 Okay, so first, before we start, thank you for your participation, okay? And between brackets, this is just to say the main goal of this simulation is to be able to participate and to also to experience what is going on in the council in this kind of negotiations. And of course, everything which is related to that which is diplomacy, quality of documentation, different kinds of policy and decision making, all these factors are always important. So I would like just to encourage you to, I mean, just taking into account the main goal is basically to experience the EU in the, I would say the main, the main center of the policy process, which is the negotiation and the decision making. So I would encourage you to basically to use this kind of diplomatic language and to use as much as possible this kind of reasoning and rhetoric to convince and to refute the arguments of others, okay? So that would be the main goal and I would encourage you to use this kind of this role. Now Peter, which is the representative for the European Parliament, is going to make the moderator of the simulation and is going to explain basically the agenda for today that you have already in your, we already give you the information about the agenda, but Peter is going to explain more in detail how it's going to take place, okay? Okay. Well, thank you Javier. And I'd like to also reiterate what Javier has said and to thank you all for participating and for the work you have done in preparation. And we look forward to being able to enjoy this event, which is the first time we have organized it at the university and which we hope to become an annual event. Regarding the agenda and the procedures, well, I'm going to make a couple of comments. You have the documents that were in the drop box, but I just want to go over a few of the principle factors before we begin. To begin with, the meeting will be chaired by and moderated by myself and Javier, who will also act as the representatives of the Parliament and the Commission, who do not take a formal part in the negotiating, but where and when necessary to facilitate an agreement may express an opinion or propose informally an alternative. So during the debate at various stages, we might have the opinion of the Parliament expressed that might change the dynamic. We might have the Commission modifying the proposals. But the main activity will be done among yourselves, and that's the ambition of this event. The procedure for doing so, first of all, the voting procedure in the European Council and on the issue of the multi-annual financial framework. Unanimity is the goal and the voting procedure, and the ambition of this simulation is to replicate that and achieve unanimous agreement. One factor that isn't explicit in the procedures that I put up that I would like to just go over or just mention briefly now is that in the vote for unanimity, an abstention doesn't count as a vote against. So you could have an abstention, but unanimity among those who have taken part in the vote, and it would count towards unanimity. So you can think about that in your strategies and your negotiations. The vote will be taken in secret. We will pass pieces of paper and you will write your yes or no, and we will count those votes, and if it's in agreement, we will pass the motion. If not, we will open the motion for debate again. If you so decide, there is a mechanism whereby the European Council can, if they agree, provide the Council in later negotiations with the possibility of passing parts of the agreement by a qualitative majority voting. So during the session, as an option, if there is no possibility for unanimous agreement, you can decide among all of you to change the voting system to a qualified majority voting, which we will do as two-thirds of the countries present. The vote can be called by yourselves or it can be proposed as well by the chairs if we see that an agreement can be reached at that moment. In terms of then the agenda for how we will start is we will open up the floor. We'll go straight. There are two sessions divided by a short coffee break. We will open up the floor to debate the commission proposals. In the agenda that was put up on Dropbox, we had divided the proposals between the two sessions. For the meeting today, we have decided that from the very first session, all the motions are open for debate. So you have the first motion, which is in response to the commission proposal about increasing, maintaining, well, the commission proposal is to increase the budget. The second proposal, the second motion, is on the possible introduction of own resources. And in the third motion, we have the different divisions of how the money will be divided between different sectors and different specific projects. In order to make a comment, make a statement, make a proposal, we would ask you to raise your hand and we will take notes and we will call each person to speak in the order that we have written down. One final factor is that, like I said at the beginning, one of the great parts of the, one of the most important aspects of negotiations in the European Union is this informal behind closed doors or side deals. Even before we arrive at this stage in the European Union negotiations, there will have already been months and years of work between civil servants, permanent representatives in Brussels preparing, negotiating, doing a lot of the groundwork before it comes to the council. So although we cannot simulate everything within a short one day simulation, we would like to be able to give you the opportunity to experience and see how the informal negotiations work because it's not necessarily always the most logical or the best explained argument it has won, but who can command the majority or who can build cleverly a coalition for their point of view. So in that spirit, during the sessions, we can call confessionals, timeouts in order that we can carry out these informal talks and coalition building exercises. Those can be called either by ourselves the chairs or in agreement from the member states. So I think it's, I hope it's all clear and we would like to begin in order for you all to have a good chance to participate and to speak. So in that spirit, we will open the floor for comments and positions on the proposals outlined by the commission. So given the Austria is right now in a break, I think we can start by alphabetic order knowing the preferences of the first motion. So we can start with volume and then we can just go and make the first round. Do I have to explain my preferences in the first hit, I mean? In the exact group. Yes. I mean, we're discussing, do we have to talk directly about our positions in every point or do we have to make a globalized point of view or? We are going to basically focus on each motion or each issue if you want and then we can just try to negotiate different issues at the same time. But first, we would like to know your preferences, well, according to the proposal we have made, the commission has made, or the size of the budget, okay? Okay. Well, in the first commission proposal, Belgium agrees with increasing the budget, the overall size of the budget. I don't have to explain why, right, just, okay. Well, we do think that we have to increase the budget because, of course, we want to fund some initiative in a long-term period and Belgium is being contributing substantially to the budget and the amount of resources that have received from the European Union has been really low comparing to other countries and we have to pass these austerity and to move forward new initiatives and new projects and respect of the second issue, the own resources in the tax, Belgium agrees with using own resources and the financial transaction tax. We think it's a good idea and we'll increase our possibilities and yes, we do need to invert and introducing a new tax is really beneficial and the third proposal. Just focusing on the first one at the moment. Oh, yeah, sorry. Yeah, just because maybe it wasn't clear. We will do it in terms of the first session regarding motions one and two, but of course, in the side negotiations and private talks or even in the speech if it's related, you can mention it but essentially what we'll do in the first session is vote on the first two proposals so we would like to hear the comments on the motions one and two. If within that, within your argument, a comment upon the other motions is relevant, you're free to introduce that but the vote will be on motions one and two in the first session. Yes, the last thing I wanted to say is that even though Belgium is not in the any of the groups, it's the front of better spending on the already question policy and our policies are more focused on better spending to increase budget and to be better distributed. And yes, I think that's all. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Next time then, can we hear the position of Czech Republic? Thank you. Thank you. First of all, I want to thank the Commission for the proposal of the commission of the financial framework and about the proposal of increasing the budget, the European Parliament said that freezing the framework at the 2030 level was not viable and it was needed at least a 5% of increasement of the budget so the Czech Republic thinks that it's necessary to increase the expenditure for the multi-annual financial framework to $3 billion of my country which will be an incrementation of more than $142 million every year and I think it's necessary because we are, we need this increasement to make functional the European Union. Okay, thank you. Next, from Denmark. Thank you very much, my honorable Chair Clinton. First of all, I'm the representative of Denmark. My name is Roger Padreń and I will be, and we will be really clear in fourth point. First of all, Denmark is the main concern of the European Union. In absolute per capita terms and also in relative to the GNI, sorry. Secondly, I want to tell you that we will save the majority of our funds from the CAP and we advocate for a reduction in direct payments. Thirdly, I'm the representative of the European Union. Thirdly, we advocate for a reduction in direct payments. Thirdly, and that's our main proposal, we advocate for a reduction of the MFF proposal. Nevertheless, we consider that increasing the expenditure cannot be a bad proposal. Nonetheless, we think that we have to reduce our contributions as we have said, we are the major contributor in the European Union and that's not equity. That's why we call for a reduction, we advocate for a reduction of our contributions, a reduction of our budget. Nevertheless, we think that we can arrive to an agreement if this reduction or this increasement have the final conclusion that we as other important contributor countries, such Netherlands, such Finland, such Germany, Sweden, United Kingdom, finally we reduce our contributions. Thank you very much. Okay, thank you Denmark. Next we will hear from the representative of Finland. Thank you very much. The commission proposal is to make a more generous budget, but in Finland we think that the question is about decreasing the proposal of the commission because we want to take into account the tight economic situation. So, we are not going to accept a proposal or a budget of more than 1% of the European Union, GNI of the 28 countries. Why? Because, yeah, in fact, the European Union is going to be reduced, less money to spend and there will be some cuts on the budget, on some headings of the budget, sorry. But we will increase the competitiveness of the European Union. We will get more efficiency on the resources and more capabilities to face the crisis. The economic situation, as I said, is one of the most important aspects to take into account we repeating what I say will not accept more than 1% of the GNI. Okay, thank you. Next, Germany. Good morning. I am Julia Kodina, the representative of Germany. Primarily, I wanted to say that Germany's negotiation position is characterized by its role of huge net-paying country and by the German attempts to draw the right lessons from the current public debt crisis. So, in the light of economic crisis and the difficult situation for national budgets, the German government is opposed to an increase of the European Union spending, wanting instead to see the avaliable funds used more efficiently. That means that Germany will try to restrict the net payments by backing the 1%. And also, Germany aims to reform and tackle the weaknesses of the European spending policies by using its better spending approach. As such, Germany proposes using the European budget as an incentive for structural economic reforms, especially in crisis countries. Referring to the introduction of our own resources, Germany also backs the introduction of the FTT but collected individually by each member state. Okay, thank you, Germany. Next, we'll hear from Hungary. Hello, thank you very much. The position of Hungary regarding the overall size of the budget is that we are going to support that, as we see it like for really important to have the budget on this kind of amount, regarding the current situation in all the European countries. And one really important point for us is that we are going to oppose any reductions of the overall sailing, as we consider to be really important that the budget is going to stay on the amount the Commission proposed. One point to mention maybe would be that we like to have the debate more like in kind of a bottom-up approach and not starting with capping the total revenue sailing of the budget, but whether with defining the most important challenges and the priorities first and then talking about any reductions. So yes, we would appreciate really a kind of common financial crisis management. Thank you. Okay, thank you, Hungary. So now Italy. Good morning and thank you very much. The new government of Italy have a very clear commitment. This is to incentivize the economy of the EU and we want to increase the budget in order to face the real problems of the EU like unemployment and we want to increase the competitive of the EU economy and we also would like to maintain the question funds because it's a really important issue to stabilize the new countries and also really important regions of our countries. Thank you very much. Sorry and we would like to increase the budget but not increasing the contributions of our countries. We would like to increase the budget with increasing the taxes, the European taxes. Thank you very much. Okay, thank you Italy and I will hear from Latvia. Thank you, chair. The Republic of Latvia is really pleased to be here today and thank you all for