Sibylle BERG

What Sibylle BERG has said (5)

• 2026-02-25 “Answer given by Mr Micallef on behalf of the European Commission 11.6.2026 Written question The first meeting of the President’s Youth Advisory Board held on 3 December 2025 explored the impact of social media on young people. Board members and observers shared their views on online access, age verification, digital well-being and mental health as well as on opportunities provided by social media. The meeting provided an opportunity to bring directly a strong youth perspective in policymaking at the highest political level within the Commission . In preparation for this first meeting with the Commission President, the Commissioner for Intergenerational Fairness, Youth, Culture and Sport organised an online meeting with the Board in November 2025 to hear their views on the topic and structure of the inaugural Board meeting. As a follow-up to the meeting, the Board was invited to draft a policy paper with recommendations in January 2026 for the Commission President’s consideration. This paper fed into the work of the special panel on child online safety launched in March 2026. The next meeting of the President’s Youth Advisory Board is foreseen during 2026. The topic of the meeting is still to be determined. The report of the first meeting of 3 December 2025 and the rules of procedure will be published in the register of expert groups [1] of the Commission ahead of the second Board meeting. The Board was set up as an Expert Group (group reference: E04004) by Commission Decision C(2025)3967 of 25 June 2025 [2] . [1] https://ec.europa.eu/transparency/expert-groups-register/screen/home?lang=en. [2] Register of Commission expert groups and other similar entities https://ec.europa.eu/transparency/expert-groups-register/screen/expert-groups/consult?lang=en&groupID=4004.”
  Focus of EU policy on education (shaping workers vs citizens)
• 2026-02-25 “E-000798/2026 Answer given by Ms Albuquerque on behalf of the European Commission Central securities depositories (CSDs) are currently required to settle the cash leg of securities transactions through ‘accounts opened with a central bank’ or, under restrictive conditions, ‘through accounts opened with a credit institution’ pursuant to Article 40 of the Central Securities Depositories Regulation (CSDR) 1 . With the aim of fostering innovation, the proposal to amend the CSDR as part of the Market Integration and Supervision Package 2 enables CSDs to settle the cash leg of securities transactions with certain electronic money tokens (EMTs) regulated under the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCAR) 3 . EMTs 4 are subject to specific rules, including requirements on reserve assets and how EMTs must be issued. Holders of EMTs have a claim against the issuers which have therefore a liability towards holders. In addition, a definition of ‘central bank money’ is included in the proposal in order to further differentiate between the possible means of settling the cash leg of securities transactions including in the context of distributed ledger technology (DLT)-based settlement. The proposal is currently under negotiation in the European Parliament and Council. The proposal to amend the CSDR also includes legal empowerments 5 for the European Securities and Markets Authority to draft technical standards on how to operationalise DLTsettlement. The DLT Pilot Regulation 6 provides that Article 5 of the CSDR applies, which does not preclude same-day settlement models, as it specifies that the settlement should occur no later than two business days after the trade. Regulation (EU) 2025/2075 7 will shorten that period to one business day from 11 October 2027. 1 Regulation (EU) No 909/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 July 2014 on improving securities settlement in the European Union and on central securities depositories and amending Directives 98/26/EC and 2014/65/EU and Regulation (EU) No 236/2012, http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/2014/909/oj. 2 COM(2025) 943 final. 3 Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 31 May 2023 on markets in crypto-assets and amending Regulations (EU) No 1093/2010 and (EU) No 1095/2010 and Directives 2013/36/EU and (EU) 2019/1937, OJ L 150, 9.6.2023, pp. 40–205. 4 EMTs are defined in Article 3(1)(7) of MiCAR as ‘a type of crypto-asset that purports to maintain a stable value by referencing the value of one official currency’. 5 Articles 6(5) and 45a of the proposal to amend the CSDR set out the mandate for the European Securities Market Authorities to take into account the use of new technologies, including DLT, in the drafting of technical standards pertaining to communication protocols used by issuers, CSDs and other market infrastructures and the mandate to draft technical standards in relation to the mitigation of the risks stemming from the use of DLT for the provision of CSD services outside of an outsourcing arrangement. 6 Regulation (EU) 2022/858 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30 May 2022 on a pilot regime for market infrastructures based on distributed ledger technology, and amending Regulations (EU) No 600/2014 and (EU) No 909/2014 and Directive 2014/65/EU, http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/2022/858/oj. 7 Regulation (EU) 2025/2075 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 8 October 2025 amending Regulation (EU) No 909/2014 as regards a shorter settlement cycle in the Union, http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/2025/2075/oj.”
