Thank you, Stephanie. Good afternoon, everyone.
Todays meeting saw broad consensus around the need for Europe to act urgently to strengthen its resilience and strategic autonomy in the face of challenging geoeconomic and geopolitical developments.
Europe must quickly find its place in a changing world to protect its citizens and secure its long-term prosperity.
Recent violations of the Unions airspace, including yesterdays outrageous violation of Estonian airspace by Russian MIGs, underline the need and urgency for Europe to take responsibility for its own security, as well as ramping up pressure on the Russian aggressor.
Sanctions are crippling Russias war economy.
With our 19th sanctions package, published yesterday, we propose to further ramp up pressure on the aggressor.
We are widening the net in the areas of trade, financial services, energy and sanctions evasion.
And we will not rest until the aggressor is stopped.
More broadly, the EU is now taking bold and necessary steps to facilitate the investment needed to increase our defence capabilities, including through the €150 billion SAFE instrument and the activation of the national escape clause.
We also must support Ukraine by covering its financing needs in 2026 and 2027, and help it purchase the military equipment it needs to sustain its fight for survival.
This is why we continue work on the Reparations Loan.
We also need to reduce our strategic dependences, including through diversifying our trade and deepening our partnerships around the world.
Here, I would also like to thank Canada, Norway, the United Kingdom and Ukraine – all represented here today – as some of the EUs most valued partners.
In todays world, it is more important than ever that we deepen cooperation among like-minded nations.
Finally, we must continue to take decisive action to secure our long-term prosperity by implementing of the Competitiveness Compass, and continuing to deliver on the recommendations of the Draghi report.
This brings me to another important discussion we held today on how reforms in Member States can strengthen the EUs overall productivity and competitiveness.
Because indeed many of the levers to enhance competitiveness are in the hands of Member States in areas like education and skills, labour market policies, taxation, public administration and innovation ecosystems.
Reforms by Member States are therefore key.
The European Commission is committed to playing its part in coordinating and encouraging the implementation of such reforms.
And the Competitiveness Compass provides a comprehensive set of actions to be urgently taken at EU level to complement Member States efforts.
These meetings provided an important opportunity to present and engage in an exchange on a key pillar of the European Unions broader competitiveness agenda: simplification.
Since the beginning of this year, we have presented six simplification proposals, including in agriculture, defence, due-diligence, and sustainability reporting.
These proposals will make EU rules simpler, more proportionate and easier to navigate for European businesses, resulting in annual savings of around €8.4 billion.
Our overall objective is to simplify administrative procedures to reduce costs by 25% for all companies and 35% for SMEs.
This means cutting around €37.5 billion in annual administrative costs by the end of this Commissions mandate in 2029.
Our discussions focused on the importance of monitoring the overall economic impact of new EU legislation across different policy areas, and also on how simplification can deliver a more competitive European financial sector.
These discussions serve as very useful contributions to our ongoing work.
I am grateful to the Danish Presidency for facilitating these exchanges, recognising the importance of simplification and supporting the omnibus proposals the Commission has already made.
Before I finish, I wanted to once again thank the Danish Presidency for their hospitality and for the excellent organisation of the meeting.
Tusind tak!