being here as well. The Republic of Latvia teams that the overall size of the next financial framework should remain approximately the same as we European countries cannot, Latvia believe that we European countries cannot bear the cost of reducing further the European budget in so far as we would, that would impeach on the fundamental value of the European Union due to the convergence policy which remains, which is embedded in the article 174 of the Lisbon Treaty, which is that in order for the European Union to be competitive in the world, we need first internal collision. That means reducing the discrepancies between the different countries. If Latvia believe that if we reduce the European budget, we would only further expand the discrepancies between European countries. Therefore, Latvia believe that this reducing the, welcome the proposition of the commission but underscored that a reduction would be not the adequate solution to tackle the current situation. Secondly, Latvia is a friend of the cohesion policy, as you may have may guessed, and would like to see also further the implementation of further financial tools that would be needed to be tested before to be implemented, but that's what we are here for. And Latvia would like to thank you all for listening to Latvia. Okay, thank you Latvia. And next we'll hear from the Netherlands. Thank you Mr. Clinton. I represent Netherlands, the Kingdom of Netherlands. First of all, I would like to remember that Netherlands has the sixth largest economy in Europe, even he's not being one of the biggest countries. And we are the second country with less investment in relative numbers. So we are totally against increasing the roof of the IMFF. We think the solution for a better Europe doesn't come from money and more money and more money. We think that what Europe needs to solution the problem with an employment and competitive, the solution comes to be more productive and to invest in R&D and innovation. And I have to say that Netherlands, we have a lot of experience in that matters. We have the best healthcare system in the Eurozone. And we are one of the countries with the best R&D investment. So I think Netherlands can help a lot with the Red Affinite, the European Union, but not with more money. So we don't agree with the Commission and also in the matter of the own resources and the taxes. We are against that because this will only complicate the funding system and make it less transparent. I think we can later talk more about this matter because I think it's important. Thank you. Okay, thank you. And I will hear from Poland. Okay, thank you. Poland is in favor of the continued increasing or strengthening of the EU budget, and in particular the structural and cohesion funds to continue towards the common EU goal of enhancing economic, social, and territorial cohesion and lessening the disparities between all of the member states, in particular the differences between Western and Eastern Europe. For example, the EU funding has been very positive for Polish debt. The money helps the government develop an innovation which has in turn accelerated our struggling economy and helped us achieve long-term growth. So at a minimum, Poland wants the EU budget to remain the same as an increasing 1.05% of GNI, but we would support increasing the budget even more because we believe it helps the less developed Eastern European countries develop more. Thanks. Okay, thank you. Poland will now hear from Spain. Thank you and good morning, Mr. Glinton. In 2010 we established five headline goals to be achieved by the year 2020. One of these goals, the first one, is that the 75% of the 20 to 64 years old European Union citizens should be employed. We need a powerful budget to make real these goals, so it's necessary to make real our needs, mainly the question funds and the PAC funds to increase our budget, our multi-annual financial framework budget. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Spain will now hear from Sweden. Thank you, Chair. A follow-up delegate from all European representatives. Sweden thinks that there is no point but to reduce the budget. We think that it's unrealistic to think that unemployment, other problems from very special countries, will be solved by increasing the budget itself. We are, according to the Commission of Communication, to allocate resources in an efficient way. That implies less challenges, less ambiguity terms, but determined ones. That means that Sweden wants to freeze implements, if not possible reduction, but at least we want to promote substantial cuts and more market reforms taking into account explicit criteria because there are some budget guidelines which are being not well implemented by the countries. So we want to introduce clear and compulsory criteria in order to evaluate all these spending. In order to make a better Europe, we want to increase efficiency, as we said. We want to set a single set of rules and complement EU programs with national programs. We want to remind that Sweden represents 1.9% of population of European Union, but we are contributing more than 3 billion euros per year in the European Union. So that's not fair and we are not contributors, but we are not benefitting the same way. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Sweden will now hear from the United Kingdom. Thank you, Chair, fellow Ministers. First of all, the United Kingdom would like to thank all of you for expressing your opinions in a so clear way. The United Kingdom will follow more or less the positions from Germany and Sweden since the United Kingdom would like to see a reduction on the total amount of the EMFF. However, we also want to promote budgetary consolidation and for this although we will try to promote the freezing of the EMFF because we think that if we get to keep it below the rate of inflation, we will already go on the way of enhancing budgetary consolidation. So we think that having a ceiling on the overall size of the budgetary framework will already promote the ideal that already some delegates have posted and thrown on the table. So we think that our two main objectives is not increasing the budget of the EMFF, but better spending and smart growth. So we think that if we get to plan the budget in more long-term side scenes, long-term prospects, we will get better management of this budget so we will tackle the errors and fraud that have been happening. And for this, we think that it's very important to have a more transparent way of managing the budget and also this should be negotiated because it's not only how much we spend but how we spend it. So finally, we'd like to say that on what considers the taxes in the European Union, we are completely against the introduction of any financial transition tax even at the national level as some delegates have proposed. We think that GNA-based revenue collection is already sufficient and it's also a good way because it considers the situation that its country is going through because if a country grows, its net importation will be higher. And also, we want to keep the current British rebate. It's very important for us since we are a net contributor also. So just to sum up, our objective is to reduce the budget but make it more effective so we can negotiate in which lines we want to invest and even modify some criteria or introduce bonuses, for example, promote austerity programs and budget discipline to respond to the financial and economic crisis that just now we're just starting to go out from. And to this purpose, we contemplate the reform of the revenue system including an increase in efficiency and transparency on the budget and the individual programs as well. Thank you. Thank you. So we're now going to open the floor for responses to the various presentations that we have heard. And before we open the floor, as the acting representative of the parliament, we would like to signal our determination to have some clear-cut agreement on resources and funding and own resources and signal our determination to have an agreement upon that before we would later accept the full package. So we're going to turn then to the floor. So if you would like to make a comment, please raise your hand and we'll take them as they come. Okay, so United Kingdom. Thank you, Chair. In this matter, United Kingdom has already said that it's against the introduction of any tax that you could collect directly such as a system of fixed annual lump sums, which the commission I think proposed. But instead of this, we think that there's a lot of space of negotiation in, for example, making the resources that already the union has at its disposal by eliminating or substantially reducing trade barriers and market support since we think that there are already technical barriers to trade in which the eurozone, well, yeah, they have been reduced. But however, the requirements that many policies that the national level impose to the goods that we trade are still making additional costs and incrementing the prices of our goods that are damaging for our products. So we should, we would like to focus more in this modification of our policies rather than putting additional ways of collecting money, because if we already see a clear majority of countries that do not want to increase the euro resources, we think that we see no point. But thank you. Well, as a representative of the commission, I am very glad of all the comments you already made, all the arguments you used. Some of them are very useful. For example, market reform, just make a summary of some of the arguments you used, specific criteria for allocation, more efficiencies, setting clear rules, transparency, disparities of the regions, the crisis, the redistribution, all these arguments are really good. But we need to reach an agreement. And of course, I mean, most of these arguments are not related directly. This is the view from the commission to the size of the budget, or at least not necessarily. So the point of the commission here would be still to maintain the proposal and please, I think you should try to reach an agreement on this, because my perception, or the perception of the commission is basically that these arguments are more related to, well, the efficiency of spending the budget, but not about the size of the budget. So it would be very good if you could be more precise. And so if you try to accommodate some of the preferences regarding to these different points, okay? So otherwise, we'll make some variations on this particular issue. And now we're here from Netherlands. Thank you. To answer what the representative of the commission said, I think it's a matter of general concept, what we discussed here, because I think that, another thing that the size and the efficiency is not separate things, and I personally think that we have to discuss, I don't think someone thinks that the problem is the size. And I think a lot of countries agree that the problem here is how we spend this money. So we can spend time discussing that, but not the size. I think at least Netherlands will not accept to increase the budget. We will be happy to reduce it, actually, but we know that's difficult, but for Netherlands the best, our number, it could be in the framework period before the number was 975 billion. And for Netherlands the number, our experts made a study and they said that the correct number for the interest could be 960 billion of euros in the budget. So that's our proposal. First we will hear from Denmark, and then Sweden, then Hungary, but first Denmark. Thank you very much, Terry Clinton. Well, first of all, we want to say that we have enjoyed really much the commentaries of our representatives from Czech Republic, from Poland, from Latvia, and from Spain. Although you are not so net contributors as other countries, I think that your contributions have been really, really, really positive and are really good for the debate. As we have said before, we are, from the beginning, we are advocating for a reduction of our budget. Nevertheless, we think that we can arrive to an agreement. We can arrive in an agreement because we will be real clear. We can arrive in an agreement of increasing the budget. Nevertheless, as we have said, we don't want to contribute more. And we also ask the countries or the cohesion countries to contribute proportionality more. So we can increase the budget, of course. But not as the same procedure, as the same rule of proceeding that we are working now. Secondly, we think that it's important that this budget, and that will be the debate after, it's important that this budget is good used. If not, it doesn't matter if we increase or we reduce the budget. The important is how do we use the budget. The important is the second debate that we will have after. Thank you very much. Okay, Sweden? Does it? Okay. It's been under this situation from the last years in the EU that there has been like an stabilization of the net contributors and the countries which receive more. It happens that the ceiling in the last EMF was $90.75 billion, as my partner said. And we don't think that this amount is realistic nowadays. We actually think that a realistic amount should be more flexible in some terms, determining that it should be reduced to $9.50 billion, taking into account that each year we should have like $130 billion amount of money and no more than $140 billion at least. That's our opinion. Thank you. Hungary? Thank you very much. I can pretty understand the opinions of the former speakers. And Hungary normally is not really known for being a big supporter of the commission, but today we have to speak in favor for the commission's proposal. And we think we have to increase the budget in order to really kind of lift Europe out of the crisis and to reach the goals written down in the communication from the commission that Europe can be a catalyst for growth and jobs across Europe. So we really have to kind of address all the crisis and all our problems, and this is not possible without increasing the overall budget. Thank you. Okay. Next, Podent. We definitely agree with what Hungary just said. But so a lot of people have been saying that the goal is to spend the money more efficiently. And obviously, I think every country here would agree that we should spend our money more efficiently to make it more effective to increase the effectiveness of the European economy and focus on developing R&D and making the European economy as a whole more competitive with the rest of the world. But we have to take a step back here and think about what the original goal of the European Union is and that's to make a single market where all of