Press conference by Petri SARVAMAA (EPP, FI) and Eider GARDIAZABAL RUBIAL (S&D, ES), co-Rapporteurs, on Outcome of the Rule of law conditionality trilogues. This transcription speech is the result of an automatic process. Check Against delivery

Brussels

press conference

EU mechanism on democracy, the rule of law and fundamental rights (T)

SARVAMAA, Petri (EPP, FI)

GARDIAZABAL RUBIAL, Eider (S&D, ES)

Multiannual financial framework 2021-2027 (T)

Press conference by Petri SARVAMAA (EPP, FI) and Eider GARDIAZABAL RUBIAL (S&D, ES), co-Rapporteurs, on the outcome of the Rule of law conditionality trilogues

SOUNDBITE (Original), Petri SARVAMAA (EPP, FI), rapporteur, Thank you very much. And hello, everyone. It's a beautiful day, actually, in Brussels, which you cannot see from the studio. But it just got very much more beautiful because we really achieved a historic deal for the European Union. We managed to secure a link between the use of EU funds and the respect of the rule of law in the member states.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Petri SARVAMAA (EPP, FI), rapporteur, And before we go into details, I think the most important thing that we now have to realise is that if you look back a year or two, what chance did anyone give to have such a mechanism even in place? And now that we will go into details, you will hear that that actually what what we managed to to achieve in the deal with the Council is short of just one thing. But before we go to that, we have to look at this as a whole.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Petri SARVAMAA (EPP, FI), rapporteur, It took three and a half weeks, all in all, for this negotiation to be wrapped up. And I think to me, it tells that we were able to do it so fast with so many details and so much substance in the final text, so many conditions, a clear preventiveness for the risks. Not just something that we can prove afterwards that a member state was in breach of the rule of law in connexion with the budget of the EU, but an open list also and all these things in articles, it's incredible.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Petri SARVAMAA (EPP, FI), rapporteur, But what it tells me is actually that that there is a clear majority of the member states who want to end one phase in the European history and start a new one. And there, because this was a court decision to file what is required was, of course, relentless, tireless work of our team.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Petri SARVAMAA (EPP, FI), rapporteur, And I will shortly give you the floor to Áder, my my dear colleague, who was my co rapporteur, and we were each other's co rapporteurs. In the beginning and we wanted to fuse our brains into one. And I think we really managed to do this. But I know you are hungry for details.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Petri SARVAMAA (EPP, FI), rapporteur, I just wanted to to say that we managed to get the risks. We managed to get the list of the breaches. We managed to get the protection of final beneficiaries. We managed to get the article to values, the fundamental rights, pretty much everything that we could achieve. So maybe that's for an opening statement.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Eider GARDIAZÁBAL RUBIAL (S&D, ES), rapporteur, Thank you very much and welcome to all of you. As my co rapporteur Petri said, today is an historic day, and none of us thought two years ago that we could manage not only to have an agreement, but to secure this agreement in only three weeks because it was really delicate, it was intense negotiation. But at the end we did it.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Eider GARDIAZÁBAL RUBIAL (S&D, ES), rapporteur, And it shows the political will of both institutions, I would say. On the Council side and on the Parliament side. Going into the details of what we managed to secure and what we discuss and agree in the trialogues on this call, for example, we made sure that the rule of law is seen in the context of all the Union values enshrined in the treaties, including fundamental rights, as well as in the context of Copenhagen criteria for accession.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Eider GARDIAZÁBAL RUBIAL (S&D, ES), rapporteur, And this was one of the priorities of the Parliament. Every breach of the principle of the rule of law will be covered by this mechanism: from individual breaches when they cannot be addressed effectively by existing sectoral rules, to the widespread, systemic or recurrent breaches for which no mechanism exists so far. And we have been discussing a lot this, we already have some existing regulation and we are trying to go to the place where those regulations are in place.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Eider GARDIAZÁBAL RUBIAL (S&D, ES), rapporteur, We integrate the mechanism also into our wider framework, and we make sure that the commission uses the European Rule of law mechanism in its annual Rule of Law Report as sources of its assessment under the regulation. And we also made sure that tax matters. So tax fraud and tax evasion can be covered also by the scope. Maybe you can complete if you want, Petri, because we negotiate a lot more things.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Petri SARVAMAA (EPP, FI), rapporteur, Yes, well, maybe I can continue a little bit. One one of the things that was really important for us now, and this was, by the way, one of the very, very central points of contention and the hardest issues that we that we tackled vis a vis the Council was to have a full article of the regulation to list what we mean by a breach of the rule of law.