Speeches

Madam President. If we want to protect European money effectively, we need to improve a lot of things. I'm going to mention two that are less talked about than they deserve. Firstly, transparency. Let's start publishing all contracts with public administration in the Union, as Slovakia, for example, does. At the same time, we also need to control who benefits from public contracts as the beneficial owner. This is recommended, for example, by the World Bank in the 2020 Anti-Fraud Report or also by the International Monetary Fund in the 2022 Handbook on Ownership Control. Second, we need to measure results, not outputs. It is not enough to measure the number of kilometers of roads built. If the result does not improve the flow of traffic, reduce travel time or reduce the number of accidents, then we have probably invested inefficiently. And even in the best system, there will be failures. And it is difficult and expensive to detect and correct them. It is more effective to detect and correct failures in the system.

Mr President. The Single Market has boosted economic growth in the European Union. However, the impact of the Single Market on people’s lives goes far beyond the economy. The single market then helps maintain peace, improves relations between countries, improves freedom and tolerance, protects law and democracy. Completing the single market would make many of today's problems much easier to solve in the future. The completion of the single market, for example, in Slovakia, in my country, would increase gross domestic product by three and a half to 5.7 billion euros each year, roughly as much as Slovakia gives out of public spending on all education. And it's almost as much as we put on the whole health care system. But let us not forget that the success was, and probably will be, a common market in the European Union, not a common centrally planned economy.

Madam President, the report on the vision for the Union's rural areas by 2040 did not please me. Nor does it propose appropriate solutions and, in particular, does it have properly identified reasons why rural areas are lagging behind. Trying to put young people in unproductive jobs in rural areas cannot be part of the strategy. Why do we want to sacrifice them? The OECD study gives us clear recommendations. It is not enough to redistribute money to poor regions, structural changes are needed. Inefficient grants hamper innovation and productivity growth. At the same time, differences in productivity are the main reason for lagging behind. We should give regions autonomy in local taxes and promote fiscal decentralisation. These solutions are missing from the report and I think we will not make progress without them.

Madam President, it is undoubtedly good that we are setting ourselves targets for digitalisation. Unfortunately, we don't have them well-chosen. They do not measure the results for the citizen. For example, the objective of making key public services available online. It is not enough that the service is available online, because the online service can be done in such a way that citizens lose more time than if they visited the office on foot. Who does not believe, read about how the online Covid vaccination registration service worked in Slovakia, my Member State. Instead, targets such as how much time saving has increased, costs have fallen or labour productivity has increased thanks to digitalisation would be more appropriate. Such objectives are mostly lacking in the proposal and I think it is a pity. I'm convinced of that.

Madam President, while the borrowing strategy has been conducted without major difficulties, new European debt also brings many hazards into the future which the report overlooks: higher inflation, increased indebtedness of Member States and resistance of Member States to fiscal consolidation and structural reforms. I think it is a mistake that the Commission does not set fiscal consolidation as the main condition for drawing the recovery funds. Borrowing strategy is the easier side of the coin. The harder one is the not-borrowing strategy, the growth strategy that has been missing so far, fiscal consolidation and structural reforms in Member States. Without them NextGenerationEU risks to be a missed opportunity that we cannot afford.

Mr President, the solution to today's energy and inflation crisis should not be taboo or austerity in the Union budget. Even a citizen in difficult times cannot solve his problems without saving in his budget. Therefore, part of the resources needed to cope with the crisis should be redeployed as a matter of priority from inefficient funds where we help the vulnerable in a targeted way. There is scope for more efficient use of public funds. Inefficiencies in several funds have long been highlighted by the European Court of Auditors. In difficult times, people are also looking for ways to increase their income. We too should once again focus more on the real sources of economic growth. It's as if we've resigned to them during years of reliance on the bank's cheap money and on public debt.

