Today we are celebrating the most successful 60-year period in the history of a free Europe. Yet today, more than ever, people are turning their backs on the European project.

Both from within and outside the European Union, ultra-nationalism, populism and individualism are on the rise. For the first time, instead of welcoming the accession of new countries, we find ourselves having to come to terms with the United Kingdom’s departure.

For these reasons, the occasion calls for more than just fine rhetoric. We need to bring Europe closer to its citizens by offering practical solutions to their problems.

Our response to populism must be a Europe that produces results: reducing unemployment, managing migration, guaranteeing citizens’ security and protecting the environment.

Now is not a time for disunity, for blaming other institutions or EU governments for past mistakes. That will get us nowhere. Now is the time to show courage and accept responsibility for finding joint solutions to our problems, in the interests of the peoples of Europe.

If unemployment, particularly among our youth, is to be reduced, we need a more competitive Europe attuned to the needs of the real economy. In addition to the Stability and Growth Pact that helps to ensure EU countries pursue sound public finances and coordinate their fiscal policies, we need a ‘Generational Pact’.

We cannot leave unmanageable debts and an inefficient economy that hampers job creation to young people. We must ensure that they too enjoy the benefits that our social market economy have brought us.

Tough measures to put our budgets on a sound footing are not enough. We need to develop policies that foster investment, manufacturing, services and the digital economy, drawing on the opportunities offered by the Single Market. We need to improve European economic governance. Budgetary flexibility and the use of European funds should be conditional on those funds being spent properly and on the implementation of reforms improving economic and administrative efficiency.

This is how we can pave the way to efficient economic convergence, an essential step if the euro is to benefit all Europeans.

We need simpler rules and procedures that do not stifle our citizens and our businesses. We must not bog them down with policy details

We need simpler rules and procedures that do not stifle our citizens and our businesses. We must not bog them down with policy details. Instead, we need to concentrate on the global challenges facing us: foreign policy, defence, trade, climate change.

No European state acting alone is strong enough to negotiate successfully with the US, China or Russia. It is only by working together that we can ensure that the interests of each of our member states are best looked after.

By acting together, we can guarantee Europe’s high-quality products access to world markets, underpinned by clear rules which put a stop to unfair competition.

We also need a European defence market and defence industry, so we can defend ourselves more effectively, with each member state pulling its weight.

We must generate military synergies and develop military capabilities that can be coordinated easily, even though they are drawn from different countries.

We must foster greater mutual trust if we are to protect our citizens against terrorism and crime and combat tax evasion. Our intelligence services, courts, police forces and anti-fraud agencies must work together and exchange information. By the same token, if we are to monitor our borders more effectively, we need to pool more of our resources together, backing the European Border and Coast Guard Agency.

While abiding by the principle of solidarity, we need to both guarantee the right of asylum and reform the Dublin Regulation to make it more effective. We must be just as rigorous in taking in people who qualify for asylum as we are in countering illegal immigration.

If we are to address an epochal phenomenon bound up with demographic growth, climate change, terrorism, war and poverty, we need a joint strategy that focuses on development in Africa. We cannot leave the management of migration to people traffickers and terrorists.

We need robust economic diplomacy if we are to facilitate and speed up returns and set up reception centres in North Africa in cooperation with the UN and ease migratory pressures.

We need a Marshall Plan for Africa, involving greater investment and transfers of expertise in the areas of security, infrastructure, clean energy, entrepreneurship, training and administrative capacity-building. If we want to address these challenges properly, we have to grasp the fact that today European unity is more important than ever. Europe needs to be changed, not weakened.

We can reflect on our mistakes, on what needs to be improved.

However, we must not become discouraged or lose our sense of pride in what we have achieved together.

We have rejected capital punishment, the world looks to us to respond when journalists are im-prisoned, when women are the victims of violence or are denied their rights, and when opposition politicians are threatened or detained. We are a beacon of commitment to fundamental rights. This makes us much more than just a market or a currency.

All of us have a responsibility to show even greater strength and courage in exercising our role as defenders of the universal values that underpin the predominant raison d’être of our Union.

Europe is a success story when it embodies dreams of progress, prosperity, freedom and peace.

I refuse to believe that Europeans have lost that desire to dream. It is up to us, today, to convert the image of a distant, ineffective, bureaucratic Europe into one that rekindles the passion of our people for a Europe that once again makes them feel that they are part of a historic project.

This is the greatest legacy that Europeans can pass on to future generations.

Antonio Tajani is president of the European Parliament.