THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION REPORT. Europe in a period of transition

THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION 122 ditions. In this respect, the NGEU can be considered the embryo of a European treasury. − Making the most of the debate on revising the fiscal rules in the EU underway recently, the NGEU should become a permanent fund and not just a tempo- rary instrument to tackle the COVID-19 crisis. That would provide the EU with the fiscal capability to fund necessary public investment in situations of recession. − The rollout of the Recovery and Resilience Facility lacks a European perspective. While the NGEU has been put together in the framework of the EU by the community institutions, the bulk of the resources will be channelled on a national level, in view of the recovery plans of each of the Member States. There- fore, joint objectives and actions must be devised on a European scale, within the sphere of the powers of the Commission, to give the plans a community perspective beyond the mere allocation of resources and supervision of the design and execution of the plans. This would enable ensuring a joint impact in its own right and not just as an aggregate impact of the national plans. − A special effort must be made to promote and give greater visibility to the principle of solidarity inher- ent in European construction, as well as to address the difficulty posed by integrating the need to fos- ter the economic, social, and territorial cohesion of the EU in the plans designed from a national viewpoint. − An instrument like the NGEU plan should incorporate a more long-term vision and not just in relation to the objectives of structural change and transformation of the economies, but also on the risks and costs that many of these transformations incur, almost all of which are long-term and with uncertain intermediary impacts, particularly in the social and labour fields. Ensuring just transitions, in the broadest sense, and consolidating social cohesion are of particular impor- tance to prevent indifference towards or disaffection with the community project. The fiscal effort against the coronavirus − The federal level of the Union must be strengthened via the permanent issuing of European debt as a tool to combat crises, allowing the Member States greater fiscal leeway as a tool to tackle global challenges such as climate change and the green transition of the economy. − We propose introducing new community own re- sources, including the financial transaction tax, a border duty on imported CO2, a fraction of the common consolidated corporate tax base aimed at big companies, and a digital services tax, as well as the allocation of ECB profits to the Union’s own resources to enable paying off the European debt, constituting the fiscal union to underpin the financial union created with the Recovery Plan. 3. Health, migration, and foreign policy: pending tasks for the EU European Union of Health − Provision of greater governance to the agencies and units responsible for health matters in the EU. − It is necessary to strengthen the health systems of the EU and create a working group (EU Health Sys- tems Task Force) with a view to studying and making proposals to extend the action of the EU to ensuring common standards in the health systems of all the Member States. − Firm support must be given to the WHO in its goal of approving an international treaty on pandemics (this issue is not included in the Communication of 15 June 2021, COM(2021) 380). − Maximum priority must be given to making COVAX a successful programme in taking vaccination against COVID-19 to low- and medium-income countries and to making a proposal for a global strategy for equal access to vaccines and medicines, including the reform of the present situation of medicine patents.