive is to increase transparency of green claims made by traders. There is a need to increase the trust of our consumers and bring legal clarity to our entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, the current situation with green claims and labels in Europe is not satisfactory. Studies show that over 50 % of companies’ en…

28 Feb

2024

EN Speech

European Digital Identity framework (debate)

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Madam President, Commissioner, colleagues, in Estonia, the digital identity has been in use for more than 20 years. It has been a success story – soon people were giving 1.3 million digital signatures per week. Our population is only 1.3 million. Thanks to the digital signature, we save one working week a year, which is equal to 2% of GDP. Convenient digital solutions are available in every Member…

3 May

2022

EN Speech

Artificial intelligence in a digital age (debate)

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Mr President, first of all, I would like to thank our rapporteur, Axel Voss, and all the shadow rapporteurs for their good work and excellent cooperation. I consider this report a good vision paper which describes our ambitions and how to reach them. Our aim is to build human—centric artificial intelligence, which will serve our people while respecting their privacy. The report encourages us to us…

16 Dec

2021

EN Speech

Barriers to the free movement of goods (debate)

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Mr President, this oral question aims to address the barriers to the free movement of goods introduced by Member States at national level. The Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) has stressed on several occasions that a well-functioning, strong, fair, inclusive and resilient internal market was also an essential component of the EU’s response to the socio-economic crisi…

14 Dec

2021

EN Speech

Digital Markets Act (debate)

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Madam President, honourable Vice-President, honourable Commissioner, dear colleagues, I am not just happy to speak in favour of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) today, but I also want to give praise to Commissioner Vestager and Commissioner Breton for their excellent proposal. As Renew Europe, we have long fought for a unified single market where all businesses, whether big or small, should be able t…