The leaders of seven southern Europe countries - Cyprus, Spain, France, Greece, Italy, Malta and Portugal - have called for a Europe of twenty-seven that respects national employment and social protection laws.
The social dimension of the EU requires the citizens to be central to our integration project, the seven leaders said on Monday 10 April, following a mini-session held in Madrid.
They argue that increased coordination of the education and social security systems can help to promote bottom-up social convergence, as can the creation of a European pillar of social rights, an initiative to be presented by the European Commission on Wednesday 26 April (see EUROPE 11762).
In favour of decisive progress towards finalising EMU
In the economic and budgetary field, the seven leaders called for decisive progress towards finalising banking union in the Eurozone by creating a European deposit insurance scheme (EDIS).
Due to the UK leaving the Union, the EU of 27 countries must open up a new phase of the deepening of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and in particular, fiscal and social convergence, budgetary capacity and investment policy, the French President, François Hollande, said after the summit.
The seven Mediterranean countries, which are in favour of deepening the single market in the energy and digital sectors, reiterate their commitment to a rules-based trade policy to support free and fair trade.
The Madrid declaration also lists measures needed to increase the security of European citizens, including border protection and fighting the financing of terrorism. The Mediterranean countries, which are in the frontline of migration flows, consider that EU migration policy should be based on both accountability and solidarity, with the European legislator currently working on the revision of the Dublin asylum system (see EUROPE 117120).
The fourth and next summit in the series (see EUROPE 11714, 11620) will be held in Cyprus.
To read the declaration (in Spanish) click here: http://bit.ly/2oT7IRt. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)