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Thank you, Vice President. President, please, the floor is yours. Yes. Thank you very much. Welcome everyone today.

First of all, I would like to thank, Executive Vice President Raffaele Fitto,

not just for today but for the ongoing cooperation, since my presidency. We have been working together.

On cohesion policy, on the midterm review, on the strategies, on the right to stay,

on housing, on the realities of the outermost regions, the islands, the border regions. It was a very good cooperation.

Also, I would also like to thank DG Reggio.

For making this week possible and also accompanying Olof our regions in this constant transition.

I hope it's not the last time I can thank the judicio.

About this week, it's very important for us.

So while the focus of European leaders is mostly Brought the attention to the borders and outside because what is happening outside.

Our role as local leaders is to keep our attention inside and within the European Union.

This is why we call this is why the motto of this week is Strong Europe, Strong Regions,

because what we argue that the The European Union can only be a strong player in the world if it stays strong and connected inside.

So in this week, we have more than we are bringing together local leaders,

researchers, policymakers, funding opportunities. We have more than 4800 participants. We organized 80 sessions and it's organized.

Together with 121 regions,

so more than half of the European regions are actively participating in cities in this week.

We also have additional sessions, around 100 sessions in the member states.

So this week is about what is happening inside the European Union, what are our challenges that needs to be addressed.

And we Agree With Executive Vice President Fito on the role of cohesion policy and on the goals of the future of the European Union.

Maybe the only difference is the path we see differently.

And This week we will be talking a lot about, we have the report, sorry, before I forget.

We make every year a report because it's very important to have all the data.

We make it together with the Grok and with Eurostat.

So we have a written form of what is happening, what is the pulse of our cities and regions in the territories.

So what we see differently,

and we will be talking a lot about money this week because Olof our cities and regions feel the growing responsibility, the increasing.

Numbers of strategies and European goals, and there is a big expectation that strategies will be accompanied with resources,

and there is a huge gap emerging between the expectations of agency and resources and the reality.

So there will be a lot of talk about the European budget, especially with the European Council approaching, and with the Irish Legobox.

Three important things about the budget the size, the architecture, and the governance.

From these 31 gets the most attention, it's the size, and this is the one which changes almost nothing.

We are still talking about around €250 billion a year,

that's the EU budget, the common spending, which is comparable to.

A yearly GDP of the Lazio region in Italy,

so we are talking about a yearly GDP of one European region and not even the biggest European region.

And it's quite clear that this money is not able to solve every of our problems.

So the big question is, this money we spend together, where do we spend it?

And this is where we come to the architecture and the governance.

This is where the biggest changes are happening, and this is where the anxiety from the cities and regions are growing. The architecture, what is the architecture? Where are we spending this money?

And here we see a very big shift.

In the investments because investments are moving from a place-based investment, an investment tool that sees places, cohesion policy to an investment tool that is Place blind and it's only based on excellence, moving from many places to a few places,

and what we really know and has been proven, and we have quite a few studies that if you invest the same amount of money in the two different methods,

an excellence-based or mission led versus a place-based,

it creates very different geography, very different economic outputs.

Economics without geography is a very incomplete way of understanding, so it matters how we spend this money. And the third one is the governance.

There is a very big change in the governance.

Who is deciding where do we invest, and there is a big shift,

a big shift moving from the local and regional.

Authorities to the national level and a very, very big shift.

The biggest shift is that there is a big control moving from the national level to the European Commission level in two ways,

both sides of the budget, one side, half of the budget is centrally managed by the European.

In the Commission, that's a big shift, and the other half is also through the milestone mechanism that was imported from the Recovery and Resilience Facility,

is also highly controlled by the European Commission,

and we raise concerns about Olof this. I'll just one more thing to add.

What we would like to change this week is the narrative over cohesion policy.

We reject the framing of cohesion policy as being an outdated,

traditionalist, balanced policy.

Cohesion policy cannot be separated from the single market. It is part of Europe's competitiveness. Infrastructure.

It is designed and functions together with the single market.

The idea is we make more money together, but it's not distributed evenly,

so we reinvest part of the gains of the single market so every single region has a possibility,

a chance to build capacities, to build. Connections to the single market.

What will happen in the next years that Because of reforms that are coming, and we all agree on that, that Europe has to be more competitive,

it will not just mean competitiveness in the outside world,

but it will also mean more competition within the European Union.

Dismantling barriers of the single market will mean a bigger competition within the European Union,

which will mean that those who are strong will have a bigger chance to win, and those who have less can lose everything.

And increasing internal competition without a balancing mechanism, without a just transition, without a reinvestment of the gains,

will actually,

we see a risk of making Europe more fragile and less cohesive.

I'll stop here. Thank you very much.