the European countries are at least somewhat equal and equally developed. And so if we were to reduce the funding, we would be severely hurting many of the Eastern European nations that have been using the benefits of the European funding to help them escape low levels of development. For example, since Poland entered the EU, our growth rate has increased from 51% to 68%. So it's clear that the EU funding is helping countries like Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic and Romania. And so we definitely think that if we were to cut the funding, it would severely hurt all of us and go against the goal of the EU of creating an equitable market. Thank you, Belgium. Thank you for all your comments. At first I said that I would agree to increase the budget. But now we are considering the Commission's proposal to accept it the way it is. As Denmark said to the other countries, they are not one of the higher GNI contributors, but Belgium is. Our contributions are significantly higher than our GNI. We are investing a lot. And that's because a few of our goals is to increase the private R&I in promoting entrepreneurship. And that's why the EU budget can help and to reduce it just will make less opportunities, less cooperation between regions. So that's why we agree with the Commission's proposal. Thank you. Thank you, Spain. About better spending countries group mentioned in June 2011, Parliament adopts its general position towards this multi-financial framework. The report name is Investing in the Future, a new multi-annual financial framework for a competitive, sustainable and inclusive Europe. In this report, the Parliament rejects the position of those member states that aim to ad-freeze the next multi-annual financial framework. For example, France, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, United Kingdom and Denmark. On the contrary, the Parliament suggests an increase of the European Union budget. At the total of GNI, we cannot reduce the budget if we do it. The European Parliament will reject our proposition because compared to the previous multi-annual financial framework, it will have been reduced. Thank you. Thank you, Germany. Yes, thank you for all your comments on this topic. But as Denmark has already said, Germany is not, the budget is a red line for us. It is not negotiable that it is increased because in these days of international crisis, the same austerity should be applied on a national level and should be applied for the MIF FF. We simply won't raise the 1% because we are already one of the huge net-paying countries. We will focus on structural economic reforms, especially on the crisis countries, which tend to be the cohesion countries. That's our area of negotiation, but an increase in the budget wouldn't be fair for our citizens. Thank you. Thank you, Finland. Thank you very much. In what size of the budget concerns, we say it before, and we will repeat it, 1%. We will not negotiate more than that. That's our red line, and there will be no unanimity of expanding more than that. We are not speaking only about efficiency. We have a determinate context that we can manage. Well, yes, but reforming, not only in crisis. We have to make employment. We have to restore the stability, and we have to return to public finances to sustainability. So, 1% and no more. Thank you. Latvia. Thank you, Chair. Latvia is really pleased of the current comments that have been made so far, and would like especially to welcome the comments from Hungary, Poland, Spain and Belgium. Each of them has pointed out some key issue within the debate, especially that the budget for Eastern countries is key. And as Poland has pointed out, and is the same case for Latvia, the new budget for Latvia is essential to its growth. And if we reduce this budget, we all are going to be responsible for the deepening of the current crisis. And as I pointed out before, it does not comply with the Lisbon Treaty and with the convergence policies, but also by the fact that, and Latvia would like to record you all, that there is, we all, the member state of the European Union have been pledging to implement the Europe 2020 strategy. And in keeping up with global competition and reducing the EU budget for structural conditions might not be the best way to address economic crisis. What Latvia would like to propose is that, as Hungary has underscored, a more bottom-up approach, namely to determine the size of the budget according to the actual needs of the member states of the European Union, and in order to create more added value to sustainable economic development, and therefore Latvia would like to suggest an unmoderated session. Thank you, Chair. Well, thank you for the participation, but as the Commission, I would like that no one in this room is actually putting these kind of red lines of 1%. I would like to remind you as representative of the Commission that the budget of the EU is extremely small. It is 1%, okay? And I remind you that the budget of the member states is over 46, 47%. So the perception of the European Commission is that the crisis of the world which is taking place right now needs European solutions. Okay, so I would like that you actually could help to find these European solutions. I think everyone should be a little bit generous on this. And please, no more red lines, okay? As the Chair of the meeting, I would like to call a short break of two or three minutes to reflect on the comments of the Commission, which the Parliament would also like to support and remind delegates that exactly what the Commission has stated. The size of the contributions are minimal. The size of the task that the European Union has in the next few years is enormous. To get these economies going again requires European solutions. And we don't see it as being an exorbitant increase in the contributions. We see it as a very modest proposal and we would like to reiterate what the Commission has said. But we will take a break for two minutes now for you to reflect on our comments. And then we will continue with the Czech Republic, Sweden, UK, and Italy. So one more issue, please. After the break, which is three minutes, we can have a coffee outside again. And you can try to reach agreements in these informal meetings with your colleagues, okay? Thank you for this break, okay? And I hope you already have some discussions to be able to reach an agreement. Just to remind you, as a member of the Commission, my plan is not to introduce a new proposal. So the idea is that you just have to continue negotiating on this figure. And just to remind and to make a call for looking at the European solutions. And also to remind you that if you don't reach an agreement, well, you know the status quo prevails. So these member states mainly that are pretty much against increasing or even keeping the status quo of the budget will have a... Well, I think at the moment it's 1.05, okay? So just make a call for a further cooperation between all member states. So we can continue with some member states, no? With the Czech Republic, I think. Thank you. The Czech Republic agree the idea of the necessity of better spending and smart growth. But growth comes by helping less developed regions. And the idea is to make a European Union. And I want to repeat the word Union. Acting as one state in more than one area. And with the enormous differences we have right now, we can only be... Sorry. And with the enormous differences we have right now between regions, we can't be this state. And we won't never act as a big state in market areas as China or the United States. So we agree with the commission proposal. And if it were possible, we would like to rise the budget to more than 1.05% of GNI. Thank you. Thank you. Next, Sweden. We have been talking too much about the red lines, about increasing money as well, the budget. But the sides of the budget, it's important. And I want to ask you something to all of you, like Czech Republic, who is... The representative is saying that it's in favor of higher implementation of the 1%. Is an inclusive Europe depending on an increase of the budget itself? Why don't we include other incentive systems in order to promote competitiveness, free market and also employment for those countries who are in crisis, because we have to take into account that net contributor support is important on the sides of the budget. Thank you. Thank you. The UK? The UK believes that the word that the minister from the Czech Republic has just addressed are important to remind us that there are some countries which advocate for a certain position. But if we increment the size of the budget to even more than 1.05 with the UK is not even considering, are you aware that your increase in your apportation will be much lower than the ones that the UK or Germany or Sweden would have to pay for? I mean, it's important to be solidary, but it's important also to be sympathetic. I mean, we are a union, so we take care for you and you take care for us. It's just a bilateral relationship. So having said that, the UK would like to propose to, we would like to reduce the budget, but since we see that we are in a negotiation and therefore we have to make or we need to make some concessions, would like to propose the freezing of the budget to how it is, but modifying or relocating how the resources are, I mean, how we decide where the resources go to and how they are spent. So this way we see that we could go to a path to implement better policies as the commission has said that we are facing a huge humanitarian need. So we think that if we could spend this money better and control it better by introducing, for example, a system of bonuses when a country reach the objectives that the money that has been given and does it in an efficient and successful way, it can be given a bonus or more money or kind of a prize. You have done it good. Next time you receive more. This would lead to more efficient policies and greater objectives because we see that there's no transparency and there's no accountability nowadays and that's why that's one of the points why we don't want to give more money because we don't know where it will go from and go to and how it will be spent. And finally, we just in more technical line, we think that it's important that all the payments that we do go in line with inflation because we think that if not we also in real terms we lose. So it's important that we do not only take into account the nominal terms but also the real terms. Thank you. Thank you. Next, Italy. Thank you very much. We are in favor of our colleague in the Czech Republic and we think that we should go further in the integration of EU and it's important to have a global politic and we think that it's an important step, the increase of the EU budget that we believe that this is not enough money for a spend. We are against the austerity policies that the German state proposed are also Denmark. We think that the austerity policies have very bad consequences like for example Germany, it's not the economy of Germany, it's not increasing as we warned and for example the French economy or these politics have a dramatic consequences for Greece. So we agree of this increase of the budget but it's not enough for us. We want to increase this budget. Thank you. Thank you. Next, Denmark. Thank you very much, Terry Clinton. Well, first of all, as Terry from the commission has said, we have an important task here. I think that all of us, we want to arrive on agreement that an important agreement that helps our our national economies, our own countries and all the European Union to grow and to be a better union in the future. And when I'm talking about better union in the future, I'm talking about a better community. That's why I will tell you something, we will tell you something. If we don't arrive on agreement today, our future will not be the same as it has been our past. That's why I'm asking all the cohesion countries, I'm asking all the cohesion countries, I'm asking Spain, I'm asking Czech Republic, I'm asking Latvia, I'm asking Hungary, I'm asking Italy. I'm asking all of them and also Belgium that we want to contribute. And we are not in a position of increasing our budget but also we want to listen proposals. Good, effective and clear proposals because until the moment we don't have listen nothing about that. We have listen, we want to increase that, we want to increase more, we want to increase one, it doesn't mind the numbers. So we want good ideas, we want to know why it's important to increase the budget but also we want to know why it's important for all the union. We want to listen why now here in the present we have to arrive at a conclusion that increases our budget and which are our benefits. That's why, for example, I want to listen how do you want that this budget affects to your economies. For example, in Denmark we want that the budget affects the preservation and the management of our natural resources. We want that the budget also affects our competitiveness for growth and employment. And also, of course, we want that this future budget that today we hope, we hope we are not doing and making red lines. We hope to arrive to a conclusion that the budget also affects our question for growth and employment. That's the last and important thing that I think we all countries have to think when we are talking and when we add important and new, I hope, ideas. Thank you very much. Okay, thank you. Hungary? Thank you very much, Denmark. I think I could give you a clear answer on your white questions why we want to raise the budget. Might I mention the situation, the current situation of the European Union facing the refugee crisis? What we are going to do with all the migrants? How we are going to protect our borders without money? What we can do if we receive so many people coming into the European Union without kind of having some border protections, so we need money for that. I think that's an important point. We have to tackle the situation now, the current crisis, and we have a lot of problems in Europe, so we cannot stay at the status quo with the budget. But we have to at least increase it just a little bit just to show that we are going in the future to tackle all the problems that we have a future for Europe that we do not want to stay at the same point always. And I think raising the budget, as proposed from the commission, it's just ridiculous. It's just a ridiculous waste. So it's not a huge thing. And then later discuss on the points where we are going to spend it. But I think we should agree now for first just to raise it a little bit. And then we can decide which