The drafting of Russian reservists, sham referendums in occupied parts of Ukraine and Putin’s nuclear threats are the focus of a key debate in the European Parliament. MEPs call on the EU and its member states to respond strongly to Russia’s escalation of the war and its preparations to annex Ukrainian territories. Opening statements by Council and Commission. Opening statements by Josep BORRELL FONTELLES, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission in charge of a stronger Europe in the World and by Ursula von der LEYEN, President of the European Commission. This transcription is a resulr of an automatic process. Please check against delivery.

EU - Ukraine (T)

statement

debate

plenary session

EU - Russia (T)

troubles in Ukraine (T)

BORRELL FONTELLES, Josep (PSE, ES, EC)

VON DER LEYEN, Ursula (DE, EC)

solidarity with Ukraine (T)

Russia’s escalation of its war of aggression against Ukraine: opening statements by Josep BORRELL FONTELLES, HR/VP of the European Commission and Ursula von der LEYEN, President of the European Commission

SOUNDBITE (English), Roberta METSOLA, EP President, Good morning. Dear colleagues, today's key debate is on Russia's escalation of its war of aggression against Ukraine. On the 30th of September, after Russia staged a series of sham referenda it illegally annexed to the occupied territories of Ukraine in what is a blatant violation of Ukraine's sovereignty, territorial integrity and international law.

SOUNDBITE (English), Roberta METSOLA, EP President, So on behalf of the European Parliament, let me reiterate that Donetsk, Kerson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia, just like Crimea, are and will remain part of independent and sovereign Ukraine. And no sham referenda can ever change this. So it is my pleasure to now give the floor. Behalf of the Council to Josep Borrell just opened the debate after I will give the floor to the President of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.

SOUNDBITE (Spanish), Josep BORRELL FONTELLES, HR/VP of the European Commission, Presidents, honourable members. I'm speaking in this plenary in representation of the Council. Of the European Union. In order to explain to you that since together with the Commission, we set out a new set of general and personal sanctions, cooperation and ambassadors have been working hard on this.

SOUNDBITE (Spanish), Josep BORRELL FONTELLES, HR/VP of the European Commission, Last night they were working the meetings continuing this morning. And I trust that before the end of this plenary sitting, we will reach an agreement within the Council and the adoption of the joint proposal put forward by the Commission. And I have no doubt that the president will give you the details. I'd like to thank the president of the commission and my colleagues for the efforts and the leadership they've shown. And continuing to come forward with proposals and debating proposals for sectoral sanctions together with the targeted personal sanctions.

SOUNDBITE (Spanish), Josep BORRELL FONTELLES, HR/VP of the European Commission, This should further constrain Russia's export capacity. And the relations its industry continue to carry out, particularly the technological sector. In August of last year, we were importing 12 billion cubic litres only for this year, and we've cut our imports to a third of what they were. Over the last 2 to 6 weeks, we've reduced imports by 54 billion cubic metres. That's going to allow us to reduce our energy dependency on Russia, which severely constrained our foreign policy towards Russia.

SOUNDBITE (Spanish), Josep BORRELL FONTELLES, HR/VP of the European Commission, And as a result of that, an impact on our foreign policy, including Ukraine. We needed a foreign policy towards Ukraine. It had been. Subject to our policy with Russia. And that, in turn had been subject to our energy dependency. But now we have a clear policy towards Ukraine formed by our will to ensure that Ukraine go on to join the European Union.

SOUNDBITE (Spanish), Josep BORRELL FONTELLES, HR/VP of the European Commission, There's a clear goal behind this policy. This will become possible because we will no longer be so dependent on Russia. There's good news on the battlefield for Ukraine in the war. Ukraine is going back onto the offensive. The war has entered a new phase. It's undoubtedly a dangerous phase because we're in a terrible scenario now. We mustn't cut our eyes to this.

SOUNDBITE (Spanish), Josep BORRELL FONTELLES, HR/VP of the European Commission, There's a scenario of a conventional war involving a nuclear power, which is currently retreating from the conventional theatre but threatening to deploy nuclear weapons. This scenario is undoubtedly a source of concern. And we have to show that our support for Ukraine is not weakening. Ukraine is making progress on three fronts in the Donbass, having retaken Liman and the south of Zaporizhzhia of the operation advancing towards Mariupol, and lastly in Kherson.

