Speeches

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, it might be a little bit of a strange expression, but sometimes I feel that the President of the European Commission is the only man in the room. I mean, what we talk about is – and I am looking to the Council on Thursday – we need a deepening of the European market. We don't have to repair. We don't have to repeat what we had been formulating in the trenches. We do not have to go to these black-and-white things. I mean, looking to the Greens, deregulation – a taboo word? I mean, we want to build grids and we have to have simplification. Otherwise, we are not going to build grids. Looking to the Socialists, is competition shattering the social model? No, but the unions fear you, because the unions ask us for jobs and competitiveness and not for ideology. And looking to the Council, we had been always strong when we, in the 90s, had been delivering on our economy through the common market. But the common market is the free flow of goods, services and capital, and it works just for goods. It doesn't work for services and it doesn't work for capital. So in a way, all what we do – repair, budgets, deregulation – is all repairing. If we would agree – independently from the United States, Trump and so on – to deepening this market, that would be the biggest contribution to the European economy. I ask the Council not to be ideological, national or hesitant. We have to get our needs together. We have to deepen the market and not repair and not ask for obscure 'made in Europe', not to ask for more subsidies, not to fear deregulation. We have to go to the substance.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioners, I think the privilege of the EPP is that Siegfried Mureşan has been laying down the policies of a united EPP. We're not advocating our little things; we're looking for a balanced budget, indeed looking for the clarity of the budget. We're granting, and we do think, that more of the same might not be the future. We have to grant flexibility, but we will ask the Commission to resist – while having that flexibility – that a common debt fund is refurbishing the old dreams of top-down steering, the 'super-bazooka', the top-down industry policy. This is not the way to go – neither in industry policy nor on the other funds. What we need is flexibility, but we need also the courage of the Commission that innovation needs to be designed by stakeholders. We have to have that openness and not this kind of top-down centralised theory. 'Yes' to efficiency, but 'no' to this dream of centralised steering of the European economy.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioners, I think the privilege of the EPP is that Siegfried Mureşan has been laying down the policies of a united EPP. We're not advocating our little things; we're looking for a balanced budget, indeed looking for the clarity of the budget. We're granting, and we do think, that more of the same might not be the future. We have to grant flexibility, but we will ask the Commission to resist – while having that flexibility – that a common debt fund is refurbishing the old dreams of top-down steering, the 'super-bazooka', the top-down industry policy. This is not the way to go – neither in industry policy nor on the other funds. What we need is flexibility, but we need also the courage of the Commission that innovation needs to be designed by stakeholders. We have to have that openness and not this kind of top-down centralised theory. 'Yes' to efficiency, but 'no' to this dream of centralised steering of the European economy.

Madam President, Commissioners – and I use the gender neutral plural and very much welcome that we are talking to two Commissioners because the exercise we're going to undertake needs a collaborative effort from the Commission. I could also address DG ENER, where these days we are negotiating a low carbon hydrogen act, which will also be decisive for the chemical industry, and I hope it will help the ramp up for that. But let me briefly show you the broader picture. 23 February: BASF plans to close plants in Ludwigshafen. 23 February: Dyneon plans to close the whole plant in Gendorf. 23 August: Lanxess plans to fully close in Krefeld-Uerdingen. 24 July: BASF plans to close plants in Knapsack and Frankfurt. 24 October: Evonik plans to cut down plants in Hanau. 25 May: Bayer plans to close plants in Höchst. 21 July: Dow plans the complete shutting down of the Mitteldeutsches Chemiedreieck in Schkopau and Böhlen. And this is just Germany. Its dramatic and abstract figures don't help. We are in a process of dramatic deindustrialisation. That doesn't mean that we just talk about individual plans. These are a complete value change. These are the starting points, the trickle-down effect of a lot. I mean, France and French companies have been bravely investing in eastern Germany, but without basic chemical industry, this is not going to work, and we should understand that. That's not an excuse for not doing something for our climate ambition. That's not an excuse for this industry not needing to transform. But we should realise we're at the brink – or it might even be 12:05 – and that we are simply ruling out the industrial base of the chemical industry in Europe. And so, we highly appreciate what the two Commissioners – I would suppose it will be a more joint exercise in the future – have been announcing today. We welcome that. We think it's a coherent package. We think it's not easy for Commissioners to join in because there are environmental concerns and other issues. But, it is just a starting point. We have to keep a business case for the chemical industry in Europe right now, and this is massively questioned by the industry itself.

