 Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to proceed to point 24 above the European Entrepreneurial Region Award Ceremony. So this is a debate with the winners and members of the European Committee of the Regions. Let me start saying that the EER label is a recognition to winning regions for their innovative entrepreneurial strategies for strengthening their local SME sector. That is a leading local employer and the backbone of Europe's economy. For well over a decade since 2009, we have celebrated the invaluable efforts of our regions to encourage entrepreneurship, to provide the enabling conditions for their SMEs and the strong entrepreneurial vision supported by local region forward-looking strategies. So far, we together with the European Commission and European Parliament, and with the support of the SME United, Social Economy Europe, Eurochambers, and EURAVA, have awarded 36 European territories bigger and smaller metropolitan and rural regions. Those more developed and those catching up. Not only centrally located, but also more remote and peripheral regions. In these challenging times, we dedicated the 2023 EER award to building resilient communities in EU regions and cities. We must do our best to stimulate the entrepreneurial activity in our regions, capitalizing on the power of innovation to boost the digital and green transitions. We will now proceed to announcing the three winning regions awarded with the EER 2023 label as selected by the EER jury. Before that, I want to thank all the regions that participated this year and wish to see them apply again. I stress that the three EER labels are fully equal and we will announce their names in alphabetical order. The representatives of the awarded territories that are present in the room are invited to join us here at the front to collect their trophies and to deliver a short three minute speech. The following awarded regions will commit to leading by example in implementing ambitious entrepreneurial strategies for building resilient entrepreneurial communities. So do we have drums? No. The European Entrepreneurial Regions of the Year 2023 are Barcelona City from Spain, Vanilla Municipality from Portugal and Western Pomerania from Poland. I think we have to do it in front. I invite you to. Now I would like to first of all congratulations to all three winners and I think we have a short video clip about the 2023 label, EER 2023 label, please. Thank you. Now it is my pleasure and honor to give the floor to Mr. Paul Solanilla. You have the floor, sir. Congratulations. Muito obrigado, señor presidente. Dear friends, dear members of the Committee of the Regions and the rest of the institutions. First of all, thank you very much for this award for the City of Barcelona. We are very honored and we would like to share with you basically three reflections why this award is very important for our city. First of all, I would like to remind you and to remember that in 1996 the mayor of Barcelona, Pasqual Maragall, the mayor of the Olympic Games, was elected chairperson president of the Committee of the Regions. So the Committee of the Regions and the citizens is a very important institution for the city of Barcelona. So it is, as I say, an honor and its link to our tradition, to the European tradition of Barcelona. The second comment that I would like to share with you is why we are developing what we call our Barcelona Green Deal agenda. Barcelona is an entrepreneurial city. If you have visited, if you have the chance to visit Barcelona, and you see, for example, our beautiful architecture has been done basically by the private sector, for the entrepreneurial sector. We are not obviously the city capital of Spain, we are the second city. So I would say our private sector or entrepreneurs are having a lot of force, a lot of energies for the city. So one of the ADN, the ADN of the city is the public-private cooperation. So public leadership and public and private cooperation. But the third pillar of our strategy we think is the more important, is the most important taking into account that we are, we say, a relatively big city or one of the global cities is social cohesion, social endorsement of the policies that we are doing. Anything of what we do, it has sense if we do not involve the citizens. We are a competitive city. Barcelona is well-known as a competitive city all over the world, is already today, despite of a tourist capital and a sports capital, is one of the digital capitals, global digital capitals. But this competitiveness is based in the talent of the city, the talent of the foreign talent that wants to live with us, but especially is a model of a city. It's a model we want to protect the equality. We don't want to go very fast leaving people behind. I think this is the triple success of Barcelona, competitiveness, sustainable city and social cohesion. These are the three elements, Mr. President, that we want to keep in Barcelona. And this award, it gives us new energies because we know that any success of the past guarantee any success of the future. So we need to have the humility to learn, to listen from the others, and Barcelona is always open to host anyone who wants to come to work with us to build also this new Europe. Thank you very much, Mr. President. Well, we are the ones who thank you, and congratulations once more. Mr. Paul Solanilla is the Commissioner for City Promotion and Barcelona City Council. I now have the great pleasure of giving the floor to my opponent, the Portuguese President of the Municipal Chamber of Penelope and Eduardo Santos. I give the floor to another panel. Our President of the European Committee of the Regions, Vasco Alves Ribeiro, esteemed members of the European Commission, esteemed colleagues that are awarded also with this distinction. As Mayor of Penelope Municipality, it is with deep pride and that is the responsibility that we receive this