Gunnar Hökmark (PPE). – Madam President, there is a tendency here to say that if we don’t solve the problems that we are facing, the Union has failed. I think that is totally the wrong approach, for it is a way of underestimating the problems and challenges which we are facing and which, in many cases, are not of the kind that you can solve by a political decision today or tomorrow. We need to deal with them, and the only way to deal with them in a proper way is to stand together. That goes for the migration issue. It wouldn’t be easier if Member States were on their own. That would not be feasible at all. But together we can do it, if only step by step. And it is also true when we look at the more fundamental threats which we are facing from aggressive Russia or state capitalistic China, or which stem from the fact that we have a president in the United States who is unreliable.
We need to stand strong – strong in security, strong in cooperation – and not see every political conflict as some sort of dividing line. The right thing to do is to make us as strong together as possible and to see the threats to our democracy and our open society.