The Week ahead

The Schengen Area has never before faced such a serious pandemic on its territory. Understandably, Member States have reintroduced temporary border controls as an immediate health safeguard measure. The European Parliament's position on the situation in the Schengen area following the COVID-19 outbreak will be voted on in the Civil Liberties Committee next Thursday. The EPP Group calls for a gradual, careful and responsible re-opening of the internal Schengen borders in a unified way. We cannot accept that border controls introduced due to COVID-19 are prolonged unnecessarily. Restrictions on the freedom of movement have to be reduced to the same extent as the relaxation of COVID-19 containment measures.

The European Commission’s proposal to add €10 billion for the research programme Horizon Europe to reach €94 billion in the next updated EU long-term budget (MFF) for 2021-2027 is a good start. But we are still far from the €120 billion the European Parliament deems necessary for the future of European research. We will vote on Thursday to open the negotiations with the Council on Horizon Europe in a positive spirit with the aim of improving the final outcome. The same goes for the important other programmes - the European Defence Fund, the Digital Europe Programme and the EU Space Programme. They are important projects that need proper financing.

The fourth round of talks on the EU-UK post-Brexit relationship, which will be the last round before the UK can request a deadline for a possible extension of the transition period, starts on Monday. The EPP Group wishes to build a broad partnership with the UK which also covers multiple sectors with cooperation in foreign policy and in security and defence as jointly agreed in the Political Declaration. The extent of this future cooperation will depend on the UK’s readiness to deliver on what was agreed.