Briefing by Stéphane SÉJOURNÉ (Renew, FR), President of Renew Europe and by Valérie HAYER (Renew, FR).

Strasbourg

plenary session

press conference

SÉJOURNÉ, Stéphane (Renew, FR)

Press conference by Stéphane SÉJOURNÉ (Renew, FR), Renew Group Leader and by Valérie HAYER (Renew, FR) - Briefing of the Renew Group

SOUNDBITE (French), Stéphane SÉJOURNÉ, President of Renew Group, Thank you, Antoine. Good morning, everybody. Delighted to see you again. In during this part session. I'd like to tell you about our group's priorities. As you just heard, value is with me today should be focusing on European industrial policy, which is a question of great interest to us. And we will be, of course, telling you what we think about the decisions which have been taken in by the Council on the Parliament.

SOUNDBITE (French), Stéphane SÉJOURNÉ, President of Renew Group, So before moving on to those issues, I'd like to comment briefly on the setting up of an independent European body responsible for questions related to ethics. So this has become something of a regular item in debates in the Plenary. Those who once again will be talking about ethics in the way in which we can respond to those problems arising from castigate and amongst other things.

SOUNDBITE (French), Stéphane SÉJOURNÉ, President of Renew Group, So the European Parliament will be debating a resolution involving the setting up of such an independent ethics body. So as I've said many times in the past, systematically now since 2019, we've been my group has been supporting the setting up of an independent ethical group. That's now become the official position of the European Parliament that was first proposed in my group in 2021.

SOUNDBITE (French), Stéphane SÉJOURNÉ, President of Renew Group, And that was soon adopted soon afterwards as a resolution. So the Qatar Gate scandal reminds us to how important it is that we have an independent ethics body and that body should be able to enforce rules on ethics. It should be able to verify our declarations of interests and would be responsible for the interpretation of those rules. Very much along the lines of the French national ethics and transparency body.

SOUNDBITE (French), Stéphane SÉJOURNÉ, President of Renew Group, So in the proposal for resolution, we will have the opportunity to set out details regarding the functioning of this new body and its powers. So why are we adopting why we are voting a resolution on this? So I said beforehand, I'd like to tell you a little, give you a bit more detail about the way in which this new body might operate.

SOUNDBITE (French), Stéphane SÉJOURNÉ, President of Renew Group, My feeling is that certain political groups are pushing on this issue very halfheartedly. There's a lot of inertia around. And my impression is that the Commission will propose a very much pared down version of this proposal. So I think it goes without saying that we have to try to focus our efforts to step up that.

SOUNDBITE (French), Stéphane SÉJOURNÉ, President of Renew Group, The second important priority for us this week is the debate on immigration. As you will have seen yesterday. At the end of the day, the renewed proposal for debate was adopted and I think the exchanges yesterday were quite revealing when it comes to showing you what the lay of the land is between the different political families.

SOUNDBITE (French), Stéphane SÉJOURNÉ, President of Renew Group, The political level, we've seen a quite Trump like reaction with the EPP, which is now calling about building a wall. Our conviction is that the only way we can hope to reach an efficient compromise or indeed the European consensus is to avoid the different groups. It's insisting on red lines. And I think that debates on this in the run up to the European elections next year will be made even more difficult. This is why it's very important that we focus on that.

SOUNDBITE (French), Stéphane SÉJOURNÉ, President of Renew Group, Clearly we do need physical external borders. We need proper processes to deal with those borders. And as we stressed from the outset, we have to push for more solidarity so as to ensure we have a balanced reform of migration. On industrial policy, I'll hand over to Valerie. And we will, of course, should be working in close cooperation with Greta on the revenues priorities.

SOUNDBITE (French), Valérie HAYER, MEP 9th parliamentary term, Thank you, Stefan. Get insurance in over. Couldn't join us today, unfortunately, but I've been working hand in hand representing the new group and those negotiations. As you know, these negotiations take four to somewhat unusual time. The new American proposals, which could lead to a great deal of European industry transferred to the US and losing competitiveness in terms of the calendar.

