Would the digital continent therefore be the only one where the value created does not lie with whoever truly creates it, but rather with whoever transports it, whoever brings it to its final consumer? So if we are here today, if we have addressed all the challenges I have just mentioned, if we are still standing, it is because we have had emotions, a common culture, because the authors are the people who etymologically hold what is most important to us and who hold true authority in Europe. Copyright must therefore be defended in this contemporary digital space. And it is the dignity of Europe, its very ability to exist and not to break up into a continent of similar states that means that, to succeed in this transition, we must defend fair remuneration for all authors and for all forms of digital creation.

The final key to our sovereignty is industrial and monetary economic power. Making the heart of Europe an economic and industrial power naturally requires the energy and digital technology policies I have just mentioned. It also means having an ambitious space policy and consolidating a competitive European industry on a global scale. But longterm economic power can only be built around a single currency, which is why I am so firmly attached to the ambitions of the eurozone. I am not ashamed of belonging to the eurozone, I’m sorry if some people are, and I think that it neither relieves nor pleases any non-eurozone EU member state that those who share the euro are afraid to say that they do so in order to do something with it.

Because it is through this Economic and Monetary Union, at its heart, that we can create the heart of an integrated Europe. I know there are questions and concerns about this issue, and I want to be clear: the fundamental goal is not to find a mechanism which will magically solve all our problems, if there were one, we would have already created it. It is not to pool our past debts, nor to solve public financing problems in one state or another, it is to reduce unemployment, which still affects one young person in five in the eurozone. So what we need is a longterm economic and political strategy, and our challenge within the eurozone is to work out how to make it an economic power which can compete with China and the United States, and how to achieve what for the past 10 years we have failed to do: to create jobs and ensure that today’s generation of young people are not destined for unemployment because of our failures and instability!