Jean-Luc Dehaene (PPE). – (NL) Mr President, as a member of the negotiating team for the multiannual financial framework, I, in turn, would like to thank the Danish Presidency for the cooperation it has shown. The result of this cooperation has been the negotiation box, among other instruments, in which the relationship between expenditure and income was retained, in keeping with Parliament’s express demand, and which makes this a precondition for the final solution.

It is also valuable that the negotiating box will now be included on the Council’s agenda, where growth, but also the European Semester and hence fiscal consolidation at Member State level, will be discussed. Because, thanks to our own resources, the proposal before us allows Member States to reduce their contributions and, therefore, to make more room in their own budgets to contribute, with their own resources, to a growth budget, which is essential for the European budget going forward.

It is therefore time that we lay down basic principles that will ensure both growth and budgetary orthodoxy. The budget can make an essential contribution to that. I hope that the meeting of the European Council will also be an opportunity to send out a structural signal to the euro and the euro area. We do, indeed, need a banking union, a political union, and we need to take structural measures if we want to be credible.