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I think Choose Europe for Science, the initiative announced by President von der Leyen, is an important signal for Europe and the world, but luckily it had been accompanied also by a press conference where the President had been announcing that there will be a stand‑alone research programme, which necessarily is the base for that ambition. I think we should also emphasise that this is not that we want to attract the most talented in the world, it is that we stand in also for the freedom of science. Much smaller programmes, like the programme for researchers at risk, are an expression for that stand-in. Yes, we want to be attractive for the world, but we also are the safe haven for researchers, women researchers in Afghanistan, researchers under pressure in other parts of the world – we are the safe haven for them. So it's both: our expression for excellence or ambition for excellence, but also our expression for standing in for the freedom of science. Basically, we all know that it's just going to work if we have a strong research programme. We can appeal to the world, but if we do not have a higher ambition in terms of research, it's not going to be attractive. What we need is, simply put, more money. The last programme had been designed for a budget of EUR 120 billion and we ended up with EUR 80 billion. So, research budgets are in constraints and that is in complete opposition to what our formulated ambition had been – that at least 3 % of the GDP of Europe should be allocated to research and innovation. So in a way, ambitions should follow also with the political courage to prioritise research and innovation in Europe. If I may conclude: now that the Commission and even the President have fully recognised the importance of science for the future of Europe, we also expect the Commission's proposal for FP10 to be a Commission which also chooses science for Europe.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner! Allow me to speak in German. Russia continues to finance its war machine through energy exports in the third year of the terrible war of aggression against Ukraine. Even though the Russian aGents of interest In this debate, too, we will try to argue differently. That is why it is important for Ukraine, and thus for the entire European Union, to drain this source of funding for Russia. I therefore also expressly welcome, on behalf of the EPP, the Commission's proposal to phase out Russian fossil energy in an orderly manner by 2028 at the latest. Point. However, as a long-standing member of this House, allow me to make a side note: Interestingly, the European Commission has always prevented us from terminating these imports by means other than sanctions, for example through trade defence instruments. Suddenly, this can also be done with the EU Parliament as the legitimate representative of EU voters – we, who have long been calling for the phasing out of Russian energy. And we know it has a price, and I say it as a German Member of Parliament. It has a price, as freedom always has a price. But one thing I would like to emphasize here: It will not be easy for all Member States to get rid of Russian imports within a very short time. While – and we will hear this again today – some countries here put forward certain reasons for political sympathy with Russia. It must be about this in the coming months, and you have also pointed out how to strike the best possible balance between the interests of individual Member States and the EU as a whole, without strengthening Russia and its President Putin in the war against Ukraine.

Perhaps an objectification after the apologists of doom will help. Mr President, Commissioner! We must... the proposals now on the table from the Commission are, I believe, an enrichment of CBAM, which is necessary, which is also good, and the de minimis rule will help many. But we still have to think a bit about the design of CBAM. So, of course, there is the question of what defines the extent to which CBAM offers protection for our industries in transformation? So we have to KPIs They also verify it a little bit. How do we measure and how do we measure the effect of CBAM? That, I think, is also a terminology that we need to think about. We have to think about it, that's the open question – of course we're looking at the Commission, I know you're working on it: We need to develop an export strategy. How do we deal with export products? That's how it is missing link throughout the whole story. And, of course, we have to ask ourselves at some point, and that, in my opinion, will also be a CBAM 2: How do we deal with downstream sectors, i.e. CBAM substances that are processed? So steel is steel, but how do we deal with white goods, with washing machines, etc. I believe that if we KPIs It is also plausible to have an automatism that is simply coupled to the functionality of the instrument. If the instrument works, let's take the allowances out. But we must also have a mechanism, so to speak, which proves that if we allowances In other words, the functionality of the instrument. And we could do that over KPIs do. And in this respect, we offer you cooperation and see this as the first important and good step in the right direction.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the next MFF must be a game changer for European industrial competitiveness. This begins with the understanding that competitiveness is the ability to compete in markets based on a combination of price and quality, so not picking winners and losers by state-driven industrial policy. To compete on price, Europe must level the global playing field where our industries face higher costs, such as from stricter environmental standards, or compete against state-subsidised rivals. However, even with a more level playing field, success requires higher productivity than elsewhere to further reduce costs. And Europe's only viable path to productivity gains and reducing costs is innovation and deepening the internal market. Innovation also drives quality improvement, which is the second leg of competitiveness. Therefore, for the next MFF, the priorities of ITRE are a standalone 10th framework programme for innovation with at least EUR 200 billion, a competitiveness fund to offset structural cost disadvantages, and thirdly, an internal market facility to deepen the internal market, building on the Connecting Europe Facility and the Single Market Programme.