Speeches

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Mr Timmermans, first of all, I would like to ask you to really consider how you will vote tomorrow on the proposal to reduce CO2 emissions for cars. I would like to stress that this regulation will have huge economic and social impacts across the European Union. The automotive industry in the European Union employs millions of people and generates up to 8% of GDP in my country, for example. In the aftermath of the pandemic, the sector is not fully in top shape and is facing a number of other serious challenges. In addition, the unavailability of passenger car transport for the poorest or the fall of this industry can cause huge social unrest. Before banning the sale of new cars with internal combustion engines, we must first offer people an affordable alternative to passenger transport. I would not like the revision of this regulation to be the same as last time, when Member States washed their hands of the development of clean mobility and its infrastructure. For Central and Eastern Europe, these cars are completely inaccessible economically, and the infrastructure for recharging them is tragic. The proposal also needs to be a bit proportional. If we are talking about the end of sales of cars with combustion engines, it is necessary to say that it makes no economic sense to adopt any new emission limits, whether in the form of the new EURO 7 standard or new transitional CO2 limits in the meantime. With the prospect of an early end to internal combustion engines, it makes no sense for their manufacturers to invest additional billions of euros in their development. On the contrary, they can be invested in the development of clean mobility and its accessibility.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, after two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the frequency of suicidal thoughts has increased enormously for up to 70% of hospitalised patients, the number of emergency services for self-harming children has increased by several hundred%, new depressive and anxiety disorders have developed, especially for children who have not yet been in psychiatric care, there has been an increase in eating disorders, there is a time when we need care for tens of thousands more children, and we do not have it. We're not going to solve this today, here and now. But I am very glad that the Commission is comprehensively starting to think about this problem, because this problem will be solved for decades. But it is impossible to accept the long-term shortage of child psychiatrists, which is associated not only with healthcare, but above all with education, because that is where it all begins, in medical universities. We need to motivate young doctors to study child psychiatry, to do it, and to make it interesting for them. These are all things that are on the table, and I firmly believe that the Commission will really take this seriously and that we may, in time, say that we have succeeded.

Mr President, Commissioner, I support and support the resolution on the protection of children who are forced to flee the tragic war in Ukraine, because the position of the weakest in the war needs to be all the more protected. However, I will not forgive myself for commenting on this resolution. Central Europe, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania are facing an unprecedented number of refugees, even compared to the 2015 refugee wave. Poland granted asylum to more than 2 million Ukrainians in a matter of weeks. A much larger Germany granted asylum to 1.5 million refugees during 2015. I am not saying this to triumph over the number of refugees, but to underline the enormous strain on the entire system of government, health care and education. I think that these countries deserve recognition of how they are managing this situation. Even without compensation, people are housing refugees and trying to help them. I simply lack recognition of this ordinary human solidarity in the resolution. A resolution is often about what Member States are supposed to do without acknowledging what they have already done. In Ukraine, before the armed conflict, there were 2 million people with rare diseases and 13 times more people with HIV per population than the European Union average. Many of these people have already come or will come to countries like mine in the coming months. Specifically, with 4 million refugees, this is between 13 and 16,000 new cancer patients in Europe per month. And that's not the end of it. Children who come to us do not have mandatory vaccinations, which we consider to be the standard in the EU. We are talking about the need for hundreds of thousands of doses of live vaccines, which are mostly not stored in the EU and have to be produced. Colleagues, if you don't help us now, our health systems will not bear this onslaught and will collapse. I beg you, help us, please lighten our burden. Share your bed capacity and provide us with the necessary medical supplies. Show solidarity with our countries not only in words but also in actions.

Madam President, Commissioner, dear Véronique, dear colleagues, I think we have managed to adopt a fairly good report in the special committee. It was a very long journey complicated by the pandemic. Unfortunately, the pandemic will continue to complicate the implementation of both the BECA plan and our report in the near future. Especially from the point of view of its financing. Each step in the plan and in the report is extremely costly. Unfortunately, public health budgets are very low and in a very poor state after the pandemic. However, what I think has been neglected in the report are hundreds of thousands of cancer screenings not carried out during the pandemic. And this is the biggest challenge for us politicians: cancer prevention in the coming years. This is a time bomb that will inevitably explode in our face one day. If we ignore the situation, we will have patients in worse health and their treatment will be very costly and unsuccessful. I welcome the emphasis given to cancer prevention and development in Europe's Beating Cancer Plan. However, I believe that, as a Parliament, we must be significantly more ambitious in the proposed measures. Prevention is very important, but not sufficient. Why? Because we have long failed to reduce the rate of risky behavior in our population, and the committee's report stubbornly sticks to the solution through higher tobacco taxation. This is despite the fact that it is clear that smoking is primarily a social problem in a certain part of our society, and no high tax will deter this group from smoking. Member States need to be able to effectively minimise health risks. A Europe-wide approach is needed. Colleagues, I sincerely hope that this does not end with a plan and a report. Now it is necessary to start to fulfill everything thoroughly.