points we can shift, which issues we are going to address, for which issue we are going to spend more. And if I might address like the huge countries who are going to contribute a lot, like Germany, for example, if you look at your national budget, it's ridiculous, the budget of the European Union. So please, I think you could really afford that. Thank you. Okay. Czech Republic? Thank you. And thank you to the hungry minister who said something with sense. And to answer Sweden, I'd like to say that the Czech Republic has not said anything about red lines. And I'd like to know your proposals because you are who is not, you are not agree with the commission proposal and we agree. And I'd like to say that, yes, to answer the United Kingdom. Our increase will be much lower than Sweden, the UK, or Germany. And it's a bilateral contract, yes. And we agree the idea of transparency and we are doing a huge effort to be more transparent in all our transactions. You talk about the contribution that we have to do to the contribution that you will have to do. You and Sweden and Germany, for example. But there are lots of billions and billions of euros of revenues and correction systems that you will receive. So we know that you are countries that contribute a lot in the budget of the European Union. But there are countries that also need a lot. And that's what I would like to say and if Sweden can make a proposal. Thank you. Okay, next we're going to go to Latvia. Then we have the UK, Finland, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Germany, Spain and Sweden. In order to meet the obligation of the agenda and the time, if we cannot and if we have not reached a unanimous agreement by that stage, we will go to a vote of a qualified majority. Okay, so Latvia. Thank you, Chair. Latvia is really pleased with the comments made so far. But would like to point out after the speech of Denmark that actually proposals have been made and reasons have been pointed out before your speech. So Latvia is really surprised of your arguments. Exactly. And Latvia would like to welcome the UK's proposition and also believe that transparency, accountability and more efficiency are key to the European budget. And would like to, but do not think that freezing in status quo is a solution. But just waiting for, Latvia believes that with the European Union, we have the opportunity to act together and to create instruments to address the current national issues. If we all together decide for status quo, we would only, the meaning of the European Union would be deeply in the mind. Therefore, Latvia believes that the European budget would need to be increased if not to high degree still increased. And for the transparency concern of the UK, Latvia believes that we could have set binding conditions for, to create incentive, additional incentive for reform. Meaning that with areas directly solely related to coercion policy, we could specify how the money would be spent. On the other end, for Latvia, I believe that Latvia supports the introduction of a common strategic framework. Recalling Latvia's previous speech on a more bottom-up approach, Latvia believes that each states we need to come together and establish and define, according to our own national strategy, create established synergy between the different funds. For example, the cohesion policy. In the end, Latvia would like to call, not for a division right now, but would call everyone, every member state present here to take a step back on its national concerns and try to envision on the long term what we are discussing right now. Thank you. Okay, thank you now, the UK. Thank you, Chair. First of all, since the United Kingdom believes that we're kind of entering in a repetitive, ambitious circle because no one seems to be making clear concessions or trying to reach a middle point, would like to welcome the Latvia's proposal of monitoring the money and establishing kind of a synergy of funds so that there are no solicitations and repetitions and making this long-term envisioning. However, we don't believe that freezing the MFF budget is equal to following the status to us since we're talking about not following historic patterns, but instead spending the money in a different way, not spending more, but spending different. So, of course, this has to be more concrete because this seems kind of abstract, but now we're just talking about a quantity so we cannot start talking about specific policies and actualizations because this would be eternal, but the UK, for example, will propose in further negotiations to accommodate factors when we negotiate the quantities and all this, such as the globalization, the aging population, which is one of the main problems in the European Union because our natality tax is rather low, or for example, the climate change, which is already being negotiated in Paris, I think. So, also, you have to take into consideration that we are ministers from national parliaments. We are subject to national pressures, so we don't have, we are not free to do whatever we want. Of course, we would like to spend all the money we could in the European Union, but also with our population because it's the one that we have more closer to our home and we have to take care of it. So, we welcome the proposals that, for example, Hungary has made, but we cannot only give you money so that you can do one policy in immigration because, for example, the UK advocates for not giving social aid to non-European Union citizens, but instead the ones who have been living here for four years. So, if you only advocate for this policy, we cannot give you our support. Therefore, we would like to, for example, propose reforms in more broader topics that will carry more benefits for all of us, such as the modification of the market and what we said before about relocating trade barriers because we are nowadays mainly an economic union, maybe going to a political union, but we are not these nowadays. So, we have to take into consideration that we are competing with huge economies, such as the United States, China or the BRICS, and we have to be competent and not follow national policies that are damaging to our products and our prices and our competitiveness. So, this is particular policies being put on the floor. Thank you. Thank you, Finland. Thank you very much. First of all, I would not like to speak about austerity. I would consider it fiscal discipline, sorry, because here we have some countries that have been rescued by some countries of the European Union and now take one increase of the budget, and I think that we have to reconsider the spending on the European Union by following some criteria that make us reach an agreement. My father would say two can reach an agreement if one doesn't want, and that's what we have to do. We have to reach an agreement both parts. And I can negotiate about more than 1%, but only if we continue considering the fiscal discipline, sorry. Finally, I would like to finish with a monetary quote that says, beyond differences and geographical boundaries, there lies a common interest. We have to follow that interest and make a better European Union. Thank you. Thank you, Italy. Thank you very much. I want to answer to Denmark and UK. Italy, I want to remember that Italy is a net contributor to the EU Union. And we want to say that contributing to the Union is not an act of solidarity. We can destinate funds to increase and to incentivize the economy. And Italy is in favour to start reforms to have a more competitive country, but we think that it's very important for all the countries to complement these austerity policies or these reforms with their contribution to a budget to increase the competitiveness of our economies. Thank you. Thank you, Netherlands. Yeah, thanks. I will try to be brief because this is taking quite long. First of all, Netherlands will try to, I think, I will try to make a responsible act and I will make a precisely proposal to the group to decide. I think there's some hypothetical arguments here. I will not point whose, but some points are quite bad. And I will say that we all know here that the net contributors, like Netherlands itself, has a lot of boost to put money on European Union because that makes a lot of increase in exportations and it takes a lot of money to come back to the country. So our best worry is the next point, the introduction of taxes. So Netherlands will vote in favour to increase the budget to the 1.05% of GNI only if we later vote against the taxes. I can explain why Netherlands doesn't want taxes. That's because it could be less transparent because it could be like a mess in the fund system. And I think now it's clear. Every country puts the money in relation with the GNI. It's clear. So we can see what each country, how much money put and the new system of taxes will be very, very, I don't know how to say it, a mess. I think it will be less transparent and I think the European Union is quite, it's not transparent. So I think it will help. So Netherlands will vote in favour if we don't take the taxes. United can just do a direct question. Is the minister from Netherlands talking about the financial transaction tax in particular or which system of taxes? Because the European Union has quite a broad system of taxation. I'm talking about the proposal of the commission, the financial transaction tax. And any tax. I mean, we are not in favour of any tax. We only think the best way is the GNI. So I want to start off by saying thank you to the UK, Sweden, Denmark, Germany and all those countries. The cohesion countries realise that you guys are contributing more than you get back in terms of your contributions to the EU. But you guys need to think of it as an investment that in the long term will benefit all of Europe. You're investing in your neighbouring countries as trading partners. And in order to compete globally with China and the US, Europe needs to be strong as a whole and to develop together into a strong economic and where there are no weak spots of the union. And so to answer Denmark's concerns of how the funds, if the money you're giving us, how it's helping us, I can point out some examples in Poland. In Warsaw, we're developing a big science centre with a lot of research and development, which is one of the new goals of the EU to focus on making it more competitive as far as technologically. And then also the EU contributed 1.3 billion euros in Poland to build an A1 motorway to not only improve links between regions in Poland, but also to improve connections between Poland and the rest of Europe. And so this shows that your funds are not only helping the cohesion countries, specifically in their countries, but to make them more integrated in the rest of Europe. Also each year around 1.4 million Polish farmers, which is a big portion of our economy. It's largely in agriculture. And so 1.4 million Polish farmers receive aid from the EU and it's increased their income by almost 45%. And so just all of this shows that your funds are not going to waste. They have been helping us develop. And if you continue to do this then in the long term, it's going to pay off. So thank you. Thank you. Next to Germany. Thank you for all the comments from the fellow representatives. I just wanted to answer first the Czech Republic that, well, speak a long ago. I just wanted to say that more budget doesn't mean more integration for us. We think that it's not that much that it's freezing the status quo. It's just trying to adequate the conditions of the European Union budget to the actual crisis. Our proposal is that we firmly believe that it's enough with this budget that the main point is to reform the resources allocation because we think that they are quite misused and not that equalized distribution of the budget and efficiency. We think that we the friends of better spending would make concessions on the resource allocation and that would actually favor a lot like countries like Czech Republic, Poland, Latvia and so on and in determining policies. Thank you, Spain. I have a short question to you. Okay, extremely short. In the voting, the qualified majority, which number is... Will you know, please? It's out of time, this question. Because that depends on the number of countries but we are only 13 countries here, okay? We will see this in three minutes. Spanish agree with the Czech Republic proposal as we said before the break. European Union needs a strong budget to make real the needs of the member states. Austerity policies are not working and the eastern states and some of Mediterranean countries are in a poor situation and we can only get out of this situation through the investment in coalition policies. However, we understand the positions of the other countries and I think we can reach an agreement. As Netherland said, the commission proposal 1.05% of GNI is between the preference of both groups. Thank you. Thank you, Spain. So I will hear finally from Sweden and then we'll close this motion. I would like to answer some of the proposals coming from Czech Republic, Latvia and the other friends of cohesion. What is not fair is to impose to our national citizens a decision which has been taken here in the European Council and because the decisions historically taken have lead us to division as you see. Sweden is of the idea to suggest to all of you because we are all in the European Union that to invest in European commitments also means that some national governments will be benefited when they contribute on the way they set here. So it's important to not following the historical patterns and have a broad and a global view on what is going to happen. Increasing is not a long-term solution. What is a long-term solution to the economic situation is to restruct the CAP and think about how the countries are contributing on specific issues such as smart and corrosive growth, research and innovation which are the policies which are going to make this European Union competitive. Thank you. Thank you. Well thank you. Actually you didn't reach and you are providing so many difficulties to reach an agreement. As moderators of this debate we are going to propose a final vote on this motion and also the way to proceed would be basically by a qualified majority voting which means that you are 13 member states at this time so you will have to reach 8.6 so let's say 9. So 9 will have to agree on this motion otherwise we will move to the next motion. Anyway we are going to move anyway to the next motion but it would be nicer if we can move with an agreement. So because we don't have time to do this in a secret ballot we are going to just do it