On the occasion of the incoming Austrian Presidency of the EU, Sebastian KURZ, Austrian Chancellor, Antonio TAJANI, EP President and Jean-Claude JUNCKER hold a press onfernce following the presentation of the priorities of the incoming EU Council Presidency, during the EP plenary session (15-18 January 2018) in Strasbourg: extracts

TAJANI, Antonio (EPP, IT)

Strasbourg

JUNCKER, Jean-Claude (LU)

press conference

KURZ, Sebastian (AT)

EU - Austria (T)

Austrian Presidency of the EU (T)

The priorities of the Austrian Presidency of the Council: extracts form the press conference

Title: The priorities of the Austrian Presidency of the Council: extracts form the press conference

SOUNDBITE (Italian), Antonio TAJANI, EP President, It&rsquo;s not the question that closing internal borders will solve the problem of migration, that's is not going to work . We need to look to the countries of the South of Europe, Italy, Greece where closure of the border would create further damage. These countries would still be on the front line of dealing with the massive arrivals.

SOUNDBITE (French), Jean-Claude JUNCKER, President of the EC, What I wanted to say is that the trust fund for Africa will have a valuable &euro;4.1 billion. At the European Council, and prior to that at the preceding meetings, we talked about mobilising &euro;500 million. So the amount for the trust fund is &euro;4.1 billion. Secondly we have an external investment plan for Africa, we have mobilised 3 .4 billion, European Commission money. That should&rsquo;ve stimulate investment in total of 44 million billion euros. As per dealing with the sources of migration, member states a proposed to do their share. They I haven&rsquo;t quite done so yet. If they have done we would&rsquo;ve had better and have an investment volume of &euro;88 billion. When people say that we are doing nothing for Africa, I think that&rsquo;s not even approximately a correct the picture of what is being done.

SOUNDBITE (German), Sebastian KURZ, Austrian Chancellor, We, as Presidency, we have a leitmotif which is a &lt;Europe that protects&gt; , that is the general heading of our Presidency. We want to do whatever we can in order to make sure that all Europeans feel protected, protected against illegal migration, among other things. Secondly of course we need to protect our welfare and for that we need to make sure that Europe becomes more competitive. We have to have better competitiveness in the EU and we also need to make sure that we are up to speed in the area of automation and digitalisation. We need to look towards the future. Security systems need to be future proof as well.

SOUNDBITE (German), Jean-Claude JUNCKER, President of the EC, The difference between now and the year 2009 is as follows: the Kurtz government has a government program that they&rsquo;ve adopted with the support of Austrian Parliament and it's supported by the two coalition partners. This is a clearly pro-European government program. In 2009 we had no expectation that that will be the case. The new government of Austria is clearly pro-European. I don&rsquo;t see any cause for concern.

SOUNDBITE (Italian), Antonio TAJANI, EP President, I&rsquo;m concerned because there is a lack of a solution to the problems surrounding migration and the problem with refugees, in particular on the part of the member states. I have insisted in the recent meetings of the European Council that the member states of the European Union should decide rapidly to adopt the whole package to reform the asylum system. The current rules are obsolete, agreement was found on five points, on two there was no agreement but as part as the Parliament is concerned this package should be adopted as a block, the reform of the Dublin system should be done at the same time as the rest.