Mr President, as we know, Europe is a continent of widely differing peoples and cultures, but one thing is certain: there is nothing surprising in the concern which has greeted your arrival at the helm of the Union. Italy is tainted with a stain which could well spread to the rest of the new Union: an extraordinary concentration of power, primarily economic and media power but also political power, which has placed you in a position, inter alia, where you are now above the law. However, we realise that just continually protesting will not suffice: we prefer to act. During these six months too, we will continue to urge the Commission to respect its undertaking to present a communication on the degree of pluralism of the media in the Union and to fulfil its role as guardian of the Treaties. Indeed, we feel that Italy is rather hesitant, so to speak, when it comes to enforcing the ‘Television without Frontiers’ directive. We have fought to have pluralism included among the founding values of the new European Constitution, so that the lack of a legal basis can no longer be used as an excuse not to take action in Europe regarding media concentration and pluralism. At a time of economic crisis, it is usual to endeavour to find ways of boosting the economy. We know that Italy has extremely creative ministers who are anxious to expound their ambitious plans for bridges, tunnels and motorways at European level. We are ready to enter into constructive dialogue on TENs and the role of the EIB, but we must be under no illusion. It is not true that only three of the 14 projects decided on at Essen were executed because of a lack of funds: if there were not enough investors, one reason is that the appropriateness, socio-economic viability and – we would add –environmental sustainability of many of those projects were not guaranteed. We must recapture the spirit of the Delors plan and two powerful principles contained in the Commission’s White Paper on Transport Policy, which I am afraid we sometimes all appear to disregard: investments must serve not just to fill Europe with infrastructure but to promote economic and social cohesion too. We must banish the idea that economic growth must of necessity go hand in hand with transport growth, for, otherwise, we will soon find ourselves stuck in a permanent traffic jam. It makes no sense to spend EUR 6 billion on the Messina bridge to shorten journeys by half an hour when thousands of Sicilians are without drinking water and it takes three hours to complete a 100-km journey by train. It makes no sense to invest 15 years of work in a 54-km tunnel for the Turin-Lyons link, drilling a hole through a mountain full of asbestos, when modernising and enhancing the present line would make it possible to absorb twice as much freight traffic in five years. We do not want to discuss grandiose projects which may not be achievable – we want investment which promotes innovation, renewable energies and land regeneration with regard to which the participation and acceptance of the citizens living in the areas concerned are seen as an asset rather than an annoying obstacle. President-in-Office, your European programme states clearly in black and white that we must open a new season and that we must combat environmental bureaucracies. This is an interesting circumlocution, which we believe refers to the desire to extend to Europe a principle which is in great vogue in Italy – total deregulation. We will oppose this attempt to export Italian produce, which is particularly risky at the time of enlargement, for it directly serves the policy of making everything subservient to infrastructure and is based on an antiquated concept of the environment as a commodity to be used and sold off. Italy is second only to Spain when it comes to breaches of environment legislation. Your government, President-in-Office, has changed the laws on waste so as to make monitoring more difficult, even though 11 million tonnes of waste are lost without trace and the turnover of the ecomafia is estimated to be around EUR 2.5 billion every year in Italy. It has weakened the laws on the assessment of environmental impact so much that it has become purely a formality. It has consented to the indiscriminate promotion of hunting in parks by regional authorities. For this year, it has appropriated EUR 56 million for protected areas, which is less than the cost of building 1 km of motorway tunnel. It is preparing to decriminalise environmental offences across the board. In all this, it is disregarding Community law. In this matter too, as in the issue of the media, we feel that this is a situation specific to Italy. President Prodi, in a sector in which the Union has genuine competences and international responsibilities, we fear that the unnecessarily complicated infringement procedure is no longer sufficient, and that by maintaining an excessively tolerant attitude and giving more consideration to the details of form than to substance we are in serious danger of helping to render Community legislation on the environment completely ineffective. President-in-Office, as regards foreign policy, we would all like to benefit from your excellent relations with President Bush, but certainly not to organise an impossible contest in military expenditure, maybe reducing contributions to development cooperation organisations in order to fund the Italian presence in Iraq. A fundamental dispute has arisen with the Bush administration over the International Criminal Court. We would like to know, President-in-Office, whether you are going to press ahead with and update the action plan for the Court, which was adopted in May 2002. Then you are on excellent terms with President Putin. Once again, it is our genuine hope that we will all be able to benefit from this friendship. You have listed all the countries in the world: how can you forget Chechnya? We need incisive action to bring about resolution of this conflict. We must adopt an initiative, and we will support you if you do so, with a view to convening a regional conference for the Caucasus in which all the current conflicts can be addressed without fail. Moreover, President-in-Office, we believe that we and you would be proud if you succeeded in persuading President Putin to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. One final word on the European Constitution. We will support the Italian Presidency’s endeavours to achieve a short Intergovernmental Conference so as not to disperse the – moreover, few – positive results of the Convention. However, President-in-Office, you must keep nuclear energy out of the Constitution, and I call upon the deputy Prime Minister, Mr Fini, to help us keep it out. Just as for GMOs, it would be unwise to underestimate the negative reaction of the citizens of many European countries, Italy included, when faced with the explicit promotion of such a costly, dangerous source of energy, as is currently contained in the Constitution. (Applause from the left)

Political group: Verts-ALE