  Regulation of crypto · Digital euro scope (retail vs wholesale) · Financial regulation
• “(16:34:24 – 16:51:23): Tak. I'm very pleased to be come here to present this, and, I will very briefly introduce myself. I'm someone who's been doing work for many, many years no. Correction. Decades for the parliament in on different aspects of the EU budget. And I'd also like briefly to present you can wave Harry Harry Crichton Miller, who is 1 of the researchers involved in this project. I'm not sure there's a message to be had in the fact there are 2 Brits, but you can you can digest that yourselves. So let's let's proceed if the clicker works, which I'm assured it does. I know you've been discussing this for half the afternoon, so I I don't need to dwell very long on the background. You're familiar with the it's working. You're familiar with the NRPPs, the the National and Regional Regional Partnership Plans. You are familiar with and I think resistant to the idea that the ESF should no longer be a standalone fund. And it's also worth noting that the same is true of the Just Transition Fund, which is going to be folded into these NRPPs as well. If you look through the competitiveness fund, which you might think in some respects is the big innovation of this multi annual financial framework proposal, There are elements that can be identified as social, but as we tried to analyze them, it got trickier and trickier to work out either what they were and, more importantly, how much money they would generate, skills, features in the competitiveness fund. But it's more so in the recitals than in the the articles. And, therefore, it's very hard to work out whether there's really going to be much of a budget within the competitiveness fund for what can, at least at 1 level, be regarded as social objectives. So that's a concern. It's also worth highlighting something which is going to be more transformative on the budget than just having the national plans. And that is that performance based budgeting, which is a trend that's been arising over the last couple of multi annual financial frameworks, it was very prominent in the recovery and resilience facility, is going to be much more prominent in the next round. And that prominence itself is something that, this committee and others in the parliament are going to have to try to accommodate because it's not as easy as it sounds. Great idea. Relate what the EU spends its money on to performance, but the practicalities are far more difficult than they than you might think, especially in 1 instance, which is where it becomes linked to the the country specific recommendations part of the semester process. It'll be linked to the outset of the next MFF, but we don't know quite what impact future country specific recommendations might have on the governance. And the other thing to note on all this, and I think there's already a degree of consensus on this, is that the whole approach brings to the fore a nexus between the commission and the member states. And that leaves, to some extent, on the sidelines, other institutions like the parliament, committee of auditors, the maybe even the regional level within member states. So there's a there's a transformation going on here, which we can't neglect. Be careful. This is is not working very well. Can you move to the next page, please, whoever is in control of it? Next 1. Yeah. Second 1. Second page. Go back up. Is that the second 1? Yes. No, you've gone too far. Back 1. Right. It's about numbers in many respects. And the first aspect of numbers is that if you look at the the arithmetic of this, the full budget for national and regional partnership plans is going to be around 47% of the next MFF. If you look at what was in cohesion policy and agricultural policy in the current MFF, it's over 60. So it doesn't take much imagination to realize that this is going to be a reduction in what used to be the core functions of the EU budget. It's quite a big 1. Then we're told repeatedly that 14% of the the national plans has to be for social purposes. It's a minimum. The the research we did made it pretty clear that it's it's a minimum which will apply to all member states even though some member states will have differing views on what constitutes social. But there's the trick in it, which is the minimum is not the denominator for this minimum is not the whole 865,000,000,000 at current prices of the allocation for national plans, but it's you have to subtract the amount for agriculture. So this minimum this minimum is based on a much lower denominator and, therefore, yields much less money. That's why we come out with the view that it's going to be worth this approximate ESF equivalent, €79,000,000,000 in current prices for the next MFF compared with if you escalate current prices from the current MFF, something more like 95, 98, even a 100. Now then you hear the commission telling you that, no, that's not correct. The next MFF is going to have a €100,000,000,000 for social, broadly speaking. Now you can see why I've gone old Donald Trump here and put my next word in capitals and said, really? Well, this relies on adding loan funding from the Catalyst Europe Fund to the grants, and it means that you're having a combination of grants and loans to arrive at the 100,000,000. Okay. Maybe some of you are quite happy with that being grants, loans as well as grants, but it does mean that it's, not the same as it was before. And the social content in the Competitionist