Madam President, Commissioner, let us face it, we need a plan for 30 million of our fellow citizens living with a rare disease in the European Union for the next decade. The last one is 12 years old, and that's a shame. The needs of patients with rare diseases require a greater level of cross-border cooperation in healthcare. Despite the existence of a directive on cross-border healthcare to facilitate such cooperation, barriers remain that not only make it difficult to access healthcare in another EU country, but leave administrative, financial and emotional burdens on the patient. Improvements in diagnostics, data, research, integrated care and treatment should also be encouraged. We need massive screenings of newborns to give them a chance to live a normal life. It is quite clear that without EU-wide leadership, this fight simply cannot be done. I am so pleased that the upcoming Presidency trio in the Council, headed by France, the Czech Republic and Sweden, are positive about the new plan. However, I would like to take a brief look at the financing of the European Reference Networks, which we have heard so much about here today. About a month ago, I brought the issue of their financing to the attention of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety. European Reference Networks (ERNs) are the most successful project of European health policy. Even though we have set clear rules for their funding under the EU4Health programme, they are now facing financial difficulties and a threat of extinction. It is necessary, Commissioner, to respond as soon as possible and provide them with the missing money for 2022. It is not about what will happen after 2023, where we probably have the money, but there is a big problem with the fact that we need to keep financing in 2022. I ask you to do everything possible so that this shining project of successful cooperation does not have to disappear just because it will be missing in the order of a few million euros. I thank all those who help in the care of patients, especially families and doctors who are trying to find the best way for their treatment.

Madam President, I ask myself: What year is it, anyway? Are we really talking for a year and a half about temporarily relaxing the rules on intellectual property protection in relation to COVID-19 vaccines and medicines at the WTO? We're discussing it from left to right while thousands of people are dying all over the world and we're happily creating new mutations. You just have to ask yourself the question: What is the point of an international treaty under which we are not able to respond satisfactorily for a year and a half to even the biggest health crisis in a century? And why? So our pharmaceutical companies don't lose their profits? So a few rich people can get richer? Who decides how this world works? State officials or multinational corporations? So let's answer this question. Personally, I am no longer sure. Today, it must be clear to even a small child that without giving the rest of the world the chance to vaccinate, we will simply not get rid of this crisis. Let's finally do something about it and not just talk about it.

Madam President, I am not at all happy with the outcome of the negotiations on this report. First of all, the text has very little ambition in terms of reforming intellectual property rights both inside and outside the European Union. After two years of the pandemic, we basically stayed on the same challenges that we presented five years ago in the resolution on access to medicines in the European Union. I am convinced that patent protection does not and should not serve as a key incentive for innovation. I also believe that compulsory licences should be used more frequently. This must be the norm during the pandemic. For this reason, my colleagues and I have tabled an amendment to this report that introduces these aspects into the text. Secondly, I do not like the report's stance on public support for drug research. If the entire database on vaccine development and supply has shown us anything, it is that the public sector must have more control over the support it pays to pharmaceutical companies. We cannot allow the farce to be repeated again, where the vaccines we have paid for with our money belong to someone else and we are not allowed to know their price. Overall, the ambition to set new transparency rules in the pharmaceutical sector for pricing, research spending and quantification, and the publication of clinical trial results is disappointing. Unfortunately, for these reasons, I cannot support the report at the moment. It doesn't bring anything new.

Mr President, Commissioner, a year has passed and we are almost the same way. This is due not only to low vaccination coverage in some Member States, but above all to the reluctance of Member States to cooperate more in the fight against the pandemic. In fact, the only two successful projects in almost two years are the joint purchases of vaccines and the introduction of COVID passports. In order to be successful, we have to close both eyes. And I'm asking: What is our vision for the future? Even if, at the moment – and I am only in favour of voluntary vaccination, because I simply believe that radicalisation and forcing people to do so will only make them stop wanting to be vaccinated all the more, the more those people will fight for their rights and freedoms – we have vaccinated society as a whole, we will not stop this wave of pandemics. I ask you, Commissioner, to hurry up with the selection procedures for the treatment of COVID-19, so that you put new medicines on the European market as soon as possible and are able to buy them in the necessary amount. That's the only thing that can help us save lives right now.

Mr President, rapporteur, fellow Members, I am very pleased that we will be able to conclude work on the directive on insurance against civil liability in respect of the use of motor vehicles today, and I thank the rapporteur, Mrs Dita Charanzová, very much for her work, as we have succeeded in removing the controversial requirement of compulsory liability for electric bicycles, scooters or garden tractions from the Commission proposal. This would indeed be a step in the wrong direction, which would certainly not help the reputation of the European Union. Some motor vehicles, such as electric bicycles and segways, are smaller in size and are therefore less likely than other vehicles to cause significant damage to health or property. In addition, this step would also largely affect older citizens, who do not have much money to lose. Vehicles intended exclusively for motor sports are also excluded from the scope of the Directive, as they are usually covered by other types of liability insurance and are not covered by compulsory motor insurance if they are used only for competitive purposes. In two years' time, there will also be a significant simplification in the negotiation of third-party liability for registered cars in another Member State. Indeed, motor insurance also has a significant impact on the free movement of persons, goods and vehicles and, therefore, on the internal market and the Schengen area. I believe that this directive will create legal certainty and harmonise what should be covered by insurance. Motorists therefore no longer have to worry about diverging rules between Member States. Negative impacts on a wide range of stakeholders, including accident victims, insurers, guarantee funds and motor vehicle policyholders, resulting from legal divergence will be eliminated. I think we have all done a good job, and I thank you once again for it, because it will be of particular benefit to the citizens of the European Union.

