Politics
(Strasbourg) David Maria Sassoli has taken his seat as President of the European Parliament, thanking in his address those MEPs who had elected him at the helm of the institution that “more than any other has a direct link with citizens, whom it has a duty to represent and defend”. Indeed, it is them whom he addressed in his acceptance speech, in which he outlined the key priorities of his presidency: “Our freedom is born out of the justice that we will be able to achieve and the solidarity that we will be able to foster”. “We are making a start to a parliamentary term where events place a great responsibility on us” and “no one can settle for maintaining the status quo”, the newly elected president said. Epochal changes call for “new ideas, the courage to combine great wisdom and extreme audacity”, like those shown by the founding fathers, Mr Sassoli stated. “We must have the strength to relaunch our integration process” and to make the EU “able to respond more strongly to the needs of our citizens and give real answers to their concerns, to their increasingly widespread sense of loss”. It is then important that we defend and promote the “founding values of freedom, dignity and solidarity”, every day, both in and outside of the EU. There is also a need for “our economic rules” to combine “growth, social protection and respect for the environment”.
