Remarks by President von der Leyen at the press conference on the first 100 days of her mandate - Hoofdinhoud

Good morning to all of you,

The College of Commissioners has taken office now since 100 days.

While we were preparing this meeting here this morning, I thought about the situation, how it was 100 days ago. It is worth to look back, because then, you might remember that the topics were: One month of delay. Will there be a majority for the College? Will there be a UK Commissioner, was still the question. Climate neutrality in 2050 - is that not completely overambitious, and Council will never agree to that?

When I started 100 days ago, there were many, many different questions and many difficult issues on the agenda. But the EU-Turkey Statement was not under question. In all my speeches, I said that migration will stay with us, migration will not go away. And that we need to find sustainable solutions. And today, we are in the middle of a deep dilemma. The events at the Greek-Turkish border clearly point to a politically motivated pressure on the EU's external border. The migrants who have been brought to the border are in a situation where they need help. Greece needs help, too.

This is one of the topics that I have discussed with Prime Minister Mitsotakis over and over, and I will discuss today with President Erdoğan. So not just the long-term relationship with Turkey, but also this very acute situation. Finding a solution to this situation will require relieving the pressure that is put on the border. And ensuring that the individual right to ask for asylum is respected. And it will require supporting both Greece and Turkey to deal with the pressure they are under. This is why I am in constant contact with the Greek Prime Minister Mitsotakis and I am meeting President Erdoğan tonight, together with the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, to discuss all these topics.

On top of all this, we have a situation on the Greek islands, in the refugee camps, that was already over the limit and now, more people are arriving, and of course, further support is needed. The EUR 350 million provided by the EU immediately are a first step to improve the situation on the islands. Another EUR 350 million will follow. But it is urgent to relieve the pressure on the islands by bringing people to the mainland of the continent, too.

And I think it is very urgent to care for the unattended minors on these Greek islands. I am very concerned about their situation. They are the most vulnerable. It is urgent to get them away from the islands and to find a safer place for them. This is why last week, together with Prime Minister Mitsotakis, I asked the Member States to help right now - of course there will be a long-term help needed, but to help right now - with the unattended minors on the Greek islands. Thankfully, we got positive replies already, for example from France, from Portugal, from Luxembourg, from Finland, from Germany. So they will step in in the acute situation and take on unattended minors to their countries, to the Member States. But of course, further help over time is needed. And humanitarian support for the refugees in Syria is needed, too. As a start, the European Union immediately mobilised an additional EUR 60 million, but more is to be done.

To those who have questioned over the last days the European capacities, I say very clearly that we are much better prepared in the European Union today, compared to 2015. That is why we are able to send all this help to Greece at the moment being. But we are still not prepared enough. Within these first 100 days, Vice-President Schinas and Commissioner Ylva Johansson consulted all the 27 Member States to find common ground for migration. And we will put forward our new European migration pact right after Easter. We are almost done with it now, we are going in-depth now in the preliminary consultations, and then, after Easter, we will put it forward.

Another acute situation that we are faced with is the spread of the Coronavirus. We are of course following closely the developments in Italy, where the government has announced new measures to contain the spread of the virus. We have, as you know, within the Commission, a Coronavirus Response Team that is working with the Member States on the known issues: that is preparedness, risk assessment, the coordination of measures, the funding of research on diagnostics, on treatment and on vaccines, the joint procurement for example for protective gear.

The spread of the virus has a vast impact on people's lives, but it also has a vast impact on our economy. We are looking into everything that we can do to help to address the impacts on the economy. There is a strong coordination ongoing with the leaders of Europe, but also of course with our European institutions, for example the ECB or the Eurogroup, to address these topics in a coordinated and coherent way.

In these difficult times, we all sense that people and Member States are asking for more Europe: ‘Do more! Act more! Act more on borders, act more on migration support and the Coronavirus, on the macroeconomic support.' Yet, without a new budget, we will not be able to respond appropriately. We are at the end of the current budget, the seven-year period is almost over. And if I look at the tasks ahead of us, we are running short of the flexibility to act in crises as we see them right now. This is why I call urgently on all Member States to find now an agreement on the MFF. We need it to proceed, it is very late already and we really need now a common agreement on the next budget for the next seven years.

