Petr JEŽEK : It-tmien leġiżlatura 

I voted against this report, which sets out the visa exemptions rules for UK citizens travelling to the EU in the event of a disorderly departure of the UK from the European Union. The report was unanimously adopted by Parliament in the Civil Liberties Committee under its lead negotiator and rapporteur, Claude Moraes. As the ALDE shadow rapporteur on this subject, I therefore expected the interinstitutional negotiations to take place in a smooth and swift manner. Nevertheless, Parliament was regrettably faced with an obscure and inappropriate attitude from the Council, which inserted an entirely inappropriate reference to Gibraltar as a ‘colony’ in a footnote to Article 3 of the amending regulation. I was equally disappointed and baffled to see the Commission changing its position by ultimately supporting the Council’s position regarding the footnote referencing and singling out Gibraltar. Furthermore, I deeply regret the decision by some colleagues to remove the excellent rapporteur, Claude Moraes, based solely on his nationality. Therefore, despite holding a strong view that neither UK nor EU citizens should need to have visas for short-term travel to each other’s territory, I could not support the final text of the regulation, specifically the footnote regarding Gibraltar. Such language is unacceptable in EU regulation.

. ‒ I voted in favour of this regulation, which will help strengthen the security of identity cards and of residence documents issued to EU nationals. The regulation will establish common security standards for ID cards and residence documents, which will help tackle document fraud and identity theft, which are rampant, in part due to the multitude of formats of ID cards and residence permits currently in circulation in the EU. This regulation will overall facilitate the free movement of EU citizens, reduce administrative hassle and strengthen the internal security of the European Union, ultimately contributing to the European Union’s fight against terrorism and cross-border crime. While the new cards will have a standardised format with two biometric identifiers (the facial image and two fingerprints), I nevertheless voted against the provision to render the taking of fingerprints mandatory as I believe this should be optional and remain the Member States’ competence to decide on the latter.

I voted in favour of this report, which concerns the establishment of a framework to facilitate sustainable investment as it provides the basis towards climate friendly investments and sustainable projects across the EU. Nevertheless, I voted against the introduction of proposals to define when and how an economic activity is considered as unsustainable i.e. the ‘brown taxonomy’. Indeed, such an extension would heavily increase the bureaucratic burden on all industries as it takes the opposite approach of the Commission’s proposal, which sought to define when and how an economic activity is sustainable, not the other way round. In my view, the report’s suggestion to include unsustainable activities will not encourage transition strategies since those activities identified as ‘brown’ will not be able to benefit from sustainable finance to fund their transition and therefore will not be incentivised to get greener. I also voted against the suggestion to implement a ‘comply or explain mechanism’ as the latter would create a substantial and unnecessary burden for investors, as they will need to justify whether they consider the adverse impacts of the investment decisions on sustainability factors.