Implementing Mario Draghi’s ideas on competitiveness, renewing the European project and respecting the letter and spirit of the Treaties: these are the main political priorities adopted on Wednesday 11 September in Ostend by the European Parliament’s Renew Europe Group in the light of the upcoming hearings of the European Commissioner candidates and the first 100 days of the new European Commission (see EUROPE 13479/14).
The ‘Ostend Declaration’ calls on the Commissioners-designate, when appearing before the relevant European Parliament committees, to demonstrate the utmost competence and integrity in the performance of their duties. “We will ask them to confirm they are firm believers in the further integration of the EU as a political project”, reads the statement. According to the Renew Europe Group, they should never “nationalise European politics but instead Europeanise national issues”.
Renew Europe is calling on the Commission to implement without delay the recommendations of the Draghi report (see EUROPE 13478/1) in order to boost European competitiveness.
This political group’s criteria for the political platform of the new Commission’s first 100 days are as follows: freedom (extension of the scope of the Rule of law conditionality mechanism, inclusion of the right to abortion in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, etc.), prosperity (new European Industrial Deal and a Competitiveness Act, etc.) and security (speeding up and strengthening the EU’s military support for Ukraine).
Link to the Ostend Declaration: https://aeur.eu/f/dea (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)