 Good morning. Thank you very much for the kind invitation because as I was telling just a short while ago when we had a coffee I always like to come to Ireland because it reminds me of the very nice moment we lived here when my country Slovakia was admitted into the European Union and the island was at that time in the presidency and they organized excellent welcome party for us in Cork and then very nice rising ceremony in Dublin so I realized that our two nations are very close because we like to have a cold beer we like to have a good fun and we share I would say very much similar similar temperaments since that time of course I came to Dublin and to other cities in Ireland many times and I saw the enormous rise and I now I see a very difficult austerity time the island is going through and therefore I was very pleased that I could discuss those of these issues yesterday in your joint committee on European affairs that I had the chance to raise some of these issues with your minister for European affairs Lucinda Crichton but also minister Howling and I met also both speakers in your parliament Kean Korla and Kahelok this was my best gaelic I can get you know so yeah but I have to say that one thing I was repeating in all the mistakes that also we in the commission are very much impressed with very solid track record the island established in in tackling the crisis in the close cooperation with Troika with the with the commission and even though I know that the times are are tough especially here in Ireland but I think that there is also a lot of positive signs on the horizon I think everybody was very much impressed by your exports which have been also growing during this tough time and I think that six percent is a very very impressive result your high-tech industry is doing very well your medical industry is doing perfectly and also your agriculture I think is going through very very positive period as well so I think that with the traditional Irish resilience hard work and very solid track record I believe that Ireland will be very soon back on track and very soon back in very very solid economic performance when I was invited to speak to you about the community method I very much welcome the opportunity to do so because of course this is the issue which is not discussed only in Ireland but all over all over the Europe and I think that especially with the Lisbon Treaty entering into force we could see how the community method became something which is now called in Brussels jargon ordinary legislative methods so it means that vast majority well over 90 percent of the decisions are adopted through the community method meaning legislative proposal from the commission and then qualified majority voting in the council and the majority voting in the in the parliament and I would say that at that time when the Lisbon Treaty was being adopted we've been more extremely pleased that we are now concluding the 10 years of very difficult institutional debate that we are giving the European Union new tools which should be strong and good enough for managing the European Union in its enlarged form of 27 and that we are actually equipping ourselves with the tools which should help us to be more performant on the global stage what we most probably didn't realize at that time was enormous economic interdependence which was developed over the years since we introduced euro and I think this was one fundamental lesson of the crisis that independence now more than ever is requiring much stronger and much deeper integration that you have to ensure that national economic and budgetary policies cannot have such a devastating effect on the euro area as we have seen over the last years we I think realized the the depth of these interdependence only when we saw that two percent economy can actually affect the situation in the whole eurozone and that actually we could create the global ripples in the economic economic development if you look at the at the causes or the roots of the crisis I think we have to be very open and frank about it that the crisis was caused by irresponsible actions from the governments and the financial sector which led to the massive debts and to the economic policies which were simply not unsustainable we also have to admit that globalization reveal the fact that we are lacking competitiveness that we've been living beyond our means and that we've been losing this competitive edge which was so much plasticly revealed when the globalization pressures been so so became so much present in in the european european union and therefore the the fact that we understood how the european economies are integrated whether they whether they are or they are not part of the eurozone means that simply in the future we cannot support loose canons of irresponsible economies and policies of this nature in in the future so for us in the commission I think it's it's quite clear that europe's response to the to the crisis caused very clear or led to very clear conclusions that we need to cooperate much more efficiently and we need to look for more rather rather than less europe and I think that one lesson was also quite clear that the framework which the lisbon treaty brought to us simply was not enough from the point of view of economic governance from the point of view of political and financial instruments we had at that time at our disposal and we had to do everything on time we had to fight the immediate crisis and at the same time we had to lay down the infrastructure for the future for the future cooperation for the deep integration and built in the preventive mechanisms which would not allow us to have the same crisis situation crisis situation again the lisbon treaty was very much the treaty which I believe strongly strengthen the parliamentary dimension of the european union be it in the european legislative process by the strengthening of the position of the european parliament by putting it on the equal budgetary and legislative footing with the council but also by involving more and more the national parliament be it through subsidiarity check mechanism or be it also through the political dialogue which we introduced from the commission because we just simply realized that especially in the fields like economic governance like the debate on the sustainability of our budgetary policies we would need more and more of an interaction between the commission and the national parliament as well very often i heard especially the last year after the stormy first months when the lisbon treaty entered into force the discussion who was the winner and who was who was the loser and of course the commission was very often described that is in the position where its influence is being is being weakened and where we are like losing some of the power to other european institutions particularly the european parliament at that stage but i cannot agree with the assessment because i serve something like the inter institutional interface i'm commissioner but i represent also the commission in the general affairs council in the council which prepares all all summits which is the last one before the