Maria João Rodrigues (S&D). – Mr President, the Commission has come with a proposal on fiscal capacity for the eurozone which we really want discussed at the next euro summit. Finally, the eurozone, which is the only monetary zone without a budget, recognised that we do indeed need a budget in order to have a future in the eurozone.

However, what should be the objectives of this budget? There should be not only stability, but also growth and upward economic and social convergence. From this viewpoint, we need to go beyond the Commission’s proposals, because if we want to support convergence, we should be clearly in favour of reforms, growth, increasing the sustainability of our social welfare systems, and coupling reforms with investments. Something is missing in this instrument.

Secondly, the instrument to support investment is necessary not only to protect against shocks, but also to make sure that Member States undertaking deep rebalances of the budgets can maintain a decent level of social investment, which is not the case so far. We need to go beyond, because if we do not improve these proposals, and we have combined these with co-financing being reduced for structural funds, we can already predict that divergences will continue in the eurozone.