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, let's end the discussion a little bit on a positive tone. I think there is some air of realism, and the energy-intensive industries are the core and the backbone of the European industries. On the other hand, decarbonisation is a generational task and it is also leading to new investments and it's also based on new technologies, and Europe needs that. On the other hand, we have to tackle the conflict of ambitions. Not all sustainability goals will be reached and that will be a painful discussion. So let's get much more practical from my point of view: we need more and faster permitting. We need affordable energy through market-based and smarter use of the mechanisms and in terms of infrastructure investments. We need more investments in decarbonisation. We have to care about the capital market in the Union. We have to care about additional proposals which we have been avoiding so far. We need CO2 storage. We need a realistic system to make it market based. We need to end the ideological discussion about hydrogen. We need practically all the hydrogen we can get. And I think the positive note that with the steel pact we got a realistic proposal on green hydrogen on the table will help the industries. So let's go back to business. Let's go back to reality. Let's understand that this is the core of our industry, and not get under another impression. America is not the best example for these industries.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen. I believe that in difficult times today the Steel Act A good sign. However, when I see our friends from the AfD, whose populist friends in America are leading the world into a protectionist war, then you see what the industrial policy promises of the right mean internationally. When populists rule America, we plunge the world into a world trade war. I wonder what their politics looked like in reality. I don't want to imagine them. Last week, the Commission announced further measures. The Steel Safeguard will be further strengthened for the period up to the summer of 2026. The Commission’s commitment – and now it is becoming practical – to present low-carbon hydrogen rules in a practical and technology-neutral way is also indispensable as a signal for the steel industry and the metals location in Europe. I'm also pushing towards Mr. Eickhout. We hope that the support of all parties in Parliament will ensure that we are realistic. Delegated Acts Get it. The long-promised export solution for CBAM must be presented quickly and cast into law. The lead markets for green steel, which have been announced since 2020, must no longer remain political buzzwords. Here, too, we need concrete proposals, but we will also present them ourselves. Finally, we also need to work on the competitiveness of metalworking sectors. It does not help if steel jobs are maintained at the expense of the manufacturing industry. But that means a new realism. I think that's the starting point today.

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen! After 100 days of the new Commission, it is clear: The Commission is delivering – under the heading of competitiveness – what the Commissioner is addressing today is what we have been cautiously addressing here for five years: business case for the Green Deal?" 14 000 pages of regulation, 900 delegated acts still ahead of us. And now we are discussing: ‘What is the business case for the European economy?” And we will also have to deal with difficult trade-offs across parties in unpleasant discussions – and without those who make themselves comfortable in the ideological trenches. So how do we deal with the trilemma of competitiveness, climate protection, environment, sustainability? What do we address? The interests of European citizens, our economic foundations? We will have to get out of the ideological trenches. We need to discuss standards. We must now translate these 14 000 pages into 900 delegated acts in such a way that we do not stifle the European economy, but do not lose sight of the generational goal of climate change. We will have to give up rhetorical positions, we will have to move towards each other, otherwise the competitiveness of the European economy and the lack of competitiveness of the European economy will achieve all the objectives that we have differently for citizens, for the environment, for climate protection, for the economy, for small and medium-sized enterprises – we will not achieve them all together, because the economic performance of the European economy is the basis for the sovereignty of Europe, for our civil societies, for the question of our geopolitical role and also the question of our security. That is why I call on the Commissioner to implement it now. There is no one fits all. We need sectoral talks. We do not have to talk about the European economy, but about the economy – this is permanent. We need to find other forms of regulation, of implementation, as we have done so far. If the Clean industrial deal is a first step in this direction, it is a right step – but it is also only a first step.

Madam President, this is not the usual comment of a rapporteur highlighting his sunny personality. This is a decisive vote of this Parliament. This is about whether we are going to have a framework programme, an independent research framework programme, in the future or not. Whether it's squeezed into an absurd idea of an all-in-all competitiveness programme, which is squeezing together 35 years of independent research policies. The committee had been clearly committing to that, and that's the second shot for the Commission today, because the Warsaw Declaration – the unanimous declaration of all research ministers in Warsaw – had been saying no to that endeavour. We need an independent program. It has a mid-term, a long-term perspective. It must be open, it must be blue sky. It's not an instrument to have a seamless possibility to shift money from A to B. So vote for that and we will have a vivid discussion with the Commission on that.

