Mr President, the comments by the previous speaker, Mr Tannock, should show Mr Newton Dunn why Mrs Gebhardt rejects his amendment. The German government has taken an initiative to restrict and gain better control of the counterfeiting of travel documents – and that is in the context of the freedom of movement in the European Union. Mr Newton Dunn has now, on the pretext that the Parliament could not have such a strong influence under the third pillar as with his legal base, chosen the approach to amend the legal base and in doing so he has limited the target group taken into consideration to those who are affected under the first pillar within the meaning of the security policy of the European Union. That then led to a Member such as Mr Tannock giving an inflammatory speech about immigration! That goes together very well if you have the philosophy of a British Tory, which amounts to an anti-European view! However, this only marginally concerns Germany’s initiative to strengthen the security structures in Europe. But it does provide pretexts for the politicians who in the meantime colour every debate on security in Europe with the subject of illegal immigration. I should just like to say something here to our colleague from London: having heard your speech, I must ask you a question in return. Is Europe now really an immigration continent or not? If you answer in the affirmative with your lively description that Europe is an immigration continent should we not finally take action and create legal structures on immigration? You would be the first to say ‘no’, I am quite sure of that! We are not a continent of immigration and we don’t need any immigration rules! But what does the whole debate show us? Mr Newton Dunn has perhaps chosen a sensible approach from the viewpoint of the European Parliament in order to increase our influence. We have already seen the political effects that that has. Remaining under the third pillar does integrate more groups of people, as Mrs Gebhardt has just said, that is to say, all criminals who forge travel documents. But we have not integrated the Parliament as strongly as with the Newton Dunn legal base. Overall, that shows that neither the third pillar nor the marginal transfer of responsibilities to another pillar are sufficient to create efficient security structures in Europe. Commissioner, you must together with us make that clear to the Council. You did so in Tampere, you did it before, and you must do it again. The debate here shows that not all of our efforts bear fruit, because the government cooperation is not sufficient to convert the needs resulting from the internal market structure and the associated speed of integration into new legislation on security structures in Europe and it does not operate in accordance with Amsterdam. We must draw the necessary conclusions from this, otherwise it will not work in practice. Because we are arguing here about the legal bases, we are conducting some stupid debates about illegal immigration – that is something for the Tory Party conference, but ineffective for Europe – and we are completely neglecting what we should do, that is, create effective legislation to restrict the counterfeiting of documents, both by those who illegally provide access to Europe and those who, as Mrs Gebhardt rightly said, travel thorough Europe with a suitcase full of heroin but with counterfeit documents too. Mr Newton Dunn, because we are of the view that in weighing up your proposal, that is a very worthy one, and the intention that the German Council Presidency had in its time, we must decide in favour of the greater target area, we shall reject your amendment, not only because of the legal base, but as a consequence of all the others, which does not alter the fact that you have undertaken a careful piece of work. You have indeed done that, but on this subject we differ greatly in our political views!

Political group: PSE