leaders sit together where we exchange a view with the herman fandrompoi where he is presenting his views and listening to the response from the from from the ministers so he could be better prepared for the meeting and the prime ministers or the presidents could be better informed what they might expect once they once they come to brasil's i also serve as a commission responsible for the relations with the european parliament i and i went through all the difficult negotiations on the framework agreement so i can i can really see the situation from the from the three perspectives and if i can make one conclusions it's quite clear that the lisbon treaty actually strengthened all three institutions it strengthened the union and it strengthened the cooperation and it forces us to do more than we did before it forces us to cooperate much more closely than before and it's put the commission very often in very demanding position of the honest broker when he become to the conclusion of the legislative process and we are looking the solution which is acceptable for all three institutions if you look about some i would say most evident and positive changes brought by the lisbon treaty i also have to of course mention except the increased transparency of the process increased democratic legitimacy of the EU decision making process also the the the the most visible changes which been brought by the by the lisbon treaty the first one of course was the creation and the election of the first president of the european council also at that time there was a discussion is it a good thing how it would fit into the overall construction of the european cooperation but i think that after two years of the crisis when we have several absolutely crucial summits it's quite obvious that we've been actually lucky that the lisbon treaty entered into power before the crisis went to this very severe period because i cannot imagine how one would be able to be president or prime minister of his or her country and at the same time would be able to run the the european council with all the responsibilities the european council got over the recent year especially in tackling the crisis i think that both the thanks to the to the personal qualities and and personal features of both presidents baroso and fund rompoy the cooperation is excellent actually mutually reinforces both the institutions they have regular meetings on monday morning when they are discussing agenda when they are i would say dividing the their roles and and tasks and of course they very much respect the treaty so if it comes to appearances at such a levels like g20 g8 president baroso speaks on what are the commission competencies and you know them very well from from agriculture to to transport and the president fund rompoy speaks about what are his responsibility like cfsp csdp and the cooperation is working i think very very smoothly new element which was also brought to the forefront was the creation of the external action service and we discussed it yesterday at several meetings because i participated in so-called quadrilogue where the commission presidency kathie stone for her new service and the european parliament and we've been actually working on getting it done agreeing all the changes and building up the european external action service and of course i'm sure that you would understand that it was not an easy exercise to get all these institutions working together to create new european diplomatic or to merge the the cultures of the commission officials council officials and of course national diplomats now the european external action service is there the kathie stone is performing her duties she doesn't have the easy task because also the global situation is not easy but i think that she would need also in the in the in the future more more support from the foreign minister so we can really use also this new tool to the to the fullest speaking about other institutions i should come i should come back to the to the competencies of the of the commission because if you look at them from from purely analytical point of view i think we also would agree that the lisbon treaty actually reinforces the the competencies of the commission lisbon treaty preserved a near monopoly on the legislative initiatives its executive functions and the power to adapt non-essential parts of the legislations to the changing circumstances these are the famous delegated and implementing acts or the former cometology we sometimes sometimes so much discussed and sometimes creates a lot of preoccupations by the by the national parliaments i think that i can tell you with the with the practical experience the lisbon treaty reinforced the the community method and actually um clearly underlined the vital role of the the commission in in in the whole process our chair was speaking about the directorium about the meetings between chancellor merkel and and president sarkozy and it's true that newspaper headlines give the impression that chancellor and the presidents who are leading us out of this crisis are really in the in the forefront of these discussions and i think it's also very natural that the two major and biggest economies of the european union work towards the solution to the current crisis but i have to underline that this is only part of the process because if you look how this crisis being tackled from what aspects we had to address these challenges the crisis brought to the european union you would see that the actual recipes and the actual measures which been adopted been adopted through the community methods because what is our major tool how to prevent the crisis from taking place this is the legislative package six spec which was really worked through on the communitarian basis based up on the legislative proposals coming from the from the commission and after very close cooperation with the task force which was also formed by the herman fund rompoy so we've been working on the two parallel tracks but in then the result was the legislative proposal which came from the commission and which was then swiftly approved by the member states and by the european parliament so we can say that in these very difficult times also this parallel approach has actually helped us to build consensus much faster and help us to agree to the level of the coordination to the level of communitarian cooperation which is unprecedented and when i remember the spirit of the discussions when we've been discussing the lisbon treaty or before that the the constitutional treaty i think that if somebody would at that time would propose something similar to the six pack simply he would be laughed at because at that time it was unthinkable that we would be able to to make such a leap forward into the integration and in such a sensitive areas like we are now covering in the six pack so i would say the lesson learned from the crisis then the very good understanding of the problem cooperation between both presidents and very important role the commission play in the formulating the the needs for the better economic governance and making concrete proposals which been then approved by the