in a more usual way as it is made for example in the parliament so whatever. So maybe you can just, the proposal is Peter. We are voting on the proposal of the commission which is increasing the expenditure ceiling to 1.025 billion euros which represents 1.05% of GNI. So all those in favor raise your hands. Any abstention and any votes against? Okay well taken into consideration that abstention are counted as negative votes. In qualified majority voting we didn't reach an agreement okay. Which basically means, say again. Well if you all agree on the proposal to freeze it or if you can agree to propose freezing it we can hold a vote on freezing it but first do you have unanimous agreement on a vote for freezing the budget as it is? I don't think we have unanimous agreement but maybe qualified majority agreement. Well in the end it freezes. Is there unanimity about freezing the budget for? Since the increasing of the budget has been rejected wouldn't you like to at least freeze it? It is free anyway but I mean because there was not agreement but we can just see whether you would like to decide this together with the next motion and maybe you can make some kind of side payments about different issues except to you. The responsibility of the commission is clearly basically to reach an agreement but as you will know if you don't reach an agreement the status quo prevails which I assume you already know the consequences for that. So shall we vote again? Well we can postpone the vote until later. Okay we can postpone the vote and then you can think about that again. I will give you a few more minutes to think about this. Professor? We will make four minutes break before we start the second motion. Okay thank you. We are going to begin the second session and we are going to debate in the second session the allocation of the resources. Before we begin the second session the representatives of the parliament and the commission would like to indicate a certain level of dissatisfaction with the attitudes of the member states. We feel that there is a lack of desire to reach an agreement. We feel that people are talking at cross purposes and there is no attempt to trade, to reach an agreement, to negotiate, to swap, to balance, to act and use the abilities and skills that you have in order to reach this agreement. So as representatives of the parliament and the commission we would like to see within this session that strong desire and commitment for a better Europe for an agreement and for a quick agreement. So to open the session we will be debating how the resources will be divided. We will continue with the same procedure as before and I will immediately turn to open the floor and I would like to hear the proposals of the member states. So to begin with the United Kingdom. Thank you chair. First of all so as to settle the negotiations the United Kingdom would like to propose kind of a framework between which the negotiation could move and it is that all our efforts should be aligned with the Europe 2020 strategy. We think that this is an appropriate framework and within this we will kind of just state our positioning in each one of the headings. For example in heading 1A which wants to enhance economic competitiveness and strengthen transnational infrastructure programs. We think that the cohesion funds should be directed to the poorest regions. However, we want to propose the introduction of a new category which is the transition regions which would be composed by the regions whose GDP per capita falls between 75 and 90% of the EU average. These regions receive less funding than the less developed regions and this would be better for them. And then we believe that this would lead to a higher conversions between the European Union because for them it is easier to reach the level of the more developed regions rather than the poorest ones which need more efforts, more money and deeper policies. So this would be one of our main points. Secondly, we want to talk about the CAP funds which considered the largest part of EU funds but we think that financial means to this policy should be reduced or instead we ask for significant reforms such as readjusting the policy towards the second pillar of rural development. We cannot keep it the way it is. Third, the third heading. We think that the expenses from the previous financial framework are considered to be sufficient and no further increases are required in this heading. However, we want to point out that in the fourth heading since it comprises the... through this heading we can address the problems of global poverty and transnational terrorism. We think that in this heading we need to address enhanced efforts and increase the funds for example in diplomacy and because we think that it's one of the main problems nowadays worldwide and that's more or less it. We hope that all the member states can agree to these minimal demands from the United Kingdom but which are really important and could make a huge difference in the future. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Denmark? Thank you very much. Three points to begin. First of all, CAP. Maximum, we want to lose 5%. Second point, that's complicated but we want a maximum of 24. 24, remember this number because it's really important for us. 24% of direct payments. No more. No 30%. 24. Third point, most important point. Cohesion funds. Maximum, 100 billion. That's it. That's our position. We will not move. No more. No less. Thank you very much. The second, can you repeat? From direct payments, we are asking for 24% maximum of contributions and Cohesion funds, 100 billion. Thank you. Netherlands? I think while Netherlands is against to introduce a new category of countries, I think it's quite easy. I think that the countries that are big and have a lot of regions are in favor of this proposal, but countries like Denmark or Netherlands that didn't have a lot of territory and a lot of regions, we don't agree and we think it's not fair. We think it's fair that the Cohesion funds goes to the poorest regions of the poorest countries, but to invent another category just because big countries could get more money, we think it's an unfair strategy for the little countries. So Netherlands is totally against introducing a new category. Thank you. Germany? Yes. Thank you for your comments. Just to state Germany's position, Germany and UK have similar vision of how the budget should be distributed in these categories, though in the common agricultural policy, seeing that France is not here and a lot of countries would want a small decline, Germany could accept that, but as long as it favors direct payments for independent from production output or production costs for farmers and do not that the cutting is not overboard, it's not too far reaching, but in the end and it also supports the new transition categories because we don't think that it's just to be against the little countries, it's just to be more efficient and really distribute the resources to the poorest regions. Thank you. Sweden? We have problems with Michael. The Sweden representative is in favor of the concerns shown by the Denmark representative. We believe that the CIP is important, but in order to abolish those subsides in the agricultural policy and this is for the fairness and the quality principles for the EU, it's not that we only need substantial cuts, but we need to face the real global challenges in the world and we need to make these direct payments, innovation directed, we need to face the challenges like the climate action, also facing agro-food sector, we have to take into account all this because if we don't, there are some countries that won't be making support to this and we are virtually giving support to make these greening direct payments better for the future. Thank you. Okay. Are there any more comments or will we take a short break of two minutes and the parliament would like to and the commission together would like to remind people of their responsibilities to reach an agreement that we cannot hold up the process much longer. You have to remember that the public opinion of the European Union is in crisis if we are shown to be an institution that is unable to reach an agreement. We're in a period of economic crisis and to some extent political turmoil and we would like you to assume the responsibility of reaching an agreement so we will take a break for two minutes and we would as the parliament and the commission we would encourage people to make an agreement, prepare those agreements and we will return in two or three minutes. Okay. First, the United Kingdom. Well, before the break the United Kingdom would just to make an important point for this country because we are kind of focusing on how we will finance and we don't know what because we have not agreed on anything. We're talking about, for example, we're focusing on direct payments instead of talking about the CAP or each heading and how we will follow this 2020 strategy. So in this line we want to say that the United Kingdom is against direct finance because we talked before about being more efficient, being more transparent and we think that this way this is not as much accountable as it could be and this is not in the line of a global strategy that it's the way that will be more efficient. We just in the previous voting we couldn't reach an agreement on the amount of the budget so we just need to because we said that we would reach it on each heading so if we focus on financing and we don't focus on what we finance we believe that no agreement will be reached so just start making proposals and being more concrete. Thank you. So I think before the break actually we could hear the proposals from other countries that didn't say anything like Poland, Spain, Latvia, Italy and Czech Republic and Belgium, okay, and Finland. So we can start maybe with Spain and then we will move in the other direction. Thank you. About the PAC funds, a decline of 7% is not a small decline. We are talking about hundreds of millions of euros and it affects the competitiveness of the countries that receive CAP funds as France, Poland, Italy or Germany. At these times our primary sector needs injections of capital and a decline of 7% is deathly. So Spain and other states I think won't vote a decline of the natural resource funds. About the direct payments, we think that at crisis time we cannot focus on the environment. We have to focus on the economic recovery, the competitiveness and the employment. The commission proposal affects directly the recovery and indirectly the employment. I am talking now about the direct payments. I am Mariano Rajoy. We would appreciate if you, Spain, can be more precise, okay? Okay, Spain proposes a reduction of the percentage of the direct payments and a reduction of the ecological focus area about the commission proposal. And about the PAC funds, we don't want a decline. About the cohesion funds, Spain defends the creation of the transition regions because in the European Union there are some countries that are developed but have undeveloped regions and we need these funds. These countries are for example present here. Poland, Spain, Italy, the Czech Republic and some Eastern countries. In addition we have to fight against the youth unemployment and for all these reasons the commission proposal about the cohesion funds the second proposal have to be respected. Thank you. Thank you, Spain, Poland. So I know we didn't agree on a budget but I think we have to make, I'm going to go under the assumption that it'll be at increased to 1.05% just because if we don't reach an agreement that's what it'll go to. And so if we're not, if we're increasing the budget a little bit then I don't see why there's any reason to have to cut either the funding of the common agricultural policy direct payments or the cohesion fund because if we're not decreasing the overall budget why do we need to cut these programs? And as I mentioned earlier both the cap and the cohesion funds are significantly helping Eastern European and cohesion countries develop and catch up to the rest of Europe. So I propose just keeping the amount of those funds the same. So Poland is open to rethinking how the common agricultural policy is implemented to make it more effective in terms of sustainable farming and modernized, modern farming techniques as well as conserving energy and being better for the environment. But we do not see any need to reduce the amount of spending here. We should just make it, we could increase the spending and make it more efficient. Latvia? Thank you, Chair. Latvia would like, the Republic of Latvia would like to echo the need of the implement of envisioning what we are currently debating within the 2020 Europe strategy that the UK rightly pointed out. Concerning Latvia position on the cohesion policy and especially Latvia will further expand on the diversion of funding of conversion of objective regions because Latvia has already been expanding on its cohesion policy stance. So for Latvia, diversion of funding from convergence objective regions towards an additional transition category which reduced transparency of the cohesion policy and could lead to deviation from the policy basic ideas which is promoting the catching up process of less developed regions. Therefore, the future of cohesion support do not result in the detriment of less developed EU members to the states and region. Meaning that in echoing the point of Netherlands, having another category would not be, Latvia does not think that that would be the best mean to address discrepancies among European regions. Furthermore, Latvia believes that the co-financing race for cohesion policy instruments in convergent regions should remain the same. Also, regarding the CAP, the Latvia would like to stress that the CAP would support equitable and balanced policies that would reduce the disparities between member states and therefore would like to emphasize that future direct payment system must be based on objective criteria. The character is a factual situation and because according to the proposal, Latvian farmers in 2020 after a long introduction period would still receive only 54% of EU average direct payments level. In 2013, Latvia will receive as received only 35% of the EU average direct payment level. Thus clearly the proposal does not solve the underlying issues and goes against the principle of fairness and quality. Latvia thus would like to invite every country to reflect further on this point. Also, Latvia considers that the commission proposal regarding the rural development is too general and would like the commission to further