Madam President, Commissioner, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, although, when cooperation between ASEAN and the EU is mentioned, most people take it to refer to the ASEM process, that is to say the meeting of Heads of State and of Government, ASEP, the important meeting of parliamentarians from Europe and Asia, must not be overlooked. Cooperation in this area is so important that one of our partners must not be forgotten. We need both of them! We have, in the course of time, built up very intensive ventures in economic cooperation, and Asia is in any case the European Union's most important trading partner. We have built up good relations in the cultural sphere, but what we need is to step up political cooperation, quite simply because geopolitical conflicts and problems have an effect on the European Union. Consider terrorism, consider internationally organised crime, consider migration, consider environmental issues and the many other problems we have. So I welcome the initiatives taken in this report, as well as the Commission proposals, and congratulate the rapporteur on the very precise proposals he has made. I would, though, like to add some of my own, which I believe will further improve cooperation. The first is that we should arrange, in future, for an ASEP meeting to be held, if at all possible, prior to every ASEM Summit, in order to draft tangible proposals and, in second place, in order that we should move on, as Mr Jarzembowski has just said, instead of just putting dialogues on the record in broad terms, to coming to definite decisions and setting out in definite terms for these summits resolutions and objectives that can and must be put into operation. A number of us from this House, led by the distinguished Lord Inglewood, took part in the ASEP meeting from 26 to 28 August, at which we were exemplary in so far as we wrapped up a very solid package in the area of counter-terrorism. There I had the opportunity to act as coordinator, and I will ask you, as President of the Council, and you, as the Commission's representative, to incorporate these specific points from the terrorism package at the next ASEM Summit. Let me pick out a number of proposals. We proposed unanimously that the UN should attempt to come up with a uniform definition of terrorism that would then be binding on all our States. We decided on the establishment of a network facilitating cooperation in counter-terrorism, the exchange of information, mutual aid – including aid of a technological nature – in dealing with chemical or bacteriological weapons or the training of experts. At this meeting, we made proposals for security systems in transport by land, sea and air to be improved to defined standards, and we also proposed that, at last, all terrorist acts, including conspiracy, incitement, and membership of terrorist organisations should be classified as serious offences and punished as such in all Asian states. Finally, we also resolved that protection and help be afforded to the victims of terrorism. We will be successful in the struggle against terrorism only when Europe itself takes measures that work, when cooperation with the USA is developed and made to work, and if, at the end of the day, we also succeed in developing first-rate cooperative projects with our Asian partners in the fight against terrorism. I beg you, Commissioner, and you Bertel Haarder, my much-respected former fellow Member of this House, to take account of these proposals from ASEP at the Copenhagen Summit and take them on board. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE