There is no format and no conversation I hold without also informing the smaller and medium-sized member states of the European Union, especially when they are directly affected regionally themselves, such as the neighboring states in Eastern Europe. In this respect, I believe we have shown that we as Europeans are capable of acting, both in the large format of the G7 and in the large round of heads of state and government of the European Union. I am traveling home this week after intensive consultations with the feeling that international cooperation is working well, both in Europe and in the G7 format, and that is the precondition for us to make our contribution, yes, to nothing more and nothing less than to peace in the world. Many thanks, Mr. Fischer, please.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chancellor. It seems there is greater disagreement about who should sit at the negotiating table for the Europeans when talks between Ukraine and Russia come about. Do you still see enough support in the EU for the E3 to continue the diplomatic process, and does the E3 actually have its own communication channels to Russia, at whatever level, or is there total radio silence at the moment?
Please forgive us for not informing the public about the details of our consultations, but two things are important to me. First, this E3 format came about at the express wish of Ukraine, and it also has a certain internal logic, namely that Great Britain, Germany, and France are working closely together here. These are large states in Europe. They are also the ones that contribute to a considerable extent to the military support of Ukraine, Germany by a wide margin by now. The number one, as I said, was the express wish of Ukraine that these three countries play a role here, also in coordination. That is what we are doing. Great Britain, as a country that is no longer part of the European Union, must still be there. It is an important NATO partner in the European Union. And we are not only talking about Ukraine, we are also talking together about important questions now in preparation for the NATO summit in Ankara in a few days. In this respect, these are important discussion formats.
We always involve, of course, Italy, we always involve, of course, Poland and also other member states of the European Union. That is a matter of course for us. Who speaks for the European Union, we do not have to decide today. We will decide that when talks come. It is of course clear that the Council President, that Antonio Costa, the President of the European Council, has an important role to play here. He represents the European Union. He ensures that we hold good talks within the European Union, that we also go into the Council meetings well organized and well prepared in the European Council, and in this respect we do not need to make any further decisions at the moment.
Mr. Rinke. Yes, thank you. Mr. Chancellor, could you please specify a little which instruments you want from the European Commission? Are these also instruments against currency manipulation, which you have now repeatedly mentioned? And a supplementary question. The USA has launched an investigation against Germany because of pharmaceutical prices. Are you concerned that the tariff agreement with the USA is now void again, because possibly higher tariffs on pharmaceutical products will come?
No, I assume that the United States of America will stick to the agreement we have. As far as the reimbursement of modern, innovative medicines by our health insurance funds is concerned, that is a decision that falls under our national jurisdiction. If America would like to have information about that, we will of course gladly make it available. But that is a question of our reimbursement system within the legal framework of health insurance. And in this respect, it is a purely domestic matter that we will have to discuss here if necessary. The question of how we proceed further in the formats is a question I have just explained. I think we have really found a good rhythm now in how we conduct the talks and that we are all trying to end the war in Ukraine as quickly as possible, that is clear to all of us, I believe. Please, is the trade... Oh, you wanted the... Yes. Yes. I apologize, I misunderstood that. So, which instruments are available to us, that is what the Commission is now supposed to prepare for the next Council. I already raised the topic of currency relations or exchange rates in the G7 format. By the way, also with great approval from the American side, because America is affected by this just as much as we are. We compete in some cases with currency areas that have currencies depreciated by up to 30%, undervalued currencies against us. Undervalued is the right expression. And I recalled that there were such disruptions between trading areas in earlier decades as well. There were then sensible discussion formats about how to deal with such questions in the end. There was an agreement made once at the Plaza Hotel in New York. There was an agreement in Paris once, even before we had the currency union in the European framework, before we had the EU monetary union. There was the European Monetary System back then, which was also a system where people agreed on corridors with exchange rates. Something like that is also what I have in mind now. We do not want to make mutual accusations here, but we want to try to balance out these imbalances. And these are imbalances that do not only come at the expense of trading partners, they also come at the expense of domestic demand and purchasing power at home. So basically, nobody can have an interest in having such currency burdens over the long term, such shifts also in terms of the real purchasing power of the individual currency. And in this respect, talks are indicated, but we also have to conduct them in our own interest.
