Mr President, I have two brief comments to make to the previous speaker, my esteemed colleague Mr Oostlander. I am pleased that that he wishes to vote in favour of the Ludford report, but I am not so pleased at his contention that the European Union is a community of Christian values and I should like to correct that directly. Christianity contributes to the catalogue of values of the European Union, but there are also other currents which have found their way into the catalogue of values of the European Union and I think it is important that we establish this once and for all. (Applause) As far as the debate on the Ludford and Haarder reports is concerned, allow me to make a few technical observations on behalf of my Group. Mr Haarder submitted an excellent draft report to the committee and the committee tabled 170 proposed amendments and 22 compromise amendments, making a total of 192 amendments. The committee spent days discussing them and then voted on a largely amended report and now we have another 69 proposed amendments here in plenary. There is nothing dramatic about this per se, but nearly half the proposed amendments are from the group which calls itself TDI: the Technical Group of Independent Members. This is the combination of Mrs Bonino and Mr Le Pen, in itself a sensational combination, but this club never takes part in debates on technical work. These ladies and gentlemen are never present in committee. They never take part in detailed discussions of the problems. Why then do we always have these proposed amendments in plenary? The answer is in their speeches, which we have already had the pleasure of here today. They want to use this forum to bring their platitudes to the attention of as wide an audience as possible throughout the world. Technical work, no thank you. Simplified rabble-rousing, yes please. That is the political strategy of the extreme right in this House. The second point which I wish to address is this: when we discuss the human rights situation inside the European Union, then, as Mr Ceyhun rightly said, what we are discussing is the introspection which we are obliged to engage in if we wish to discuss human rights violations in other parts of the world and if we want to tell candidate countries that we are critical of ourselves, that we get out our own measuring rod when it comes to respect for human rights at home. This is important, because only those who are critical of themselves have the right to criticise others. That is why these reports, both Baroness Ludford’s antiracism report and Mr Haarder’s human rights report, pave the way. The annual debate on these matters paves the way for the basic political orientation of the European Union. And when I learn that these reports are being abused for prosaic domestic policy considerations, then those who practise this abuse are ill-advised. I refer to Article 38 of the Haarder report on separating the careers of judges and investigating magistrates, on which Mr Cornillet, who is present here, has tabled an amendment which, basically, is about the careers of judges and investigating magistrates in Italy. I just wonder what that has to do with human rights. Anyone who abuses a human rights report in order to make national domestic policy has missed the point completely. As far as the fuss in points 41 and 42 about Savoyard princes being allowed to enter Italy is concerned, I fail to see exactly how human rights are being violated. Anyone who wants to hold a serious discussion on human rights in the EU should talk about human rights and not abuse these valuable and excellent reports for tactical domestic policy games. (Applause)

Political group: PSE