Speech: Transcript of Speech of First Vice-President Timmermans to Policy Network, London: A Fresh Start
Thank you
Good afternoon to all of you
It's a great pleasure to be back after two years. When I was last here two years ago, I talked about Britain and why I believe it is better for the UK and certainly the EU that Britain is an engaged and active member of the club. Let’s get one thing clear at the start, as we're at the beginning of an election campaign in this country I'm not going to engage in the debate about what fans of The Clash would know as 'should I stay or should I go?’.
But the other thing I spoke about last time was the need for change. To clarify that Brussels and its institutions are there to serve the people of Europe and address the democratic deficit in output, throughput and input, and that is what I want to focus on today.
If I accepted this job, it is because this is the last chance to sort this out - Europeans made that pretty clear in last year's European elections. I truly believe that it's necessary to change. I had a great job as Foreign Minister, I thoroughly enjoyed it and it was an important task. But I also saw that Europe was in a bad place; citizens' perception was that the EU is there for the EU, not for Europe's citizens. If I can change that perception with my small contribution I'll be extremely happy. Because I believe we need in certain areas for the EU to be a global player, and to strengthen the position of every single one of its Member States.
For many years I studied the relations between the EU and Russia. I lived in Russia for 3½ years. We are in a strong place when we are united in confronting the situation in Russia and Ukraine. The Russians are waiting for us not to be united on Ukraine. The only sustainable outcome, based on the Rule of Law, democracy and fundamental rights will be if the EU sticks together and stays the course, and makes sure Putin understands that we won't give in on our values, and will help Ukraine to stand on its own two feet.
If I talk about fresh start it's against the background of huge international and internal challenges. We could talk too about the situation in the Middle East and challenges in our own societies, like the incredibly intricate question of why some of our own young men turn against societies they were born in; why do they embrace nihilistic fundamentalist ideology that teaches them to kill people who don’t have their beliefs?
Why does it happen? Part of the answer is to be found in Europe - learning from each other, among Member States, with the Commission at their service working with Member States to provide security.
I also believe that we need to have a fresh start in how we create legislation. And yes I know every Commission when it starts will say they are new and will do things differently!
I'm very privileged to be able to work with very talented people. We are really an excellent civil service, but I also sense that some people think they'll see in a year or two that we will be back in the old situations. I have an urgent task - I need to convince a majority of these excellent people that we can deliver change and be big on big things and small on small things.
It is incredibly important that we follow through on limiting the initiatives we take to those areas where EU action is urgent and needed. For too long we worked on the premise of doing things because they were nice to do; I want to work on the premise that we do it because we need to do it, because Member States can't do it by themselves alone. There needs to be added value of acting on a European scale.
If there is no added value we should not act. There are many areas where added value is clear. With the situation with Russia and the Middle East it is urgent that the EU creates an energy union, it is urgent that not one single Member State is at the mercy of one energy supplier. It is urgent that we understand in all Member States that we should be weaned off the dependence on fossil fuels. It is urgent to create sustainable economies based on sustainable fuel consumption and to have a better use of energy resources.
We can only do this on a European scale. Some Member States don’t have one single energy supplier, but others depend on Russian gas for up to 95% of their energy mix. It is urgent that we create grids on a European scale - for instance to end the isolation of Portugal and Spain in the energy markets. These things are necessary. Not 'nice to do' but 'need to do'.
The same applies to the Digital Single Market. There is an opportunity we're losing if you compare Europe to the USA, and see what's happening there - in terms of start-ups, innovation, and quickly getting inventions to market. We are missing out on opportunities because we are still divided. Our market is still compartmentalised at national level - we need to change that urgently. To do that we need to get our data protection regime in order and make sure that the telecoms market is regulated in a decent way. That is urgent; it's not 'nice to do' but 'need to do'.
The same is true of the internal market. Lord Hill has put forward some excellent proposals. On capital markets union. We urgently need it. Businesses need to have access to other capital than what they get through banks. They need to have other possibilities, which is good for growth and for competition in capital markets.
We also need the Commission to be more strict in implementing the rules of the single market. I think in recent years we've not been strict enough with Member States who don't comply with rules of the internal market, and if we don’t do that we risk slipping into protectionism all across Europe and that will really be bad for growth and jobs.
It is also urgent that we put the Juncker plan into place so that we can get investment going again in the European Union. Make no mistake about: this investment is not an alternative to sound fiscal policy. It is not. Those people who have the illusion that now we are going into a phase of investment so there's no more need to get your budgets in order would be drawing the wrong conclusion. We need three things urgently: sound fiscal policies; more investment; and structural reform. And Member States need to perform on all three and the Commission will certainly support that
To change - and we've tried to show we're able to change by cutting back on proposals - we'll need outside help. It's only been three months. But I can sense that when I'm inside what we call the 'Brussels bubble'. In there, everything we do is completely logical, within that context. The fact you'd say 'we have many many proposals and we're not sure we need all of them, but it keeps everybody happy to keep them, so lets continue with that', is logical in the Brussels bubble. But it's not logical if you go to the people that have to deal with that legislation and those proposals. I believe we have to bring those people into the fold. This Commission will be far more active in the Member States, and not just Commissioners going to their own homes. You will see us going to all Member States in our areas of expertise and responsibility. We need to get Member States to come on board for this change, because I believe that’s what our citizens want.
