 To Mr. Orget Geblevich, please. Dear Commissioner Lenarchić, Welcome on behalf of the EPP group and thank you for being with us today and for your special attention to all regional and local politicians across the EU that we have the privilege to represent in the COR. Let me start by expressing our deepest sympathy with European citizens personally affected by the COVID-19. Over the past months we have been local and regional authorities at the forefront to fight with the spread of pandemic, taking concrete actions on the ground and mobilizing all our resources to offer solutions to our citizens' needs. We need to pay special tribute to them and to all workers in healthcare, agriculture, retail, transport, education sectors providing for essential goods and services in these difficult times. We want to also prize the extraordinary sense of civic responsibility and solidarity of European citizens in the COVID-19 pandemic following the measures introduced by the authorities helping each other and safeguarding their local communities. Dear Commissioner, European citizens are facing today the most dramatic health, economic and social crisis in generations. They express through us the regional and local representatives their concerns and expectations for the highest level of protection and preparedness in the handling of health emergencies. They expect from us to urgently implement effective measures at all levels of governance which must be based on the right conclusions from the impact of the pandemic. The first and foremost we have to modernize our health systems and invest in the pharmaceutical sector to be better prepared to cope with the health emergencies. Second, the COVID-19 crisis revealed vulnerability of European value and supply chains. That's why we need to reduce our dependency on third countries and strengthen our European industrial base. Third, we have to step the economic recovery app in order to keep up business alive, maintain and create jobs as well as to deliver services to our citizens. It's crucial to mobilize all existing found, also EU founds and make them directly and easily accessible for regional and local authorities to address this crisis. In this regard, we have welcomed the commission's set of actions at the outbreak of the pandemic. Commissioner Lenarchic, over the last few months we have been debating how to tackle the devastating effects of this pandemic in medium and long term. As a response, end of May, the European Commission proposed recovery plan together with revised MFF. Both solutions reflected the request you are and of regional and local authorities for resilient, greener and digital EU closer to its citizens and more responsive towards local and regional leaders. We believe this can be benefit all local and regional communities across Europe, because both proposals are based on the three of EU fundamental values, solidarity, responsibility and subsidiarity. Of course, we need to still analyze in detail the commission's proposal from our regional and local angle. However, we can already say the recovery plan is ambitious and forward looking. We can also say the next generation plans will be success if discussed, agreed and delivered with the regions, cities, towns and villages. Regional and local authorities must be placed at the heart of the EU recovery. With the new health program, the reinforced European Civil Protection Mechanism and programs for research and innovations we would have more instruments to raise future crisis. Also programs supporting member states and regions to recover kickstarting the economy and helping private investments are very much welcomed. And last sentence, we hope that member states will avoid delays and researching a timely agreement on the commission's proposal. To protect people and restart economy. Thank you very much.