Mr President, first of all we should ask ourselves why we are debating issues to do with European defence in this Chamber, which is not particularly full, in the European Parliament. I am particularly pleased that Commissioner Barnier is here, because he was the one who brought the issue of European defence to the fore in the Convention. Right at the outset, I should like to explain briefly why we are addressing defence issues here in this Parliament. In 1999, the Heads of State and Government decided to establish a European crisis intervention force of between 50 000 and 60 000 troops. Since then, this crisis intervention force, which was actually a virtual force and not a regular European Union army, has however been deployed in two cases, first in a small operation in Macedonia, and then also in Bunia in the Congo under mainly French leadership. I come now to the European Parliament: on 10 April of this year, on the basis of the Morillon report, the European Parliament set out its views on defence policy, and in particular proposed a two-stage plan. At the time we had asked ourselves what we could learn from Maastricht. We learnt from Maastricht that first and foremost you only make progress in Europe if you set clear goals and deadlines for achieving them. We said that by the year 2009 we wanted to have made sufficient progress to be capable of carrying out an operation of the intensity and difficulty of the Kosovo conflict on our own, independently, or together with our allies. As a first step, the call was made in the Morillon report, and subsequently endorsed by a substantial majority in the European Parliament, for us to have a 50 000-strong crisis intervention force by 2004, a permanent crisis intervention force to be available around the clock for rescue operations and humanitarian duties. That then is what the European Parliament is calling for. I now turn, however, to arms policy: after the operations in the Balkans, we were told repeatedly by the American side that Europe only spent 50% of what the Americans spend on defence, but that measured in terms of efficiency it was only 10%. Why is that the case? In the United States there is only one buyer of arms and that is the Pentagon. In the European Union, there are not one but 15 buyers, which procure more or less the same things, but according to different criteria and using different methods, and cooperation in this sector leaves a great deal to be desired. We do not therefore have a common armaments market here, but continue to have 15 sub-markets. Our goal now must be – if we wish to move forward and spend European taxpayers' money more efficiently in this sector – actually to form a common market, which means dismantling barriers to trade between the Member States in this sector too. However, if we wish to dismantle these barriers to trade, we first need to ensure not only that there are common rules for the export of armaments, but also that these common rules are applied in the same way by the 15 Member States. Anything else would mean that the exports would first be transferred within the European Union to those countries with the laxest provisions, and that must not be allowed to happen. The European Union Code of Conduct on Arms Exports is undoubtedly our most developed body of legislation. But firstly it is only a code and it has only been transposed into law in some countries. The first demand that is made in my report is for this code to be made legally binding. That is the first issue. Member States may also declare unilaterally that the provisions are legally binding. In addition, we have to ensure, as soon as they are legally binding, that the authorities in the 15 Member States apply these provisions in exactly the same way, because that is the first and most important precondition for success. Secondly, the report calls for arms brokering to be better regulated. There is a certain element here of deals taking place in a grey area, brokered by people who should surely not be involved in this activity. That is why we are calling for all of those engaged in brokering activities to be registered, and think that a Europe-wide system of authorisation should be introduced for this activity. Thirdly, we note that it is relatively straightforward to ascertain who has manufactured the arms, and often this also tells you who owns them. It is unclear, however, how they are passed from one to the other. That is why we are calling for an international system to be set up that will make it possible to ascertain who has passed the arms to the end-users. There is a French proposal on this subject and we are calling for this to be used as a basis for ensuring that we obtain a full account of how the arms reach end-users, which is of decisive importance for security.

Political group: PPE-DE