SOUNDBITE (Spanish), Josep BORRELL FONTELLES, HR/VP of the European Commission, Russia still has numerical superiority and it still has superior firepower. And that's why Ukrainian forces. Aren't using extremely agile tactics. They're using very powerful intelligence surrounding concentration and power, creating pockets which are then destroyed as the Russian army itself withdraws. This allows the Ukrainian forces to keep their losses lower than they would have been and score successes that no one would earlier have forecast.

SOUNDBITE (Spanish), Josep BORRELL FONTELLES, HR/VP of the European Commission, The situation for us is extremely venomous. Russian soldiers, for one thing, don't actually know the purpose of this war. The 300,000 men who are going to be taken from their homes and sent to the front will understand it even less. So you can win a war on the battlefield. But first and foremost, you have to win it on the battlefield of ideas, because behind the war, as such, there's war and it's a struggle for supremacy of values.

SOUNDBITE (Spanish), Josep BORRELL FONTELLES, HR/VP of the European Commission, Russia is fighting hard around the world to make the case that the the consequences of this war are actually the result of our sanctions against Russia. We have to fight that battle in talks with our colleagues all around the world. We must continue to isolate to Russia. A very important international body, the ICAO, who I met recently. And we need to keep up this effort consistently because there are a lot of strong feelings around the world regarding the causes of this war and above all, its consequences.

SOUNDBITE (Spanish), Josep BORRELL FONTELLES, HR/VP of the European Commission, For many countries, the consequences of the war are undoubtedly bad ones. Increasing energy and food costs. We have to make a strong commitment to the rest of the world to provide them with assistance to help them overcome the impact of this war. We have to make huge diplomatic efforts to explain the case so that the world will understand why it is that this war came out and how it may end. And it cannot end because the world, the Western world becomes exhausted.

SOUNDBITE (Spanish), Josep BORRELL FONTELLES, HR/VP of the European Commission, That's what Putin is hoping will happen. He thinks that democracy is so weak that systems of public opinion, he thinks to put up with it a Cold War. He's waiting for the general winter to come along, which has always helped Russia win previous conflicts. He's hoping that the cold, the the cut in gas supplies, high energy prices, and low temperatures will undermine our will to continue our support to Ukraine.

SOUNDBITE (Spanish), Josep BORRELL FONTELLES, HR/VP of the European Commission, And this is the place where I have to ask Europeans to understand what's going on. Our support for Ukraine isn't just a question of generosity. Our support for Ukraine has to remain total because Ukraine's fate is intimately bound up with our own. What happens there it entails our future too.

SOUNDBITE (Spanish), Josep BORRELL FONTELLES, HR/VP of the European Commission, Honourable members, decisions there determine our future, too. And that's why it's so important to ensure that, just as others have done in Europe, for going on with previous imperial ambitions russia also needs to give up its imperial ambitions. We need to work in a way to ensure that there's peace. And that means that Ukraine must recover its territorial integrity and its full sovereignty.

SOUNDBITE (Spanish), Josep BORRELL FONTELLES, HR/VP of the European Commission, Russia must shoulder its political and moral responsibilities in the war. Must pay for the reconstruction and those responsible for crimes against humanity committed there must be brought to account. That must be our goal. And so we have our sanctions and we're providing military assistance and we're taking diplomatic action on those three fronts. We must continue to redouble our efforts unflinchingly.

SOUNDBITE (Spanish), Josep BORRELL FONTELLES, HR/VP of the European Commission, This is not the time for doubt. European society must be able to keep up this struggle. Supporting Ukraine, using the procedures we have available to us. The president of the Commission today will be presenting the details of the sanctions package that the Council will be adopting. But above and beyond specific sanctions.

SOUNDBITE (Spanish), Josep BORRELL FONTELLES, HR/VP of the European Commission, The really important thing is for Europeans to grasp that if there's a price to be paid, that price is worth it. Because if we don't pay this price, we will end up paying a much higher price later. This is a battle for freedom for Ukrainians, but also for our freedom. And the effort we have to make will be written into history books as a point in history where a united Europe proved able to resist the aggression. Of a radically different political organisation from our own. Thank you.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the European Commission, Honourable Members, It is just four weeks ago that we met here in the hemicycle for the State of the Union. But in those four weeks, the Kremlin has escalated its aggression to a new level. Putin has launched Russia's first mobilisation since World War Two, treating hundreds of thousands of young Russians as cannon fodder.