Mr President! Ladies and Gentlemen! With the compass for a competitive EU, I believe we have, for the first time, an instrument that gives us a direction to navigate through the storm we are in. The poster boy of the right plunges the world into a new protectionism. With massive subsidies, China is leading to distortions of competition in global markets that threaten our economy. We have a dilemma that we have a Green Deal have begun, whose climate protection goals and sustainability goals are correct, but for which we are currently business case Missing. I believe that the announcements of the compass on simplification and cutting red tape are all promises that we must deliver on to the European economy. They also have a psychological aspect because our societies feel that they are over-descriptively regulated and that this is a burden beyond the pecuniary burden for entrepreneurs. I believe we must also ensure that this course is followed in the implementation of existing legislation. If we look vertically, what is in a Battery Delegated Act? What is in Low Carbon Delegated Act? Then we see that these are non-economic, ideological implementing provisions. We need to be careful that it really leads us in the direction of our common goals. When it comes to competitiveness, we urgently need to answer the question: Are we talking about competitiveness or are we talking about sovereignty? We have to ask ourselves: We must capacities hold up? That's what we did with the Chips Act We did that with him. Raw Materials Act made. But we also have to ask ourselves: What is really competitiveness? Competitiveness is literally the competitiveness of industries, that is productivity. We have also taken the first steps in this direction. Indeed, we have now finally started to create framework conditions in the internal market, to reduce transaction costs, to remove barriers to market access – what we are good at: market. But I want to give a warning. This dream of a super instrument, a super compact fund, this centrally managed super-tool to structure European industry is something that we as the EPP will not support.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner! After all, I admire the intellectual frugality that is needed, so to speak, to read to us. I don’t think we have heard the gunshot – and not all of them. Yes, we are talking about the erosion of the industrial base of one of the key industries in Europe, and we are talking about the fact that we are not meeting the 55% targets, so to speak – and that should make us concerned together. We don't have any at the moment, so to speak. Business case for the steel industry in the market, which is constantly flooded with unfair subsidy practices, which is steadily losing competitiveness in global competition due to ever-increasing costs and which is not supported in the implementation of the Green Deal. Yes, IPCEI approvals sometimes take two years. I think we are not even so different in our views – we have to do something about it. And the Steel action plan etc. – I mean, dear God! We need to take immediate action now. We need to take a close look at the tariff quota for imported steel; it needs to be reduced, and we need to think about how we canafeguard clauses apply. More country-specific import quotas are needed to cope with global import pressure. We need an anti-dumping and anti-subsidy process that is being vigorously pursued, so to speak. These are also not easy solutions within the WTO. It is also not only done with immediate measures. In the next few months and years, we will finally have a Business case for the European steel industry. This means that we have to take care of access to sufficient and cheap energy, for example through the expansion of the electricity grid, but also, for example, through the question ‘What constitutes, so to speak, cheap energy in the future?’. We have to deal with the question of how to get a scaled hydrogen ramp-up faster. We have to end this color discussion, because the goal is a common one. But we simply do not have a single steel company in Europe that has a contract It has hydrogen. We need green lead markets – we need to think about, so to speak, how we can create green lead markets. And in this respect, this is not a marginal task, but a task that we tackle together, but which cannot be solved with these HContent papers.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen. I come from a region in Germany that has been the major energy and lignite region in Europe for 150 years. Already the announcement of this has led to the fact that this proud lignite region has decided to become the first net-zero region in Europe, that is, the people who are hardest hit, so to speak, in their jobs, in the economic development of the region, who have served for 150 years in the energy supply. Lignite was not bad, but we must now recognize that climate change makes it necessary for us to save CO2, that lignite is no longer a future energy source. These people are now saying: We want to become a net-zero region, we want to establish new technologies, we want to benefit from them, but we also want to support them. But we also want to be able to do it faster. We want to have a reasonable framework. We are, so to speak, the ones exemplifying change. We heard that today. We heard today: On the right side is the business of fear. Climate change is ignored. They work with fear. We heard on the left: It's all bad, we ignore social rights – it operates with fear. I look at our green colleagues, I'm not sure. I'm just not sure. Today we have a first important step that makes the Green Deal realistic, namely that we have an ecological transition, but that this is also the economic future for industry in Europe. Today, the Greens are reluctant to support it. I find this extremely problematic. And when I hear about butterflies and nuclear power, I don't know if they don't side with those who operate with fear. The future is made of courage. Today we decided to support new technologies. We decided to make it faster, more effective. We have said sensibly that we need to consider value chains. We want to make the Green Deal possible, realistic, an opportunity for the people – in my region, in many other regions in Europe. This is a sign of courage today. It is a sign of the future. It's a rejection of those who run their business through fear.