expand on this project. As the overall proposal for agriculture complies with the commission's own experience due to its communication as the CAP towards 2020. And Latvia would be glad to expand more on the different headings where we will have time to. Thank you very much. Thank you, Italy. Thank you. We agree with Poland to say that we cannot spend less of the budget proposal for the commission, but we are in favor to reduce some, for example, the administration funds. We can reduce it by simplifying the administration. We think that we can simplify and reduce the administrations that are now in the EU. And also for the natural funds, it's really important for Italy because it's key for our country. But we can reduce these funds in order to invest in a more efficient way. But it's essential for us the funds to a smart growth because it's really important nowadays to focus in this. I think that I don't have to say anything more. Okay, thank you, Hungary. Thank you. Just to do it kind of quick and efficient. I'm going through the headings now. The first one, smart and inclusive growth. Hungary completely agrees with the commission's proposal that this should be like the huge amount of the budget. And especially I would like to highlight the equation policy. It's really important for us. I think that's one of the main priorities of the European Union, that we kind of reach a common level, an economic level in between the countries. So here are going to be no cuts in our opinion and we won't agree to any decline at this point. And yes, sustainable growth, natural resources, of course, also really important for us, the CAP. It's one of... It's a point we could do some reforms but not going to cut the budget for this point. Security and citizenship. Yes, of course we could maybe kind of raise here a little bit the spendings because as I already addressed the issue with migrants, we have to protect our borders. We need money for that. Global Europe and the last point, administration. I think here we can save some money and maybe shift a little bit of the budget from these points to the coalition policy or the security things. Thank you. Okay, Germany? As I have already stated, I agree with the UK proposals but the common agriculture policy. Though Germany is one of the... Well, the countries that benefit more from this policy seeing that France is not here and that we will have to reach an agreement is okay with doing reform. It would be like... It's Germany's position to... We could allow a cut but not the 7% because that's not a small cut as Spain has already said. Yeah, we also, as the UK stated, we want to invest in citizenship, freedom, security and justice and growth and jobs and we could also use a little bit of the money spent in administration to be more efficient in other areas. Okay, thank you. Finland? Thank you. First of all, I will comment some commission proposals. To the financial transition tax, Finland is in favor of them. To common agriculture policy, we would like to introduce that in the pillar too. There should be some kind of link to the past performance and allocations for the whole of previous period. Also, we agree in the ecological focus area and in question funds, we agree the transition regions and we would like to put emphasis in research and innovation for a 4% not seeing them as an empty pocket or a modus operandi but as a long-term commitment for the European Union. Also, we agree the commission with the proposals in connecting Europe and but we are not agree with the proposals in administration where we want some additional coatings and finally in correction systems we agree them but going to the headings of the budget and to be clear competitiveness for growth and jobs we would like to invest more money in that heading 1A to cohesion 1B we would like to keep the same level but we know that it's difficult we are in crisis so we expect them to be reduced and we would accept a reduction in cohesion but we would also like to redistribute the way that Europe invest in that heading for example, European regional development phone should have more foundings or European should have found in the heading 2, sustainable growth and natural resources we would like to put more money in rural development funding but we also know that the CAP is a very big invest and also has to be reduced so we would not oppose and we will be open to any proposals and accept them in security and citizenship also we are open in global Europe however we want to propose one thing that is that the major share some 90% should be allocated to ODA, official development assistance and in administration as I said before additional codes and that's it, thank you okay, thank you Denmark well, we'll move then to the Czech Republic thank you well, I'll be quick we can reach an agreement with the Netherlands in not defending the finance transaction tax we can also reach an agreement with Denmark in 24% of direct payments maximum but we won't defend a decreasing of smart and inclusive growth and sustainable growth budget we will not defend the creation of transition zones and we will not defend a reduction of equation phones and we will defend funding transparently but heavily financed of convergent regions the less developed regions of the union and we have to help them to get the development that they have to have thank you okay, thank you and Belgium thank you in the first place we are completely agree with competitiveness for growth and jobs the proposal of, I mean the goal of this MFEF is to create new jobs new opportunities to increase the market so we agree with that and yes, we completely agree with cohesion funds because, well, as we said before the European Union is not only economical so wouldn't be fair if we couldn't help the less developed regions to altogether advance in a more productive and efficient Europe then the common agricultural policy yes, we agree too because we want to protect the young farmers to promote safe good food environments to protect rural economies we would like to increase the security and citizenship to improve the security and border protection and the agricultural policy which is really important nowadays and we would like to increase the administration because if we want to achieve a more competitive, more efficient Europe we have to invest on that point to make it to make the agreements everything that is spoken here be taken to the practice and yes, I would like to remember that Belgium has plenty of the EU institutions so it costs a lot of money and a lot of invest from the Belgium government so we would like to increase the administration funds thank you okay, thank you and now that we have heard all of the initial comments and reflections from each member states we're going to propose a five minute break for to facilitate the informal negotiations we would remind you again that the objective is to make a deal this time is for you to work towards that and bring an agreement to the table and also reaching the coalitions with the countries you are supposed to make coalitions I'm bringing particular proposals in front of the commission to see which actually has a positive input for the final negotiation so four, five minutes for informal negotiations not for coffee break but for informal negotiations time is over for the negotiations so please let's come back to our negotiations Finland and Czech Republic, please come on okay, well it has come to our attention that the representative for the United Kingdom would like to make a proposal so we will turn to the proposal and then we will invite comments yeah, I would like also the delegation of Finland and of Germany to propose it with me as well should we go with you? to be together? okay, this is our proposal we will discuss it with most of you I don't know if you can agree with this but it is subject to further modifications with a first proposal well, for example, we propose to maintain the Croatian funds you know, we'll cut some of these but we want to promote the dimensions in research and information and we also want to... we will cut in the CAP 10% but we will cut at 3.5% and also we will cut in administration 1% and this we will invest in security on our borders by different national security and... in global security in global security in the position we want to establish a strict criteria of allocation of funds to promote the catching up of the regions these many countries are not in favor of implementing the criteria of translation of regions we want you to put a strict criteria we post an export and expand the control of the funds and we should include a system of bonuses for those regions that implement successfully the objectives that they have received and this review will accommodate some funds or having some money if they fulfill promoting localization fighting aging population and climate change but with this we want to get more transparency and more efficiency and accountability so it will just affect you and I'm pretty thankful nevertheless I don't know how to... it seems like I don't know, like the cool countries go there and say to us what's good and what's bad so... we know how you work normally so you don't have to make explanation I have to say that Netherlands is the only country who made the responsible act to say let's vote in favor of the multi-financial framework we sit on this matter and we sit in other matters but we can sit in the matter of the new category of transition countries because it has no sense but you said... sorry one moment the exposed and exempt control goes to the convergence regions so the Netherlands point is to reduce the coercion funds but to the country... one moment let's go members to perhaps return to their places thank you is what you wanted in Netherlands? the position of Netherlands is that if we reduce coercion funds we know that we will receive less money Netherlands is a country and we accept this fact because we think that some countries don't have to receive coercion funds because I don't know it's like I don't know how to explain in English but I know how to explain in Dutch but... we have a problem no, no, I don't know how to... can I think and then I talk again? yes, you can think before Germany? I wanted to to say that since the CIP pro countries have made some concessions like reducing the budget I believe that the coercion fund or we believe because we have reached an agreement in the informal meetings should not as the representative of the UK said raised or cut but to be better spent and we also made the concession of not implementing this transition transition areas just for countries like the Netherlands so I think that it should like the aim is to reach an agreement so that should be taken into account as we all have made concessions Finland? thank you I want to say something to what Netherlands has commented is that the question is going to have a new criteria new mechanisms of control and for all the countries that include transparency new incentive etc so it's not looking for our interest it's just for Europe and the citizens of Europe just that, thank you UK? yeah the UK has just remembered a conversation that had with Libya yeah because Libya just said before the break that it was in favour of transparency promoting the catching up process no establishing of new category and promote equitable and balanced policies in CIP we threw an objective criteria we believe that all this has been contemplated in our proposal and also Libya was concerned about how this would be dealt with if we cut it if we cut in the administration and we said that it was not incompatible since it was just establishing a criteria so that the national administrations that won't be affected had to make a control of these funds and the policies they were directed to and make an inform and be accountable to the European Union the European Union does not have to increase its administration to deal with this establishment of criteria we don't see that it is incompatible so we believe that we have been really contemplating with your concerns and that it is a good proposal to reach a unanimous agreement okay Poland sorry I think we have to take into account that the cap is the second largest expenditure of the EU so if we are cutting that by 3.5% and we are not cutting the overall budget then we are going to have a lot of extra money to spend and while I do think we need to spend some of that on the European's borders and dealing with the refugee crisis I think it would be more wise instead of focusing on global Europe as much to maybe consider adding a little bit more to the cohesion fund just because that helps you are taking away for the developing countries a little bit from farming which is one of their most important sectors of the economy and so to give back to that it would be more helpful to add it to the cohesion fund I agree that we need to make it more efficient and add incentives to that policy but if I think it would be more effective to because we are going to have a lot more money so at least considering adding some of that extra money to the cohesion I think we have enough to do that so I maybe consider instead of keeping cohesion the same increasing it by a little bit okay Latvia I mean numbers don't matter maybe one or two percent okay Latvia thank you chair Latvia is not sure that the actual discussions are permitted with the European council but Latvia will still take the opportunity to respond to UK it's true that we had some informal discussion during the break and that Latvia agrees with most of most of the propositions that have been put forward but Latvia does not recall going against this proposal yet furthermore regarding the question of administration and the administrative costs that UK presents Latvia is really interesting in knowing UK's stance on this matter in so far as how is UK going to make his national administration fully accountable to EU regulation and furthermore so Latvia is open to any argumentation on this furthermore Latvia would like to echo the point of Poland regarding the increasing funding of the cohesion policy Latvia believes as has been repeatedly saying that cohesion policy and within the 2020 EU strategy is key to reduce discrepancies between the different European Union and also Latvia would like to point out that what's to have more objective and equitable criteria within the distribution of the common agricultural policy which is a point that has not been mentioned yet thank you for your feedback Finland yes thank you first of all it's related to the Poland's intervention with all the codes we are going to propose it's 1% of administration