First, allow me to thank you for inviting me to your committee meeting and allowing me to share our priorities for the Latvian presidency of the Council of the European Union.
It is a great challenge for Latvia. This is—11 years after joining the EU—our first presidency. A number of member states have great experience in conducting presidencies. Indeed, some of them have done so six or nine times. However, the timing of presidencies has changed, and member states will take on the role only every 14 or 15 years, so it presents a particular challenge.
As a small country, we want to make our presidency efficient and useful, which very much reflects the needs of the time. That was our assumption when we chose the major objectives and priorities of our presidency. The most important task is to overcome fully the financial and economic crisis. We consider that we can do that and be more competitive. Therefore, we have chosen three major areas on which to concentrate our efforts: a competitive Europe, a digital Europe and an engaged Europe.
A competitive Europe means creating jobs and returning to economic growth. We see that there are several instruments that could be helpful to implement that programme. First is the Commission’s plan for investment—the Juncker plan—through which €315 billion is to be devoted to an investment package for big and small and medium-sized companies.
We have advanced quite well in that direction. We hope that, by the end of our presidency, we will be able to launch the plan fully. This week, the economic and financial affairs council endorsed a strategic investment fund. The Commission has also published a green paper on capital market union. We see that instrument as another good tool to get access to investment for any companies, including SMEs.
We very much hope that those instruments will be a good boost for the recovery of the European economy, getting back to growth and creating jobs.
We care very much about the social dimension. That comes from our Latvian experience from the time when we had to overcome a financial and economic crisis. One of the key factors was maintaining good dialogue with social partners. Therefore, we are very much engaged in keeping social dialogue in a three-part summit with employers and trade unions.
We are working on the implementation of the banking union and all its mechanisms. No particular new approaches are envisaged, but we want to launch the newly created structures and check that they are functioning properly.
An efficient energy policy is one of the key elements of a competitive Europe. We are determined to move on with the creation of the energy union. Again, we have advanced quite well. A high-level conference took place in Riga at the beginning of February in which the energy union was discussed, and our energy union strategy has been endorsed by the transport, telecommunications and energy council. We expect that, in March, the European Council will give its green light to energy union and that, in the June Council, the next legislative act will be adopted to implement it.
We see energy union as crucial in our time. It is not only part of the European economy; it is part of European security. In our vision, we see energy union based on five major principles: the principles of solidarity and an interconnected energy market, efficient common energy diplomacy, competitive energy independence, diversification of sources and of delivery, and good governance across energy policy.
In the Baltic Sea region, we have quite good experience of how good and efficient governance of all those principles is being created. Countries around the Baltic Sea are doing much to interconnect different kinds of energy sources. Gas pipelines cross the countries around the Baltic with the ultimate goal of creating a common gas grid around it. There are electricity cables from Estonia to Finland, from Lithuania to Sweden, from Lithuania to Poland, and from Latvia to Estonia. That gives an efficient tool to change when necessary the flows of energy such as electricity and to differentiate sources. A common Baltic energy stock exchange gives an opportunity to buy electricity in one exchange not knowing who produces it. That gives a real alternative and real competition between energy companies.
We see that we and the United Kingdom are like-minded on matters of development, strengthening the single market and all the regulatory framework of the single market. That will be one of the permanent issues of the competitiveness council. We are determined to make the single market a more efficient and affordable tool to strengthen competition among companies in the European Union.
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A digital Europe is one of the key elements of competitiveness. Our digital philosophy is based on the assumption that digital solutions should be found by default. That means that we look for digital solutions to cope with new challenges and for digital opportunities. That approach gives Europe enormous opportunities for trade, movement of goods and services.
At the same time, we are thinking about issues such as data protection, the security of information systems, the accessibility of the web and, of course, education on security among youngsters in particular. We will discuss all those issues during the digital assembly that will take place in Riga on 17 and 18 June.
There are a number of challenging issues on the agenda. I will mention a few of them.
The telecommunications package is quite a difficult item because, across Europe, there is a great number of different actors and stakeholders—companies and states—who have different interests and, perhaps, a different level of development in telecommunications. The discussions are not going easily, but we want to push them ahead to get some affordable compromise on roaming and telecommunication tariffs. We hope that we will make as much progress as possible and not leave too much to our trio partner Luxembourg.
The digital single market is also a crucial point on the agenda. It is in our interests to develop the digital single market as much as possible bearing in mind the fact that it should safeguard the quality of services at a reasonable cost for customers.
We are advancing the network and information security directive, which is crucial for the further development of the digital market in Europe and the protection of consumers. We are also working on personal data protection, an interoperability solution for European public administration and more implementation of e-government, e-governance and e-services offered by Governments.
