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Thank you very much.

Nikol Pashinyan, first of all thank you very much for being such a fantastic host,

and indeed the speakers of the opening of the plenary and you and your question you described already the turmoil the world is in.

I will not linger at that, but during these last years since we have the EPC actually during the last 4 years,

if there's anything we have learned,

then this is how vulnerable we are if we have overdependencies.

And it was a painful process to learn about these overdependencies. I want to mention 3.

The first one is the overdependency on imported fossil fuels.

Energy has always been a stumble stone in the internal market of the European Union which I oversee,

but now with the crisis, the conflict in the Middle East, it has really become a choke point for us.

And it is this overdependency on the volatility of the global prices of energy that is painfully hurting our competitiveness. But we have assets. That's also important. We have assets in the European Union.

These are the energies that grow at home.

It is the renewable energies from wind and sun to hydropower to geothermal,

but also to biomass, you name it, and it is nuclear.

And we have to build our energy reliance much stronger, much more reliable on these homegrown,

cheaper and predictable energy sources that we do have,

and for that it is important that we electrify the European Union.

I will not go into the detail, but my first point is energy. Energy is.

For us crucial and it has to be much more independent that we deliver our energy for the for the Europeans.

Second point is of course security and defense.

I mean, if there was an eye opener over the last 4 years,

then it is in the fact that we need to be able to stand up for ourselves. It's long overdue.

This is the reason why we mobilize up to €800 billion until 2030 to fill the gaps that we have in security and defense.

It is of utmost importance that we are more independent in this topic and that we are able to build a credible deterrence because the best prevention of potential military aggression is a credible deterrence.

And this is a task where all of us here in the room are are assembled to deliver on a much more credible,

stronger together with Ukraine stronger and reliable security and defense and my third point.

Is that European independence does not mean inward looking, not at all. It's the opposite. It is reaching out to like-minded partners.

I mean this is symbolic here also to reach out to like-minded partners because we need also stable,

reliable supply chains. And supply chains we need from partners.

And therefore you have witnessed over the last years that we have very much intensified our network of free trade agreements with Latin America with India, with Australia,

and I will be traveling with António to Mexico we have the biggest network of free trade agreements worldwide and we should really cherish this and work with that to make sure that we get more independent and have reliable supply chains back to you.