SOUNDBITE (Spanish), Josep BORRELL FONTELLES, HR/VP of the European Commission, He used a sham referendum in an illegal attempt to change international borders by force. And since many months, he is using energy as a weapon. Now, of course, we feel that the Russian war caused us economic and social hardship and it places a heavy burden on our citizens and on the economy in our single market.

SOUNDBITE (Spanish), Josep BORRELL FONTELLES, HR/VP of the European Commission, We see in particular the rising energy prices and gas and electricity prices that are leading to reduced purchasing power and they are leading to a loss of competitiveness for our business in the international market. But our resilience in all of these difficult times is remarkable. And what we have to do is work steadily on our resilience, mainly on the field of energy. And that's where I want to focus on today.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the European Commission, If you look at the course of the last seven months, together with our member states, we have already taken important steps. We have diminished our gas consumption by around 10%. That's good. It's not enough. We have to do more. But it's a big step forward. I want to give you two figures what the Russian supplies of gas are concerned.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the European Commission, At the beginning of the war. If you look at all the imports of gas, the Russian share was 41%. Within seven months, we have gone down to 7.5%. That's good. And we have compensated this decrease in Russian supplies by a massive increase by our trusted suppliers, for example, the United States, for example, Norway.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the European Commission, Let's look at gas storage. That is almost at 90% by now. This is 15% higher than on the same day last year. Three weeks ago in this hemicycle, I announced that we will skim the exceptional profits that electricity producing companies have these days to make them available for member states to support vulnerable citizens and businesses. Now, last week already we have enshrined that in EU law.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the European Commission, We achieved that enlightenment speak. And I really want to thank the Czech presidency for this outstanding deliverable in really a very, very short time. And yesterday the Council reached agreement on Repower EU. So we will have key instruments in place to make it through the winter that starts and saving to jointly purchase gas. This is our platform to get rid of the grip the Russians have on us through their fossil fuels.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the European Commission, These are agreements with other friends to redistribute the windfall profits, to support those in need, and to invest in the future of a sustainable energy supply. And that is repower EU. The measures we have put in place provide us with a first buffer of protection. And thanks to these, we can and we will now step up to the next level.

SOUNDBITE (Spanish), Josep BORRELL FONTELLES, HR/VP of the European Commission, I will lay out a road map in a letter to leaders in view of our meeting in Prague in two days this week. And I want to discuss with you firsthand the key components of this letter. Of course, it's all about energy prices. So we will step up our negotiations with trusted partners, for example with Norway, to dampen the price we pay for gas imports.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the European Commission, The talks have already started. I think as a European Union we have a considerable market power and many of our suppliers want to conclude deals with us which are beneficial for two sides, both sides. So I really think it is necessary that we come to an agreed corridor of crisis to stop this crazy peaks we have partially in the import of gas prices.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the European Commission, We will strengthen our energy platform. And let me be very clear, it is in our collective interest. After the winter we will have to refill the gas storages and if we then see that we have again a scenario where Member States are outbidding each other on the global market, and that's raising the prices here and the European Union, this is not sustainable. So we have to have a joint procurement of all member states to do this much better than the way we have.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the European Commission, My next point is on gas prices. And as you know, we use gas in three different domains: for industry, for heating and for the production of electricity. Let me start with the electricity. Our market for electricity is built in a way that high gas prices are driving electricity prices. We have now to limit this inflationary impact of gas on electricity and everywhere in Europe.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the European Commission, This is why we are ready to discuss a cap on the price of gas that is used to generate electricity. This cup would also be a first step on the way to a structural reform and overall reform of our electricity market. But I think we also have to have a look at gas prices beyond the electricity market. So where industry is concerned, where heating is also concerned, the general approach of gas.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the European Commission, And here we will work together with member states to reduce gas prices and to limit volatility and thus to limit the impact of price manipulation by Russia. Because if you look at the fever curve of gas and gas prices, the whole gas price, you can see the manipulation that Russia has on the gas prices. And this has to stop.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the European Commission, We have already offered this mechanism in March. At that time, we've said that it can give an important signal that the EU will not pay any price for gas anymore. We have qualified such a price cap, as having an immediate impact on price levels, but that it entails drawbacks in terms of security of supply. This is still true today. So it's a fine line to walk. It's not trivial to do that.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the European Commission, But the situation since March has critically evolved since then. And today, compared to March, more Member States are open for it and we are better prepared. Such a cap on gas prices must be designed properly to ensure security of supply, and it is a temporary solution to cater for the fact that the TTF that is our main price benchmark, is no longer representative for our market.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the European Commission, This TTF benchmark reflects a pipeline gas. But in the last seven months, because we wanted to get rid of the dependency on Russian gas, we have increased a lot the LNG market and this LNG market is not properly reflected in the TTF. So introducing a cap on gas overall is a temporary solution until we will have a new EU price index developed that ensures a better functioning of the market. And the Commission has already started to work on this.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the European Commission, Honourable Members, these are far reaching measures and I wholeheartedly agree with you, when you say in the the resolution, you will vote on today that exceptional times require exceptional measures where the union needs to act as jointly and as united as ever.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the European Commission, In pursuing our action, two same things remain paramount. That is action and unity and action and solidarity. If I look at our single market, we really need to protect the fundamentals of our economy and in particular our single market. The single market is the strength of our European Union, and this is where the wealth of the European Union comes from.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the European Commission, Without a common European solution, we risk fragmentation. If every member state goes on its own, we have fragmentation we don't want and we have to do something against it. And therefore it is so paramount that we preserve a level playing field within the European Union and our single market. Every member state is benefiting from it. As I said, the wealth comes from our single market. Now what does that mean?