award. This distinction, attributed by the European Commission and the European Committee of the Regions, is a recognition of our commitment in the fields of innovation and entrepreneurship as an essential path for the development of territories with low population density. Allow me to briefly describe the Penelope Municipality, which is a magnificent territory located in the center region of Portugal, a low-density territory of approximately 135 square kilometers within the so-called Pinal Interior Territory with the following demographic characteristics. We have about 5,400 people and we have a loss of 9% population in the last 10 years with low education levels, low levels of entrepreneurial ability and aging above the national average. Considering this reality, we believe we have created the tools and the environment to overcome this fight. The partnership and networking with a scientific and technological community, such as the Peter Noons Institute and the University of Coimbra, has been essential to attract new companies to the territory as well to the cooperation, the close cooperation with the local business association NEP. The creation of ES incubator is a fundamental structure of the municipality to consolidate the EER strategy in partnership with the Peter Noons Institute. The networking with a scientific and technological system is decisive for business growth and development instead of giving up Penelope decided to dare to risk and to act. We understand the importance of defining the local strategy sustained focused on innovation, competitiveness and entrepreneurship. We call it the ICE. This plan enabled us to create competitive advantages using the differentiating factors of the territory and establish strategic partnerships that could exploit real opportunities while defining a smart specialization as a rural territory with focus in agribusiness, forestry, clean energy, ICT, environment, circular economy and bioeconomy, tourism, creative industries and digital fabrication. This municipal plan assumes local rural singularities as the main differentiating factor able to provide a necessary foundation for sustainable development. We have already come a long way but we are very conscious that there is still much more to do. We are still in pursuit of the ideal ecosystem which will allow us to grow even further. In the next phase, to further increase our strength, we feel that we need to focus on the people, increasing the availability of accommodations and improving the public services in order to create fringe benefits that will also become competitive advantages. As I start by alluding at the beginning, receiving distinction also gives us greater responsibility and a necessary trust to continue our path. In Portugal, beside Lisbon and Castelo Branco, we are the first low density municipality to achieve this distinction which should be a source of pride for everyone who lives, invests and works in Ponella and hopefully will give us an authority boost to attract more investors and people to our territory. My compliments and thanks to the ER Committee on my behalf and on the behalf of Ponella Municipality, thank you for this recognition and for this big encouragement. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. We are the ones who thank you for participating. And now a well-known face of the Committee of the Regions, Mr. Geblewicz, as President of Pomerania, you have the floor. West Pomerania, exactly. West Pomerania. West Pomerania. Dear President, dear friends. I don't want to create a geopolitical incident. You know, because we have a Pomerania region as well, so President can, you know, be offended. West Pomerania. West Pomerania, precisely. This time I will speak Polish if you allow me. Drodzy przyjaciele. Dear friends, I have always said that the success of a region is a sum of all of the companies and citizens' success. Today I'd like to add that the success of Europe is the success of all the cities and regions in Europe combined. That is why this distinction is so important both for the Committee of the Region and for the whole of Europe. It is very important for my region, West Pomerania, a beautiful region at the Baltic Sea bordering with Germany in its northwestern part. This region has had the most difficulty in undergoing the transformation in the 1990s when half of our economy collapsed and our unemployment reached 35%. That was a huge challenge when, 20 years ago, I became a councilman for the first time in a small municipality. We had to reconstruct our economy. In my locality, we're both an industrial and business park. Today, this business park counts 50 companies. When I became the marshal of our region, our priorities were exactly the same. Modern economy first. After many years of hard work, we've managed not only to reconstruct our economy, but to rebuild it, basically, from scratch. We have no problems with unemployment. We have labour for shortages. And we have one of the highest ratios of SMEs per 1,000 inhabitants. And we are the biggest green energy hub in Poland with the e-commerce centre, not only for Poland, but also for Scandinavia and Germany. Tourism is developing very fast. We have the best hotel accommodation offer in Poland. But we're not slowing down, improving the competitiveness of our companies by promoting innovation, creativity, research and development in harmony with teaching the youth and protecting environment. This is our motto. So, we organise workshops on coding and robotics. We help young people who want to start their own businesses. We attract investors who want to invest in innovation. We are building a strong connection between the academia and business. We have a very good environment for creative industries. And that serves in order to transform our creativity into success, our ideas in concrete projects. That is why let me thank here to all the hard-working and creative inhabitants