 Všeč Less than a month away from taking over our first presidency. It represents obviously a great opportunity, a major commitment, but also an honour and responsibility. The European integration was for a long time a main driving force behind our hard work, reference and changes from the post-communist country to the Slovakia of today and indeed the back to Europe was one of the velvet revolutions principle crados. češtjeje, a je to zarosnje fornitičnosti, ljebohnje, vsebo, ko je ne bojil na uročkema identitijah, ki smo jaz je odprončati, ni boješ v dakika, nesa izčešnjenje. V tem taj stajemo im referendum i tako. Euron, karanti, inšenjanj stitchesice. Prvi, je vselog , inje왔jaši pravičenje. S wings we are in the core of Europe, we are in the heart of Europe and we are grateful for that because we were given a lot and we felt it time to give back. And as for preparations, technical remarks. We are in the final stages but the programme will only be adopted after the British referendum in the very end on the Tae 28 of June for obvious reasons In da se slova goverjmanje vseče objevajte na 30. jubov. Prezettaj me pa način s nekaj inživljenim, da se je zelo način na vsečenje prezidenci. Ljubi in Slovakia. Slovakia je vzdelo se zelo všeč za zelo z Evročiji. Z nekaj 6 mnosti, prišlično se prišlično se skupila na všečj Evropje. Zelo smo dajati mnogo ideje in even nekaj nekaj nekaj n 고bov. Z filmem, da se nekih, z kjer smo zelo tudi svoje prezidentje. Cislim naša in sve, kaj smo prezidentje pošličnje? To je izgleda. Zdaj smo izgledali zgodno in persistently na vse, ki je zelo vši EU, in tudi svojih zelo. Sveti smo pripraviti vse pripraviti vse. Sveti smo vse, ki je zelo v Eurupu izgleda in izgleda raziljenje. Sveti smo pripraviti pripraviti vse, ki je izgleda izgleda izgleda izgleda izgleda izgleda. We want Europe to be prepared for investments and new jobs. This is why we will focus on creating the right environment that allows European projects to get off the ground. How? By mobilizing investment tools, by deepening the economic and monetary union, by helping small and medium-sized enterprises within the capital markets union and by strengthening the banking union. Since we understand what connected Europe means, we will devote our efforts to common European projects such as the single market, the energy union and the digital single market. We will therefore focus on challenges that require a common approach and common European solutions. Such challenges include the previous dimension sustainable migration policy as well as the European neighborhood policy and EU enlargement. These are the issues where, acting as an honest broker, we will seek solutions benefiting the entire union. As presidency, we will be chairing one of the three main EU institutions, the Council of the European Union, which represents the EU's 28 member states. The meetings at different levels from technical to ministerial will take place in Brussels, Luxembourg and Bratislava. In doing so, we will show you Slovakia. Her beauties, charms and secrets. Slovakia. The country holding the presidency of the Council of the European Union from the first of July to the 31st of December. Slovakia. Recharging Europe. As you could see also in the movie, the main kind of like feature of our presidencies, logos in every case, just to explain to, this emoticon is formed from the Slovak punctuation characters typical for the Slovak language. The author is a 23-year-old student of the University of Fine Arts. Basically, the idea is that you can change the mood of the logo according to the situations. For instance, after the attacks in Brussels, the said logo, the said emoticon was on the statement of the ministry concerning the terrorist attacks in Brussels, for instance. We are hoping that it will be mostly smiling. Well, I will try to outline in my presentation basically four areas, the context, the point of departure for the Slovak presidency, our ambition, how to contribute to do our Europe, our House of Europe better and more prepared for the next century. Then I will outline the priorities per se of the presidency program in the vision of Europe that we aim for. As you probably know, we are in a so-called trio. We will take over the steering wheel of the Council of the EU, what is the whole official term of this office after Netherlands, first of July. The trio is formed by Netherlands, Slovakia and Malta. So we are basically a trio of one experienced country and two complete novices, because we, Malta or Slovakia, it's the very first presidency for us and it's the 12th presidency for Netherlands, which shows the difference for fans of numerology or people who like numbers. It's the 12th presidency of Netherlands, as I said, and it's the presidency of Slovakia 12 years afterwards. Unfortunately, I don't have any explanation what it means in terms of numerology, but we hope it's a good role. Well, to the more, to the less entertaining and maybe more sobering facts, the setup and the Slovakia is assuming its presidency in very challenging times in the past couple of years the union has faced a number of serious crisis and they have undoubtedly impacted its overall shape but also formed moods of EU population. Migration and refugee crisis clearly reopened philosophical questions like multiculturalism, tolerance, solidarity, safety. It