Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I believe that the present time makes it possible for us to observe what a misjudgment it is for European states, with their present dimensions, to define their interests solely in national terms, and how impossible it is to get national interests to prevail in global disputes such as these. We now see this demonstrated by the tragic situation in which the British prime minister finds himself, having been so faithful in his support for the Americans; his inability to produce the right results means that he may well now be at a disadvantage. One can also look at this with a certain amount of cynicism, for the one thing that is abundantly clear is that those who act against the interests of the European Union, by failing to seek common positions in accordance with Article 11 of the Treaty of Nice, will not be among the winners in this dispute or in any other, whether they wanted to join in no matter what happened and under any circumstances, or, like the German Federal Chancellor, wanted no part in it whatever. This is why it is the larger countries that have to understand the fact – of which this crisis is for this reason a helpful demonstration – that the self-interest of a country's own citizens can be made to prevail only if we find something where all the European states' interests converge and, together, use that to carry some weight. It is for this reason that I hope that this crisis, rather than damaging the development of a European foreign and security policy, will serve as a catalyst that will enable us to make the necessary progress on this issue. If the United States of America declares war unilaterally, we will have great problems persuading our people of that war's legitimacy. It will be extremely difficult to restart the transatlantic dialogue, and, above all, to gain our citizens' support for it. I believe that it is very much in our common interest that this situation should not be detrimental to transatlantic relations in the long term, and that we must, for this reason, become strong enough to make our visions real and effective in the immediate aftermath of any war in Iraq, – visions that will enable us, quite independently of the security alliance that is NATO, to put transatlantic relations on a new footing in order to make them sustainable in the long term and thereby to gain public support for this relationship on both sides of the Atlantic. Our plans for the future simply cannot involve the formation of axes with Moscow and Peking, and our choice of role models alienating us from the United States of America, a country with which we have values in common. (Applause) I do think, though, that this means that we as the European Union – if we speak with one voice – have to make it clear that, in the fight against dictators like Saddam Hussein and against international terrorism, military action may well be important, but that this war can be won on the global stage only if we possess the capacity for prevention and cultural dialogue, are aware of the concept of social justice, and can work on a large scale in dealing with this subject matter as a whole. I believe that we have to gain the insight that peace can be brought to the world only if the use of military force does not exclude the use of other means.

Political group: PPE-DE