Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, this report, should it be adopted, will take us into uncharted territory. Why uncharted territory? Because it will give us the opportunity, on the basis of an interinstitutional agreement with the Council, to examine secret military documents and be party to certain information and will therefore enable us to develop a means of extending parliamentary scrutiny to these areas. This has been under negotiation for years and I should like in particular to thank the Swedish Presidency, now a distant memory, and the Spanish Presidency for their help, which has made it possible for us to negotiate here today. Of course this paper is not perfect. We are entering new territory here and that is why learning is also the order of the day. We must not, however, go too far at the outset, because this is a very sensitive area and at stake are the security interests of the Member States of the European Union and all of our fellow citizens. That is why everyone, both the Council and Parliament, first needs to learn how to work together and to build confidence, so that the necessary information and control processes can then be set in motion on this basis. That is why we have also made it clear that either of the two sides can terminate the agreement after two years, so as to draft a new agreement on the basis of the experience acquired, and that this is therefore not a permanent arrangement but just a first step on this sensitive issue of internal security. It has also been explicitly stated that this agreement in the field of foreign, security and defence policy is without prejudice to future agreements on the transparency of internal documents for internal policies. As has been said, agreements also need to be reached in these areas. I will make it quite clear that in my opinion it is quite conceivable, if not a necessity, that measures will be adopted in internal policy areas, where there are particular sensitivities due to the possible participation of third countries, and that these might go very much further even at the first attempt than is the case in this document. I believe that we have achieved something here that certainly bears comparison with the standards in national parliaments and that the security standards, which we ourselves need to develop in this House, will also certainly have their part to play in enabling us to meet the requirements, just as the five Members of the special committee will have to undergo security checks by their respective Member States. As you can see, there are no separate rules here either; the situation is comparable to that of national Members of Parliament. On this basis we can find solutions that will help us to make further progress. I should like to ask you to support both of these papers on amending the Rules of Procedure and on the agreement itself. I would also ask you to reject one of the amendments, because it concerns the extreme case of criminal offences being committed, by whichever side. This is something that could arise whenever the handling of public funds and public documents is involved. It is regulated elsewhere – not in the Rules of Procedure – and does not need to be regulated here. It is far more appropriate here to proceed in accordance with the traditional principle that action will be taken against anyone committing a criminal offence. Ultimately, of course, we rely on the consciences of those who know of any such criminal offences to speak out, so that action can be taken against their perpetrators. I think that this marks a step towards greater transparency and control of our foreign, security and defence policy, and if someone had said five or ten years ago that we would be negotiating the establishment of a committee of this kind in the European Parliament, I would not have thought it possible. This shows how far the European Union as a whole has come since the Treaty of Amsterdam and the Cologne Summit on security and defence policy. However, it also shows a commensurate need for parliamentary scrutiny. That is why I would urge the House to support this initiative.

Political group: PPE-DE