Ursula von der LEYEN, President of the European Commission gives her final answer afte the end of the debate.

statement

Strasbourg

debate

plenary session

VON DER LEYEN, Ursula (DE, EC)

state of the European Union 2022 (T)

State of the Union debate - SOTEU 2022: answering statement by Ursula von der LEYEN, President of the European Commission

SOUNDBITE (English), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the EC, And first of all, I want to thank you for the broad and united support for the support we are giving to Ukraine. This was overwhelmingly the case here in the European Parliament. I know you are a staunch supporter of Ukraine, and I thank you that you reiterated it today with all force.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the EC, So to a few topics, I will not be able to respond to all the questions that have been put forward. I have spoken long. I want to have a look at the topic of the energy crisis, and I want to make very sure that there is no doubt about the fact in this house that it is Putin who triggered this energy crisis.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the EC, I had the strange experience that I listen to an ID MEP who really seemed at least to be so naive to think that Putin started to use gas as a weapon only on the 24th of February of this year. This has been prepared since long. I mean, beg your pardon, but look into the last year where you could have seen systematically Gazprom, state owned, Russian state owned company, reduced deliveries of gas so that we had a 10 years low of gas storage. Are you so naive or you just want to ignore the facts if you look at that?

SOUNDBITE (English), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the EC, Then I heard from an MEP of Renew, rightly so, that the energy measures that we proposed yesterday and that I explained today have to be time limited. And of course they are time limited because this is the reason why we use the 1 to 2 to speed up, to be time limited. It is the emergency instrument. I know it is not highly valued in the European Parliament, I understand that. But if you look at the 1 to 2 explicitly, the topic of energy is mentioned in 1 to 2.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the EC, So and one of the preconditions to the question here is it must be appropriate, it must be speedy, and it must be time limited. It's a logic in itself. You have asked Hilda about timelines. Indeed, the proposals we have put on the table yesterday, we hope and expect that Council will decide on them end of September, so that then they can be on the road exactly.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the EC, But and this is important, the big, big reform many of you were rightly so calling for, for example, to decouple the gas from the married order system. This big reform will be coming at the end of the year. And this is a big task all of us have to tackle together before this mandate ends because it is urgent now to move forward with the completely changed energy markets.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the EC, On defence, I understand your request. May I remind ourselves on that we've done a lot to create the army of the Europeans. So structures are in place, the PESCO is in place, the defence fund is in place. What we have to do now is bring it on the road and deliver. I know I am partially preaching in the wrong church here because my call has to go to the member states. But there is a reason why we put all of these instruments in place, so let us work on it together. This should be now our task.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the EC, Global Gateway and the whole topic of how to deal with China. So first of all, Global Gateway. I think this deserves an own debate because yes, of course the governance has to be in the place. But I told you that with President Biden, we will invite leaders to a summit to go through these projects now and to be very concrete on where we deliver together these investments that are a concrete alternative, what to what the world has seen so far from China.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the EC, They are transparent, they are high quality, and they do not leave the countries in which these projects are finances with a huge debt burden what the Chinese projects always do. So what China is concerned, this tool needs an own debate. But the fact that a few weeks before Russia started the invasion in Ukraine, China and Russia signed a contract of unlimited friendship. This is telling enough.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the EC, And finally, Honourable Members, I thank you for the broad support to strengthen our SMEs. We will come forward with a package. As I said, I would be very happy to hear not only what should not be, but pleased to hear also what we can do. I think this positive, constructive approach towards these reforms that we want to look forward and that we want to address, this has to come, too. I think this is a noble task of the Commission and of this parliament.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the EC, And finally, to fortify our democracies. I got the question here on, for example, when are you acting on forced labour in our products? The good news is yesterday we tabled a proposal to combat forced labour. So this is done. It now goes towards you and I hope that we will be there to unite it and swift. Long live Europe. Thank you very much for a very lively debate.