even touched upon our humanism and capacity to help the rest of the world. Terrorism, the spillover of Daesh's brutality in European capitals spread fears never seen here before. We are still facing in the 21st century a conflict and practically a state of civil war in Ukraine with part of its territory being occupied. We are facing the already mentioned UK referendum which can change basically the whole ballgame and we are also witnessing a fragile eurozone. This is a difficult context for the member states and the EU citizens. The results are not so good. As a result we observe a certain sense of political fragmentation and this is our primary and greatest concern because fragmentation makes us vulnerable internally as well as externally. And it really questioned the credibility of core integration projects such as for instance the EMU or enlargement which is pretty big because basically EU is questioning its strongest and very easy to present achievement. More on the level of the national states we are observing rising euroskepticism, radicalization and move towards anti-politics meanings basically those who are basically using euroskepticism and radicalization are claiming that they don't want to be part of the political establishment and their means are basically out of this establishment and these forces are hard to control in the functioning and existing democratic system which we have. We don't like such defeatist mentality. Any community would have huge problems if confronted with these types of challenges and the magnitude of them. We think that those who only criticize without trying to find real and workable solutions do it mostly with the intention to mobilize and manipulate the public against the EU. And if I can help myself with the famous quotation of Winston Churchill, the EU is the worst form of European coexistence except for all the others that have been tried. I basically came from the conference of ambassadors which we had in Slovakia last week and one of our keynote speakers was the Dutch minister of foreign affairs, Mr. Kunders and he used even more expressive description of Europe. He said that it's not the mythological beauty, it's rather somebody with a lot of warts in his face and even hair in his nose or her nose and ears and it even smells sometimes but it's really something which is worth to fight for and worth to try for. We do think that the presidency is an excellent opportunity to substantially contribute to the joint search. We would want to be an honest broker with positive attitude if I may use the famous term by not less famous Irish entrepreneur we would like to have a non-nonsense presidency pragmatic uniting and being a people's voice. So as I said that we don't have this logo but rather this one. So how can we contribute? We have an idea of how to move Europe forward. The basic two elements are we would like to focus on positive agenda because that's one of the things we don't like in certain that we are unable, unwilling or whatever to present EU as a very successful project and we are forgetting all the benefits which the EU is bringing for all the member states in different areas. We would want to build upon the successful experience and continue to foster for instance single market in order to remove barriers and obstacles in the single market in our case for instance there will be a special focus on the digital single market, I will outline it later on and aim for sustainable solutions. We don't want to lose sight of a strategic vision and long term perspective we are aware of the fact that our presidency is only for half a year all the steps and all the ambitions we have we see as a part of a process which the EU still is and that's how we would want to approach it. The overarching ambition will be to help Europe to be more resilient in terms of a stable economy a deep and single market effectively manage migration and asylum policy as well as strong external relations and international trade. The ingredients that we have to merge are threefold it's the vision and the ambition which we have the current reality on the ground and the strategic EU documents that's the framework which kind of gives us the maneuvering space. What priorities do we want? We want to be pragmatic, we need to deliver tangible results so we will concentrate on common European projects with direct benefits for daily lives of citizens we want to be uniting we want to overcome fragmentation in Europe therefore we will try to find solutions acceptable for all member states and beneficial for the union as a whole and we want to be people's voice we will focus on the needs of citizens in order to restore their trust in the EU we think that these principles are mutually reinforcing and we believe that with tangible results we can help overcome the fragmentation and we can bring real added value for our citizens The priority areas economy and financial agenda single market, especially digital but also European Union and sustainable migration and asylum policy and I would like to stress the word sustainable and external relations and trade Let me start with the European economy we will support the environmental favourable we will support environment favourable to investment, further economy growth and job creation we will focus on the