Home Alfred SANT

I have voted for this resolution which highlights the urgent need to face squarely all digital and cybersecurity challenges in a context where the EU lags behind China and the US.
Cyber-security readiness and awareness must remain key.
The resolution emphasizes that the workforce gap has widened by 20 % since 2015. Traditional recruitment channels are not meeting the demand for digital savvy personnel.
Indeed, education and training are essential to ensure SMEs and individuals are digitally skilful.
With widespread digital interconnection, weaknesses in one sector will negatively impact on others.
Considering cyber-security horizontally is a welcome perspective.
It ensures coherence and interoperability across all sectors.
Such a concern is at the heart of a current draft regulation I am working on, the Digital Operational Resilience Regulation for financial services (‘DORA’).
This sector-specific regulation complies too with the principle of digital sovereignty, as cloud services would need to have a legal presence in the EU, to ensure EU law is enforced.
The EU’s strategic resilience will depend on our capacity to frame, perhaps reduce, dependency on non-EU technologies.
If the EU is at present, no leader in the field, it should still offer an ultra-secure and innovation-friendly environment to citizens and businesses alike.

The procedure leading to the application of EU Regulation 2020/2092 on a general regime of conditionality for the protection of the Union budget should be one based on a technocratic, transparent and independent investigation, focusing on the flaws in the rule of law in a Member State according to a well-thought out methodology.
Political statements that attempt to amplify or screen the real situation on the ground should not influence this procedure.
The same Regulation states that when the Commission is assessing the conditions of a country, it shall take into account relevant information including decisions, conclusions and recommendations of Union institutions.
However, it is unacceptable that a political entity such as the European Parliament, with many of its Members having a direct conflict of interest in the case, attempts to impose its will on the investigative entity - the European Commission.
Through this resolution, the Parliament is in my view overstepping its role, with the procedure followed being highly inappropriate and detrimental to European values.
Having said all of this, in no way can I condone or support most of the measures that are bringing the mentioned member states under scrutiny.
For these reasons, I abstained on the final vote.

I voted in favour of this resolution because I agree with its general thrust: that the EP has the right to scrutinise the progress on the ongoing assessment by the Commission and the Council of the national recovery and resilience plans.
However, this vote in favour is conditioned by the following reservations:
Firstly, the European Parliament’s role is to scrutinise the Commission’s performance in defending the pre-agreed targets, complex as they are, as adopted through the Regulation. This cannot translate into direct interference by this house in the design of the single Member States’ national plans.
Secondly, the Resolution contains a strong reference to the European Semester’s Country Specific Recommendations. Recommendations tied to macroeconomic conditionality and relevant structural measures are already controversial in their own right.
The obstinate resolve of various political factions to impose such recommendations over the social dimension that these national plans should have is reprehensible, especially in a moment where both society and economy are attempting to exit the biggest crisis in Europe since World War II.