SOUNDBITE (French), Valérie HAYER, MEP 9th parliamentary term, After the presentation of the Commission proposals. After last week's summit, where the heads of state and government initially had an initial exchange of views about potential solutions. So the big summit on this issue at the end of March. So with this draft resolution from the European Parliament, we have the opportunity to send a message to the Commission, the Member States, regarding the priorities which we think are important.

SOUNDBITE (French), Valérie HAYER, MEP 9th parliamentary term, We'd been working on this resolution before the Commission proposal came out. So behind the scenes we were able to send signals to the Commission to nudge them in the right direction. And I think when you group was the first to come out with this position, there are four main priorities for us. First of all, the need to simplify red tape when it comes to businesses. So is to ensure that we can step up our efforts to improve our competitiveness.

SOUNDBITE (French), Valérie HAYER, MEP 9th parliamentary term, Second important priority is financing. We have to ensure that we build in flexibility to state aid systems. State aid is an essential way of delivering money quickly, but it's not the only way of doing it. Not all member states have the same deep pockets. So we have to have fair rules across Europe. And for almost a year now, our group has been pushing for the setting up of a European sovereign fund.

SOUNDBITE (French), Valérie HAYER, MEP 9th parliamentary term, We call this the new proposal, called this for the Strategic Fund Safe in fact. We proposed this last spring. The Parliament adopted it in May 2022 in a resolution. And Ursula von der Leyen talked about this in a State of Union speech in September 2022. So those are the main highlights, if you like, of the resolution. We'll be pushing hard on that. So as to ensure that we are able to fund our strategic autonomy.

SOUNDBITE (French), Valérie HAYER, MEP 9th parliamentary term, We think we should have a broader based approach than the Commission, which is now proposing a copy and paste of the IRA. And we think that's not enough to guarantee our strategic autonomy. We have to enlarge the scope to encompass other challenges, including health defence. And all other aspects which underpin our strategic sovereignty, the third axis competitiveness.

SOUNDBITE (French), Valérie HAYER, MEP 9th parliamentary term, We have to ensure that we have reforms in Europe so as to produce not just TV and batteries. We also have to be between all of that. The fourth axis, if you like, is trade. We have to reduce our dependency on China when it comes to trade. So those are the priorities which we knew will be defending. The negotiations on the resolution is still ongoing.

SOUNDBITE (French), Valérie HAYER, MEP 9th parliamentary term, They are complicated and they're made particularly complicated by the fact that the EPP that Stefan referred you beforehand when he talked about migration is increasingly espousing very strange positions on the Sovereignty Fund, which has been put forward by Ursula von der Leyen. I don't need to remind you that she is EPP, President of the European Commission, but there seem to be following her line.

SOUNDBITE (French), Valérie HAYER, MEP 9th parliamentary term, Nevertheless, I do hope that we can achieve an ambitious position in the European Parliament and the resolution will be dealt with tomorrow. Thank you very much. Just following on from Mr. Zelensky's visit to Brussels. The group will be holding its first joint meeting with the parliamentary group of the Rada, the servants of the people. That's President Zelensky's political party.

SOUNDBITE (French), Valérie HAYER, MEP 9th parliamentary term, And. If I'm not mistaken, they are actually a member of a political party. They were members of the LG Group and I will be holding a joint press conference with them tomorrow here in Strasbourg. Yes.

Q&A, Question regarding on the sovereign fund and how it will be financed.

Q&A, Question regarding on Istanbul convection.

Q&A, Question regarding on migration and the conclusions from the European Council and the second question regards on ethics body inside the EU.

Q&A, Question regarding on the behaviour of the italian journalist and Berlusconi about Zelensky and the consequences that can be on the future with Italy.

Q&A, Question regarding on the upcoming European Parliament Elections.