Verbatim report of proceedings

Thursday, 26 March 2020 - Brussels

European coordinated response to the COVID-19 outbreak (debate)

  Siegfried Mureşan (PPE). – Mr President, I am watching with great concern what happens to Italy and what happens to Spain, because my country, Romania, has almost one million Romanian citizens living in Spain, and more than one million Romanian citizens living in Italy.

I am watching with concern what happens to them, but I am watching with equal concern what happens to the people of Spain and to the people of Italy. And I’m watching with the same concern what happens in every single European country.

We should all be concerned with what happens in every single corner of Europe, and the answer to this crisis is solidarity. The important question is: how can we achieve solidarity in this crisis?

And my answer is: we can achieve solidarity through concrete measures. If the people of Europe, if the countries of Europe, see that we have concrete ideas at European level, ideas which help them, then they will follow us, then the countries of Europe and the people of Europe will stick together.

The good news is that the European Commission proposed concrete actions less than two weeks ago, and we will adopt these. Two out of the three proposals which we will adopt today are linked to the budget of the European Union. And as Vice-President of the EPP Group responsible for budget, I say: our group will approve these proposals today. We will not make any amendments and we will reject any other amendments made which would delay the entry into force of these proposals. We will approve them today, and we want them to enter into force immediately.

More can be done, there are still EUR 4.1 billion unused in the budget of the European Union of this year. And I call upon the European Commission to mobilise these resources, new resources, fresh resources, in the fight against coronavirus. We can allocate it to finance research to find a vaccine against coronavirus. We can allocate it to buy medical equipment. The President of the Commission has described that she has now the mechanism in place to do this. We can allocate it to help those in need, to help small and medium-sized enterprises.

We should also prepare for the future. When we will be voting on the budget of the European Union for the next seven years, it should contain a reserve, a consistent reserve for a similar crisis in the future. Because in the next several years we will again face crises, which we cannot anticipate today, like we also could not anticipate the virus. So we need for the next several years a sufficient buffer to react to crises.

To conclude: Europe means travelling, Europe means meeting people, Europe means visiting new countries, Europe means learning, Europe means listening to people, Europe means shaking hands, embracing each other. In order to be able to return to this as soon as possible, we need now to stop doing this for a limited period of time also, out of respect for the medical personnel, who are overcoming this crisis.

We as a Parliament transmit a clear message, whenever needed in the future, we are ready to be back to work, to take concrete measures which help the people of Europe overcome this crisis.