of our region, all the creative and hard-working businesses from our region. They're using every opportunity they have. I'd like to thank my co-workers who are helping me in our daily, day-to-day effort. And I would like to thank the academia for helping us create this very good environment. I'd like to thank the jury for recognising our effort. Thank you very much. Now, thank you once again for your presence and congratulations once more. Keep up the good work. Thank you. Now, ladies and gentlemen, we are a little bit ahead of schedule. And I would like to ask you if anyone opposes that we maintain the launching of the European Alliance of Cities and Regions for the reconstruction of Ukraine for the hour it was scheduled. But at the same time, if anyone opposes that we move and deal with some other points that were supposed to be after the launching. But I think if no one opposes we could take care of them right now. No opposition? Excellent. Now, I would like to point to 26. It's the appointments of rapporteurs general. It's for decision. I would like to inform you that in accordance with Rule 43 of the Rules of Procedures, the Plenary Assembly is requested to take a decision on a proposal to appoint Mr. Nardella, Mayor of Florence and President of EuroCities, as a rapporteur general for the opinion on the European Commission communication called Ukraine Relief and Reconstruction. The draft opinion will be submitted directly to the Plenary Session of October 10, 12. In accordance with the same rule, the Plenary Assembly is also requested to take a decision on a proposal to appoint General Verfaill as rapporteur for an opinion on the revision of the Industrial Emissions Directive. The draft opinion would be submitted directly to the Plenary also in our October Plenary Session. May I ask the Assembly for its approval? Anyone opposes? If not, it's approved, point 26. Point 27, for your information, the list of newly appointed members and alternates has been published in the member's portal. Please draw your attention to that list. I don't know if you have any other business, but I do. Our trainees would like to present the Y Factor Project, which refers to Ukraine. So a video to present their project will be displayed, but it is my pleasure to ask that pigeon to take the floor for your intervention, and then after your intervention we'll have the video. Dutch, the floor is yours. I pressed this correctly. Okay, thank you very much, President. Ladies and gentlemen, President, distinguished guests, and esteemed colleagues, it is a pleasure to welcome all of you and have an opportunity to give this presentation. My name is Tyke Pigeon, and I am the spokesperson for this term's Y Factor Project. I am pleased to represent a brilliant team of hardworking trainees who have been given the opportunity by the Committee of the Regions to lead our own independent project. For this project we have decided to focus on the war in Ukraine and its impact. Russia's violent act of violation of Ukraine's sovereignty and integrity has brought a shocking end to an unprecedented era of peace in Europe, and will take years and most likely decades for us to learn of its final consequences. However, for the past four months, my excellent teammates have been investigating what the perspectives of today's young people are on democracy, local and regional government, European values, and how these perspectives have been affected by the war. Through research and through a series of interviews we have conducted with young European citizens and with young Ukrainians. From our findings we have produced two things. The first is a final report in which we delve into our research at length and analyse the responses of our interviewees. You can find it on the Committee of the Regions webpage and you can also find it by scanning this QR code which you will find on many of our posters and on our information desk outside. The second is a documentary which we have titled Holding Hands and for which we will show you a quick trailer shortly. The documentary will be premiered in an event on the 14th of July between 5 and 6pm at the Committee of the Region premises in the OREM auditorium. Afterwards it will be available on the Committee of the Regions website and accessible on the YouTube channel. Before I go I would like to express my sincere thanks to the Committee of the Regions for making this project possible and I would like to express my deep gratitude to the wonderful team of my fellow trainees and for their incredible efforts in creating this amazing achievement. Really if you would give an applause and credit please give it to them. Thank you all very much for your time and please enjoy the trailer. Thank you. In 2022, Russian troops launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. What we need is to have all the EU countries standing together. No war, no lessons from the history. The fallout is clearly at the level of the gas price and the emissions. In this documentary, young citizens of the European Union and Ukraine face on the war identity, safety and democracy. I want to have a future, I want to have a career, I want to have a family. The idea of Europe is very present. I've been to Poland to rescue my family so I saw it with my own eyes. Discover their emotional stories and the Y Factor project holding hands. Thank you so much for this presentation and for your work and for your help at the Committee of the Regions and especially for taking the time to draw attention and mobilize yourselves to this issue so important as this is the war on Ukraine. So congratulations once more and thank you. Now, ladies and gentlemen, we have, we still are, we remain ahead of schedule. I think it would be wise to have a short break. Please don't go too far. So at five, we start with the launching of the Alliance for the reconstruction of Ukraine. Thank you. We'll be back in a few minutes.