and 3.5 in CAP we will have a 4.5% of cuttings we would like to know how much you want of that percentage to go to security and to the refugees crisis use that I mean I'm not an expert in actually how much money they're spending in every part but I would think that maybe to solidify the refugee crisis you could use 1.5% maybe spend another 1.1% on global Europe and then put the rest in cohesion hungry first of all I would like to thank the UK, Finland and Germany for issuing that proposal Hungary really will support it and we really appreciate that they're not going to be cuts in the cohesion funds maybe just one exception we won't agree will be that this cohesion funds are going to be set on these conditionality provisions with the ex-post and their ex-unfair evaluation because we think that's going to be a kind of race in bureaucracy and makes the whole system more complicated and as we are going to cut the administration I think we agreed on 1% but we discussed about 1% cutting the administration costs I think it makes absolutely no sense to have this kind of conditionality in the cohesion funds thank you Dan Mark thank you very much I have a plane Barcelona Prat from to Copenhagen one hour so the time is limited also we want to add something first of all we are really really enjoyed a lot the proposal from UK, from Germany and from our colleagues Nordic colleagues from Finland but we also want to be more precise because we love the principles but we want to talk about numbers I think that we have more or less 30 minutes but it's important that all of us the countries that we are favour of this proposal we talk about numbers because the commission has done to us important and concrete proposals and I think that's now it's the time to talk about numbers because finally that's the important thing thank you very much we have 25% to invest in other areas as a result of the cuts so you can also propose where this can go and we will discuss it and reach an agreement so if you have any proposal we want to know it Sweden which came from Germany Finland and UK with the fact that the transition idea is for making development better for all the European Union I want to ask something which is related to the countries which oppose this which is the alternative to this objective criteria and on the other hand we also agree with Denmark that we want to talk about numbers because the commission has talked about some proposals such as the 5% of ecological focus area which is going to be maintained in the CAP it is important because it's all about the global challenges which we want to face thank you we'll hear from the United Kingdom and then the representative commission would like to say something if we have not commented on certain particular increment or decreasing in the commission's proposal is because we agree with this for example this 5% and we have already talked about numbers and where the money comes from and where it goes from we talked about this 4% cut and we said that this would go forward on borders global policy, transnational terrorism and some commented on increasing equation funds the UK would contemplate this increment as far as it goes to research and innovation no other place thank you well thank you for all the proposals I think we are getting closer to one agreement but we are still not there I would like to collect some of these ideas we have already proposed and to make sure to what extent we are close enough to make a final decision I would like to know regarding to research and innovation I would like to propose some slide increase regarding to the previous financial perspective 2016-2013 at that time was 60 billion euros I would like to propose 70-80 I would like to know what the members are saying but very quickly total in favour what? total in favour can you repeat please yes to increase the budget for research and innovation to 60-70 billion euros for the whole period of time 2014-2020 70-75 so Poland are you sure what about Latvia Belgium Spain yes good so we have already one agreement what about administration this is a strictly contentious issue basically there are two countries who are the the beneficiaries of this this is around 5% of the budget there were agreements proposed to reduce basically this percentage basically we have two positions here one is a string a position from the British that they want to make very tough cuts on this particular issue others are more balance and others want to give the status quo so which is taking our proposal on this issue cutting how much 1% only 1% we accept to reduce more of 1% we don't accept increasing 2.5 hours without adjustment now is a very low percent so we consider that more than 1% is excessive so 1% is okay like we believe that 1% is okay since there will be a need for administration for the ex ante and export conditions control in the Croatian fund so we believe that 1% is okay I have to say that the proposal is 5% I think 1% is very few it's very low a 1% of the budget for administration or a 1% of the total budget I understand that we have to deal about the budget of the administration we cannot say about the global budget if we are talking about the administration the question posed by the chair of public is right there is doubt here confusion about the 5% or 1% regarding to the previous framework or regarding to the total budget yes to make clear yes the administration is 5% of the total budget and we would be reducing that to 4% of the total budget so we are cutting it by 1% of the total budget see my proposal was the proposal of the commission is lower than that as you can imagine we are very interested in having good bureaucracy very professional bureaucracy so there is a clear perception that we will have a problem here in Finland that's related to a new criteria new mechanisms to exactly an exposed control and the role of the member states in controlling so the administration will be will continue being important but we have to cut in some headings and that's one of the easiest to say it in a certain way Denmark ok it's important to reduce the percentages can be from 2 to 5 I think the maximum 5 I think the 5 it's a good option but the thing that something that it's important to not change is as we have said one thing is reducing 5% the administration and the other thing as you have read from the commission proposal is an increase of working time of the staff that's if we reduce we will arrive to the objective reducing and then adding 2 and a half hours more for the staff without no adjustment on salary or other bonus that's not fair and that's the thing that we have to be all in favour of not changing that so we can be in favour of reducing 2 1 more 5% doesn't mind but not changing the time the working time without no adjustment thank you Belgium yes this is why I am strongly disagree with the the non incrementation the decrease of the administration because we want to we don't want bureaucracy we want the institutions to work as they have to do and if we reduce the administration we will have workers that are working more hours to do the same to do the same work yes but less retributed which is against of the MFF which wants to increase the job and the employment and stuff so the decrease of the administration would be against the objectives and we'll create a worse workers situation and a lot of bureaucracy thank you from the commission I think that is this issue until the end of the negotiation just to make sure there could be some kind of accommodation between different issues let's move to the next issue which is the equation fund according to the proposal by the UK and Germany and Finland there is agreement to keep the status quo we don't reduce regarding to the previous framework but it's a transition time if you prefer but I will let you know what I assume that everyone here including the question countries agreed on this well Poland wanted to increase one percent but the UK is saying no way any other intervention of this so we leave this Netherlands what I would try to say Netherlands think that the Netherlands proposed was to cut to only give question funds to the convergence countries all the other funds to cap it and we know that this could the Netherlands itself but how I see that I'm the only one who thinks like that I think I will agree with the proposal well I think that also Spain and other countries wanted a transition time just to make sure that also not just in European countries but also some European countries other countries who don't have here they prefer to have some time until they are not allowed to get some funding but I can see that there is strong agreement on this keeping the status quo and then just minimally to extend the transition time it's going to be relevant and whether we can increase a little percentage in some countries so let's move to the next issue about the CAP is there agreement about keeping the CAP in the real terms percentage terms 31 I think Poland was pretty much saying they want to keep the status quo Germany well from the informal meetings I as a representative of Germany I think we actually reached an agreement of yes cutting it but not 7% only 3.5 because we are well aware that other areas need also investment to do Germany is agreeing also to do small reform because it's aware of its position of large its large benefits of the CAP as long as those cuts go to the already stated of the proposal of the UK representative said the research is going to be more important and so on but I believe that we all agree on the 3.5 cuts yes so I don't think you like heard about our informal discussion so I think it'd be better if we cut it by 3.5% and they said they would agree to increase the cohesion fund a little bit for research and development so I think it'd be better if we cut it by 3.5% and increase the cohesion fund that's what we agreed upon in the informal exactly okay thank you chair thank you chair would like to support the point made by Poland and would like to state as it was stated during informal discussion that the cutting of 3.5% would be implemented criteria to ensure the fairness and criticalness of the criteria for fairness of agricultural competitiveness in the European Union thank you okay so I think we are close to the agreement about connecting Europe there was also an agreement as far as I know from Poland do you agree about this actually right now it is around €40 billion for the European Network Transport so if anyone disagrees it's the time to say this so basically there are two issues which are at the end which are not clear one is about administration which there are slight differences and the second one is also about the percentage of no so one is administration and another one is about the percentage to increase the occasion fund and of course we can also open or reopen again the discussion about the budget because this is adequate time to rethink about this okay so just short interventions about this and then we'll make a decision short intervention the United Kingdom would like to say that would like to propose a cut in administration of 5% as Denmark had supported but contemplating the concerns of Belgium for example not increasing the timing of 2 hours and a half so cutting 5% but no increase in the timing and in the global budget we think that we kind of have a balance so we want to support freezing the budget thank you UK I also forgot the issue of the British rebate okay so I think if someone wants to say something maybe maybe it's the time to say it right now Netherlands I just only want to say that the thing about increasing the number of hours of every worker is to compensate the fact that you reduced the number of workers I mean the reduction of the budget means that you have to to to to to put away to fire people and that means that if you want to do the same service you have to increase the hours of the other workers that's the fact if you if you fire workers and you don't increase the hours of the others the service will be worse than it was before I think Belgium I would like to ask to the United Kingdom from which where are you going to take the amount of money from I mean where do you want to cut from the administration what do you think that is a lack or it's just unnecessary thank you we just in the informal we just called upon reducing redundancies which are quite spread in the European Union nowadays for example we could contemplate gathering expert's informs and follow their advice but we think that there's field for these cuts Latvia Latvia I would like to point out that maybe the industry cut would be would not be necessary if the spendings on the salaries would be reduced thus the problem is not quantitative but it's qualitative it means that Latvia would like Latvia would like to point out that and to call for reflection on the salaries of the administrations on maybe a reduced increase of working of hours of work and a reduced reduction of workers meaning that we can have not 5% no cuts but less salaries and augment a bit the number of hours to ensure that austerity is applied by every European citizen Sweden we should be realistic in terms of what Belgium said because 2.5 hours increase in the working hours per week maybe too much if we still reduce administration and on the other hand we have just proposed more control and this is going for transparency if we cut on administration there is no way we can make the citizens know what we are doing from the European Union so the cut 1% is okay for us but 1% on the global we are talking about 5% on the reality I agree with that I agree with that since Sweden increased in the proposal which was not clear we want to say to the minister of Libya that we are not talking about salaries or working times we are talking about eliminating redundancies so the workers will keep on having the same salary they are having now and doing the same job but not making two people the same job that's where we want to cut and we want to study this because there are problems nowadays and we don't think it's incompatible with establishing a criterion for transparency it's not giving more job but doing the job in a better way just quickly if you think this is coming more from not from Poland but from me if you increase their working hours by 2.5 a week that's literally just a half an hour a day it sounds that it's not that efficient of an organization the way it's working right now so I think that the workers could manage to work a little bit harder the problem is that they don't have strict standards they're not like required to do as much so I think for the salary that they get because I would imagine that