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Petri SARVAMAA (EPP, FI), rapporteur, And not just sort of like theoretically, but and also importantly, what are the things that are endangering the independence of the judiciary and failing to correct arbitrary decisions of the authorities, limiting legal remedies. And now we have this article to a as part of the final deal.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Petri SARVAMAA (EPP, FI), rapporteur, And again, I would like to underline that the wording is in the form of endangering the independence of judiciary. So that already is enough for the Commission to take action. And this is one of the many delicate points where, you know, it makes the world difference that we have actually in an article, the preventiveness and the risk.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Petri SARVAMAA (EPP, FI), rapporteur, And this was this was I would say the key goal for for us to achieve. Well, we also managed to to shorten the timeline to adopt the measures we did so considerably. I mean, if you look at the Council's, the President's compromise proposal where they had a maximum of 13 months. That's over a year for this to actually to happen. And now we are down to a minimum of five.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Petri SARVAMAA (EPP, FI), rapporteur, And depending on the on the conditions and the situation, then a maximum of seven. And there is what Council called or we all called an emergency brake. Now, I want to explain this was really, really a key point for the Council. I'm going to speak on their behalf. But it was important for them to have the possibility for a given member state member state.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Petri SARVAMAA (EPP, FI), rapporteur, We can call it a possibility to take it to a discussion in the European Council. But again, on our behalf, when we saw this, this was initially we really wanted to get rid of this, but as a condition to leave it there, we wanted to make sure that there is absolutely nothing that will then stop the Council from adopting a decision on this and also that it cannot be prolonged for for an indefinite amount of time.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Petri SARVAMAA (EPP, FI), rapporteur, So that's what we did then. We we we managed just today that this was the final point. The final fight that we had was to include a sentence in Article five seven where it says that. With a view to ensuring that the Council takes the decision within these time limits, the Commission shall make use of its rights under Article two, 370, where it seems appropriate.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Petri SARVAMAA (EPP, FI), rapporteur, This is again, the same thing. Commission is the one who is initiating this whole proposal from 2018. They are the ones who have the task to look and monitor of the member states continuously. And if they see even a risk of endangering the independence of judiciary, they will start this process. And then at the end, they will also make sure that that the council takes a vote on this.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Petri SARVAMAA (EPP, FI), rapporteur, Now, I'm not going into the rules of procedure of the Council. But that only takes a simple majority for the Council then to vote. And there will always be a member state who will ask this to be put to a vote.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Eider GARDIAZÁBAL RUBIAL (S&D, ES), rapporteur, Yes. And last but not least, because it has been an essential point also from the very beginning for the Parliament. We want all the way to make sure that the final beneficiaries who depend on EU support, such as students, farmers, NGOs, researchers, universities, are not going to be punished for misbehaviour of their governments.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Eider GARDIAZÁBAL RUBIAL (S&D, ES), rapporteur, The obligation to pay them stays intact when measures are going to be adopted. And this is the beginning. And then we can say that we found a good cooperation with the Council and with the Commission because we were all having the same goal to protect final beneficiaries. And for these, that will be a tool for beneficiaries to directly report to the Commission the cases where, for example, payments are not arriving and the Commission will then do whatever they they can do to make sure that they receive the amount using all instruments at its disposal in financial and in the sector.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Eider GARDIAZÁBAL RUBIAL (S&D, ES), rapporteur, And to conclude that and I think this also give us a last push to find this agreement. The Eurobarometer that we saw last week, we found that 77 percent of Europeans support the concept that the EU should only provide funds to member states that are really respecting rule of law and democratic principles.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Eider GARDIAZÁBAL RUBIAL (S&D, ES), rapporteur, So what we did today and what we achieved today is to deliver a mechanism that is robust, efficient, and we hope that we'll make this a reality. So thank you very much and congratulations to my co-rapporteur Petir for the excellent job.