Madam President, I would like to begin by saying that I am certainly not doing political agitation here before the elections that await us in the Czech Republic, because the KSČM, my party, has been raising this issue as the only political entity on the Czech political scene for years. Once again, we have lists of the world's rich and politicians who, through various machinations and so-called optimisations, bypass the payment of taxes or, for some reason, hide assets that they have earned so honestly. And it really annoys me, because we're kind of used to it. It just seems completely normal to us! But how much longer are we going to suffer for them? How long will we allow our citizens, who pay for world crises mostly caused by the greed of these billionaires, to be robbed while they buy islands or fly into space for fun! Let's stop talking about it and start doing something about it! And nicely here with you, on the territory of the European Union! Let's not strangle tax havens, let's add responsibilities to them, and let's protect our citizens against them toiling and billionaires earning.

Madam President, Commissioner, I strongly disagree with the establishment of HERA, either as a stand-alone agency or just as a unit within the Commission. I believe that this task should have been entrusted to ECDC and it seems to me that HERA is merely robbing the powers of ECDC. Under the proposal, it should provide an assessment of cross-border health threats. And I'm asking: Does the ECDC not provide these assessments? Isn't that the primary reason for its existence? So what exactly is the added value of HERA? Besides, where will the staff working in this new department come from? The number of experts in this field in Europe is not large. Is the Commission planning to rob staff from its own DG SANTE or ECDC or EMA? Another scandal is how the Commission approached cooperation with the European Parliament. The establishment of such an important body by means of a Council Regulation is very unfortunate, does not help to clarify the situation and does not indicate good inter-institutional relations. Unfortunately, this ill-considered approach will only force us to react differently to the HERA proposal by amending the mandate of the Cross-Border Health Threats Regulation. Colleagues, yes, many of our citizens follow the health system, but it is not possible to operate it as cabinet legislation.

Mr President, Commissioner, first of all, I would like to thank my colleague Kountoura for her well-conducted motion for a resolution on the crucial issue of road safety. Every year around 22 700 people still lose their lives on the roads of the European Union and around 120 000 are seriously injured. I am therefore positive that EU countries confirm their long-term strategic goal of achieving close to zero fatalities and zero serious injuries on EU roads by 2050. As part of this vision of zero casualties on the road, there is a debate about road infrastructure safety, modern technologies, brands, etc. However, I believe that Member States should also support those drivers who want to improve. Even through safe driving experience courses, events, car testing on special sliding surfaces, every driver can test their abilities or the quality of their vehicle on EU polygons. These are training bases, centers for drivers with high social added value, experience centers for drivers, which are already perceived by many subjects. I believe that Member States should support these activities, as the experience of these test sites can lead to the right decision when our lives are at the crossroads between life and death.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, when we are talking about natural disasters, I would also like to share with you one that my country, the Czech Republic, has experienced. At the end of June, a tornado struck South Moravia, leaving billions of crowns worth of damage and, worse, casualties. Of course, this could be discussed for a long time, but I would like to underline two things. The first is the need for a good meteorological forecast and an early warning system for citizens, which obviously did not work here. And the second is related to the great solidarity of the people. I would like to express my thanks to all those who helped South Moravia, and perhaps even a little more to volunteers and volunteer firefighters. Firefighters are those who do not cry every year that they need to buy new military equipment for billions, and yet they were there first and stayed the longest. Thanks to them for that.

Madam President, Commissioner, a year ago we adopted a resolution on the European Union's public health strategy after the pandemic, in which we all called for a stronger role for the EMA. I think we have managed to adopt a fairly balanced text on the committee, despite all the disputes, which will strengthen the Agency. Therefore, I would like to ask you not to vote against the compromises reached in the ENVI Committee. Unfortunately, I see one huge problem in the current developments surrounding the building of the Health Union. This is a lack of funding for the further development and strengthening of the EMA and ECDC health agencies. It was already clear from the Commission's initial proposal that more money would have to be sent to them, because the current funds would simply be far from sufficient. What was my shock when I found out that, on the contrary, cuts were planned for EMA and ECDC in the planned budget for next year. Yes, some might argue that they will receive some extra money from the EU4Health programme. It can strengthen the funding of these agencies, but at its core it is only project and time-limited funding. Moreover, the programme has far more important priorities that we have overlooked for decades. In addition, so far, it seems that the agencies' regular budget has been cut by exactly as much as they should have received extra. So we just moved the money from the right pocket to the left pocket and we'll expect something to change. So what do we want? I thought we should learn from the current pandemic and strengthen the structures we have. So far, however, it seems that we rather want to maintain the status quo. Colleagues, I very much hope that we will be able to resolve the issue of new funding by the autumn, because if not, then we can blow the whistle on the entire famous Health Union.