Mr President, Madam President-in-Office of the Council, Commissioner, in recent weeks we have frequently said it, and in the light of this annual report we should emphasise it once more: since 11 September we have not actually learnt anything new. It has become clear to us, however, and we have become more conscious of the fact that we need a new definition of security, that the old concepts of security policy actually no longer work and that, for this reason, a particular combination of external and internal security needs to be formed. It is no longer the case, you see, that a potential enemy can be unambiguously recognised behind a border; now the enemy also has the ability to be in our midst. Here, I believe, a coordinated approach needs to be agreed. Admittedly, we also know that this threat can no longer be fought by individual states because the challenge is international and runs across borders. That is why we also need to find cross-border solutions. Each individual European state only has a chance of guaranteeing the long-term peace and security of its own people if we pool our resources, in terms of military forces, in the field of prevention and in the field of civil crisis management, but also in terms of ensuring cooperation between our security bodies and intelligence services. For this reason, I believe, we have actually made considerable progress in the last two years in view of the decisions made since the Treaties of Amsterdam and Nice and, in particular, those made at Cologne and subsequent summits. On this basis, I think that we should press on with developing a European security and defence policy once the necessary conditions for doing so are in place. In our opinion, we have to recognise that it will be necessary to make certain structural changes to achieve this. This is because we believe that it will only work if, firstly, the Member States realise that only the joint institutions can act and that bilateral initiatives also weaken the individuals concerned, even if they think that it makes them appear particularly powerful in the media. The second point is that the structures in the different institutions will also have to dovetail to avoid there being any duplication of work. It does not, in my opinion, make any sense for there to be committees on civil crisis management in both the Commission and the Council, with the High Representative. That is why I wish, on behalf of the European Parliament, to repeat our position that in the long term the duties of the Commissioner for External Relations and those of the High Representative should be merged within the Commission. That should happen in order to ensure that there really is a uniform approach and so as to have uniform structures. This has nothing to do with the merits of those specifically involved at the moment; it is a question of structure. On this basis we must also, of course, make sure that this person has special relations with the Council so as to give their work the appropriate legitimacy at that level. I also think, however, that we can make it clear that added value really is being generated. I should like to give just a few examples here. I believe, for example, that the large anti-terrorism coalition would not have been formed in this way had it not been for the particular European influence exerted by the troika's travelling to the Middle East, which yielded significant results. I do not believe that the large anti-terrorism coalition will be able to exist in the long term if the European Union does not foster stability in the Mediterranean area through the Barcelona process. For this reason, I also believe that the European Union has the task of addressing the root causes which sow the emotional seeds of terrorism, whether it be in the Middle East, in the relations between Pakistan and India, or in other parts of the world where we should make a particular effort to make our contribution to securing peace. In this process we have to recognise that our relations with the United States take the form of a partnership and that, regardless of all our efforts to develop our own security and defence policy, NATO is still necessary because it alone is able to guarantee the collective security. If we wish to play a role in politics as a whole, however, we must also actively work to further develop our relations with Russia, build new bridges and provide those countries which at present cannot, should not or do not wish to be members of the European Union with a new framework and a new form of European economic area. Nevertheless, I should also like to say that all of this will only work if we are also prepared to make the money available in our national budgets to make it possible to really keep our pledge to provide 60 000 people for the Rapid Reaction Force. We will not be successful in terms of prevention and civil crisis management and we will not continue to play a key role in foreign policy, but will just be passive observers, including in our relations with Russia and the United States of America, if we do not plausibly demonstrate that we have our own military capability. It is often the case that prevention only works if it is possible to show the country in which you want to intervene to establish peace that you also have military options. It is often sufficient to possess a military capability – this is shown throughout history – to prevent military resources from even having to be deployed. That is why realising our vision of having a 60 000-strong Rapid Reaction Force, transport capabilities and our own satellite system by 2003 is decisive for the credibility of the future European foreign and security policy.

Political group: PPE-DE