Press remarks by President António Costa following the meeting with the Federal Chancellor of Austria, Christian Stocker 15:05 Press remarks by President António Costa[...]

First of all, I would like to thank Chancellor Christian Stocker for this warm welcome during my visit to Vienna. This tour des capitales is a very important moment for me.

First, because the European institutions must be close to the different member states. Secondly, because we need to engage with the different leaders. The Union is a union of nations, and all the voices matter. We need to take into account all the different leaderships and national positions to build unity among the 27 member states.

Austria is a very important member of our Union, always very committed - not only to protect their own interests, such as those of Austrian farmers, to protect your borders, and manage migration - but also very engaged in our common challenges: competitiveness, security and defence in Europe, and also promoting the enlargement of the European Union to new member states.

And I want to commend, first of all, Austria on the way that you manage your specific constitutional neutrality while fully engaging in European Security and Defence, and your clear support to Ukraine.

Secondly, we are fully committed to working with you to protect our borders and to manage collectively migration.

But we also work together for our main priorities: boost competitiveness, strengthen our single market, promoting trade and promoting innovation. This is a key issue to improve our competitiveness.

Allow me to use this moment to commend the European Commission for approving today the final version of the Mercosur agreement, a new version, who solved many of the previous issues we identified. This agreement will be a great opportunity to boost our competitiveness and open our markets to new products and services.

This is very important for a country like Austria, which already has a trade surplus up to €1 billion with Mercosur countries. Now, with this new Mercosur agreement, I think it is good news for Austria, as it can boost your exports to a very important market.

Finally, as you said, Christian, the next MFF is a great opportunity for all of us. We need a new MFF with a purpose, one that is specifically targeted to support our main policy priorities: competitiveness and security.

And we will certainly focus our work on this in the coming months, counting on your support to deliver on these issues.