SOUNDBITE (English), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the European Commission, With Repower EU, we have developed a crucial instrument to accelerate the transition in the energy independence. That's what we are working on since seven months. And Repower EU will allow, it's the governance structure, the investment in infrastructure, for example, pipelines, for example, interconnectors, for example, renewables.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the European Commission, But it also allows, and that's important, to support businesses and households to invest in energy efficiency, for example, insulating houses or installing heat pumps or installing new technology for the companies, the businesses that have to do the transition.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the European Commission, Now here's my proposal. I think we should further boost repower EU with additional funding. Common European funding. This way all European states can accelerate the necessary investment. All European Member States. We modernise our infrastructure, the energy infrastructure. We preserve the level playing field. And we secure our European competitiveness on the global market. So we have to do this investment. We have to do this funding together as Europeans jointly with a common solution.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the European Commission, Honourable Members, allow me to speak about another pressing issue which we have to address today. The acts of sabotage against Nord Stream pipelines have shown how vulnerable our energy infrastructure is. For the first time in recent history, it has become a target. Pipelines and underwater cables connect European citizens and companies to the world. They are the lifeline of data and energy.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the European Commission, It is in the interest of all Europeans to better protect this critical infrastructure. And for this, I will present a five point plan. First, we must be better prepared. We have very recently agreed new legislation that's good, which will strengthen the resilience of critical EU entities. The Responsible Parliament Committee will be voting on it next week. That's good too. So we are absolutely on time and I think we can and we should already now work be working on this basis.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the European Commission, Second, we need to stress test our infrastructure. We don't have to wait as something happens, but we need to make sure that we are prepared. And therefore, we need those stress tests. We need to identify whether we have weak points and where these weak points are. And of course, we have to prepare our reaction to sudden disruption.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the European Commission, What are we doing then? Are all the information chains in place? Is everybody informed? Does this emergency scenario really work then in our single market? We will work with Member States to ensure effective stress tests in the energy sector. And this then should be followed by other high risk sectors such as the offshore digital and the electricity infrastructure.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the European Commission, My third point. We will increase our capacity to respond through our civil protection mechanism well known to you in the European Union. With this, we can support Member States in addressing the disruption of critical infrastructure, for example, with fuel, with generators, with necessary shelter capacity.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the European Commission, My fourth point. We will make best use of our satellite surveillance capacity. We have these satellites in place. We have the capacity to do the surveillance to detect potential threats. So this is also a matter of prevention and awareness. And finally, we will strengthen our cooperation with Nato and with key partners like the United States on this critical issue.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the European Commission, Honourable members, this worm has entered in a new phase. The Ukrainian army keeps reporting impressive successes in its fight against the aggressor. We all saw the images of deeply relieved people welcoming Ukrainian soldiers. And I could see with my own eyes when I was three weeks ago in Kiev that life has come back to Kiev.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the European Commission, Of course it is the bravery of the Ukrainian people that made it possible. But I think Europe's contribution also has made a huge difference. And now it's the time to keep track to help the Ukrainians to face down the invader. A strong and steadfast Europe. That will only be the only way to stop Putin. This is a moment to stay the course and to signal again to our Ukrainian friends. We stay by your side as long as it takes. Thank you. And long live Europe.