Mr. Gutschker, please. Thomas Gutschker, Frankfurt, Allgemeine Zeitung. Mr. Chancellor, I have a follow-up question first about the possible negotiations with Russia. You said that first we have to agree on the substance, then we clarify the formats. Where do you still not agree as the E3 and with Ukraine? So, which questions are still to be clarified there? And secondly, on enlargement, you said that the debate will actually only come in October. But you have already submitted your considerations, and they have probably been presented in the room. On your proposal for an associated membership for Ukraine. There is a lot of criticism from the member states. The arguments are: 'One must not prefer Ukraine over the Western Balkans,' and 'it is not legally feasible to introduce an observer status.' Is the proposal basically dead now, before you can really discuss it?
So, first of all, agreeing on the substance means agreeing with Russia that we are now negotiating, and that is the precondition for us to define who negotiates, and primarily Ukraine decides that. Ukraine is the affected country, and Ukraine ultimately decides who stands on its side and conducts negotiations. The European Union is not a neutral third party here and is not a mediator here, but is a party on the side of Ukraine, and then Ukraine also decides who negotiates for it and with it. So agreeing on the substance with Russia means negotiations will be conducted. We are not there yet, and I repeat, it is solely up to Russia to make the decision to enter into negotiations now. As far as the enlargement process is concerned, we did not discuss it extensively yesterday and today due to time constraints. That was purely due to the time circumstances, because the agenda was already very full and because it partly took a very long time. We submitted two papers. First of all, I made the proposal regarding the associated membership of Ukraine, and also in my letter to the Commission President and to the Council President, I also included the Western Balkans. I then submitted a so-called non-paper with Emmanuel Macron, where we specified it once more and went into more depth. The associated membership works without a treaty change, and we have precedents for it. I want to recall once more, this also stood in my mind a bit, when in 1990, one year after the previous European election, with German reunification, we had taken a territory into the European Union that was not yet represented in the institutions at the time. We introduced an observer status in the European Parliament for the then still existing GDR and then subsequently for the East German federal states. 18 observers without voting rights from East Germany moved into the European Parliament at that time. That worked without a treaty change, and that is why something like what I have now proposed also works without a treaty change. My proposal was also precisely aimed at enabling something that works without a treaty change. Everything else is an illusion. We will not get treaty changes in Europe at the current point in time. And of course, all of this has to be coordinated with the process around the Western Balkans. I do not want different speeds here. There are different circumstances, there are different progress reports, there are different restrictions. A country like Ukraine at war cannot become a member of the European Union, but it could become an associated member of the European Union and then later a full member of the European Union. With the Western Balkans, it is different. We have been negotiating with these states for almost 20 years about membership in the European Union, at least one of the countries, namely Montenegro, is practically ready for accession. The chapters are largely completed. The country could now enter the final process, so to speak. There is the question of all at once or one after another. There are good reasons to say all at once. But there are also good reasons to say one after another. We will talk about that at the next European Council. And that is anything but off the table. On the contrary, the proposals are on the table, and there is a large number of colleagues who are grateful that they are out of the frustration of last year that we had when we held the last Western Balkans summit here in Brussels and nobody really knew what we were supposed to do now with the Western Balkan countries, how we were supposed to move forward. And the attempt by Emmanuel Macron and me is simply to get out of this loop and now make a proposal on how we can move forward with this topic. I always say this, sitting at the top of the table is the Prime Minister from Croatia, Andrej Plenković. That is the last country that joined 13 years ago, the European Union, and Andrej Plenković is now the longest-serving Prime Minister sitting at that table. So you can see from this example how long ago it was and how overdue it is that we now talk about enlargement, especially for the countries that are actually ready to join. Mr. Fechner, please.
Thank you very much. Viichter News Agency DTS. Mr. Chancellor, you only touched on the topic of reducing bureaucracy very superficially just now. Overall, we haven't heard much concrete about it. Do you still believe that you will achieve concrete implementations at the EU this year, as you had planned, such as the fiction of approval, and which countries are actually the brake-pedalers?
So, I did not touch on this only superficially at all, but I just said it very clearly in my short opening statement. This is one of the main topics that we have been dealing with, and have been dealing with again now. The Commission is now presenting a progress report to every European Council. The Commission allows us to talk about follow-up measures every time. How do we move forward faster? We also talked again, I didn't mention this just now, but I'll make up for it, we talked again about the 28th regime, that is, the simple legal form available throughout Europe for startup and scale-up companies that are supposed to set up a company for all of Europe within 24 hours. This idea is still right. We want to push it forward, and we agree that we want to make this possible by the end of the year. So, it also played a major role in the Council today and yesterday that we really want to continue working on this topic together with determination. Of course there is resistance, of course there are always brake-pedalers, but it is exactly our task to overcome that too and to ensure that we now implement what Enrico Letta and Mario Draghi told us, what we discussed very intensively together on February 12th.
