Press conference by Stéphane SÉJOURNÉ (Renew Europe, FR), President

Strasbourg

press conference

SÉJOURNÉ, Stéphane (Renew, FR)

Renew Europe

Press conference by Stéphane SÉJOURNÉ (Renew Europe, FR), President - Briefing Renew Europe

SOUNDBITE (French), St&eacute;phane S&Eacute;JOURN&Eacute; (Renew, FR), Renew Europe President, Good morning, everybody. I hope you've had a good summer. Autumn is round the corner, could be tricky with this new plenary after summer, the State of the Union and Renew's position setting the theme here. And I'll be doing that following the Commission's speech to set out the context of the speech.

SOUNDBITE (French), Stéphane SÉJOURNÉ (Renew, FR), Renew Europe President, Firstly, as a group, we've spoken a lot to the president of the Commission. I saw her last week again, and this week a proposal was sent to the President of the Commission from my group detailing a number of points that I'll go over in a moment.

SOUNDBITE (French), Stéphane SÉJOURNÉ (Renew, FR), Renew Europe President, The European Union needs to meet the issues arising from the solidary, from the crisis to do with sovereignty, health crisis, the energy crisis and the military crisis with support to Ukraine, we need to protect Europeans by supporting them. And that's very important in public opinion over the last few months. And then a few points on my speech regarding the energy crisis.

SOUNDBITE (French), Stéphane SÉJOURNÉ (Renew, FR), Renew Europe President, Firstly, I will be stressing the importance of solidarity amongst Europeans, we're in a single energy market. I think we could talk about our production capacity and together come up with energy saving measures that could be shared across member states in terms of sovereignty. More broadly, dependence. This is something that is agreed upon within my group.

SOUNDBITE (French), Stéphane SÉJOURNÉ (Renew, FR), Renew Europe President, The parliamentary agenda and the Commission's agenda is decided upon in 2019 is a good one. And what we need to do is speed things up, everything to do with sovereignty. And in terms of law making, investment and budget, we need to look at what may run and fly in the face of more European sovereignty and look at whether our decisions may make us more or less dependent in terms of the rest of the world that goes for energy, defence and food.

SOUNDBITE (French), Stéphane SÉJOURNÉ (Renew, FR), Renew Europe President, So we'll be talking about that in the budget. My groups are for more flexibility on the European budget. We'll be able to talk about that again. This crisis requires investment in solidarity amongst member states and then institutional issues, which are very important to my group. The possibility perhaps of putting at the top of the political agenda again the Conference on the Future of Europe in the conclusions, the capacity that we have that puts brakes on our decision making.

SOUNDBITE (French), Stéphane SÉJOURNÉ (Renew, FR), Renew Europe President, Now, those are some of the issues that we want to look at in the debate on the Future of Europe. And there is a Trojan horse with Russia in a number of cases, particularly Hungary, with their prime minister, who goes as much to Moscow and to Brussels, which is a problem for us as Europeans. And I will be drawing that to the attention of the president of the Commission.

SOUNDBITE (French), Stéphane SÉJOURNÉ (Renew, FR), Renew Europe President, Press freedom once again, independence of justice in Hungary, all of these issues are essential. And we will be looking at how the rule of law isn't something outside the EU. It's important inside if we want to be credible. So those are the main areas for the debate on the State of the Union. Lots of things on the agenda this autumn politically speaking. Public opinion wants a European response, and that's what we want to give in the proposals from my group, at any rate, in this debate.