 Good afternoon and I'm very pleased to welcome you to this IEA seminar on the Czech presidency. My name is David O'Sullivan and I'm the Director General and I will be chairing this webinar. And we are very delighted to be joined today by Marek Harvda, the Deputy Minister for European Affairs of the Czech Republic, who has taken time out from his very busy schedule, I imagine, in the run-up to a presidency, to speak to us today about the priorities of the forthcoming Czech EU presidency, which of course is part of the trio presidency, which began with France and will be completed by Sweden early next year. The Minister will speak to us for approximately 15-20 minutes or so, and then we'll go to question and answer with our audience, as is the usual practice. You'll be able to join the discussion using the Q&A function on Zoom, which you should see on your screen. Please feel free to send your questions in throughout the session as they occur to you, and we will come to them once the Minister has finished his opening remarks. I remind you that today's presentation and Q&A and question and answer session are on the record. Please feel free also to join the discussion on Twitter using the handle at IIEA. We are also live streaming this afternoon's discussion, so a very warm welcome to all of you tuning in via YouTube. I'd just like to briefly introduce our speaker. So as I said, Marek Havda is the Deputy Minister for European Affairs of the Czech Government, and he contributes to the coordination of the Czech Republic's positions on EU policies and supports the Czech presidency of the Council of the European Union in 2022. He has considerable expertise in the area of evidence-based policymaking, which is always a nice thing to hear, Minister, and the use of behavioural economics for policy formulation. And among other things, he worked on impact assessment in the domains of health and consumer protection in the European Commission. So fellow colleague from the European Commission like myself, and he has served as an advisor for the EU structural funds at the EU Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, and he has been since 2014 a member of the Impact Assessment Board of the Legislative Council of the Czech Government. His educational background is Charles University, a PhD in Sociology, and several postgraduate degrees in John Hopkins Warwick Business School and the Central European University. So we're delighted to have you here today, Minister, and we look forward to hearing your description of the priorities for the Czech presidency, which is taking over at a rather challenging time in European politics. Please, floor is yours. Well, thank you very much for kind introduction, and thank you very much for the invitation. I'm really glad I can be here with you today. Although it is a rather short notice because it was my minister, Minister Mikhail Ashbeck, to be with you, but I'm just sending greetings from him and I'm serving as a replacement. So I got to know just yesterday I will be presenting here. So please bear with me and please, you know, feel free as well to interrupt. Raise your hands and I'm more than happy to have more of the discussion, even as I will be presenting. But let me start with presenting the Czech priorities, so the political priorities for the presidency. The motto of the presidency is Europe as a task, which is a title of President Václav Havel's speech. Back from 1996, which he presented in the ceremony of award of the Charmine Prize in Aachen in Germany. Havel reflected on the political map after the fall of the of the Berlin Wall. So at the time, which was very favorable for for liberal democracies. And that time he was talking about the need that we should reflect on the role of Europe in a global affairs and take responsibility for promoting freedom, role for all, and as a responsibility for social, economic and environmental issues. He was not eluding to some kind of promoting a post-colonial virtue or serving as a colonial power. He was more eluding to leading by an example and by the power of inspiration promoting all these values. The invasion of the Russian Federation once again changed completely the geopolitical context on our continent. And we feel it is again a time to pull a reflection of what are the tasks in front of Europe. So the motto is Europe as a task, rethink, rebuild, and repower. And repower is in much better sense, just the energy. We think there is an important distinction between the time of Havel in the mid-90s and today. And it is that we don't have the luxury of time at the moment. We don't have the time for reflection. We need to reflect very quickly and be able to act. The Union has proven maybe to surprise too many that we can act in unity and we can be very strong in our reaction. But at the same time, maybe need to be looking for a mix of the policies which will help us to lead the EU to tackle the new challenges, the completely change geopolitical context, but as well to lead us towards the long-term goals of the green and digital transitions. Based on preliminary reflection, we have selected five priorities which I would like to share with you now briefly and have a short description of each of them. So first one is managing the refugee crisis and Ukrainians post-war recovery, hopefully. As you know, the Russian aggression has caused the largest refugee crisis since World War II on the continent. So we must be able to take steps to help the refugees, mostly women and children, and to make sure that we protect the most vulnerable, that we ensure access to education to the