triangle the European fund for strategic investment the capital markets union and the EU budget we will work on the deepening of the economy and monetary union the eurozone has developed some mechanisms since the euro crisis and without any doubt it is now much better equipped to manage the future crisis however significant gaps are still existing in the EMU architecture and the sooner we close them the better for all only then we will finally secure stability prosperity and full credibility of the eurozone the capital markets union is our other focus specifically a true single market for capital would unlock new sources of cross-border funding it would make life easier for business heavily dependent on the banking sector and we are ready to continue the efforts of the Dutch presidency on this agenda and then move on with key legislative initiatives let me turn to the second basket to boost the potential of the single market surely the single market has been and is a success story yet we believe that it needs to be enriched by two new pillars digital single market and the energy union the digitalization and e-commerce and I guess I am in an environment and in a country where I don't need to try to get your support for this specific area we all know that in 2014 the share of e-commerce in the total retail sector in Europe was slightly over 7% whereas in the USA it was almost 12% many companies would want to start and increase their online sales but that can only happen in an with clear e-commerce rules which would be applied in the whole EU University let me also welcome the adoption of a digital single market package from the end of this May we will diligently work on its effective implementation we consider it to be an excellent opportunity to overcome fragmentation in digital space and remove barriers like data portability geo blocking and international roaming which are all things which we think that are easily to sell in good sense to the citizens because those are things and restrictions which the citizens are confronted in everyday life our other ambition is to significantly contribute to building a reliable and competitive energy union strengthened international energy security improved regional cooperation and reinforced solidarity are essential tools to reduce energy dependence of Europe centerpiece of the energy union is diversification of resources, suppliers and transit routes we also want to pursue an ambitious climate efficient recycling policy these are two inseparable parts of the energy union as of number three is obvious to all of us that migration will remain an urgent issue during our presidency seemingly nothing new migration is not something which came to Europe a year or two ago it represents a long term historic phenomenon but Europe has been dealing with unprecedented migration flows only since last year or so so they put immense pressure on EU's external borders as well as the asylum system of member states and we all know how utterly sensitive it remains to us and to the migrants too we believe that we can resolve it only through joint EU wide efforts and we will as the presidency we will promote comprehensive solutions linking up all relevant internal and external aspects we must return to a proper functioning of the Schengen area and in this respect it is essential to make the European border and coast guards operational last but not least we must continue to pay attention to our external environment I speak of trade agreements and enlargement policy free trade is a significant contributor to internal and external stability of the EU Slovakia is an open economy similarly to Ireland supportive of soundly negotiated free trade agreements TTIP is a major opportunity for Slovakia as well and for other countries in Europe it would have positive impact practically in every area be it growth, employment or overall well-being so we stand ready to support the EU commission to reach an ambitious comprehensive and balanced agreement however the final text must safeguard a high level of EU standards we should take seriously the critical voices and have an open discussion about the consequences yet it must avoid unfounded and unproven allegations anti-globalizations or anti-American moods which are accompanying the discussions those are the four basic areas the benchmark of a successful presidency will be tangible progress in legislative files efficiency in their play with other EU institutions be it the commission or the European parliament I think that the colleagues from Tishak's office could tell interesting stories about this point I guess capacity to react to unforeseen event and circumstances meaning that we are not a permanent crisis management but a body and organization equipped with ability to deal with something which comes and it doesn't come unexpectedly like well it's not that understandable here in Ireland but the Slovak road workers are always surprised in winter that we get snow so we should avoid it the most challenging part of our presidency will be our ability to assume the true role of presidency to put aside national priorities and clearly pursue a common European interest to do so we need to fight our complacent mentality to restore trust among member states and recreate the ability to listen and to deliver on what has been agreed