The agenda is vast and we are happy to share our experience. In Latvia, digital services and digital government solutions are used very much and many consider the opportunity to use free wi-fi across the country to be part of their daily human rights.
I will speak about two major points on moving towards a connected Europe. One concerns trade issues. We are concentrating on advancing free trade negotiations, starting with TTIP. There are a lot of discussions around TTIP. Those discussions are everywhere—they are in the press and other media and among politicians. Many questions arise from the TTIP negotiations on issues such as genetically modified organisms, the transparency of the negotiation process and whether TTIP might affect health services.
The presidency is not involved directly in TTIP negotiations—the European Commission has the mandate. The Commission is conducting the negotiations quite actively. There have been eight negotiation rounds and two more rounds are envisaged during the Latvian presidency. We are trying to push the whole negotiation process ahead. We are representing the EU position at different global trade conferences. We are also working on increasing the transparency of the negotiations.
We should keep in mind that transparency cannot be one sided. Furthermore, we are not interested in weakening the negotiating team’s positions. However, there was a high public demand to see more information about the potential impact on health services, for example. Questions were put and answers were given on health services. When Commissioner Malmström recently visited London, she explicitly said that health services are not part of the TTIP negotiating mandate.
We are pushing ahead other free trade agreements on the EU agenda, such as the comprehensive economic and trade agreement—CETA—with Canada. That has been approved, but it needs to be implemented. We are pushing the Parliament’s process for approving the agreement. We are pushing ahead the EU FTA with Vietnam, too.
The mandate for those negotiations is huge, the points are many and the agenda is vast. The negotiators must think about what is a reasonable compromise, but winning negotiations should not be at any cost. In the end, the Commission will do its job properly and in the interests of member states and Europeans.
Another important area of our connected Europe programme is the development of the European neighbourhood policy to the south and east. We have more knowledge and experience of the east, and we are concentrating our efforts on developing the European Union’s eastern partnership policy. We are planning to host a summit in Riga on 21 and 22 May. We hope that there will be good and high-level participation.
It is not an easy time to convene a summit, but previous experience shows that, although every member state that holds the presidency plans its own agenda, it must also be prepared for challenges coming from unplanned regions and topics.
We have not particularly envisaged in our agenda the funding solution for Greek issues; neither have we particularly planned something in the response to the crisis in Ukraine, but we are facing it and we should respond to those challenges.
We see that European partnership policy, since its launch in 2007, has become more individual. At that time, all six countries were standing on the same line, but now, after eight years, we see that there are front runners and there are countries that are still a little hesitant about going more deeply into the relationship with the European Union. That is quite normal, but instead of wishing for those countries to approach more closely or to take on European standards and values, they have to decide for themselves, and that may not be an easy political decision for them.
We see now how three countries are advancing. Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova have advanced in matters of association agreements and mobility agreements and in implementing programmes and the rule of law. There are countries such as Azerbaijan, Moldova and Armenia that have a more flexible agenda, but we want each country to shape its own tailor-made policies. During the summit in Riga, we want to establish a new set of guidelines for how to move ahead in the future in relations with those countries.
We also want to review our European central Asia strategy. That is a region that is playing quite a crucial role for Europe, not only as a part of common energy policy—we should not lose sight of the fact that it is a region where substantial energy resources are located—but also as an important region for Asian security policy, bearing in mind what is going on in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq. Those countries are concerned about all those processes, and we should work together with them.
We have concentrated on three major directions in co-operation with those countries: sustainable development to strengthen the rule of law and a market economy; border security; and education. We think that those three directions could be beneficial and useful for those countries, as well as being beneficial for the interests of the European Union.
All the neighbourhood policies have quite a particular security dimension. We have seen how the security situation in Europe has changed during the past year alone, and we should respond to those challenges and changes, so we envisage that during our presidency, at the June summit and European Council meeting, we will review the crucial documents on reshaping European security strategy. Of course, we will work together with the European External Action Service, which will prepare the revised strategy, but it is essential to give a proper response on the new security challenge and the existing security architecture, as the security order in Europe has changed, whether we like it or not.
We have to find a proper response and increase European security. We know that European security is very much based on strong transatlantic links. That should be taken into account, but there are new challenges these days. Russia has stepped out of the CFE treaty—the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe—which is not a good sign.
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Europe needs a proper response and to find appropriate finances for defence issues. The relationship between countries 20 years ago was such that conditions were nice and kind. European politicians used to find the best solutions through diplomatic means, negotiations and finding compromises. We should not neglect the current situation. We should assess it and not forget about proper financing of defence policies.
I could tell you much more about climate policy, enlargement and migration issues, which are all on the agenda of the Latvian presidency, but I will try to save you time. I am happy to respond to questions. Thank you for listening to me.