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, Today marks a crucial moment when, for the first time, we are finally making a real effort to strengthen the competitiveness of European industry. The Green Deal will not work without competitiveness. On Tuesday, we discussed the Union’s post-2024 strategic agenda, with competitiveness at the heart of the discussion. However, it says a lot about the last five years that these discussions only take place during the last plenary session of this parliamentary term. Without a competitive industry, the Green Deal cannot succeed. But it is only now that we have taken the regulatory complexity in Europe to dizzying heights that we are starting to talk about how we want to maintain our competitiveness. Industry is tuning with its feet, our productivity is dropping, our industrial production is dropping, the key technologies we rely on are going to the United States. Better late than never. Supported by the Critical Raw Materials Act and STEP, the Net-Zero Industry Act became the legislative aircraft carrier on which the Commission landed and brought together pretty much everything to strengthen our industrial competitiveness. Under time pressure, with considerable internal political disagreements, the Commission published its proposal for a net-zero industry regulation, which set the right direction but required a lot of work. We have done this work. We have improved realism. We didn't put forward a nice little list of technologies, but we finally got the supply chain brought in. It will not produce solar panels in Germany, it will not produce solar panels in Europe, if we no longer distill polysilicates. It's about supply chain, it's about real economic understanding of what benefits us for these technologies. We have focused on creating a practical framework that enables industry to effectively deliver the essential technologies for our transformation and transition to a low-carbon economy. Important reforms to improve competitiveness are included, especially in addressing the lengthy permitting procedures. We have streamlined these processes by limiting the time and scope of information requirements in the preparation phases, in the permit applications. We did it with them. Net-Zero Valleys To create an exemplary model for how to set up faster production, how to really bring these technologies into the markets faster. In addition, the Net-Zero Industry Act promotes smart procurement reform by allowing public authorities to opt for superior, more sustainable, but at the moment even more expensive European products without violating EU public procurement law. Significantly, the Net-Zero Industry Act recognises the role of carbon capture and storage (CCS) in achieving a climate-neutral future by setting ambitious targets and covering the entire CCS value chain. Although today's adoption of the Net-Zero Industry Act represents a significant step forward, our work is not over. It's about implementation, it's about competitiveness. Now I look at the Greens. We have had a discussion on whether the EPP is leaving the Green Deal. We are at a crossroads, and again, whenever it comes to implementation, when it comes to practicality for the Green Deal, the Greens are gone. When it comes to the gas package, if we create an infrastructure for hydrogen, the Greens are gone. If we want to create the competitiveness of the industry of this new clean technology, the Greens are suddenly no longer there. Because when it comes to deciding between ideology or practical implementation, they prefer ideology. In this respect, the question is: You do not agree today, do you withdraw from the Green Deal? Are you interested that we implement it, that our industry remains competitive, that jobs remain in Europe, that it does not go to America and China? Or are you concerned with ideological questions, the question, so to speak, whether we also have to endure burdens, that we have to endure trade-offs, that we cannot achieve all sustainability if we have these ambitious climate protection goals at the same time? We are not leaving the Green Deal, we are getting in, we want to implement it in the next parliamentary term. You always get out when it comes to practicality! Rules, regulations, costs for others – gladly. Contribute to burdens, implementation, competitive production? No.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen! What is Competitiveness? Competitiveness is the expression and also the need in Europe to ensure freedom, security, social stability, an environment that we want to hand over to a next generation in the European democracies. Competitiveness is not the contrast between ecology, social issues and economic interests, but the basis of our societies. If we want to remain politically independent, if we want to take our fate into our own hands, if we want to ensure competition in our societies in some way, in terms of goals such as the environment, social compatibility, but also jobs, then we need competitiveness. In this respect, it makes no sense to set up pairs of opposites now. We are in a transformative situation in our economies. It is necessary. The old carbon economy will not be the economy of the future. But we must ensure that we achieve our common goals not through overregulation, but through economic forces, through the European single market, through freedom of economic action. In this respect, it makes no sense to build pairs of opposites here. This will only benefit the extreme right and the extreme left.

