 So ladies and gentlemen, you're most welcome to our webinar today and it is, there's a large number of people signed up for this because it is such a crucial issue at the moment. So we're delighted in fact we're extremely grateful that Claudia Dorfos, the state secretary of the federal ministry for economic and energy, economic affairs and energy, has been prepared to take the time out to talk to us today. She will speak for us for about 20 minutes, and then we will go to the question and answer with our audience. So you will be able to join the discussion using the question and answer function on zoom, which you can see on the I think everybody's used to that. So would you please send in your questions then. It's what session and then with your name and any affiliation if you have it and we put them to the speaker then at the end. And just to remind you that today's presentation and question and answer both on the record. Please feel free to join the discussion using the handle at IIA. So just to introduce our speaker, Claudia Dorfos was appointed secretary of state at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy in May 2018. One of the previously held roles as director general for European policy and head of the trade policy EU and WTO division, both at the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, and served in the economics division of the German Parm Rep to the European Union. So I'll handle with you now and thank you very much indeed for joining us today. Thank you very much Catherine and hello to all the ladies and gentlemen around in Ireland and maybe even beyond. Before starting this meeting we had the chance to talk a little bit among with Catherine and other ladies and gentlemen to organizing this meeting and we're just saying okay. It's been a couple of days before Christmas and everybody of course is mentally already prepared with Christmas and even my colleagues here in the ministry. When asked to prepare a little bit for me for talking to you wrote me okay it's a moment for reflection, because the German presidency ends on 31 December 2020. It's fine. Yes, but we have a very exciting week still ahead of us or two and a half days ahead of us. Exciting and challenging, because of the European Council, which will take place tomorrow and the day after with a lot of very important decisions to be taken. Also of course, because of Brexit negotiations being in the tunnel and we don't know whether there will be light at the end of the tunnel, or simply darkness so yes very challenging and exciting times. And I have to say, the German Council presidency until today was was very exciting as well because, of course, the challenging circumstances that we couldn't hold normal meetings life in Brussels or wherever you're in informal meetings in Germany, but everything had to be done virtually, which after all didn't come out as a as a problem frankly speaking, we were forced to concentrate maybe on a little less topics than we would normally deal with in Brussels when we meet life. But that gave us the possibility at the same time to concentrate on the real topics, and I think we have managed to to make some progress we have made some decisions we have made a lot of council conclusions and in so far prepared the frame framework for the Commission, who has to come up with a lot of legislative proposals next year because also of course the commission had to suffer from being seen in a way that they couldn't come up with all the proposals they had originally foreseen in 2020 so there will be a certain delay, but no problem for us, I think, because we are in good cooperation with our trio partners with the Council in Slovenia will take the presidency after us, and I think everything will be in good hand. Now, the title indeed of my speech today is building a competitive innovative and resilient European economy. You can certainly imagine that economic topics were already on our mind in our mind and on our European agenda as a Council presidency before the crisis. But, of course, with the crisis, it was quite clear that economic topics would become even more important and would be upgraded on the agenda of Europe. The two elements of the title, namely competitive and innovative, they were certainly in our minds but there is a new facet, a little new element which was reinforced through the crisis through the pandemic namely resilient and I will come back to that later on. Now, of course, a part of our presidency in the economic world was to overcome the crisis, and it still is. But the second part is to get recovery done, and there is a popular saying by Einstein in the midst of every crisis lies great opportunity. And in that respect, you can imagine that it was our firm intention and it still is of combining both the crisis management together with recovery and an agenda for modernization. And I will walk you through my agenda of four F's. First F, there are two F's in fact, freedom and frontiers. Second is finances. Third is fit for future and fourth is fairness. Now, if we look on the first one, freedom and and frontiers. I mean you in Ireland you are very well aware that the single market is really the backbone of European economy and is the source for economic growth and prosperity. However, I mean if we think back a couple of months at the beginning of the pandemic in March specifically, we have seen the weakness of the single market, because we have seen that borders were shut down that supply chains were interrupted that export restrictions within the single market So I'm not talking about third countries took place. And that was really the moment where we said hey, we are in Europe we have a single market this cannot be possible. We don't exclude anybody from, from, from those. We all had our, our guilty moments in that respect. And so the first lesson we wanted to draw during the German Council presidency in the economic field was to, to go back to a real single market. And that's what the, the competitiveness ministers did in Council conclusions in September this year. They adopted some kind of, I call it self commitment, a commitment, which says we have to avoid distortions by unilateral measures. Again, an aspect which is very close to the hearts of Ireland. We have to remove unnecessary barriers in the single market, and we have to prepare the single market for future times future challenges and, and deepen it. And as you can see, again our Council conclusions are a combination of these aspects I mentioned before, namely crisis management, plus future modernization. So here we have two instruments. One is both are in the hands of the commission. The first one is the new single market enforcement task force SMAT called where the commission together with member countries is to monitor the implementation and the enforcement of the single market is to see quite concretely where they are still impediments. Where are they still unjustified barriers. And the second instrument is the strategic report the commission will come up with in