Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, including those of you with observer status, if you are awake. As I did not start working in Parliament until April, the same time as the observer Members, I would like to mention them. I feel I am still a little like an observer. I now have the honour to speak in plenary for the first time, and I am happy that a subject has come my way that I feel is very personal to me, having acquired the kind of energy and invigoration that comes from a lifetime of sport. Perhaps that is the reason why we are still all in good shape here. I am pleased to be able to say that the rapporteur, Mrs Fraisse, has incorporated, if not quite all, then very many of the amendments proposed by the Group of the in our committee debate. With these amendments our group has attempted to highlight the same matter that the rapporteur, Mrs Fraisse, has included to some degree in her report. Women’s sport is associated with a problem that is also familiar in the political and economic sphere: participation in decision-making. Real action on equality is needed to solve it. We should remember that sport does not just mean competitive sport, peak performance or world records. Sport and exercise for most people are ways of achieving a healthy, balanced life in a society that is ever more demanding and hectic. This is an aspect that we wish to highlight more emphatically in the report. Exercise and sport promote vitality, in both individual and team events. There are also a number of other matters whose importance I now wish to stress, having been given the floor. It would be very important were opportunities to participate in sport to be were stepped up for people other than those who enjoy perfect health. Sport is also a very effective, mentally therapeutic and socially beneficial way of improving the quality of life of sick and disabled people and helping them to cope in everyday life. Those who cannot walk using their own legs can ride, borrowing the legs of the horse, as it were. That is sport. Another important point to take into consideration, I think, is that ageing women and men should also be given the very same opportunities to take exercise and practise sport as the young and agile. Similarly, the beneficial effect of sport and its ability to rehabilitate cannot be stressed too much at this point. These two very important issues have now been added to the report. I would have nevertheless liked to have it emphasised rather more strongly how sport is the most wonderful way of integrating migrants, women and children, into a new society. Despite everything, we are very pleased with the report and we are only asking for a few separate votes on some points. I hope special attention will be given to the fact that sport as a subject for study in school should not be judged using the same indicators as for intellectual disciplines such as foreign languages and mathematics. I would also hope the reference to sport as an individual’s fundamental right will be omitted from the report. I am of the opinion that sport is the right of all people, but I believe the concept ‘fundamental right’ would suffer inflation in this context. The report should also leave out the list naming those countries that did not send mixed teams to the last Olympic Games, although it is important to appeal to all countries to send mixed teams. If this report gets through the parliamentary debate in tomorrow’s vote, as I hope it does, I will nevertheless be a little sceptical about what the Commission and the Member States will do about this matter. For that reason it would also be very important if we could have a follow-up to the report, and I now appeal to the Commissioner responsible and ask if we could have a follow-up report on the recommendations contained in this report before the current parliamentary terms ends in 2004. I would like to thank Mrs Fraisse for this report and for her passionate defence of this issue as a whole.

Political group: Verts-ALE