Mariya GABRIEL, Commissioner-designate for Innovation and Youthis heard by the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) in association with the Committee on Culture and Education (CULT) of the European Parliament in Brussels to test her general competences, European commitment and specific expertise related to her portfolio

Brussels

GABRIEL, Mariya (EPP, BG, EC)

Committee on Culture and Education

hearing

Hearing of Mariya GABRIEL, Commissioner-designate, Innovation and Youth:- extracts from the hearing (2)

SOUNDBITE (English), Paolo BORCHIA (ID, IT), Other way to finance our resources it has to be allocated to research through the future clean aviation programme, do you agree with this assessment?

SOUNDBITE (French), Mariya GABRIEL, Commissioner-designate, Innovation and Youth, Aviation is one of those areas where thanks to innovation and research we have managed to move forward, to make it more 'green'. And here I am already referring to History as the Clean Sky Programme has allowed us to make real progress. I recall that it is a programme that now in its second phase it has the goal through aircraft innovation to reduce by 20% to 30% the CO2 emissions. [...] It is undergoing an impact assessment and our ambition is to be able to table the results by the end of the year.

SOUNDBITE (Czech), Grzegorz TOBISZOWSKI (ECR, PL), As we were negotiating Horizon Europe, I and my colleagues managed to introduce the reference to what we call transforming regions which will exist where we still see a high consumption of coal. How do you see the role of science, research and supporting the transformation?

SOUNDBITE (French), Mariya GABRIEL, Commissioner-designate, Innovation and Youth, The transforming regions issue poses a real challenge but we have to reduce our CO2 emissions. In the context of Horizon 2020, we are already investing in technologies, in carbon capture storage to prevent emissions. Scientific research is encouraging but technological advances are still needed, that means that without research and innovation I can hardly see how we will be able to help these regions.

SOUNDBITE (French), Mariya GABRIEL, Commissioner-designate, Innovation and Youth, 10% of the GDP of the European Union is related to the Space programme. When it comes to Galileo and Copernicus programmes are real EU success stories. They show that thanks to the investments that have been made in, under the 6th and 7th Horizon programmes, to achieve real success. We will support them even further given that their potential is huge including new technology and also because these new services can lead to new markets with new applications. I can think of precision farming, space services could be enormously helpful there, as well as for managing natural disasters.

SOUNDBITE (Portuguese), Marisa MATIAS (GUE/NGL, PT), 10 million EUR of public money within the Horizon 2020 programme went to Israeli military industry. Very recently and agreement was signed with Morocco which as you know has been occupying the territory of Western Sahara. How does the Commissioner-designate intends to protect human rights and prevent public funds being handed over to firms which have been accused of committing human right offenses?

SOUNDBITE (French), Mariya GABRIEL, Commissioner-designate, Innovation and Youth, We are very clear, by the double usage, civil applications, exclusion of all military applications, respect of the clause of territoriality and at the same time also preserve the possibility of having partnerships with the scientists in Israel with whom we are cooperating on health, on water, IT, etc. And because those rules are not respected in one area, we must not exclude the possibility of cooperating in other areas.