January. And I'm sure that Ireland will be very much interested in further probably recommendations of the commission, what we can do. F finance. You know, our motto of the Council presidency is together for Europe's recovery. And we really meant it because it means that we wanted to act in a coordinated manner with cooperation and solidarity. And I think a good signal of solidarity and cooperation was that our heads of state and government. Managed to get an agreement on the multi annual financial framework together with the temporary recovery instrument next generation EU and included in this the recovery and resilience facility in July. And then the German presidency could of course go into a trial log with the European Parliament. Now, after the trial log of course it is very important that all member countries, except the agreement with parliament and are probably all aware that there are still two member countries who have had problems with it, not specifically with the MFF or the next generation EU instrument but with the link to rule of law questions and before coming here I saw already some noises and the press that there was an agreement with Poland and Hungary. I cannot yet command on that because an agreement is is only there once we succeed together with the presidents of the European Council to have an agreement with all 27 member countries. It would be very important to have that agreement because of course it would be necessary from the first of January next year to start with all the financial means available. It's 1.85 trillion euros for MFF, which is something for long term investment and long term economic growth. This recovery instrument which is temporary means 750 billion, which are for recovery as the name says. And with its very important part, the recovery and resilience facility, it also means of course preparing Europe for the future, namely for a green and digital transition. From a German probably you wouldn't expect anything else than saying yes, but of course in accordance with the structural reforms asked for by the European Commission in the country specific recommendations in the context of the European semester. Last but not least, of course, there's also the cohesion package 400 billion classical structural funds together with other new instruments like react EU and the just transition fund. We here in my ministry we are responsible for the try a log on all those cohesion package elements and indeed there are six regulations. I wanted to conclude, I can tell you, we have concluded already for the fifth trial log or trial on the fifth element is today and on the sixth one tomorrow, and I'm very optimistic that we succeed in getting them all agreed in December in a final round which would indeed be necessary but of course everything depends on the broader agreement of the MFF by our heads of state and government. Third element, and I alluded already some way to it fit for future. And this means of course in nowadays with key elements like green and digital transition and on climate protection. It is of course our intention as somebody from Ministry of Economics of course you can imagine to do it in a non mutually exclusive way hand in hand with a strong economy. Now, you might know that the Environment Council in October agreed upon the climate law, and we already in trial up with European Parliament on that. But there was one little but very important element left over for the heads of state and government also on the agenda for this week. And the European Council, namely the question whether we agree all to a climate target of minus 55% in 2030. So it will be interesting to see whether our bosses succeed on this this week. And it will also be important to make sure that other international partners will follow. There are commitments made by China there are commitments made by Japan, which go into the right direction and, of course, also the election of President Biden, and his announcement that the United States would return to the Paris agreement opens up the opportunity for for global progress. But of course, it is of absolute importance that we will do that in a way which guarantees a level playing field for for business. And then we need an open debate. There are instruments already discussed the CO2 pricing, the protection from carbon leakage which is very important specifically for energy intensive industries in Europe. And then there is this instrument which the Commission has announced the carbon border adjustment mechanism, and it will certainly also be a question for the state aid guidelines to be updated in order to to represent the the new, you know, implementation of climate issues and level playing field. This is certainly something which then will be discussed in 2021. As we need the legislative proposal from the Commission, but of course you know all the elements are already somewhere in our minds and, and we have been discussing them. Priorities for the digital transition. Of course, I mean, again, it was quite clear before the pandemic that we need to catch up to catch up in order to be on equal footing with the United States and with Asia. And in the crisis, it became even clearer and there is again a new element, I mentioned before the question of resilient and here again we have an element which is very close to that namely to strengthen our technical technology, specifically with regard to key technologies like quantum technology blockchain micro electronics supercomputers network technologies and what have you, and I'll give you an example an example on cloud computing and data infrastructure, because there is this project Gaia X, and to be very honest, this is an invention of my minister Peter Meyer, who had the strong feeling that it was absolutely necessary to go for an autonomous secure and trustworthy European data infrastructure, specifically to be going to be a reliable cloud for SMEs in Europe and we constructed this Gaia X project then we worked as we sometimes do, together with France, in order to refine it, and now it is an open project for for everybody we have a lot of companies all over Europe and even abroad to work together with us in that project we had a summit a Gaia X summit a couple of days ago, and we also have the commission on board now in supporting this project, and we have signed a joint declaration on European cloud federation by our digital ministers meeting the Council on the 15th of October. Now on industry and SMEs as key players for the recovery. And it has a little bit unfortunate by chance, not the Commission's guilt, if I may say so, that only four weeks before the pandemic really arrived in Europe, the Commission had presented an industrial strategy, which, as it was there was practically a little bit complicated. So what we did in the German presidency was to, you know, write together in Council conclusions, those ideas, those impressions we had which should be added to a then updated industrial strategy with the, what the Commission has announced for for next