Manfred WEBER (EPP, DE), EPP Group Leader, shareS with the press her group priorities ahead of the plenary session.

Strasbourg

WEBER, Manfred (EPP, DE)

press conference

EP Press briefing EPP: Press conference by Manfred WEBER (EPP, DE), EPP Group Leader

SOUNDBITE (English), Manfred WEBER (EPP, DE), MEP 6 - 9th parliamentary term, Good morning and happy New Year to all of you. 2023 will be a key year for Europe because, you know, it's the last full year before we went into before we go into the election campaign in 2024. So that means we have to finalise our business, our job to keep our promises towards the citizens. And that's why it is a very tough, intensive year for the legislative work of the European institutions.

SOUNDBITE (English), Manfred WEBER (EPP, DE), MEP 6 - 9th parliamentary term, And there, you know, the European Parliament is a key institution for doing so. For us as a group and as a party, as European People's Party, It's also a year to prepare ourselves for 2024. That means also to have a programmatic profile where we try to convince then people to vote for us. We just come from the presentation of the Swedish presidency, which is for the next six months in the centre.

SOUNDBITE (English), Manfred WEBER (EPP, DE), MEP 6 - 9th parliamentary term, So we have Kristensen won the elections and managed to have a centre right coalition in Sweden, in Stockholm, and the focus on competitiveness, on economic growth, on trade, on cut rate of red tape is warmly welcomed by the EPP family. We are always asking for a jobs, jobs, jobs initiative on European level because people feel that they realise that in front of a possible recession for Europe that is so urgently needed.

SOUNDBITE (English), Manfred WEBER (EPP, DE), MEP 6 - 9th parliamentary term, The second priority, which we like very, very much, is migration, that the Swedish presidency picks up the ideas from the Czech presidency to hopefully do a further step in the next upcoming weeks, especially with a special European Council meeting and beginning of February. And there I hope that we can really finalise some hot political issues and that is about the management.

SOUNDBITE (English), Manfred WEBER (EPP, DE), MEP 6 - 9th parliamentary term, The treatment of the NGO activities in the Mediterranean Sea, warmly welcomed civil society engagement is warmly welcomed and we have as Europeans together to do our best to save lives. But we need a common regime, a common understanding how to bring it together. We sustain activities in the Mediterranean and there it does not make sense to attack each other in the European Union.

SOUNDBITE (English), Manfred WEBER (EPP, DE), MEP 6 - 9th parliamentary term, On the state leaders level, we have to sit together and find a common understanding. That is what I expect to be done. And the second thing is about the border protection. Now, when I see the border between Morocco and Spain, then we have that offence to protect the border and that's in some of the of border areas of Europe simply necessary to have technical means to guarantee that the legislation to check a border is properly implemented.

SOUNDBITE (English), Manfred WEBER (EPP, DE), MEP 6 - 9th parliamentary term, On these two aspects. I want I hope we can see a clarification from the leaders point of view. We all know how important this issue is. Also in preparation for 2024, you have so many years of an unsolved migration problem in Europe and now let's use the momentum. Still, the Ukraine war is Number one issue for for Europeans. The new year starts with more Russian war crimes in Dnipro the bombing of civilians.

SOUNDBITE (English), Manfred WEBER (EPP, DE), MEP 6 - 9th parliamentary term, This is again an example of the failure of Putin. He cannot win militarily and that's why he's attacking civilians and the important infrastructure in Ukraine. We need more weapons. EPP is fully supporting all initiatives to deliver the necessary weapons for our Ukraine friends. In this regard, I also regret the lack of leadership, especially from Germany and the German government in this regard.

SOUNDBITE (English), Manfred WEBER (EPP, DE), MEP 6 - 9th parliamentary term, And finally, on Qatar gate, which was for our institution, a big, huge damage for the reputation of this house. I want to be clear again that we as European Parliament have to do whatever we can do to be a transparent and citizens orientated institution. We have to do all our steps in a way that people can understand what we do and we fight against criminals and we find against corrupt colleagues.

SOUNDBITE (English), Manfred WEBER (EPP, DE), MEP 6 - 9th parliamentary term, I think the first step to replace Eva K. in December last year was already a grave and strong message, nearly unanimously in the European Parliament and I as EPP groupleader that I strongly welcome the initiative now put on the table by Roberta Metsola. This is a very good basis for the discussion to give a proper answer on this. Let me allow to add one point, which is not yet in the proposals from Roberta, and that is the treatment of NGOs on the European level.

SOUNDBITE (English), Manfred WEBER (EPP, DE), MEP 6 - 9th parliamentary term, We all know that Panzeri was using an NGO structure to hide his corrupt management is corrupt behaviour and we have in this field of NGOs, 99% of civil society organisations who do a great job and are absolutely welcome, no doubt about this. But obviously we have a problem of transparency for these 1% of the NGOs.

SOUNDBITE (English), Manfred WEBER (EPP, DE), MEP 6 - 9th parliamentary term, I can remind you that we had already some articles about the investments of Google. €100 million I read there in this article is financed from Google to NGOs on Brussels level to influence the European decision making process on data protection and copyrights. So there is something behind the curtain and we have to bring light behind the curtain. That is what we what we insist in.

SOUNDBITE (English), Manfred WEBER (EPP, DE), MEP 6 - 9th parliamentary term, Until now, nobody supports the EPP on this initiative, and I am wondering myself why nobody is doing so, having Panzeri and having the NGO question obviously on the table. So we have to focus on this and EPP will insist to look for more transparency in the NGO field. That's for the start of 2023. A lot to do. And again, we want to support Roberta to do the necessary steps to show citizens that we are ready to improve.

Q&amp;A, Question regarding on Czech actions during his mandatory on the European Council.

Q&A, Question regarding on the opinion in other parties as Renew or S&D.

Q&A, Question regarding on upcoming meeting on French-German partneship.

Q&A, Question regarding on the opinion in reproductive rights area.