David SASSOLI, EP President, and António COSTA, Portuguese Prime Minister both meet together by video meeting, before joining the meeting with the political group leaders to discuss the priorities of the Portuguese EU Council Presidency, starting on 1 January 2021, in the European Parliament in Brussels. After the meeting, David SASSOLI, EP President, and António COSTA, Portuguese Prime Minister, hold a press conference.

Portuguese Presidency: extracts from the video meetings between David SASSOLI, EP President and António COSTA, Portuguese Prime Minister and between EP Conference of Presidents and Portuguese Presidency and from the press conference

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Arrival of David SASSOLI, EP President, to the video meeting with Antonio COSTA, Portuguese Prime Minister. 

Video meeting between  David SASSOLI, EP President, and Antonio COSTA, Portuguese Prime Minister. 

EP Conference of Presidents : flags EU-Portugal.

Arrival of David SASSOLI, EP President, and Iratxe GARC&Iacute;A P&Eacute;REZ, S&amp;D Group Leader, to the EP Conference of Presidents.

Philippe LAMBERTS, Greens/EFA, Group Leader.

Iratxe GARC&Iacute;A P&Eacute;REZ, S&amp;D Group Leader.

David SASSOLI, EP President, opening the meeting between the EP Conference of Presidents and Portuguese Presidency of the EU Council.

SOUNDBITE (Portuguese), Ant&#243;nio COSTA, Portuguese Prime Minister, We all agree on the fact that the coming months will be decisive. We all have a lot of trust in the German presidency to be able to conclude in the upcoming council meeting the final approval of the MFF, the Recovery and Resilience Fund. This is something which is absolutely vital to give trust for and confidence for the economic recovery in Europe.

SOUNDBITE (Portuguese), Ant&#243;nio COSTA, Portuguese Prime Minister, It's also going to be a decisive month for concluding negotiations with the UK to have the least traumatic Brexit as possible. It would also be decisive to be able to start with the conference on the future of Europe, which allow us to have deeper debates on the Europe of tomorrow that we want to build.

SOUNDBITE (Portuguese), Ant&#243;nio COSTA, Portuguese Prime Minister, The next European Council has to approve the necessary mechanism so that by the 1st of January we can have an EU which has its budget for 2021. If not, we will be paralysing activity across the EU cohesion policy. Part of that, it means we will have the MFF defined the budget fund for the next seven years and we will also have the economic recovery plan approved.

SOUNDBITE (Italian), David SASSOLI, EP President, You've seen over the last few months we've been very focussed on finding an important agreement, a fair agreement to offer greater opportunities to the July agreement with more resources for citizens added and defining the rule of law mechanism, providing a framework. This is very important. This is the agreement. And of course, there's a dialogue between the German presidency and the Polish and Hungarian governments. And I think this will give the council an opportunity to approve this, if that's not the case, there isn't a plan B. The work would then have to be started again from scratch.

SOUNDBITE (Italian), David SASSOLI, EP President, We very much hope, of course, that the Brexit negotiations do come to a positive conclusion with an agreement and if that is the case, if there is this opportunity, the parliament is very much prepared to meet in plenary even during the Christmas holidays.

Portuguese Presidency: extracts from the video meetings between David SASSOLI, EP President and António COSTA, Portuguese Prime Minister and between EP Conference of Presidents and Portuguese Presidency and from the press conference

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