Mr President, Madam Commissioner, colleagues, there are two things we need to make clear, very clear today. First, Parliament is a strong supporter of the participation of New Zealand in the Union’s programmes. We are strong supporters of other countries like the Faroe Islands, Canada and South Korea participating in our programmes. The resolution we will adopt today makes it very clear we have no problem with those countries and their participation in the Union’s programmes. However, and this is the second point, Parliament will not accept that its democratic prerogatives are disregarded. The Treaties are clear: only Parliament’s consent can make the Union plausibly accept to set up a committee under the international agreement with the power to amend certain parts of the international agreement. I repeat: only if Parliament gives consent. The Court of Justice also made clear that Parliament’s consent must be meaningful. The Council and the Commission have chosen to ignore this constitutional reality. They have insisted on setting up association agreements for the Union programmes with a completely new category of third countries, which cut the parliaments out completely. They have asked the Parliament to sign a chèque en blanc. Therefore, the Parliament cannot give meaningful consent to these agreements, and we have communicated this clearly to other institutions for almost two years. It’s an insult of the services, and I addressed specifically the Secretary-General that she is refusing to take up interinstitutional dialogue, although Parliament’s President had asked for that a year ago. So this resolution is our last attempt to change the course of the Council and the Commission. The only step left us after this is to start denying consent, which will kill these agreements. We do not want to do this: researchers involved in Horizon should not become the victim of this interinstitutional fight, but we protect our democratic prerogatives. We will do that, whatever it takes. So I would have to read you the following question, also in the name of my co-rapporteur, Mr Lacapelle. As regards international agreements dedicated to the participation of third countries in the Union programmes, the Commission is asked the following: given the broad powers allocated to the Joint Committee established under the draft agreement between the EU and New Zealand – including its ability to adopt and amend the protocols on associations to Union programmes without further parliamentary involvement – how does the Commission intend to ensure that Parliament retains oversight and power of consent as regards future associations to the Union programmes? Secondly, can the Commission commit to increase transparency of the implementation of the agreements via regular and detailed reporting in order to enable Parliament to exercise its oversight rights? Will the Commission structure future agreements in a way that guarantees the respect of Parliament’s prerogatives concerning agreements on any association to a Union programme? Will the Commission launch negotiations on an interinstitutional agreement that completely abides by both the letter and the spirit of the Treaties in full respect of the principles of parliamentary scrutiny in the implementation of the association agreements, including as regards the adoption and amendment of protocols? And, I may add, this might be today a conversation of connoisseurs, and we might not have a lot of participation because it’s very specific. Believe me, there will be a lot of presence if Parliament is going to deny consent to these agreements.

– Mr President, ladies and gentlemen! I know how much these brief speeches get on everyone's nerves before reports, but we have had a discussion on the rule of law this morning. And this proposal is Parliament's first proposal to the Commission to establish, in concrete terms, the legislative framework to protect the freedom of science in Europe. We have had to learn, and perhaps we did not think that in the 21st century in Europe, for the first time, the freedom of science, the freedom of universities, has come under pressure from European governments. We have also learned that the only decision of the European Court of Justice does not refer to the European treaties, but to the freedom of establishment under the WTO. Otherwise, the ruling of the European Court of Justice on the case of the university in Hungary would not have come about. This is the first time that this Parliament has published a joint report on the state of freedom of science in Europe this year, because it is not at its best on the state of freedom of science in Europe. STOA, the scientific community in Europe, has had to publish a report on the state of freedom of science in Europe for the first time together – and this House, not the Commission, not the Council. This report is bipartisan and not only calls on the Commission, but also makes a concrete proposal on how we are changing the legal basis to protect the freedom of science in Europe. I ask you to agree broadly, then we have the basis to call on the Commission to do so.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I think that’s good news for the climate; it’s good news for the European economy; and it’s a clear answer to the Americans, to the Inflation Reduction Act. So, I thank for the constructive majority in the Parliament, and let’s now dance with the Council. So, in line with Rule 59 of the Rules of Procedure, I would like to ask for the matter to be referred back to the committee for interinstitutional negotiations, according to the Rules 60 and 74 of the Rules of Procedure.