Madam President, the presenters of the material call on the Commission to consider creating an exception in the rules of the Stability and Growth Pact for public expenditure on cohesion policy. But black is simply black, white is white, deficit is deficit and debt is debt. Excluding cohesion policy expenditure from the deficit will not lead to a lower spirit at the end of the day. This only increases the risk of further deterioration of the already poor state of public finances. This increases the risk of young people not being paid to work, do business and live in the EU. Member States need clear and simple fiscal rules to comply with. No other exceptions by which fiscal discipline will be circumvented.

Madam President, I will try to remember it, thank you for the floor. I welcome the European Parliament's call in this report for the Commission to evaluate the efficiency of the budget for the years 14 to 20 in order to learn lessons from the results achieved with European money in the past when drawing up future budgets. However, the report lacks the idea that the zero condition for evaluating effectiveness is that we determine in advance precise criteria and measurable result indicators against which we will assess whether we have been successful in our objectives. The European Court of Auditors also points out in its report on the performance of the budget for the years 14 to 20 that it was mainly output-oriented and that there was no significant shift towards measuring results. I think measuring results is also the best protection against fraud and corruption.

Mr President, Croatia is joining the Eurozone in very tense times of record inflation and great uncertainty. Slovakia, where I came from, which introduced the common currency in 2009 during the financial crisis, experienced something similar. We know from experience that the introduction of the euro in itself does not, in principle, make it more expensive and may be more advantageous for a small country in difficult times for reasons of greater monetary stability. Let us not forget, however, that the guarantor of the stability of the single currency is not the number of members, but its fiscal rules. Therefore, joining the euro area must not be the end, but the beginning of the path towards budgetary responsibility. Let it be a reminder to us 19 members of the eurozone that the fiscal consolidation and reforms we expect from Croatia are also a necessity for ourselves. Only fiscal responsibility will ensure that the euro benefits all, not a burden for those responsible.

Madam President, Croatia will become the twentieth member of the euro area next year, and this is an opportunity not only to wish Croatia success, but also to say a few words about the euro area, which was intended as a club of countries with low debt, sound public finances that will share a stable currency. But with the advent of the financial crisis, this paradigm has changed to a great extent. Purchases of government bonds by the ECB turn the euro area into a transfer union. Fiscal rules are regularly breached and have actually been de facto abolished with the advent of the pandemic. Public debt has risen, inflation is hitting records. Perhaps these are the reasons why sound academic research suggests that a number of new and older eurozone members would have a higher economic performance today if they kept their own currencies. And I say this as a supporter of Slovakia, my country, joining the eurozone. I wish Croatia and the eurozone a success story for both parties.

Madam President, it is a scientific consensus, and therefore a great responsibility of scientists, that humanity cannot afford to slow down in stopping global warming. The task of politicians is to achieve an agreed halt to warming with the least possible negative impact on people's living standards. We must therefore choose the most efficient methods, that is, those that reduce the production of one tonne of CO2 in the cheapest way. According to an OECD study evaluating the effectiveness of various emission abatement methods, but also the twenty-eight Nobel Prize winners in economics, they are the most effective solutions based on market mechanisms. Thus, an alternative to the market-based ETS is only the removal of greenhouse gases by less efficient methods. This means higher taxes, higher negative impacts on people's living standards. At first glance, it looks exactly the opposite. But in such a fateful matter, the victory of populism simply cannot be afforded.

Madam President, at the beginning of this initiative, there was a correct attempt to address the problem of economic activity escaping from the European Union. And this happens for two reasons or two forms. On the one hand, it is an escape of taxation of economic activity to tax havens, and on the other hand, it is an escape of economic activity due to a worse business environment. We are now trying to tackle the first one by introducing a global minimum tax. However, we should be careful not to accept it as the only one, otherwise economic activity will continue to escape from the EU, for example, to the United States. The latter should be addressed by structural reforms, otherwise economic activity from the Union will continue to elude us, i.e. investment, of course, not in tax havens, but in countries with more efficient systems. In any case, with such a huge step, which will, of course, have a lot of positive effects, the Commission should have both positive and negative effects well analysed, and in this, in my opinion, we have reserves today.

