Maria João Rodrigues (S&D). – Madam President, the European Parliament is being very clear – the next European Council can no longer delay key decisions and must make very clear choices. The world is changing, it is so clear, and it is also clear that we need a strong Europe, a united Europe, to protect people. The solution is certainly not closing the borders, but neither is the solution to keep open borders without protecting people. We need to have a Europe which is open but protecting people.

This is the case when we organise the European border. Of course we need to ensure that we have a proper European asylum system to protect refugees who are looking for our help, but when we negotiate trade agreements we need to ensure we are open to the world but we need to protect our people and our standards.

If we want a Europe that protects, the next European Council must push the negotiations on the European budget also for a budget which will be there to protect people. I am concerned, on behalf of my group, that the current proposal on the Community budget does not ensure the proper level of economic and social vision of cohesion. This is too weak to ensure our unity. The same applies to the proposals to reform the eurozone, because we don’t have proposals to ensure strong investment to converge, to ensure that the social pillar is really applied everywhere. So this is missing, and we want to strengthen European unity on the internal front, with a united Europe, for us to be able to cope with external challenges. This is the solution the next European Council should adopt without any kind of hesitation.