Mr President, the opportunity today to debate and subsequently vote on the Maaten report in second reading is an important one, a test of Parliament’s ability to live up to the expectations of citizens, who want institutions capable of making clear-cut decisions. Their way and concept of life, in which the protection of health is becoming increasingly important, are at stake. At this level, the work undertaken by the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy has been truly remarkable, thanks, in particular, to our rapporteur’s work. One thing must be made clear: we are not adopting a legislative framework to fight smoking, which continues to be the largest cause of death in the European Union; at least for the moment this is not possible and I, personally, would have many doubts if we intended to draw on, more or less secretly, an illusory prohibitionist philosophy. Harmonising the national laws concerning the manufacture, presentation and sale of smoking products at the highest possible level of health protection is something that we can and must do. As has been pointed out, there are four cornerstones of this directive: limiting the content of tar, nicotine and carbon monoxide; banning descriptors of cigarettes – ‘light’ or ‘ultra-light’ – which are universally acknowledged to be misleading; uniform regulations and, where necessary, prohibiting other ingredients and additives which are often responsible for increasing the risks for smokers and, above all, increasing their addiction; quantitative and qualitative reinforcement of the warnings of the gravity of the risk taken when lighting a cigarette and trying to dissuade the young from falling victim to this psycho-physical slavery. By merging three pre-existing directives, we are obviously staying strictly within the boundaries of improving the operation of the internal market without, however, renouncing forging ahead with a harm-reduction strategy and curbing a true scourge: smoking, which is costly in both social and economic terms. During this second reading, we have had two main concerns: firstly, political reconciliation of the aim of protecting health with the nevertheless valid point of view of production and employment. The example of applying new levels of toxic substances to cigarettes exported from the European Union as well, should apply to everyone. To uphold this basic principle, we have, to begin with, proposed extending the legal basis to include Article 133 of the Treaty, but above all, we have postponed the date by which Member States will be obliged to implement it to 1 January 2007. The second concern, of a specifically legal nature, has, on the other hand, encouraged us to increase the interdependence of the harmonisation of the market and the protection of health even further, by meticulously following the recommendations arising from the Court of Justice’s reasons for recently setting aside the Directive on advertising, reasons of which only a biased reading could lead one to conclude that the two aspects are incompatible. We have therefore carried out fruitful and important work, especially because the distances from the common position of the Council, but even more so, from the observations which were made in the Council following the vote in the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy, of which we had first-hand experience, are so small that there is a real chance for a swift and effective compromise. To ditch, as someone has proposed, all this work and with it the opportunity to send a positive message to the citizens is, of course, a valid proposal, but at least let us have the courage to do it in the name of an explicit political reason and not hide behind formal homage to the Treaty. We have made every effort to achieve the greatest possible unity of Parliament so that it can, as at other times, find the strength to appear to citizens as a sure point of reference, impervious to individual interests. If this proves not to be the case, at least the responsibilities will be clear and easily identifiable.

Political group: PSE