parliament and uh by the by the council if you look at another measures which been adopted to tackle the crisis it was quite clear that we need to address the problems of the financial sectors and we went through different measures how to improve the governance of the financial sector how to actually complement what was very much missing and was one of the reasons we end up in this very difficult in this very difficult crisis which was lack of solid regulation of the financial sector therefore we we proposed and now it's already in place the new supervisory structure new three european authorities which are forming together european systemic risk board which is now very strong solid regulatory body which we believe will will bring new ways how to supervise and regulate economic and financial industry another example which i would like to describe to you is how we are using the communitarian methods to actually manage better our economic future we realized that also national policies have such a influence on each other on and on the overall european situation that we must proceed with much better coordination in that area as well therefore we came up with the concepts of annual growth survey with the concept of european semester and national semester what i'm talking about commission now's now before the end of every year brings and presents the annual growth survey this is our analysis in which we highlight what we believe is the crucial for the european economic development in the next year what are the major problems we should tackle and on which we believe the national economies should focus their attention then we start with the european semester when the commission's analysis is discussed on the level of economic finance ministers on the level heads of states and government and once we agree on these analyses then of course we are pushing the national member states to adopt the national reform programs with the specific responses to these european problems and also these national it's called country specific recommendations are discussed on the european level and these recommendations are adopted as a collective commitment coming from the european side and coming from the from the national side and then the european semester is becoming the national semester and we see that through this way we'll be able also to to coordinate our policies better and to be in more coherent approach to our economic development one issue which was very problematic also here in ireland but in spain and in other countries was the presence or recurrence of economic or macroeconomic imbalances i call them for better understanding bubbles we had internet bubble we had real estate bubble we had construction bubbles in the european union and of course these are the phenomena which are very difficult to tackle to be tackled from the government point of view because governments are happy when the economy is growing and sometimes it's very difficult to accept the fact that maybe this this growth is not healthy and i remember how many debates we had on these imbalances on these bubbles and how difficult it was to adopt any measures against these developments therefore we decided to tackle this issue as well from the european level the last week we adopted the first assessment report where we highlighted the 12 member states because of the potential problems with macroeconomic imbalances should be deeply analyzed should be evaluated and if the conclusions would be that there are clear lists of the imbalances also new measures should be taken to to prevent these imbalances into becoming bubbles and of course this is another tool which we will use to prevent these negative economic developments from from happening one thing i would like to underline and by this i would like to underline also very important role the commission plays in all this exercise is the fact that we intend to use the the new powers the commission got under the new economic governance to the fullest because we cannot risk that we would end up with another broken stability and the growth pact which was so eloquently described by mario monti just today is in the european parliament because he said in european union we do not have good guys and the bad guys we been in these negative developments all of us together the stability and the growth pact was for the first time broken by germany france and it was during the italian presidency so all three big economies been somehow complicit in that in that development and therefore it's quite clear that once we put the the six pack into the operation we want to use it from the day one with all necessary authority and using all the powers and you could have seen the consequences of this approach already in january of this year because in december the commission sent out the warnings as somebody called the love letters from oli to to five to five member states and three of the member states clarified their positions and corrected their budget deficit immediately for belgium it was particularly difficult because you know that they've been forming the government for some time they've been discussing the budget for some time as well but then there was a stark choice to be made or one billion euro cut or quite quite hefty fine and in the end we've been very pleased that we found the solution with the belgian government the budget deficit correction was was corrected and the belgian is on on on their own on the right track the one country where we didn't succeed yet was the hungary but there a lot of discussion also on other item is taking place right now and there because it's not a member of the eurozone the mechanism doesn't imply the financial financial fines so there is look for another possible sanctions and when we discussed it in the college the conclusion was quite clear the more we will be looking for the proportional way how to sanction this negative budget budget development in the hangar in the form of freezing part of the part of the euro funds but this would be the measure which would come in place as of first of january of the next year and we hope that with the close cooperation with the hungarian authority we will be also able to solve this issue if you allow me now couple of words on the subject which is also quite hotly debated in ireland and this is inter intergovernmental treaty i think it was quite obvious over the last two years that the treaty the structure we have the monetary union which was built by using the common currency among the EU 17 member states would need to be complemented by the economic union and this was the primary cause and primary reason why we started the the discussion on how to do it of course the preference of the commission was to proceed in 27 to proceed through the regular amending procedure of the lisbon treaty but as you know very well this was not possible because two member states were not able to support such approach and therefore we had to go for the intergovernmental intergovernmental treaty i have to say that the commission didn't ask for this treaty because it sits outside of the EU treaty framework as i said we believe that most of the