Verbatim report of proceedings

Wednesday, 27 May 2020 - Brussels

EU Recovery package (debate)

  Carles Puigdemont i Casamajó (NI). – Mr President, Europe is defined as a political project by the answer it gives to its crises. Many citizens have bad memories about how we managed the last financial crisis. They were made guilty of the excesses of their governments and their incompetence in planning economic and industrial change. We cannot allow this to happen again.

We must take this opportunity for Europe, through Next Generation EU, to work more directly with citizens and enterprises, to really overcome national frontiers, to empower a network of regions and metropolitan areas that can be effective, quick to react and close to the people.

We must choose: a Europe as an enormous manager of some obsolete state unable to deal with the future or a Europe as a cooperative of citizens, equal in rights and freedoms, that brings back to the people returns in terms of social, cultural and democratic progress.

Next Generation EU is a first step. Go ahead without hesitation.