Maria João Rodrigues (S&D). – Madam President, the Austrian Presidency has launched its agenda under the motto ‘a Europe which protects’, but we fear that the understanding of a Europe which protects is being too limited. Starting with refugees and migration, it seems that most of all we need to protect ourselves from a kind of invasion coming from refugees. This is completely out of the reality. We need to ensure a proper way to rescue people drowning in the sea. We need to have a real European asylum system. We need to start discussing a legal corridor for migration in Europe and we need to have partnerships with the origin countries, which really helped these countries to provide a better life, for people to stay. This is the ambitious European policy we need to build up.

But then let me underline that if the motto is really ‘a Europe which protects’, the Austrian Presidency has a short time to deliver on key issues. The first one, I would say, is to protect fundamental rights and democracy, triggering Article 7 in the Polish and Hungarian case. Updating our law to protect us from cyber—manipulations. Then we have the need to protect people when it comes to social rights, delivering on the European pillar of social rights. Last but not least, we need to have the financial means and that’s why taxation, fair taxation, will be crucial to provide the means for us to sustain our welfare systems, our public services, but also the means to provide a community budget up to the level for the next years. Own resources are on the plate, and overall this is the short list of issues where the Austrian Presidency should be able to deliver until the end of the semester.