Agnieszka SKONIECZNA

Policy topics Agnieszka SKONIECZNA is active on

What Agnieszka SKONIECZNA has said (10)

• “Thank you, Madam Chairman, for giving me the floor. And good morning also to all honourable members. It's a pleasure and I'm very happy to follow in the footsteps of my colleagues from grow, who yesterday presented the single market program and were pressured to say a few words about European Competitiveness Fund. What has led us to propose this fund, and what we think are the key features that would help us meet the competitiveness challenge that have been outlined in Draghi report and a letter report. And of course, maybe starting, of course, modestly saying of course it's a part of the picture. Competitiveness challenge is complex. There is a lot of elements that constitute to that. There are issues on regulatory simplification, uh, business framework, nature that the fund, of course, on itself cannot solve. But it's an important part of addressing our access to finance issues and also helping help the risk investments for European competitiveness. So maybe just to come back, what has led us to propose the European Competitiveness Fund? And we have looked very carefully at our funding offer. And what we see is that we do spread our efforts very thinly across many pots with different, often overlapping, objectives and structures. Complex rules, different timelines, different elements, which has two very important consequences. First, fragmentation of our efforts. We are not reaching the scale that we need with our investment in the in the single market, fragmenting it across different ports.”
  EU Single Market harmonisation
• “We know, I think this was also mentioned. Sometimes we need grants to the risk, but also we can maybe blend and provide combinations much better. And I think that was the aspect that was asked, how can you can you use these tools in a complicated areas like defense, like resilience? And this is where I can give an example. Yes we can. It takes time to develop, but we can develop those tools. My example could come from the critical raw materials area where we know it is a difficult area to support. Also with financial instruments, with equity and loans. And we have teamed up with Ebrd, who has a lot of experience in those mining exploration projects. In fact, put together with our money from horizon 25, Ebrd put 25 together for 100 million of investment into equity in the. In these type of SMEs and scaleups who are active in this area. So we can develop these type of activities with repayable and financial instruments, with defence, with these areas where we can work with the projects. This is our advisory services that we have across the different windows. And in this way, the risk, the projects that are happening on the ground and maybe the one aspect that is also mentioned by many of the honourable members and also by the by the chair which the aspect of the single market and fragmentation. And maybe just to put in the perspective that here in the competitiveness Fund, we are looking at the full investment journey not only on research and innovation.”
  Sourcing of critical raw materials · State Aid
• “I think our experience have taught us that we need to have agility also to be able to reply to those new priorities and aspects, and we want to be much faster in that, in that respect. All in all, uh, the competitiveness fund is reaction to those challenges that we face on competitiveness, bringing, bringing together if one single, consistent, comprehensive fund funding that we have today across the whole investment journey from research to deployment, allowing us to support and scale up projects. I think this is the aspect that we're scaling up. We see the big gap also with provision of of capital. We see that we are very good continent when it comes to creating startups. And there is an issue when we, those startups want to grow up. There is an issue of access to capital, and this is where we want to really focus on crowding in and mobilising private investment. This is where the tools like equity guarantees, loans come in to help create capital markets Union to help us really achieve the objective of the Savings and Investment Union. And here we are building on on the machinery of our Investeu programme, our guarantee, which with 26 billion of guarantee, we are mobilising almost 400 billion of investment, public and private, across the European Union. Two thirds of this comes from private, and we know the major bottleneck that we have today is underinvestment by our private sector.”
  Financial regulation · State Aid
• “Thank you, Madam Chairman. And thank you to honourable members for all all the questions and maybe aspect. Also starting because there are a few main themes that I will try to address also on those elements, and also maybe starting from the element of uh, of modesty aspect. Is it enough? Is it a little? It's about the element is we have to be very much conscious of the aspect that European budget is a part only of the of the puzzle will not be able to solve with public money all the investment needs that that we have. And maybe to put the things into perspective, of course we are doubling Horizon Europe and the amount we are putting. Just also to go back to the starting from the amount we are putting forward for competitiveness is unprecedented 21%. I think that was mentioned also by honourable members of the budget, and this is where we need to go. If the main gap that we identify is exactly in mobilising, in private investment in those strategic technologies, we need to use our budget better to de-risk and leverage this investment. And this is where, in fact, the drug says use the power of the EU budget, the guarantees like the system, like we have with Investeu, where we work with European investment bank Group, Ebrd, all the other partners together to allow this risky investment to happen on the market. And this is where we want to go more and use more of this, of this type of tools. And we even say in the fund should be a privileged means of implementation whenever possible.”
  State Aid · Size of EU budget
• “And at the same time, we also say horizontally we'll have the dedicated calls for SMEs in those windows and also will support a network. Smes because I think that every SMEs is also different. The one in defense will be different from the one from clean. So you want to have adapted offer and also horizontal offer where we can connect those SMEs across sectors across different European regions. And I think this is with that. I hope that I address the, the, the different areas of the question that have been asked. I think there was just a question on the do we have results on SMEs? And I think this is maybe something to mention. Yes we do. The program that I've just across very different funds that we have, uh, Europe, uh, horizon, but also in our program Investeu that I mentioned, we do the risk loans and equity for SMEs. We have supported over 50,000 SMEs with these instruments through our partners. We don't only work with EIB Group, we also work with all the national public banks. And this is where we see very widespread of access to our tools in the European Union, allowing access to our very powerful European guarantee when we can, the risk and help SMEs across the European Union. So that's to combine the elements on the substance, but also on how we want to solve all these elements through the proposal. Thank you very much.”