changes we can achieve through the secondary legislation some of the things which we couldn't we believe that we could propose through the regular amending procedure to the treaty but as i said because we like the consensus it was not possible so then we in the commission focused very much on the content and and the spirit of the treaty and i have to say that in the end we've been very pleased that the outcome and and the spirits of the treaty went into the direction which was very important very much welcomed by the commission and by the european parliament in the end so what was achieved at first no new institutions been created secondly it's quite clear that the primacy of the EU law is clearly acknowledged then it was underlined several times in the text of the treaty that commission has a central role in delivery of the treaty objectives then it was clearly highlighted that the treaty and the performance based upon the treaty must be always in conformity with the lisbon treaty and the community method and on top of it we've been very pleased that we managed to convince our our partners in the negotiation that this international treaty should become the part of the legal framework of the EU within five years which we see as a very important safeguard for the for the compatibility not only on the text of the treaty but also on all the actions which will be stemming from the treaty in the future and i know that there is the concern in ireland as to whether the implementation of a treaty would necessitate a new referendum and our understanding is that the attorney general is looking at the issue now and of course the commission fully respects the internal procedures for the ratification of international treaties in each member states including ireland of course so what would be what would be the what would be the future as i see it i believe that now we are in the situation when we are slowly slowly putting the the the last pieces of the of the of the puzzle into this very complex mosaic of the new quality of economic governance into the into the new quality of the of the future economic union and that we are building the system which i believe will help us to proceed to the exit of the current crisis and therefore there is time not to focus our attention only on immediate emergencies but we have to look at what is so important and so much felt across the whole europe and this is how to restart the growth and how to restart the jobs the jobs creation therefore we've been very pleased that the last informal european council was already not in emergency mood it was the normal informal european council after several months when the leaders been discussing the prospect for the job creation how to restart how to restart the growth and how to tackle unemployment which is a particular problem in in your country and which is a particular problem in in my country as well therefore we came up with the idea which i which i was also presenting yesterday to the members of the european committee of your parliament where the commission will do its utmost to start the closed cooperation with the eight member states on tackling the youth unemployment we suggested creation of so-called action teams where we would like to get together government representatives social partners and commission experts and if we look how we can use the the european social fund or what still has not been allocated from from other funds to the better use of the creation of the jobs for the young people how we can amend the legislation or proceed with the active labor policies in a way that we would be able to offer young people something which is called job guarantee in austria it it works in a way we would like to see replicate in all the countries where there is such a big problem with the youth unemployment meaning that within four months after end of your schooling you should have a guarantee that you will be or working employed if this is not possible that the requalic requalification courses would be offered to you or you will get the possibility to continue your studies because that the prospect of having almost 30 percent young people unemployed in ireland or more than 35 percent of young people not working not in school not in training like we have now in slovakia simply enormous waste of time and we are wasting the potential of what is probably the best educated young generation we ever had in the european union this kind of cooperation is already taking place also in ireland there will be the team of experts coming from the commission to to ireland already next tuesday and i believe that we will have all the necessary expertise and all necessary insight in how we can use the european funds in ireland to the better use for the young unemployed people coming back to your country i was starting about what could be the sources of growth in your case i already named the sectors which are doing so well but i also have to pay a tribute to your compatriots to my colleague moira gigankuin because she's doing excellent job in simplifying all the procedures for the researcher scientists and sms to use the eu funds for research and innovation and i have a good news for you you became the scientific superpower of the european union because you are the you are the medium sized or small member states this is how i describe my country as well but you already manage to achieve excellent results because you are getting 20.7 percent of the overall eu contribution going to the research and innovations programs for the sms and this is an enormous achievement because these are these are not preallocated many this is fierce competition based on the high quality research and the high quality high quality project and therefore what would be very important for ireland would be our efforts to get rid of as many barriers in the european union as as we can because we do not have money for fiscal stimulus in the european union there is no such a member state which has money for fiscal stimulus what we have to use is we have to use to much better use our single market we need to use better the potential of 500 million of potential customers and clients and therefore we came with a single market act where we see that there will be 12 legislative proposals coming on through the fast-track procedure which would be aimed exactly at that removing the barriers and creating the possibilities for the small medium enterprise and for businessmen to use the market better so if you allow me to conclude by saying that i clearly believe that the lisbon treaty strengthened the community method that the commission got absolute new powers especially in the field of economic governance which been unthinkable just a couple of years ago and that the success and the power of the commission would of course very much depend on how we would perform the duties but also on how much we would be supported by the member states because we are there for cooperation we are there for working together coordinate our actions but the political support for the commission is always necessary and in some difficult times i can tell you very much welcomed thank you very much