Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the EC, presents the Commission’s revised Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) and Recovery Plan proposals and debates with Members in an extraordinary plenary session of the European Parliament in Brussels.

Brussels

plenary session

WEBER, Manfred (EPP, DE)

GARCÍA PÉREZ, Iratxe (S&D, ES)

CIOLOŞ, Dacian (Renew, RO)

VAN OVERTVELDT, Johan (ECR, BE)

VON DER LEYEN, Ursula (DE, EC)

Coronavirus outbreak (T)

economic situation in Europe (T)

EU Recovery package: extracts from the extraordinary plenary session

Atmosphere ahead the meeting, arrival of Ursula von der Leyen, views with Commissioners.

Ursula von der Leyen EC President speaking with David Sassoli, EP President

SOUNDBITE (English), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the EC, The Commission is today proposing a new recovery instrument called Next Generation EU, worth 750 billion euro. It will sit on top of our revamped long term EU budget of one point one trillion. Next generation EU, together with a core MFF, sums up to one point eight five trillion euro in today's proposal.It goes alongside the three safety nets of 540 billion euro already agreed by Parliament and Council, and in sum, this would bring our recovery effort to a total of 2.4 trillion euro.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the EC, The money will be raised by temporarily lifting the own resources ceiling to allow the commission to use its very strong credit rating to borrow money on the financial markets. This is an urgent and exceptional necessity for an urgent and exceptional crisis. Next generation EU will invest in repairing our social fabric, protect our single market, help rebalancing balance sheets across Europe. And while we are doing this, we need to press fast forward towards a green, a digital and resilient future because this is the future of Europe's next generation. In total, the commission will raise 750 billion euro for next generation EU. Of that total, 500 billion will be distributed in grants and 250 billion in loans passed on to member states.

SOUNDBITE (German), Ursula VON DER LEYEN, President of the EC, The European budget has always been made up of grants. This is nothing new. Grants for specific investment, grants for increased cohesion. Grants to improve cohesion in social and economic areas. And the fact that this has worked proves that this can work as well. The competitiveness of the European Union and living standards is equal to everybody in the member States. The member states have seen all of their purchasing power increase and so this will multiply prosperity for everybody in the way that Next Generation EU will. We are investing jointly in Europe's future and we will have a very specific and well-defined way of paying this back in future.

SOUNDBITE (English), Manfred WEBER (EPP, DE), The key question for us is not, first of all, how massive, massive investment will be, how much money to be spent. That is not the first question for us. The first question is, what is it for? And one of our principles is and that is guaranteed. We guarantee that we are not having fresh money for the old problems of the continent, we have to guarantee that we use fresh money for the new ideas, for a fresh future for this continent.

When we go to the markets now , borrow money, we have to be clear to have, full and strong and serious idea. Honest idea, on how to pay back. And to say that in the next MF F having the debates in March in mind when the Council tried already to find a common understanding about the MFA of today, I don't believe that this will be so easy. That's why, as EEP let's be honest, let's be clear, and that means we need Own Resources for paying back the debt we have now installed. The big winner of the crisis are the digital giants. And that's why I think it's fair to ask digital giants to pay part of the debit creating now.

SOUNDBITE (Spanish), Iratxe GARC&#205;A P&#201;REZ (S&amp;D, ES), Let us be frank. It's not about throwing more money at this. It's about making progress on a European level. And that is why the Council should change the procedure necessary so that we can adopt the MFF by Qualified Majority Vote and not unanimity. We have twenty three pro-European countries, and yet they're held hostage by four countries who prefer national solutions. This shows a complete lack of solidarity. This is so short sighted. It's short sighted because. All you need to do is look around and to realise that multilateralism is at risk and we need global governance.

SOUNDBITE (English), Dacian CIOLO&#350; (RE, RO), Either we find a solution to invest massively in our economy, or we accept that we will be hit even harder. Let me be clear this is a package for all member states and all members that need this package, irrespective of how bad they were affected by the health of economic crisis. Because the internal market is at stake. If the internal market fails, every citizen and businesses in the European Union will suffer.

SOUNDBITE (Dutch), Johan VAN OVERTVELDT (ECR, BE), Strengthening the internal market is an absolute necessity in this crisis and we have to make sure that our fabric of businesses is maintained. International groups are managing to put together enormous sums of money. They don't always have the best intentions, so we have to have safety mechanisms in place. Now we need to look at the way money is going to be paid out, but also we need to see how it's can be financed as well. And I think it's extremely important from the point of view of society that the people who are working and are saving should not have to fork out for these financing programs.