  Cohesion and rural funding · EU research funding
• “And I'm thinking here notably about our small and medium enterprises, because this is where the feedback that we got when we did impact assessment was, it is extremely complex. We want to simplify. We want to centralize access to make our funding offer much simpler, but also much faster in the we do hear feedback about slowness of our processes. So we also propose new elements on which we would like to facilitate and speed up our our funding. And of course, this aspect also comes from a experience where we had with current MFF and also with the aspects related to focus on strategic dependencies, to focus on securing our supply chains. And this is where we are also giving very much focus on the objective of addressing strategic dependencies, securing our supply chains, from exploration to processing to recycling of our critical raw materials. They are also able not only to support the best research innovation, but also ensure that we can produce in Europe for our essential needs. So that's also the objective of the of the fund. And here, this, this aspect of agility, of being able to act quickly on new priorities or other aspects. We have, uh, mentioned there were Critical Medicines Act, but also the our net zero Strategic Projects critical materials project.”
  Sourcing of critical raw materials
• “Also the aspects related to risk. So we want to step in and the risk. Most of these strategic projects to help them to come to fruition in in Europe. And also we know that financial support is not the only element. We know that what matters for our SMEs is also connection and networks. This is where we also will offer to our project and to our companies. Start ups scale up SMEs cross-cutting support and advisory services, helping them to come up with projects, helping them to make those projects, to structure them, to originate them, and also to identify bottlenecks when those projects are. And also networking. We know that how much important our current network enterprise Europe network, our clusters. We want to build on that and provide a single EU for business network that that will be underpinning the whole fund to help our SMEs and our companies connect across different regions, because the presence and our SMEs, as we know, are a driving backbone for our single market. All this in a nutshell about the main feature of the European Competitiveness Fund. We are after critical mass. We are after impact, simplicity and helping our companies to to help them with their projects and scaling up. Thank you, Madam Chair.”
  Competitiveness matrix
• “Secondly, you can imagine it has a lot of consequences also for our beneficiaries that approach us saying that our funding offer is complex, it's difficult to find the spot for them. We have multiple one stop shops, and many of our companies even do not bother applying because it's too complex, it takes too much time and the process is very daunting with this aspect. With Competitiveness Fund as a centerpiece of the next European budget, we want to change. We want to have a new approach for a modern European budget with more impact. Simpler, and also helping our companies scale up across the whole investment journey from research to applications on the market. We know this is where the gap lies today, that we are excellent in research, but we are not able to translate this excellence into applications on global markets. And this is what we try also to address with tight connections to Horizon Europe programme. And just to say, how are we how is what are the key features of European Competitiveness Fund where we want to act? First we we talked about fragmentation. We want to bring scale and critical mass. We are creating an investment firepower of 450 billion that is intended to bring this mass for investment in our, in our industrial leadership, in our innovation, in our companies, to help them scale up.”
  EU research funding
• “So competitiveness fund us for the first time for the fund of this size can mobilize all the tools, be it grant, be it procurement, be it also financial toolbox that we have. We are currently using our Investeu program, which also comes as underpinning program for mobilising private investment so we can go grants, procurement, loans, guarantees and equity to ensure that we can really meet the needs of the projects and companies across the whole investment journey. Because the second, the other novelty of the fund is also this possibility to be able to cover the investment journey that our projects and companies go through from research, through scaling up industrial deployment to market following, including also infrastructure and skills, really to ensure that we do not have gaps in our support and we can support our projects and companies in scaling up. The other element that is for us extremely important, and the feature of the of the fund, because when we look at the roof with all the programs, the windows, there is also what is essential is the foundation, so that we have a single rule book for all the windows and for all all the activities. So we are addressing the fragmentation that we see today with simple, simple rules. One toolbox with that can be used for all the policy windows single gateway to also have access in one place to all the funding offers that EU budget can can offer and also simpler access to our project promoters.”
  Competitiveness matrix
• “I know that a lot of experience on geographical balance comes also with Horizon Direct managed programmes, but also looking at scaling up deployment, uh, other uh, other elements and where we want to work very much through value chains and value chains is where we are integrating and connecting a single market. And this is where we are proposing specific calls, collaborative calls to strengthen value chains in strategic sectors to be included in our policy windows, be it in hydrogen, in battery. We are proposing very new, very new industrial policy tools, which would help us, in fact, to connect the single market value chains. Also EU frontrunners, where we want companies to team up with SMEs and with researchers to help them find their fund, their ideas bottom up on the issues they are having today of bringing these ideas to the market. It's not about champions, it's about really allowing our industry to translate their ideas to the to the market. And of course, the question comes always on the SMEs on the aspect of how we will help SMEs. And this is the aspect where first, it's very much systemic issue of single rules, faster access and also single access. We have more than 12 or dozen of one stop shops. Now let's move to one. Let's make it much easier our funding, uh, for SMEs, but also on substance. I want to reassure you that in each of our policy windows, we have focused on SMEs. We want to support sustainability of SMEs, digital transition of SMEs, and also our very innovative startups in defense or uh, or space.”
  EU Single Market harmonisation · EU policy on sustainability criteria in public funding