Ms Kata Tütt:

I did not know. I thank the Senator for the question.

We are gathering allies everywhere - all across Europe, regional parliaments and national parliaments. The big decision on the budget is made this year, in reality, because this thinking framework is either accepted or rejected this year by December during the Danish Presidency. If we want cohesion policy to stay a local policy and if we want cohesion policy to flow to all European local realities helping the transition of all the regions, the national level has to have a debate on it. The national parliament and the national government needs to have a decision, which they represent in the European Council by saying that the Common Agricultural Policy and cohesion policy are the core policies of the European Union. There are a lot of new challenges and a lot of priorities, but it is not a future-proof idea to take out the money from the core policies that keep the EU strong together and divert it to the new priorities because we will maybe strengthen the borders but from the inside we will weaken.

I do not know how Ireland can use this concept. We really want the cohesion policy to connect and flow to all of the European regions. This is the mainstream tool of the European Union that helps the transition in everything - the climate transition, the digital transition and the demographic transition. It helps all the citizens in the regions in their transition. It is about not just a clean transition but a just transition.