Fund, we just cannot calibrate with accuracy. It's headed nonthematic lines, and these nonthematic lines contain things which are very remote from social. So it's only a small proportion of the non thematic line within the competitiveness fund, which will work for social. Let's see if this works this time. Now it keeps going to the next page, please. Governance then. How do you apply policy based budgeting to social interventions? You might think it's easy. Why should it be any different from regional interventions, infrastructure interventions, any other? But it's harder because, first, social policy change takes longer. Social policy change is also difficult to monitor with hard indicators. So we look at something like the proportion of of the population at risk of poverty. That's a very slow moving variable. I remember years ago, Frank Vandenbrucker, whom I'm sure you all know, saying he had lost faith in that particular indicator and that if you want to measure change, you need something more detailed. Also, what happens if there's a milestones and targets approach to funding and the beneficiaries do not meet that milestone or target? Is there a funding cut? Particularly, what happens if it's outside their control, which mean it could be something to do with, conditioning on the country specific recommendations. There could be a country specific recommendation at the national level. The member state fails it. Is it the beneficiaries who are going to suffer? It would be the the question to pose. And when you have this member state commission nexus that I referred to, who's going to set priorities? Will it feed up from social actors from regional levels within a member state? Will it feed down from the European level to the decisions taken on what goes into a member state's plan? These are very difficult questions that could be answered. I won't bother risking this anymore and just ask you move to the next slide now, please. So our first set of conclusions, I'm I'm being very telegraphic about this, is that there will be a cut in funding for social, widely determined. I think that's pretty unambiguous. There's a degree of uncertainties I have mentioned a couple of times already about the ECF. And in my in our opinion in this study, loans are not a sufficient or adequate alternative to using grants for social purposes. They have a different way of way of operating, and and loans mean that you have to repay them and service them, so it doesn't add. There may be administrative simpler simplifications, and this is 1 of the big selling points of the the MFF proposal, but there could be costs. Beneficiaries are used to a certain way of operating, cost based. Some have simplified cost options. But if you switch to a performance based approach with financing not linked to costs and other aspects, that gets more complicated. So there could be a learning process for beneficiaries in many member states to to before they work out how these new rules apply. So simplification looks as though it's on the horizon. It's not guaranteed, and there may be transitional costs which make it worse. Can I move to the next slide, please? Other conclusions. We all respect the European pillar of social rights, but the bigger narrative within this next MFF is going to be competitiveness. It's it's gonna be pervasive. And there's a danger in this context, and this was reinforced by many of the people we interviewed for the studies, was that competitiveness looks like it's more likely to win. And yet, EPSR really ought to be regarded as part of the added value of European budgetary policies. If you want added value, the EPSR sets a way of looking establish a way of looking at it. And, also, social partners and other benefit and other actors who are involved in both project policy design and implementation, their role may be weakened in this new approach. For the EP, the European Parliament, the risk is that the the vital legitimation role that the the parliament offers, and, again, this was stressed to us by many of the those interviewed for the study, could be weakened. The EP is elected. I don't need to tell you that, do I? But being elected means you can legitimate. And, also, there are there are ambiguities in in the way the MFF proposal is set out about what happens with autonomous transfers. Are they subject to quite strict rules as as indicated by the financial regulation, or will the commission have much more leeway to do what it wants? I would advocate for the parliament, particularly for this committee, that you seek as much certainty as you can on this. Very carefully, can we move to the first bullet point on the next slide? And 1 more click. What I've done here is to summarize. I know the font is rather small at this point, but there are lot of recommendations, some of the recommendations we've tried to put forward. And the first set contains concerns the adequacy of funding between the 2 MFFs, the current and the 20 28 to 34 proposal. First, straightforwardly, boost the funding for social, bring it back towards its current level. You can do that in 1 of 2 ways. You either raise the minimum percentage instead of 14%, 16%, 18%, 20% or enlarge the denominator so that 14% no longer has the agricultural component cut out. It doesn't really matter which way you do it. The objective should be more funding. Social priorities. To what extent will the new social priorities be dominated by member states? Well, we think you need to clarify that the