Madam President, A German sociologist once described politics as the islands of attachment. And what we heard today was in part encouraging, but in part also relatively questionable. Mr Carême has done everything possible to deepen the perhaps false prejudice that greens simply do not understand anything about the economy and value chains. Mr. Botenga, whom I really appreciate intellectually, is fighting capitalism. Our colleagues say what is expected, so to speak, but it is a complete lie that we want to set up industry in Natura 2000 areas – I would like to make that clear again here. Mr Buchheit from the AfD continues to foment fears, is basically against everything and wants to emigrate to Great Britain. So it was all really needed today. What is it really about? Firstly: I believe that the majority of this Parliament wants to send an optimistic signal tomorrow that we believe in the competitiveness of a decarbonised European industry. Secondly: We believe in innovation. We believe in the people of Europe. We believe in employees, in engineers, in entrepreneurs who go in this direction. Thirdly: We simply need to support this transformation process of our economy more decisively. I think what we're doing is taking the first steps. Of course, we cannot solve everything with a net-zero industry regulation. Sectoral discussions with industry are taking place in parallel, starting with the Commission. transition pathways. We have now increased funding for research and innovation in the budgetary negotiations as Parliament, although the Council may be planning to reduce it again. I think we should just send an optimistic signal on the eve of such a decision that we will make tomorrow, that we believe that we can do it, that we don't have to be afraid of Americans, Chinese and the rest of the world, that we don't get into dystopias, but that we believe in our own performance, in innovation, in the innovation of our entrepreneurs, and that we don't always build opposite pairs of ideological between industry and decarbonization. But: It is a first, important step for the competitiveness of European industry, for the innovation we need to create decarbonisation and our goals, and for addressing the next generation as well, that we now take the necessary, practical steps to not only formulate goals but also achieve them.

Madam President, Commissioner! We were just talking about what we wanted. At this point on the agenda, we are talking about how we actually do it. The Commission presented the Green Deal at the beginning of the legislative term – a combination of a great climate ambition, which I think we broadly share, but also the question of how to combine the European economy and the jobs associated with it, but also the social acceptance associated with it. And the Green Deal should be a concept that also combines this with economic viability, the future viability of the European economy. And it is not a balance between economy and ecology, but it will give us the industry, the technology, the innovation actually the means to implement our ambitions. The Net-Zero Industry Regulation is the Commission's first response to this issue after three years. It is a response to a challenge we are getting from the United States. Actually, good news: The Americans are walking with us on the path to climate protection. But they go for it with an economic strategy that is simple, that is robust, that accepts trade-offs and, of course, that challenges the economic model in Europe. What we are now presenting as Parliament, we have fought for months together, and it goes far beyond the Commission's ambitions: We look at the entire value chain. We look at the entire supply chain. We believe that we will find a model for Europe with which the green transformation can also lead Europe economically into the future. But that means we have to act radically. We need to deregulate. This is not a conflict with social or environmental obligations. But we also have to accept and resolve trade-offs. We need to approve faster. We have to do it Allowing net-zero technologies to find an attractive environment in Europe. Nor do we have to do appealing things in general, but rather we, this Parliament, propose in very practical terms that: Net-Zero Industry Valleys to create in Europe, to approve faster, to set financial framework conditions, to encourage innovation, to deregulate, to remove obstacles – so that we are the continent that deals most economically, most innovatively with the challenge of climate change, but which also leads Europe's economy, jobs, but also our societies into the future. I believe that Parliament's draft is courageous. It took long discussions, but it basically shows the path of the next legislature. It's about implementation, it's no longer about whether, it's about how. It's about encouraging innovation, trusting our own skills, not just trying to slow down, but encouraging. In this respect, I am very optimistic that, with the proposal we are putting to the vote here tomorrow, we are now entering into rapid negotiations with the Council. I believe it is a look into the future, it is Europe's answer not only to the Inflation Reduction ActIt is Europe's answer to the fact that we have confidence in our own capabilities, in our economy, that we connect the future of our economy with net-zero technologies. And I think it's a courageous step. It is an ambitious step, but we can also take it quickly together, otherwise the decarbonisation of the European economy will only be due to deindustrialisation. We want to connect the decarbonisation of the European economy with innovation, with the economy, with people, with jobs and with the future.

