Ms Kata Tütt:

I will try to respond briefly. I do not know in detail about the enlargement. Maybe I will give the floor to Ms Coughlan on that because I am focusing on the inside.

The point of the mid-term review was that we were asking for more flexibility. New priorities always come, so it was a sort of testing that if there is a flexibility given to the cities and regions together with the member states to divert some but not all funds from one priority to another, what will happen. There were a lot of asks to divert funds on housing, water and defence, especially dual-use, that is, not in the defence industry. We do not really see what happened. We will see whether this worked because with this happening we always want more flexibility but we need stability. We are always balancing on this.

On housing, why is it emerging at the European level? It is not something that can be solved from Brussels. That is clear. You have no idea from Brussels what you need in Dublin. Why is it coming to the European level? Because the problem emerges everywhere, all across Europe. Why do we bring it to the European level? To see all the dimensions, to see what it is tied to and to see the barriers. Is there a regulation barrier to solving it locally? There is the state aid problem. Let us look for funding. Of course, everybody is looking for grants, but it is clear there is not enough money for anything because nobody wants to put more money into their current spending pot. We are looking for the European Investment Bank, for funding schemes and for a legislative barrier that can be removed. We are looking at connecting the cities to one another to understand who is doing what and how it works and to confront the big new multinational companies that are doing the short-term rentals. You cannot do it from Dublin but it is easier to do it from Brussels and to say there are rules and regulations you have to comply with to see what works. Barcelona is doing experiments on killing short-term rentals. Without actually doing experiments, it is important to see for others how it works out in the end and whether it has a legal standing.

Water is very similar. It is approaching everywhere. There are all the challenges of water: the old infrastructure, floods, droughts, desalination, a lot of energy, intense new technologies and industries, data centres competing with the desalination plants and with the raw material recovery plants, new electricity and congestion problems. The latter is also a challenge here, I understand. These are the things that usually come, but then electricity grids are solved nationally and across Europe. Housing, however, has to be solved in the local context.

I will stop there and give the floor to Ms Coughlan.