Dacian CIOLOȘ (RE, RO), Renew Europe Group Leader, speaks to the press in the European Parliament in Strasbourg during the plenary session 13-16 September.

Strasbourg

press conference

CIOLOŞ, Dacian (Renew, RO)

Renew Europe

state of the European Union 2021 (T)

Press conference by Dacian CIOLOȘ (RE, RO), Renew Europe Group Leader

Title: Press conference by Dacian CIOLO&#536; (RE, RO), Renew Europe Group Leader: Renew Europe press briefing

SOUNDBITE (French), Dacian CIOLOŞ (Renew, RO), President - Good morning and welcome. After a holiday break, which wasn't necessarily good news for many Europeans, I'm particularly thinking about the floods in June that have demonstrated that climate change is here and now. And that we have to strengthen our efforts, we have a legislative draft on the table that we will have to work on. If we want results to materialize with regard to freedoms and rights, we had to deplore the deterioration of the situation in Hungary and Poland with the adoption of laws that restrict freedom of expression. And we've been asking for months that the Commission should use the legislative tools at its disposal to do something about this. And I'm going to repeat this tomorrow in plenary.

SOUNDBITE (French), Dacian CIOLOŞ (Renew, RO), President - Then tragic news have come from Afghanistan with the Taliban back into power. Which creates new problems for the European Union and is a geostrategic role because we have very few means at our disposal to put in force, you know, implement our our ambitions. The. And of course, Afghanistan will be the subject of a resolution, but we need to draw a number of lessons for the years to come. And particularly before 2024, for then, the European response to the health crisis was on our agenda, and it will be on the agenda this week as well, and it will be an opportunity for us to recall that we need to create a union health, a European Health Union that would give Europeans the possibility of reacting when there are such crises or even prevent them.

SOUNDBITE (French), Dacian CIOLOŞ (Renew, RO), President -Then this week, we're going to have the speech on the State of the Union, on the part of the president of the commission, and aside from the items I've mentioned, we're expecting to have news about the legislative agenda on the part of the commission, because if we want to achieve certain political objectives by 2024, then 2022 will be the last year where we can expect legislative proposals so that they can be adopted by 2024. And then we have to finalize the negotiations on certain standards, setting acts on climate, but also on digital environment and migration. These are issues that we need to work on in the months and years to come.

SOUNDBITE (French), Dacian CIOLOŞ (Renew, RO), President - In order to be truly effective on these legislative proposals, our group during the political debates that we had for two days and a half in Paris, we decided to submit to other pro-European political groups. Kind of framework or contract of a pro-European coalition so that we can work more effectively together on such priorities and have better coordination at institutional level at parliament for the second term, because aside from the adoption from the legislative acts, which are important to us and which are on our table, we need to coordinate our efforts and find common denominators. And we also want to strengthen the institutional role of parliament in the European democratic space.

SOUNDBITE (French), Dacian CIOLOŞ (Renew, RO), President - To achieve that, we need real good internal coordination, and this is what we are suggesting to the other groups. We need to discuss this by the end of the year in order to make the most of the experience that we have totted up this last two years. Let us not forget the conference on the future of Europe. Much has been said, but we also want ideas made more tangible. This week, we have 200 citizens present in Strasbourg, with whom we can start discussions in order to to put something on paper, so this is the introduction and I'm ready to take your questions. .

Question on the division of key posts for the Paris declaration. [00:07:22][0.2]

Question on the envolvment of the Western Balkans in hte Conference of the Future of Europe

Question on the cooperation between Western Balkans countries

Question on Commission's response to the Covid crisis

Question on the German elections and rule of law

Question on the internal policies of the Renew Group and a possible renewing of leadeship in it