 Good afternoon. My name is Catherine Meenon and I chair the Germany group in the Institute and thank you for being with us this afternoon. We're very pleased to have Dr. Francisco Brandtner, who's the spokesperson in the Bundestag on European Affairs for the German Alliance 90 and the Greens. She should speak in this webinar on the Green Party's ambition to invest heavily in climate neutral technology, stimulate innovation and to use the European Green Deal at the EU recovery fund to help propel Europe towards a social ecological economy. She's been spokesperson since 2018. She's a member of the Commission on European Union in the Bundestag and a deputy chair, a member on the Committee on Foreign Affairs. She's been a member of the Alliance 90 the Greens since 2013. She's also been a member of the European Parliament. She has a double degree in political science and economics from Science Po in Paris and Columbia University in New York with PhD from Mannheim, which focused on the United Nations. Before we begin Dr. Brandtner I'd just like to say formally how deeply sorry we all are about the terrible events that are happening in Germany, and you have all our condolences and solidarity. Yeah, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure being able with you. Somebody needs to turn off their mic. And it's, you know, being with you via digital is not as nice as without but it's still better. And as you said, really it's been terrible. Since we woke up yesterday morning and heard about the news it's just devastating to see that so many people lost their homes lost everything. Over 50 people lost their lives we're still about 70 people missing. It's shocking to see, and we are very grateful for all the emergency helpers that are out there and trying to still rescue people. But it's also evident, you know, the power of nature. And it was really, you know, it just takes an entire building away. It's quite, I know if you've watched the scenes but it's, yeah, it's scary and it's, it shows us again what our, the big task of our generation is. So if you allow me to start with this because it's really on our German minds today. And I said I still do the seminar with you because I think it's important to stay in European touch, but yeah. It is about freedom you know we have had recently a ruling of the, our Supreme Court, ruling that our climate law, the climate law by the current government needs to be improved because with the low ambition it had, it would entail on the freedom rights of next generations. And I think that this is really the case. You know if you see what's happening if we don't do enough against climate destruction today we will pay such a heavy price not just financially that's evident but in life and in our choices that we then only have. Because climate protection is of course about the climate but it's also about protecting our liberties our freedom, our possibilities to act in this world to live in this world, and to keep our prosperity. And we also fundamentally convinced that if we go on like today, we will lose not just freedoms but we will lose also our prosperity. We will develop the new technologies. I'm convinced there are enough smart people out in this world who will do it. And the question is just if we in Europe in Germany in my state will still then have the jobs that go with it, or if we will be the importers. And I hope that we will be able to be at the forefront of innovation and technology so that we can also keep our prosperity in our jobs. But with the car industry in Germany, where unfortunately for quite a number of years they rather went into cheating on emissions instead of going into innovation. And they've been paying a high price for it, not just in terms of fines that they have to pay now but also in terms of, you know, being behind companies like Tesla Renault and others. And we know that they had also the plans in the cupboard, but they didn't want to use it because they still believe that the future is with the emission car. And we just need to make sure that such, you know, really detrimental decisions won't happen again, because then we will lose the industry and we will lose the jobs and our prosperity with it. So our focus is on keeping the freedoms, keeping our prosperity but making it fit on this planet because we only have one planet. And that's the big challenge for our generation. And I want to outline a bit how we, what our proposal for that is the Green Party in Germany, we do inspire ourselves by our green colleagues in other European partners countries, our partner parties. We have, you know, received many ideas there. And we're the Greens are in six European governments. As you might know, Austria, Netherlands, sorry, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, Ireland, Sweden, Finland, did I forget one. Ireland, Sweden, Finland, Austria, Belgium and Luxembourg, yeah, those six governments and we do support a minority government in Denmark. So, you know, it's, for example, in Ireland, what they did, I thought it was quite well is to introduce an alliance with the sectors that we need to get, for example, more improvements innovation and housing and to with the you know, hand hand crafters to have more of young people going into jobs that we do need for, for example, renovating buildings for having new standards, etc. So it's not just a German project, but we do have quite Europeanized approach to it, because we also fundamentally believe that we will get further if we do it as Europeans together. It's not just about energy lines and having, you know, getting the energy from the north from the wind from the sea to the center, but also solar energy from the south to the north. So we, you know, it's also about innovation and investing in them and getting faster forward than going into