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In my mind the key task ahead of us, is to reconnect the freedoms that Europe offers with stability, security and opportunity. First of all: stability. The European project has been very ambitious and very successful. We were able to take big steps in reuniting a divided continent, rebuilding our economies and creating peace in the post-war era. But the post-war era is over. We need to rethink our common future and change the way we think about Europe. First, the time for big leaps in European integration has come to an end. Europe is not the answer to everything. We must be much more critical about expansion of the EU, deepening or widening, geographically or politically. Stability also means strengthening what we have built so far in order to make it less vulnerable. That's why I am pushing for the full completion of the Banking Union and Capital Markets Union. So the Monetary Union becomes an asset and not a risk to stability. Another example is Schengen. If we take away internal borders we must protect our outside borders. If we can't, then we are not a Union.
And that brings me to my second key value: security. Not being able to control and manage migration is a great cause for concern. This has to do with fear of criminality and terrorism. But it also has to do with the protection of our welfare state. Our much valued system of solidarity. And inevitably, any circle of solidarity has to be closed. You need to define who's part of our solidarity and therefore has access to our welfare system and who has not. A society with a strong welfare state, which I would strongly defend, requires selective migration. We need to control migration urgently. And we need to organize it together since we share a common outside border.
And that brings me to my last key value, after stability and security, and that is opportunity. Part of the strategy of Europe and the Eurozone is to push for structural reforms at national level to make the Eurozone more competitive. This term "structural reform" has over time got a very negative ring to it. People associate it with austerity and an attack on the welfare state.
Europe is unique for its high standards of socioeconomic security. This is something we should be very proud of. No part of the world has such a high level of wealth combined with such an extended welfare state. The European social model, with all its differences in different countries, is part of our heritage, part of our cultural DNA. And we must maintain it. Which also means we need to modernize it to make it sustainable for the future. This sometimes requires making difficult choices between the current cost of labour and future pension rights. Or between costs of solidarity today and investing in the future. We should maintain our welfare states but make sure that they create opportunities again, for all. So we should ensure fairness and equity. Between generations, between insiders and outsiders, between globalization's winners and losers.
So our reform agenda should shift in focus. First of all, during the Dutch presidency, we've put a lot of energy in getting a broad agreement to fight tax avoidance. Our national tax systems, also the Dutch, create loopholes which international companies happily use in order to pay as little tax as possible. And we need to fix this. It's a matter of fairness. And it allows us to lower taxes on labour and finance key public investments.
That brings me to my second priority. We need to aim for full employment again. In order to achieve this we need, besides higher level of investments, to reduce the costs of labour. The tax wedge on labour is very high in Europe and I have been pushing reforms on this in the Eurogroup. A number of countries have taken steps the last couple of years. Here in the Netherlands, for example, we reduced the tax wedge on labour, especially for the lower incomes, with 5 billion this year. It needs further work, for example by 'greening' our taxes and shifting tax to multinationals and capital. So much more people can get the opportunity to get into work again.
Thirdly, education is key. [...]