Marian Harkin (Sligo-Leitrim, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I have a question regarding the national recovery and resilience plans member states are being asked to submit as part of their national reform plan, which is part of the semester. Is that contingent on member states implementing the country-specific recommendations, CSRs, from last year or the previous year? Is there a stick here as well as a carrot?

Ms O'Connell said that some member states were talking about increasing the budget. Were they states that are mainly net contributors or were they those that were getting more from the budget? It has always been the case that in general, citizens of member states that are net contributors do not see an increase in the EU budget as a positive measure.

Ms O'Connell spoke about polls showing a majority of people being in favour of more competences to deal with crises. This is largely because of the experience of Covid where people can see the value of co-ordinated action, be it around PPE, vaccines or research. When it comes to expanding or increasing competences, a number of colleagues have already spoken about their aversion to treaty change and I must say that I agree. In the area of health, however, there are real possibilities for what one might call competence creep, for example, the cross-border healthcare directive. That came about because of the free movement of people and services. The EU qualifications directive is, again, an important piece of legislation upon which we could build. Horizon 2020 and the European reference frameworks for rare diseases and orphan drugs are other examples. There is quite a lot on which we can build. We can use certain treaty articles, particularly around free movement, that would allow us to expand our competences in this area. After the last crisis, which was the financial crisis, we got banking union so after this crisis, we will probably find ways to expand EU competences. In one of her first speeches, President von der Leyen spoke about the cancer strategy she wanted to implement. Has there been any further talk about that or has Covid overtaken it?