20
May
2026
Watch
Reviewing the ETS system to support European competitiveness (topical debate)
Mr President, in this debate I've heard a lot of accusations and very little numbers. It's like partying wild the whole night, and then in the morning feeling bad and blaming a cookie. Because if you look at the ETS, it's actually responsible for less than 10 % of the electricity price. And many of you said that the ETS collects huge revenues, but you never said where those revenues actually go. It goes to your national budgets. Are Poland, the Czech Republic or others ready to actually let that money go and not to invest in energy efficiency, in innovation in their countries? That's the first question to be asked, because colleagues, when you speak about ETS, you always try to blame the EU like there is some sort of magic EU budget that ETS goes to. No, it goes to your national budget, and you should ask your governments where that money is spent. Absolutely, ETS2 also must be introduced very fairly and very carefully, because we should look at the real situation on the ground and especially families struggling with their bills. But that cannot be a stoppage for a change that we have started, because the real pressure comes from our dependency on fossil fuels.