the EU level, EU creates public goods. EU should, designate what is public goods and use this to influence what's in national plans. Vulnerable groups already have earmarking in the current MFF. Is that earmarking going to be at risk? Here, the commission and we do not necessarily agree. The Just Transition Fund has a very specific function. It probably should be kept outside as a standalone fund, which brings us on to something I believe you've been discussing already today, and that is whether the ESF should remain as a standalone fund. Now here are the retentions. Because if if a case is made for the ESF to be a stand alone fund outside the national plans, guess what? Somebody's gonna stand up and say, well, so should the common agricultural policy and so should the ERDF. So if there is a dismantling of the national plan approach, it would have repercussions beyond the ESF. Nevertheless, our recommendation is to endorse what you're really trying to do and and say, go for it. Try to advocate it coming outside and restoring its own regulation in the more developed form it has in the current MFF rather than the reduced form it would have in the next MFF. And last, within the competitiveness fund, see if we can strengthen in provisions. 1 more click, please. Next, some of the the many things that we think about the the implementation. Harmonize milestones and targets because if you don't, you get confusion. Harmonize standards for clearing and rigorous definitions of milestones, again, for the same reason. Although the performance approach is supposed to focus more on results, that's to say the implications of changes rather than direct outputs like numbers of jobs created, it's far more tricky in the social field. So we would argue for, somewhere between slightly elaborated outputs and minimal results as the approach. Impact is beyond the reach of the MFF. Limit CSR application and be sensitive to protecting the suspension of payments, could arise from applying M and T too forcefully. There may also be a case for removing the these kinds of rules from more innovative approaches. Social policy needs experimentation, and that experimentation should be encouraged. Technical assistance for the organizations to reflect the fact that there's a new approach. And there's 1 more methodological point, which is it'd be helpful if the commission were to produce a payout handbook to explain how payouts would happen in all these circumstances. I've gone through this very quickly. It's all in the report. Last slide, please or last click. This this takes us on to the European pillar of social rights and the role of the parliament. And here, I think that maintaining a focus on the visibility of the UPSR ought to be important for you. Don't let it get lost in the traffic. Gender mainstreaming ought to continue, and there's a case for adding a a more robust social mainstreaming perhaps to, article 6 of the performance regulation. Quite how that will be done is maybe for the for this committee more than me to to advocate. Highlight the role of the social partners because they are an important aspect of delivering social policy and stress the key role of the parliament in a number of respects in social in legitimating, in limiting the autonomous transfers by the commission, and in controlling ultimately through the con committee and others the way the these budgets are are spent. So last slide, which means I stop. Thank you very much for listening.”
  EU expenditure on social policy
• “Ladies and gentlemen, I have the feeling I've been standing here for three days trying to use simple words to explain to you why it's wrong to try to confuse our private life with these measures. I don't really like listen to my own voice enough to do that. Once again, you failed your latest test by extending this waiver for privacy of electronic communications. Either you like being monitored, except when it's you or you think you're doing something to protect children. Take careful note of the next sentence. It's important. Surveillance of private communication. The fight against child is useless because most examples of child abuse take place on public networks. It's as if you wanted to have safe sex by wearing a condom on your head. But I'll do. I'll do it without the sex metaphors, because who's got time to have sex when we're trying to save the world? In two weeks, we'll be having another final vote on the data abuse law. This will be your last, last chance to show that you've actually learnt something. Perhaps you'll even realise that you are actually part of the general population. But I suspect I'll have to stand here once again.”
  Privacy & detection of online child abuse
• “Good morning to everybody. The coalition of the willing, as it's called, could be considered the discovery of the French president who's more concerned about his overindebted country. He wants to distract from that. He wants to distract from problems is something we all want. Commissioner, your desires to do similar. Uh, it's all very well, but we're looking at a Trojan horse here. Basically, people are going to be in debt. 5% of GDP is going to go to military spending. Schools are going to be cut, health services going to be cut. We're going to have big brother monitoring. We're not going to be fighting unemployment. We're not going to be investing in outdated infrastructure. We're not going to be fighting against shortage of housing and homelessness. Thank you.”
  Defence spending