the salaries they get working for the European Union are pretty good they could manage to work a half an hour more every day then Mark is there last intervention about this here? about administration ok well, in relation about the people cool thing about the same about saying our fellow minister from Netherlands ok, you can obviously if you could and you reduce 5% you have to increase the 10% of hours of the workers if you want the same a better result of the you administration but you can do you cannot be so extreme you have to be more moderate because ok, the objective is to reduce and as the commission has said to us the objective is to not the objective so the expectation is to arrive on 5 billion of euros in savings doing this cutting of 5% but we have to be more moderate you can cut 5% but you can do adjustments of salaries to these people so doing that we will possibly we can arrive to a better conclusion and save money but not so much money than doing the proposal here we have, thank you ok, so as a broker of this negotiation I would like to make a proposal for all of you one would be that we could keep the rebate for some member states including the UK, Sweden Denmark and Finland but we can just make also slightly cuts on the administration is that acceptable for everyone UK saying yes whatever the rest everyone, Latvia does not agree okay on your proposition on the slight cut of administrative expenditure Latvia believes that it's really broad and not detailed at all and Latvia would not like to agree on such terms okay, do you want to? well, regarding the administration cuts it's not just to clarify as a proposal we would not focus so much on the on the salaries maybe but all the bureaucracy that maybe as the representative of UK said just repeating maybe functions or disorganizations and that, well I'm sure that in the European administration there's a lot of it for example, optimization of certain areas and as the representative of the UK said, we could ask experts for opinion for the better approach to this but administration could be very improved in these terms it's not about focusing on on cutting salaries that would be I believe the general proposal for the cut in administration another proposal from the commission because we, well some people have to come back to the national countries also would we to take away extras in order to eliminate for example the expenditures of administration, we just move extras to Brussels and all the sessions are going to take place in Brussels from now on is that alright for everyone? is there a problem? so Latvia do you agree on this? Latvia does not see any problem with this at the moment thank you so this means that we are reaching more and more agreements and there are a few things left mainly the percentage of the cohesion funds and also the transition time for some countries and also of course the budget, the general budget whether should be increased slightly or should be just remain in one percent so I would like to open again the first discussion of today and I would propose actually maybe like a secret vote because I have the perception that well some member states will feel more comfortable to vote secretly so of course this is just a proposal I mean you can say if you agree or you disagree feel comfortable with a secret vote yes I'm sure that all the countries will appreciate the concessions that we've made and we'll vote on the smart thing to do, thank you I just wanted to stay as the representative of the UK that Germany has made a lot of concessions regarding the CIP no, regarding the CIP and the transition region so I hope other countries would take into consideration the efforts made many thanks Germany Netherlands I mean Germany is the third country with the CIP so let's not fight with each other the delegate of Denmark has to go back to Denmark and vote secretly or not secretly or whatever okay so let's make the secret vote about the budget I remind you there are two options one was yes and one was right down somewhere so we're voting to be clear we're voting on the proposal by the commission which is 1.05 percent simply yes or no to the commission 1.05 yes or no do we write the country name and yes or no only yes or no I think okay that's it Senjana Geras the results are in and the motion has been passed 9 votes to 4 votes so the budget will be increased which will allow us to solve the rest of the outstanding issues regarding the cohesion the administration and the last issue so thank you very much and until 2020 okay for the financial perspective no no no we're not done yet formally yes but we're going to steal a few more minutes because I don't know in what measure should we speak in English right sorry Jordan sorry I didn't see that you were here we've been interested to make a short evaluation about how things have been working in the simulation whether we have been really using quality arguments just descriptive information or whatever and I think it would be good to hear from different opinions also we'll give our opinion general evaluation okay from everyone would be good doing public we talk in public or yeah like what I have been several models not European Union model but personally it's really been organized firstly from the I would say the hardware preparation I would say the information all the documents I think are really really well done and really well thought and then I think from my part it has my preparing my position secondly the hardware the room and all the flags and well the catering it's perfect that's another thing I think it's also really important in models because people have to be motivated and these kind of things motivate people thirdly about the negotiations the thing that we have done today well it's complicated in four hours to arrive important well thought conclusions when these kind of topics countries take hours or hours of preparation but I think that the negotiations have been really interesting and that's the thing that I wanted my objective here to talk about these kind of topics and to see the different position and see people who I know that are not at the positions that today they have been and it has been right really nice thank you thank you next one I would like that these type of events would have more publicity because I was I mean they informed me was a friend who told me about the event and stuff but I didn't see it in the campus or wherever but yes the organization was good I would like to to have more members to discuss I don't know what happened with the other ones but I would like because I am in an association called SAEO a student association for the European Union and I would like to take a picture to upload it and to promote these type of events because I think it's interesting and more people can be interested too you guys I participated in the United Nations and I consider that just being four hours which is a minimal amount of time because usually the models take four days long but I think that we kind of have reached concrete agreements although maybe a little unrealistic but and I want to focus to stress the place which I think is fantastic with the micro and all this it's been a good experience thank you I agree with my colleagues about the place and the organization and so on I would propose I know it's difficult but doing the simulation a little bit longer for what Laia has said it's a very short time for hours to discuss all the information for example all the positions German had in this topic and there were a lot of interesting details to be discussed and forming for example unexpected coalitions and so on but overall experience it's very nice thank you yeah wow that'd be awesome I find it really good it's a really good initiative and I second fully all the different compliments I've been made so far in terms of progression I think that it would be interesting to reduce the scope of negotiation to have to explore more the negotiation I feel like we've been a bit short of time right now and we kind of started to rush in the end and that was not really realistic so I think that might be the that might be the main flaw for me that would be interesting to have a previous session that would prepare people before the main session that would be interesting and yeah basically my suggestion would be to be more to say that sometimes in negotiation people do not find an agreement and it's fine to not have agreements that are unrealistic but to really plentear the final outcomes were not the real ones but that is not important the important issue here is there are other issues which are I think more important to discuss if you want later we did this in our class on Monday but this was definitely way better than what I learned I learned a lot more than from my class but that's obviously because the people here prepared a lot more than the rest of the kids who are studying abroad because they don't want to but I think it would have been better if we had more countries and I know it's hard, the hard part is finding a time when more people want to come but we didn't have France so that was kind of... No we did have France until yesterday but France said yesterday I'm not coming so we can do nothing about that actually this has happened with many members but they were supposed to be here and in the last two of the day they say well I'm sorry I cannot go but what we can do about this we can do something and we'll make something next year because actually I'm trying to negotiate this with the dean to have two credits it's the only way that students take this more seriously and they invest more time and everything is going to work better otherwise I mean it's... You're probably not going to get it's like hard to get Americans who are here because we want to spend our time enjoying Spain but a lot of us travel on Fridays every weekend that's why Danny couldn't come Yeah Well that was the case for some American students but I don't think it was the case for other students anyway Any other opinion or yes? I don't want to repeat but I want to say thank you to both because it's very nice and you learn a lot and more if you I mean I think we all here we spend time at home working on it and we learn a lot at least I learn and also as Roger said it was a lot of information I'm very good distracted and yeah I like it so thank you Maybe next year a day a full day it would be nice Yes actually these kind of simulations is made for for example in some American universities as well and this could last until four days but these are real simulations with many more actors including members of the European Parliament members of the European Commission interest groups and so on but well I mean this is the first time we do this I think this year was completely impossible to do that the plan is to at least to cover the whole day in a nice meal together maybe somewhere because also you can use these kind of moments to negotiate informally again No these things actually happens in Brussels and what else will I to say well in more substantive terms what I miss a little bit was well more clear negotiation strategies from some of you some of you I think have already very clear which was the position but I think that there is room to improve the quality of your strategy when you are negotiating this is really important because before you are coming here I think you should have very clear in your mind which is your position to what extent you are able to give in on your position should be your partners to make coalitions how much you are willing to yes I mean to pay for just giving on your positions all this information is really important okay and I think some of you have this information it is true that also it is hard to find this information for some member states okay that's true I mean the detailed information although Peter is saying that there is plenty of information already online I think for small member states it's harder than for bigger member states that's true okay so that would be one point just a feedback to you and also well I mean in terms of arguments I think I didn't I also miss a little bit to that you was engaging argumentation with each other I mean because most of the time you just present your ideas and your proposals which is fine and this is the first stage the second stage is actually arguing and this is very important in the European Union to show how good or how much quality have your arguments not just for your interest but also for the collective interest and this is extremely important in formal institution in the European Union as far as you are able to show that your arguments independently of your interest are very good I mean this is the best way to get partners for your position okay so I mean just to engage a little bit more with each other maybe it is true that was time constrained for that because we didn't have in four hours we cannot do everything but well just to for my view I don't know Peter if you want to add something else no I think more or less the same thank you for participating and of course as well it's a learning process for everyone perhaps maybe going ahead in the future in terms of preparation on the arguments how to convince what way to convince maybe as well we could structure in in the first session maybe more because I think towards the second session with the side agreements and the informal negotiations maybe as well in the first session we could have cut it shorter in order enforce a little bit more the side agreements because I think then we started to see much more engagement between people and trying to bring people towards your position because there's two real aims one a knowledge about the functioning of the system but also negotiations and how to convince people whether that be through strong logical arguments or whether it be through more Machiavellian side deals and playing a political game and trying to find that balance between the two objectives but apart from what Javier said I mean I thank you for all the people who have come and for your comments and if there's anyone who would actually like to add anything that hasn't added anything out now to send an email to the same web address with any comments or anything and we'll get back to you I would appreciate that for the comment and also there is we have made just also for information for us like kind of evaluation individual evaluation we would appreciate also you can just fill in this now and you can give us also now and finally after that we can just make the final picture like the official picture of the simulation you can do the Jews and the pastors or whatever ok because well otherwise