EPP leaders met ahead of the European Council in Brussels. Statement by Manfred Weber (EPP, DE), European People's Party - EPP Group Leader.
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The European People's Party -EPP- is a European political party with conservative and liberal-conservative member parties. A transnational organisation, it is composed of other political parties, not individuals.
- Manfred Weber / EPP
Today is the day to decide about the future of our ecologic footprint as Europeans. We want to be ambitious, the EPP wants to show it can strong and ambitious on the fight against the climate, but on the other hand to keep our industry strong and keep the social balance alive in the European Union. That is a question ahead of us, that is a challenge ahead of us. We want to give a strong answer on this. The second aspect is that the Member States must be also ready to finance the necessary changes, so the Multi-annual Financial Framework (MFF) discussion is crucial. As EPP we want to be ambitious, we want to invest in innovation for funding new products without CO2 but to do so we need the necessary money.
One thing is clear after a possible Brexit the real work will start afterwards. We will speak about the trade deal, we will speak about our cooperation in defence, in research and other things. So there is still a lot of work ahead of us and one element is clear for us, a Member State outside the European Union cannot have the same standards, the same advantages than a Member State inside of the European Union. So the Brits will loose some of the advantages of our strong EU.
I think that the Prime Minister of Malta made already a courageous step to underline that he has a political responsibility for what has happened, that there is obviously a link between the murdered journalist and the political situation, the circumstances in the country. So he said already he will leave office but for us is not understandable why he needs four or five weeks to leave office. I think he should inmediately do this step, there will be a better way, again we welcome the demonstrations and Muscat is in a very difficult situation today.