alone. So as a European project, we do support the European Green Deal perspective, you just mentioned it, the Commission presented it two days ago quite a big package. And it's good because it's no longer just objectives and figures, it's very concrete proposals for how to get there. And I think it's good that we get to this point of, you know, concrete steps. And we do base our approach on three pillars. The first pillar is CO2 pricing. Like it's an old green idea that prices have to speak reality and need to reflect the costs that production, for example, has on the environment, also now a social well being on health. And that these prices, these consequences, the negative ones need to be in the price of the product as well. So the idea of a CO2 price was, is quite a long standing one we introduced a CO2 already taxed in the 90s. It has been rechanged since then, but the idea is an old one. And what we have discovered since is that there are limits to going to getting a change over pricing. Because of course the objective is that polluting products or ways of procedures of production, etc. will be too expensive and that companies and consumers will switch to less polluting ones. So we've seen that there are two limits to it. The one is that you need to have a social rebalancing mechanism, because if you go by a pricing way, whatever for it has a lesser burden for rich people just because you can, you don't really notice the differences if you're really rich and you do notice it very well if you have a small budget. So you need a rebalancing a social rebalancing we as Greens do propose for an increase in the CO2 pricing. So the citizens energy money and ideas that every cent that the state gets in addition for higher CO2 prices will flow back to every citizen, adult and children per capita and thereby have a social justice impact because of course you know an amount of 200 to 300 years does represent much for somebody with a lower budget and much for somebody with a richer, somebody richer but also that you know if you are rich usually have bigger houses you have bigger cars so you do spend more and you get a relatively compared to that less spec. So that's our social component in the CO2 pricing, which is really important for us to get through the current government in Germany is increasing CO2 prices without a social rebalancing mechanism and we think it really needs to go hand in hand. And the second limitation to pricing is that you, you put the weight on the consumers. Okay, so it's consumers who have to pay a price be it you know if you have it in the transport sector, or if you have it in the building sector where we still have to do a lot in Europe. So you put it on those people renting out houses, for example, and what you don't get is fast enough an incentive for innovation and that you have to drive the prices very high to get a real impact in terms of consumer choices and innovation incentives. So that's why we say there are areas where we have to also really get to innovation by setting CO2 standards, or, you know, saying this product or this element like Lufusat is just no longer acceptable because it's so destructive for climate and environment. So that's part of the logic of saying you can't do everything by a pricing because the innovation won't be fast enough and consumers burn will be too high. This is quite an interesting debate now inside the EU because the Commission proposed a second emissions trading scheme for transport sector and housing. We are not in favor of that we prefer to go by your standards in this area, you know that we you we have car mission freeze from 2030 on that we set emissions ceilings for buildings etc. So it will be interesting to see if we get a good mixture already between pricing and regulation. And then a third, the third pillar is investments in innovation technology and infrastructure, because we know that the private sector is investing heavily in future technologies but we also know that we will need support for it in some areas in some areas. And that's where we have or where we are supporting the idea of the contract for differences that you know between the current price of CO2 and the future one or the price that we would need so that the price would really speak the truth about about CO2 pollution that the difference will be paid to companies so that they can invest in new technologies and with the price increasing in reality they will get less support and one day when it switches they will have to pay back so the idea is to front finance investments that maybe today are not affordable to companies or sectors like steel and to thereby go the way together so that's the idea of really investing in new technologies in innovation and the second part of that is infrastructure we know that we need more trains faster trains better trains safer trains buses bike lanes better energy lines transport of energy etc. So we do have to improve our infrastructure and that also won't be for free so we need to really invest there. And that's the third pillars really in investments in innovation and infrastructure. And of course if you take one thing out it might not seem radical enough from our program, but it's really important to see that we have a holistic approach in terms of, you know, using different elements of achieving the objectives of climate protection. So maybe that much from my side. We also foresee lots of reskilling or new skilling labor training etc to support areas that have an especially hard transition and and to do wherever it's possible citizens participation in the process so that we do advance faster. Because we have seen that if you do, for example, big infrastructure projects if you do involve citizens early on, you get better results and you advance faster. So that's also part of our approach.