Thank you very much, Enrico,
I think this Report comes at absolutely the right time. Enrico, you rightly pointed out how our internal and our external environment have been transformed compared to the 1980s that you were describing when President Delors and his team conceived the Single Market. We now live in a much bigger, with 27 Member States, and more diverse European Union. Most Member States use the euro as their currency. We have these new technologies that have transformed everything, from business models to consumer patterns, bringing new opportunities of course. We have international supply chains that brought many benefits and risks. Our businesses operate in an environment in which international rules are increasingly ignored. And in addition, COVID-19 has severely tested the resilience of our Internal Market and has revealed the vulnerability of our supply chains. And of course, Russia's war on Ukraine has spurred us to speed up the transformation of our energy system with digitalisation and decarbonisation, which require a profound transformation. So that is the picture against which you have drawn your Report. It is the right time to think about how we adapt our policies. It is the only way to ensure we can continue to deliver high levels of prosperity for everyone. It is the only way for enlargement to be an opportunity to prosper even more. And it is the only way to build a vibrant Single Market as a key pillar of our competitiveness.
Enrico, your Report is both wide in scope, and it is ambitious in its proposals, but let me single out a few first points of particular relevance I have noted in our discussions. You rightly point out that deepening the Single Market, or transforming it into a real European market, as you say, requires action on several fronts, in particular on regulation, implementation and on financing. And when it comes to the areas in which to act, I agree that we need to take a deep look at how to strengthen the Single Market when it comes to the big topic that we have discussed, that is the access to finance – you call it the Savings and Investments Union –; the cost of energies or lowering the cost of energies; to work on the digital infrastructure and the digital Single Market; and of course also to address the lack of skills that we have here in the European Union. We have made progress on some of these areas. If you think of the Digital Single Market, we have the Data Act, the Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act and we have the AI Act. But of course, more needs to be done. When we look at energy, we overcame the energy crisis; we have the electricity market reform; we are at pre-war level with the prices again; we have an Energy Union to purchase gas. But of course, the prices have to go down further. You also emphasise the need to make progress on what you just called the fifth freedom, and you urged us to speed up. You said it so nicely: Speed is another term for efficiency and effectiveness. Your Report explores many other dimensions.
To conclude, I want to focus on one dimension that is particularly topical. I wholeheartedly agree that we need a more European approach for our defence industrial base. We must combine here two things. On the one hand, we know that there is a clear national competence for the armed forces. If you look at the structure of the armed forces or the deployment, the doctrine or the training. That is Member States competence. But we can develop a real defence single market if we look at the defence industrial base. And that would allow economies of scale and efficiency; it would allow better defence capabilities; and it would allow higher interoperability of our respective armed forces in the Member States. That is why, as a first step, the Commission started the work on the rearmament of Member States, including through industrial cooperation. But there is scope, and there is a strong need for much more work in the future.
So, dear Enrico, dear Alexander, rest assured that the Commission will study this Report carefully and that I am very much looking forward to working with you on these topics.