children and that we support the access to the labor market of their mothers. As well, we need to make sure we're able to mobilize all the resources and expertise and use them as efficiently as possible and make sure that there is sufficient flexibility in the use of the resources which are available. As well as, you know, the Czech Republic fully supports the candidate status of Ukraine and we are glad to see the recent developments. I think it is really important due to several reasons, apart from sending the signals to the Ukrainians and showing them that the future is in Europe, as well sending a signal to Russia. But as well, there is an importance in motivating Ukraine to carry out important reforms. Without these reforms, recovery would be very difficult and we need to make sure that the role of all and public procurement rules, for example, are applied in some manner in Ukraine. Second priority is energy security. We need to speed up of getting rid of the dependency on Russian fossil fuels. The decarbonization is clearly needs to be carried out clearly in the framework of FIT455 and especially the energy efficiency and as well renewable energy sources and building needed infrastructure, including ability to the conditions for diversification of supplies, areas we need to work on. As well, we need to work on the decarbonization of transport and as you know, there is, for example, important proposal affair, which is on the alternative US infrastructure across Europe. At the same time, they need to tackle the social aspects of energy. So we would like to try to exchange the best practice on the negative social impacts and how we can deal with them in terms of energy poverty. Third area of our priorities is strengthening Europe's defence capabilities, as well as cyberspace security. We want to make sure that we enhance our security and defence capabilities that we work complementary to the NATO and we will be trying to accelerate the implementation of the so-called strategic compass. It has a number of aspects, so we need to make sure we increase our capabilities in strategic military systems and logistics, but as well in emerging and disruptive technologies. So it has both the production and industrial aspect ability to produce advanced systems, but as well to be able to reduce our dependence in terms of emerging and disruptive technologies. In terms of the cyber security, this is an area which is very much on the focus of this country. We need to be working both on cyber security in terms of the resilience of the systems of the information systems and communication infrastructure, but as well we need to be working on hybrid threats and disinformation. In that relation, we would like to see advancement in the implementation of the hybrid toolbox. The fourth priority is the strategic resilience of the Europe's economy. The pandemic and as well the aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine clearly showed us how the global supply chains are fragile. The Russian invasion as well caused the greatest deception of commodity markets in the last of the century and it is going across board from food security to medicines to semiconductors and to raw materials. We see several aspects which need to be tackled. Both we need to work on improving our capabilities, production capabilities on the continent, on the continent, but at the same time we need to improve our trade links with mostly, especially with democratic countries across the globe. They want to deepen the transatlantic operation in the framework of trade and technology council and as well to accelerate trade agreements with Latin America and Indo-Pacific region. In terms of the internal market, we see a huge potential to deepen the internal market in digital, especially in digital services and here we would like to accelerate the legislation on data flows, on artificial intelligence and on EID. Finally, the fifth priority is the resilience of democratic institutions. We think it is of utmost importance. We make sure that the democratic institutions in the union, but as well beyond, are resilient. We would like to concentrate on some concrete areas. For example, on the independence of mass media where we expect the proposal from the European Commission as well. We would like to accelerate the work on the transparency of financing of political parties. We think again it is crucial to work with like-minded countries and to use the opportunity of the EU to get everybody like-minded countries to become a global center in different areas. For example, in new technologies such as artificial intelligence and to make sure that the new rules and the new standards, they into account ever values of protection of human rights and environment. Finally, getting back to the legacy of President Marcel Hamel, we would like to support civil societies and independent media beyond the fractures of the continent. These are the main priorities. They are of course built not only on the current situation in terms of the geopolitics, but on the current state of flow of the legislative process. As you know, we are at the peak of the legislative process in terms of the current commission. There is over, I think, 200 proposals being ratified. Based on these priorities, these help us to prioritize the work on very concrete proposals. Apart from these five priorities, the program has the second more technical part where we mentioned overview is the priority files based on the division of different council formations. Yes, I'm looking forward. Thank you for your attention. I'm looking forward to our discussion.