year. And again, there was a new light motif, namely the strategic autonomy, which we should go for always preserving an open economy it's not upon, you know, creating walls around Europe, this is not the question, but it means that we think that it should be necessary to create EU value added via pan European corporations on innovative key enabling technologies and there is one very interesting instrument, the IPC eyes important project of common European interest which means that you get a little bit lighter conditions for for state aid if you work together with with at least three member countries. We have already some promising IPC eyes in the pipeline on micro electronics, for example, and also on battery cell production. And this has created the idea that with this successful lighthouse projects in Europe, we should also go for more. And there will be the launch of a of a new ambitious IPC I on hydrogen, for example, and we're also working on the next project on an industrial cloud and communication technologies. So, this is the new Europe, working for something for strategic autonomy. Again, without meaning that it's any has anything to do with closing down borders or protectionist ideas. For me is which I know is also very close to the hearts of of Ireland. This of course is a permanent task to find adequate financing to cutting red tape to find an SME friendly friendly legislation, and to support for research and innovation and also digitization. What we did in the German presidency was again underlying that and repeating the principle of think small. First, again, which should be, as I said, a permanent task, but we had a new idea on our better regulation agenda which I would like to share with you because we thought that, you know, sometimes it is difficult for innovative technologies to test whether they're really that good at an early stage. And that's why we transported to Europe the idea of a flexible framework for that. And that's, that means regulatory sandboxes and experimentation clauses. We have experience only very short experience here in Germany with that but we transported this idea to Europe and this is something that the commission now has to work with has to think about whether we can try and find some of these sandboxes or experimentation clauses in order to become more innovative. And there is another element which is important, not only for SMEs but also for bigger country companies of course, namely the idea of a one in one out rule. Again, something we have already in Europe in some member countries, including Germany, which means when you put on new EU legislation with of course regulatory burden, then you have to get out of the nice parcel, another legislation in order to get rid of the same level of regulatory burden. This is something where we would have expected the commission to come up with a communication unfortunately this has been delayed. But we, we had intensive discussions here in meetings, of course virtual meetings on that where we asked the commission to, you know, come up with such a communication very soon. And also intensive discussions about making the SME test more rigorous, because of course the rules are there the commission has to apply the SME test but we had the feeling that maybe there are even there's more room to improve the application. And this is what we have also fixed down in a presidency paper. Now my last F is on fairness and fairness of course, means global trade means balance trade which we see as indispensable. Of course we benefit all from from open markets and even so after the crisis even more. And that is why our trade ministers agreed on conclusions saying we need to keep markets open we need to strengthen the rule based system for everybody. And, again, the aspect of resilience I mentioned already in the single market context is also valid for the global context, namely, we have to make sure that we have resilient international value chains, of course without one sided dependencies. So the keyword is diversification. And again, it doesn't mean protectionism. Then, another aspect on fairness because for years, if I may say so, we have seen on the single market that companies heavily subsidized by third countries came to our European single market and our companies had to compete with those in the single market on the same terms is the idea so this this is why the Commission came up with a white book and we discussed it under the German presidency in the competitiveness council and there was broad support for the commission to come up with legislative proposals in order to make sure that this competition will be on equal footing. The proposals will only be there next year but we have prepared the ground for that. But also, we have also identified the need and making further progress apart from the multilateral strand in WTO, for example, namely in bilateral trade negotiations. The Netherlands are still on their way in China. Unfortunately, also because of the pandemic but not only because of that we have managed to get the investment agreement concluded this is now something for the Portuguese presidency. And, of course, when it comes to bilateral trade issues, the United States come into our mind again, and with the President-elect Biden, of course, there is some hope for positive effect on attempts to strengthen the multilateral trading system in WTO but also maybe in WHO, World Health Organization, but also to try and get rid of the trade disputes, the sanctions we have between the United States and Europe, and maybe also to come back to an agenda, which is of more economic weight than just concluding on many deals for lobsters, which is good. I'm not criticizing that but I think the hope for a complete discussion with the United States is there. Now, last remark, ladies and gentlemen, on UK and maybe it's still difficult for us to realize that when we talk about relations with UK, it is now under the chapter of international and global and bilateral trade agreements. Yes, indeed. I mean, you have all seen the press. Our negotiators are in a tunnel. There will be a dinner for two, evidently, tonight, and we can only cross our fingers that we will end up with a positive result. I know how important it is for Ireland, of course, as it is in commercial terms also very important for us, of course. So I think the very decisive point was also that along all the time we have made sure that there shouldn't be any danger for the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland and I think all the EU member countries have stood firm behind Ireland on that. And my final conclusion is, of course, whenever we stand firm in unity and in solidarity together, then we have the chance to move ahead. And there is still a lot to do, of course, in bringing Europe back to the level before the crisis. But of course, as I said, the intention is to make it better, to make it more modern after the crisis. And so my hope is really that we will emerge from the crisis stronger than ever before. Thank you.