Mr. Delfs, please. Mr. Chancellor, once again on the topic of China. This is also a balancing act for you. On the one hand, you naturally want to avoid an open trade war. At the same time, there is very great trade pressure, action pressure to do something, because the numbers have developed very dramatically in terms of trade imbalance. How do you want to avoid the Chinese feeling provoked by these discussed measures and reacting now already? And could you briefly explain what you meant exactly with this exchange rate corridor?
Yes, with 'discussed'. So first of all, we talked in general about economic imbalances. We respect and acknowledge when there are countries that, for example, spend a lot on research and development, and that also advance technologically very quickly thereby. We fully accept if productivity in these countries is higher than in Europe. That is a competition for us that we have to face, without ifs and buts, and there is nothing to criticize about that. If others are better than us, then we have to make an effort to become good again. However, if it is about high subsidies in entire industries that flood markets thereby. If we see that individual countries have 13, 14% of world demand and at the same time over 30% of industrial production, if overcapacities are systematically subsidized. And if all this is accompanied by a currency that is not freely convertible, that also ultimately does not participate in the capital market because the capital market is sealed off for itself, then these are competitive distortions that we do not simply want to accept. One must also speak openly about this. I do this during my visits to the countries with which we trade intensively, I also raise these topics openly, and I expect that this will be accepted in return, that we talk about these topics. And when it comes to these monetary policy questions, I want to recall the EWS system that we once established in Europe, for example, to avoid economic policy being made through exchange rates. Whether that is the right example or the right format remains to be seen. I only want to say that we have experience on the European side and on the transatlantic side with such dialogue formats on exchange rates, and they are essentially good experiences. We have to talk to each other about this topic, and I think it is in both sides' interest to do so, because even an artificially low currency impairs purchasing power in one's own country. It is therefore not only advantageous for those who want to improve their external economic competitive positions, and in this respect it is a dialogue that we have to conduct, and once again, this is a dialogue in mutual interest.
Mr. Disteldorf, last question, we have to go then. Yes, thank you very much, Jan Disteldorf, Süddeutsche Zeitung. Mr. Chancellor, the first question on the MFF, very briefly. What do you mean by 'significantly'? Can you give an order of magnitude when you say the numbers have to come down? By how much, so how much are we talking about? Second question on the MFF after the consultations you held today. What will you throw into the scales in the coming months to achieve the goal of finishing this year? How can you estimate this better now?
So the year 2026, I cannot estimate. I can only say from my side, and I have already discussed this in the cabinet. We will discuss this again, and I will also do this in close coordination with the federal cabinet, especially with the finance minister. We want to reach a conclusion in 2026, simply to have planning security, for example, for the cohesion and agricultural funds also for the years from 2028. Those who benefit from it must simply have planning security from 2028 that these funds will continue to exist in a changed scope. But the funds will not be completely cut, there will be changes. But knowing these changes in good time is important for all those involved. To what extent we will reduce, I don't want to predict that at the moment. That depends crucially on what the individual weighting will be. We basically have three pillars now. The common agricultural policy and cohesion policy will be combined into the regional partnership programs. There will then be competitiveness and the associated fund, and there will then be the funds for foreign policy and trade policy. And the weighting of these three pillars relative to each other is just as unclear as the question of how the European Union actually finances its revenues. The Commission has also made proposals for a new own resources regime. We also have to carry out a corresponding feedback with the member states individually, because there are own resources that are partly already booked in the national budgets through their own tax revenues. So a whole series of highly complex questions are coming our way. And in this respect, I don't want to commit myself, I can't commit myself now either. I'll just say that the Commission's proposal, and even more so the European Parliament's proposal to go to an amount of 1.6 or even 1.7 trillion euros for the next 7 years, is a proposal that in my view is not feasible, it is also not financeable. I just told the colleagues again what that would mean for the European contribution, not the net contribution, which is irrelevant in this context, but what that would mean for the European payment contribution to the budget of the European Union. This proposal that we now have from the Commission and from the Council is a proposal that would trigger at least 15, rather 20 billion euros higher contributions per year to the European budget for us, and that, in view of our budget situation at the moment, is not feasible, and not feasible for a long time. I think that becomes clear to everyone when they simply hear the numbers, and that is why I presented these numbers in the Council. By the way, not for the first time. I did it shortly before Christmas last year. I simply told the colleagues, you have to know what is possible and what is not, and that is not possible. So, thank you very much. Have a good home journey. Have a nice weekend. Until next time. Bye.