Mr President, dear Commissioner Ivanova, welcome to the plenary: it is your debut, but it is a highly and hotly debated topic we talk about today. Yesterday we had a debate on the 2024 budget, where the Council shamelessly cuts innovation. It is almost an annual ritual. I pointed it out there, and many other colleagues, and I will repeat it now: without innovation, we fail on our climate, on our digital objective, but also on the general objective of changing our societies using technologies, using innovation as a comparative advantage for the European economy. Without innovation, we cannot build a modern society. That is why it was so essential that with this new European innovation agenda we are getting back to taking innovation policy really seriously. I have to admit that this is late in the term, and we had been slightly confused that DG RTD rightly have been presenting an innovation agenda, but it seems to have become a little bit fashionable. I mean, we have a slightly bewildered DG BUDG, who never was suspected to have any idea about innovation, who brought forward an innovation platform, a financial instrument using headlines actually not existing for innovation before. Deep digital was not just a flaw, but it illustrated that it seems to be now a little bit fashionable to work on that. Commissioner Breton had been bringing forward 10 new innovative strategies. We have a lot of programmes, we have a lot of ambitions, but you also called for – and we did call for – an innovation agenda. I think it had been high time that DG RDT had brought forward a straight, understandable agenda: what we should do together with the Member States to bring innovation at the forefront. We need to foster the development of new knowledge and technology. We need to foster the development of new ideas for products and services. We need to foster our ability to turn technologies and ideas into market-ready products and services. We need to make it easier for our industry and start-ups to scale up innovations once they are brought to the market. To achieve all this, we need the Member States to buy in. The new European innovation agenda with its flagships is doing exactly that. Just like we have been doing for the European Research Area, we now have a policy agenda for innovation in Europe we can discuss. But also we embrace the idea that this is not an isolated ambition of the Commission and the Parliament: it is a European agenda we have to develop and we have to align behind. So now it is about deliveries. That is why I deeply believe that this specific policy agenda needs to be combined with a more general approach to making the internal market more friendly towards innovation. This means lowering the regulatory burden and more rigidly implementing the innovation principle. This means further rolling out regulatory sandboxes, this means developing a substantial policy agenda on technology infrastructures. However, most of this means investing in science, research and innovation, and we are still not investing the 3 % of GDP which had been announced almost 20 years ago by the Council. In 2021, we got stuck with 2.27 %, while the US stands at 3.46 %, and South Korea even at almost 5 %. We are also not investing enough in the European framework programmes: just for the first two years, Horizon would have needed an additional EUR 34 billion to fund all excellent proposals. This is only for the calls that are actually put out, because we also know that we are currently not investing enough in early research. If we want to fund enough early research, applied research and innovation to ensure long-term ability to innovate, we would need at least EUR 200 billion for the next framework programme. That needs to be part of our long-term European innovation agenda.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, on March 23, the European Council adopted the following text: ‘The European Union is building a robust, future-proof economy that secures long-term prosperity. This requires an integrated approach across all policy areas to increase productivity and growth throughout the whole economic base of our continent.’ And ladies and gentlemen, that is all based on competitiveness, productivity, growth and innovation. And we are going to ruin our future. I mean these lofty words from the Council, this is unbelievable. The cuts are either ritual – then it’s shameful – or they are meant. And then the Council lost their mind. The Council cut EUR 20 million from the European Research Council that is producing the Nobel Prize winners you show yourself in public. You cut EUR 35 million from the health crisis, after the COVID crisis, which brought our collective public life to a collapse. You cut EUR 10 million from security research after the disturbing events yesterday evening in Brussels. I mean, this is mad, nothing else! And you have to restore a solid budget for innovation. Otherwise we are going to fail. We are going to fail on climate. We are going to fail on digital. You are going to fail on modern societies. Not just to restore that. Get to terms, we want our budget back.

Madam President, I believe the reassuring news for European citizens is that Parliament's proposal is much better than today's discussion. A sociologist once described political discussions as insistence on the islands of attachment. I think we should simply recapitulate what the common position of the majority of this House is. And I think we share that with the Commission. We are talking about strategic technologies – they will be the key to the success of the disruptive transformation currently underway in Europe, in our economy, in our societies. And we have to finance it. Basically, STEP is a contribution – and I think we have made it better – that fits into a whole range of measures: the Net-Zero Industry Act, the Digital Decade, the Critical Raw Materials Actwhere we address these issues individually – sovereignty issues, technology investment, deregulation, investment simplification. And by no means is this proposal a gift to industry, so to speak, but it is, in fact, realistically this: It is a platform with a limited financial budget, but it uses the Structural Funds to promote strategic innovation. We have to do it – with the Member States, with the Länder, with the municipalities, with the public authorities. He is accessing a research programme – we need investment in research, whether in industry or in the public sector. However, it also deals – we have made this possible – with strategic issues such as: Critical Raw Materials Act and investment in Europe's strategic sovereignty. In this respect, the STEP is just a first step, and we should not downplay it, but it is basically in the small what we need in the large. We need to prioritise – we will not have to finance everything with new money, but we need to invest more. And we have to prioritize the existing funds because they are realistically available and because we have priorities. And one of those big priorities to make transformation possible, to change our societies, to be economically successful, are strategic technologies. This is what unites us, this recognition, and so we should now start the discussion with the Council – it will not be able to stand out by prioritising particular interests. Either we do it together, or we fail together as Europeans.