Mr President. Healthy competition is part of the European Union's golden treasure. It is important that the Commission and the states, i.e. politicians, fight against abuses of dominant position, against cartels. But sometimes we forget that it is we, the politicians, who limit competition in a systemic way. As an example, I can cite various systemic restrictions on trade in services, some subsidies to the economies of the Member States or tax exemptions. If we want to build a successful Union, if we want to overcome the current crises, we must also have the courage and the strength to tackle the barriers to competition that stem directly from the rules of the game, which are therefore part of the system.

Madam President. At a time of high, rising inflation, at a time of war, at a time of great kovid problems and others, it is even more important than usual to spend taxpayers' money efficiently. The Court has long drawn attention to problem areas in the budget, such as cohesion policy and the common agricultural policy. For example, the Court found that the one hundred billion euros spent between 2014 and 2020 to combat climate change in the agro-sector had little impact on the volume of emissions in agriculture. I therefore consider it crucial that the results we want to achieve and the ways in which they are measured are clearly identified before the programme is launched. Also, so that those programs and funds that do not achieve results effectively, receive less and less money.

Madam President, the petitioners wanted to help the environment with these proposals, and that is a good goal. However, when extending the lifespan of products, we should not only take into account that if old products have a longer lifespan, we will not harm the environment by producing new products. We should also take into account that, according to expert studies, repaired old products often do more harm to the environment than new products of the new ecological generation. Imagine if fifty years ago there were a right to fifty years of repairs and fifty years of guarantees, what cars we would probably see on the road today. It is therefore important that such proposals are analysed today and in the future and their environmental impact accurately quantified. So that we do no more harm to him than we do to him.

Madam President, one of the consequences of the Russian aggression is also related to the environment. After this experience with Russia, armament spending in the world will be higher than before. We know from expert studies that higher spending on armaments is associated with higher greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, we are in a situation where the developed world has high public debts. The starting point for this mix must be the modification of the Green Deal. It must be more efficient, it must be truthfully communicated to the public. Some measures need to be changed. For example, nuclear energy is essential, we need to import liquefied gas, to produce electricity from coal. Unfortunately, we can't stop as fast as we expected.

. Mr President, I have long argued that if we want to be successful as a country and as a union, we must open ourselves up to competition, not protect ourselves from it. The free movement of goods works well in the Union, but if I wanted my house to be designed, for example, by an Estonian architect, it is no longer without obstacles. Indeed, the free market for services still has many restrictions in the Union, mainly due to various protectionist measures favouring domestic providers under the pretext of preserving the quality of services or the public interest. If restrictions on services were lowered to the level of the three least regulated states in the Union, the productivity of firms across the Union could grow by about three percent. I therefore agree with the call for the Member States to extend mutual recognition of diplomas and qualifications as soon as possible.

Mr President, I agree that we should uphold the principle: What is not prohibited offline should not be prohibited online. With the Digital Services Regulation, we, but in my view, are at risk of creating many new rules that have a cost and not achieving an adequate improvement. We also risk doing this because we do not do a good cost-benefit analysis in advance, we do not rely on expert sources. Despite a number of criticisms by the European Court of Auditors and commitments in its own resolutions, the European Parliament often fails to carry out impact assessments of its own substantive amendments. This is also the case with the intended restriction of targeted ads. The complainants in the European Parliament have not, in my view, submitted convincing studies to confirm that targeted advertising is harmful and that limiting it will be effective for the benefit of the consumer. We should only introduce regulations whose benefits outweigh the costs and stick to the practices agreed in Better Regulation.

Madam President, the main drawback of the present Digital Market Act is the very definition of a gatekeeper. The size of the platform and the number of users do not in themselves demonstrate that a market failure is taking place. We should stick to the best practices defined in the competition legislation, i.e. choose criteria that show whether a market failure is actually occurring. In parallel with the questions in the DMA, we should open a debate on why it is that none of the current giants of the digital industry has emerged in the European Union. Enabling market entry is a better strategy than letting monopolies grow without competition and then regulating them. In addition, the proposed regulation also contains bans and obligations for platforms, which may be inefficient.