I also believe that under the influence of the crisis the European Council has been extremely active, for good reasons. The Commission has helped them do that and has gone to the European Parliament to get legislation done. But the Council of Ministers has become too tacit and not active enough in that process. If we want the Treaty to work as intended we need three institutions to be involved in law-making: Commission, Council and Parliament. There needs to be a form of equilibrium or the system doesn’t work, or one institution becomes too dominant. My invitation to all Member States is to be active in the Council and play a full role. That is why, when we're going to negotiate a new Inter-institutional Agreement on better law making between the three institutions, I want a full-fledged debate with Council and Parliament.
So on better law making - what are areas do I want to concentrate on? I have had a number of visits to Member States now. My conclusion is this: the group of people we really need to help are small and medium sized businesses. They feel very often left out. They also feel the brunt of regulation, whether European or national. And they are not as well as organised as the 'big boys and girls' who know their way in Brussels and know how to get point across, and frankly who sometimes enjoy regulation because they know they can work with it and perhaps others cannot.
So I believe that if we have a better regulation agenda it should be driven by the wants and needs of SMEs, which is why I talk to them on every visit I make.
I heard it in Spain, France, Estonia, Denmark, and here in London last night. They have the same concerns and expectations. There are areas where they want to see more from Europe, but also many frustrations with Brussels meddling, burdensome rules and outdated approaches that could take into better account the real world of today.
And here again I need a sense of complicity with the Member States. Because very often, to somebody with a small business, she or he doesn’t care if its national or Brussels rules, but the practice is to say its Brussels. Let's clarify if it is Brussels, maybe its national or local rules? But let's clarify and perhaps then we can do something about it, and I urge member states to engage with us to do this
And again, the institutions in Brussels alone cannot do this. It has to be done in a joint effort with the Member States. If we do this and if we continue to do this, perhaps I got away with it once because people were in shock, thinking "he indeed is withdrawing almost 80 proposals, he indeed is concentrating on 23 new proposals."
Probably next time round they will see me coming and they will organise to perhaps prevent it. It might happen. I'm looking forward to that political debate. I'm not worried about it but we will only be successful in that if experience at Member State level is fed back into the system, so that also people in the Commission and especially in the European Parliament get some feedback from the people we are trying to do this for in the Member States.
I believe that if we stay in line with the June European Council directives and priorities set up by Jean-Claude Juncker in his programme, I think we can certainly deliver on these things.
So I spoke about the energy union. I spoke about the €350bn investment package that we are going to put on the table and I also want to speak on the necessity to create a migration policy that works.
I truly believe that if you look at the functioning of the internal market and free movement, public support for these key areas of European integration, key areas of European cooperation, will dwindle if the public thinks that free movement means undermining social security systems, that free movement means undermining workers' rights, so we need to get that right.
We need to make sure that it is clear that free movement and social security systems are not the same thing. Of course you cannot discriminate between nationals of Member States. At the same time access to the labour market does not mean automatic access to social security systems. We will need to work with that with a number of Member states in the years to come.
I spoke earlier about radicalisation, hate speech, preaching online and offline. Here again I'm not talking about European competencies, but I think of a shared agenda, shared destiny between Member States and the possibility for the Commission to be helpful in bringing Member States together to tackle the issue.
All countries are grappling with the same questions. How do we create successful integration in our societies? How do we foster tolerance and respect? How do we make sure that anti-Semitism, which is on the rise in most of our Member States, is stopped?
For me it is quite clear, if the Jewish community feels it has no future in Europe, there is no future for Europe. And the same applies to the Muslim community. Minorities belong to this continent. Whenever we start targeting minorities - bigger problems are ahead. And we need to make sure that we tackle that issue at a European level.
We need to cut red tape. I'm not ideological about this. I know this agenda on better regulation got a bad rep in Brussels and in some Member States. Immediately when I start talking about it people are saying "Ah yes, you want to take the worker's rights away or you want to lower environmental standards, etc".
No. This is not about goals, this is about how to best attain those goals without being unnecessarily burdensome. The practice of Brussels, and let me finish on that, the practice of Brussels is that if you want to reach a conclusion, which is increasingly difficult, of course, on a proposal, you negotiate. 28 Member States and the European Parliament. At the end of the day you are so happy that you've reached a compromise, that the compromise is what you're happy with but not the content of the compromise and you don't check whether that content still does what you intended the proposal to do.
I think one of the things we urgently need to do, the three institutions, Council, Parliament and Commission is to have impact assessment of the final compromise and to assess what that compromise does when it is implemented in the Member States, only when we reach that level, I think will we have decent impact assessment of proposals coming out of Brussels.
I believe in Europe. Why?
Because, with all its faults, warts and all, it is still the best answer to the challenges of European history.
I believe in Europe because there is a place for nation states in Europe. I don't believe that being members of the European Union - since 1973 - has made Britain less British, has made the Netherlands less Dutch, has made Germany less German.
I truly believe that it has taken away some of our biggest fears. My favourite example in this context is Poland.
Poland was never master of its own borders through the centuries. For the first time in centuries, Poland now is free, democratic, respects human rights and nobody challenges Poland's borders.
That is also Europe.
Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.
SPEECH/15/4571
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