These were all unforeseen challenges that we have addressed immediately. But they have not derailed our efforts to deliver on our long-term agenda for the European Union. And I remember our first days in office. At that time, there was still a lot of scepticism about the European Green Deal and the goal to be climate-neutral in 2050. Today, it is no longer the question if there will be a European Green Deal. Or whether the European Union will become climate-neutral, but the question how: How are we proceeding? And how far-reaching will the transition be? Today, the European Green Deal is known to everybody. We are working steadily on the transition like on things as the Just Transition Mechanism or the Climate Law that has just been put forward. But many other steps are to follow over the next weeks and months.

And 100 days ago, there was, as I said initially, still the question: Will we have a British Commissioner, yes or no? Today, we know that we have signed the Withdrawal Agreement. We rapidly and in unity have adopted a comprehensive mandate for the negotiations and we held already the first round of the negotiations with the United Kingdom. We know what each side is standing for now, and will negotiate for now. We will accompany the implementation of the Withdrawal Agreement very thoroughly - this is necessary. We are ready to negotiate a very ambitious and comprehensive new partnership with the United Kingdom. We will make as much of it as we can. But the truth is that our partnership will be different as it was before. The UK will be a third country and the European Union will continue to forge its path in today's world on its own.

After 100 days, in the digital area, we have paved the road already that we want to take, the road we want to take for citizens, but also for business and for governments. On 5G, for example, for the very first time, the European Union has a common position on how to assess security risks and what to do about them. The Commission has presented its very first Whitebook on Artificial Intelligence and the very first Data Strategy. Because we know that Europe has a huge amount of sleeping potential of unused data, which we can share in the European data space we want to create.

And when I took office, the industry strategy was a long-standing request by the European Council. Tomorrow, on day 101, we will present it to you. It binds together the green deal, the digital agenda and a global Europe. It combines a strong Single Market with competition rules that are fit for the global economy. With the industry strategy, we will sharpen our defensive instruments globally. And at the same time, we will take strong action to tear down the barriers within the Single Market. Because that will enable businesses to use the full scale of the whole Single Market. And at the same time, we are not naïve about the global competition, and we are not naïve about the sometimes unfair competition we are facing.

And on day 102 - so two days from today -, we will propose a Circular Economy Action Plan. This should enable us to break away with the old model that consisted of taking too much from the environment, from the planet, from nature, to consume and then waste, throw away. But we want to go into a circular economy that is setting up a full circle of recycling, of not taking more from the planet but giving back to the planet what we take away, in a completely new model to approach our economy.

Soon after we took office, the enlargement process was in a deadlock. People in the Western Balkans were disappointed and were losing faith in the European Union. Now there is a new perspective - also thanks to our balanced proposal - the new methodology -, which makes the enlargement process more speedy, more reliable, and more credible. And our efforts to help Albania reconstruct after the devastating earthquake have gone a long way to restore faith and to restore trust in the European Union.

I am often asked about what does it mean to be geopolitical. Whatever I have explained right now, means being geopolitical. Being geopolitical also means going to Africa with the largest ever delegation we ever had for a College-to-College meeting. This is a real change of mind-set. We are working with Africa on a positive agenda that is looking beyond development and beyond security. We are working on climate change, we are working on environment, the digital transformation, skills and jobs, and many more things we have been discussing with the African Union when we were in Addis Ababa.

We had Executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans visiting South Africa to discuss green topics. And we had Executive Vice-President Margarethe Vestager discussing the digital agenda in Nairobi. This is the new way of working with Africa. And HR/VP Josep Borrell and Commissioner Jutta Urpilainen will present to you our new Strategy with Africa in a few moments.

So over the past 100 days, our direction of travel has changed fundamentally. We have spelled out a real political vision for Europe and a clear roadmap how to get there. Europe is faced with a huge transition. It is a twin transition of the digital and the green transition. And Europe needs to ensure its sovereignty in a complex and geopolitical environment. It was important to grasp the key underlying driving factors for change in order to spell out this vision for the next 30 years we do have together in Europe.

We have done so. We have developed a positive agenda for Europe, being the first climate-neutral continent, first continent with a data strategy to grasp the industrial data wave. And as of tomorrow, to have a renewed industrial strategy and a real vision for Europe's economic and industrial power.

This all could not have been done without a fantastic team of Commissioners and Vice-Presidents that are very dedicated - each and everyone in their fields, in their files - and I want to thank you, thank them, for their dedicated work. These 100 days were amazing with them, a great team.