Madam President, I believe, as the other speakers have said, that this is a significant formal occasion today, because we have for the first time in plenary the High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy. It has been said that he has three jobs but only one salary. But an even greater marvel is that he has three such great, large, heavy hats and only one head to wear them on. High Representative, we wish you every success in this task. As regards your role, we hope, above all, that you may contribute to closing the gap between the aspirations and reality of European foreign policy. The challenge that you undertake is at the core of what we do. To take an example, in 1992 we as a Union drew up the Petersberg Tasks which offered comprehensive non-military and military security options. The aspirations set out in those Tasks were perhaps most rudely challenged by Kosovo where the gap between aspirations and reality was cruelly exposed by an absence of an appropriate operational substance. The highest priority for you now is to begin to give operational content and meaning to both the non-military and military challenges of Petersberg, not least, given the several hats you wear, particularly the military ones. My own group, the Group of the European Liberal, Democrat and Reform Party, is strongly committed to the general concept of developing a capacity for autonomous European action which correctly has been identified as a rapid response capability with the necessary logistical support. This will perhaps require some re-allocation of resources. This issue of cost will have to become a parallel priority in our debates. We are committed to a capability for autonomous EU action in my group. We are somewhat sceptical about the degree to which this should be autonomous of transatlantic relations. In so far as you have dealt with the issue in broad transatlantic terms, my group welcomes strongly that emphasis. A second point I would like to raise is the question of the European Union and the coordination of our aid policies and our foreign policies. I should like to say to both Mr Solana and Mr Patten that there is an enormous challenge to bring greater political coherence to this task. The Union or its Member States account for half of all the world’s humanitarian aid and half of all international development aid. The Union gives three-fifths of all aid to Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States. But we have nothing like a proportionate say and influence in terms of foreign policy. This is a core challenge that we look to you and to the Commission to resolve in terms of foreign policy. If we develop this operational capacity through the Petersberg Tasks, if we develop more coherence in aid and foreign policy, how can we then adopt more coherent policies in international fora? We have a great density of institutional relations – we have touched on some of them in the debate already. In particular, I want to signal on behalf of my group an interest in the non-debate that waxes and wanes every so often about the reform of the UN Security Council. Without prejudice to the arrangements in existing Member States, it is a question that we must look at in due course. If we are really to have a non-military as well as military capacity, an effective voice at the Security Council table would be important especially in our outreach beyond Europe itself. This is therefore something we would put down as a marker. In his hearing before the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, Common Security and Defence Policy, Mr Solana talked about having a less declaratory and more active foreign policy. We agree whole-heartedly with that, and I would say one of the tests that we would have in the back of our minds as a group is this: in five years’ time will we have exported stability to south-eastern Europe, or will we still be importing the consequences of instability? This is for us a core challenge. Today is the tenth anniversary of the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia as it then was. I hope, Mr Solana, that you will use your role to give an added sense of political urgency to the task of enlargement, rather than to promote procrastination. I hope that you will use your voice to teach the lessons to be learned from the former Yugoslavia. It is an ambitious, difficult task. We wish you well. You will have the full support and goodwill of my group.

Political group: ELDR