Madam President, in every crisis there are voices calling for attempts to resolve crisis situations with isolationism and protectionism. The same proposals appear in the public debate also now in the context of the Covid-19 crisis. For example, this report on the EU pharmaceutical strategy proposes the relocation of the production of medicines to Europe, as well as the promotion of medicines made in Europe. I think that, as in previous crises, protectionism has turned out not to be the solution, so it will turn out now. Moving the entire supply chain to Europe would make production significantly more expensive and reduce specialisations also in scientific progress. In my view, the real solution is, on the contrary, to deepen openness, cooperation and competition, to break down barriers and to diversify supply chains. Instead of isolationism, marketing is sometimes called self-sufficiency.

Mr President. In the European Union, states finance primary and, in part, secondary education with public money. It is often the case that graduates move from poorer to richer countries, which in turn send them billions of euros through complicated EU funds. For example, 17 percent of students leave Slovakia to go to foreign universities. In 2010, it was 14 percent, so the problem is getting bigger. I think it would be better for richer states to fund teachers in poorer states directly, instead of projects that are linked to enormous bureaucracy, sometimes inefficiency, according to the European Court of Auditors, even corruption.

Mr President, I would like to thank and congratulate the rapporteur, Mrs Charanzova, for the quality of the work she has done. This is also the result, which I strongly support. The new rules on compulsory contractual insurance will bring a number of changes, but also an important role for Member States. When a citizen living, for example, in Slovakia or another Member State bought a vehicle, for example, in Germany, he had to insure it for transport there. It will be enough to insure him in Slovakia. If you drive without an accident and come to a Member State where those who drive without an accident have cheaper insurance, you will also have the right to get it, for example, as a Slovak, Czech, Hungarian, Pole. It will also change which vehicles have to have insurance. Electric bikes and garden tractors will no longer need insurance. Fast electric scooter with speed over 25 kilometers per hour already new yes. However, Member States were also given the possibility of derogations. For example, not requiring insurance for vehicles that only drive on private land, as the risk of causing damage to someone in this way may be low. It will be up to the Member States to consider how to set the exceptions so that we are only composing the damage worth composing in the Guarantee Fund.

. – Madam President, I consider the main problem of the European budget to be its focus on outputs rather than results. The European Court of Auditors has raised a warning finger over, for example, the common agricultural policy, for which it recommends the development of reliable indicators assessing its impact. The flagship InvestEU Investment Fund evaluates some of its achievements according to the number of enterprises supported. However, the efficiency of the use of public resources is not to be measured by how much common money has been distributed, but by what added value it has brought to citizens. In this context, I consider it a mistake to conduct an investigation at the European Anti-Fraud Office. The increase in the European budget must go hand in hand with the staffing of its control bodies.

Since the financial crisis, the institutions of the Banking Union have undergone reforms improving its stability and resilience. However, under the current conditions, the proposal to establish a common guarantee for bank deposits would still, in my view, constitute a moral hazard by passing on potential costs from one group of euro area members to another. To date, we have not exhausted the possibilities to improve the health of the banking sector without further guarantee schemes. Domestic challenges in the form of structural reforms and a reduction in the level of non-performing loans have still not been fulfilled by a number of euro area members. The shared risk must be preceded by clear conditions for reforms and their implementation in a way that avoids fiscal blackmail. Otherwise, the common guarantees will be an unfair zero-sum game, where not everyone wins, but one at the expense of the other.

Mr President, combating tax fraud and tax evasion is an interest shared by all Member States. However, I find it wrong to confuse this interest with the harmonisation of direct taxes, which is the interest of only one group of Member States, which would take away the competitive advantage of the other group of Member States and limit tax competition. The United States Congress has more powers in the field of taxation than the European Union. However, the United States is not moving towards deeper harmonisation, as it does not seem to consider it more effective. Let's take this into account. The present report focuses on policy support for tax harmonisation instead of a more efficient exchange of best practices and a comparison of the efficiency of tax systems. I would emphasise: rather than sharing best practices more efficiently and comparing the efficiency of tax systems. I therefore consider the present report to be an missed opportunity.