Mr President, first I would like to say that I entirely agree with what Mr Vitorino said about the problems besetting our quest for an area of justice, freedom and security, while remaining very much aware that we cannot have an area of security without justice or justice without police. We should be lucid enough to realise that generally speaking Europe is in quite a privileged position in this respect, for we have a fairly well-established level of citizens’ freedoms, even though we have to remain very vigilant. We know how to alternate Community responses – and I hope the arrest warrant and our response will be worthy of us – with the proper degree of subsidiarity. We base our activity on a system of values that have been set out and listed in the Charter of Fundamental Rights and on an approach under which monitoring by the states of the level of citizens’ freedoms alternates with recourse to the Court of Justice, both the Court of Justice of the European Communities and the Strasbourg Court. Unfortunately, however, Europe is not an oasis and the world is interactive: if I may put it this way, the world around us does not stand still, which justifies taking external action in the field of justice and home affairs. First there are the candidate countries. We cannot allow any differentiation in respect of these countries. Naturally, we will have to require the same level and the same perception of citizens’ freedoms. Then there are the countries close to us, the countries that will become close to us by what I might call capillary action. I am thinking of countries such as Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine, in respect of which we will have to decide how to act. Lastly there are the partner countries, countries that are the source of immigrants and asylum seekers and with which we must maintain a constant dialogue. Hence the need for external action. We have two types of external action. The first type is rather messianic, involving the export and globalisation of law and order and the constitutional state as we understand it. Then we have protective action vis-à-vis this external world, because, of course, there are crimes and scourges that know no frontiers, a problem to which we will have to find the appropriate answers, without of course ever abandoning the values we have set out and proclaimed. In this respect I would like to defend the European Parliament, which has to play its full role, because traditionally parliaments are meant to be the custodians of citizens’ freedoms and we have to play this role. Obviously this means more than involving our Parliament in the strategy and implementation of external actions in the field of justice and home affairs. It is also a question of our resources. In this regard, in my few remaining seconds of speaking time and under the authority of Mr Watson, the chairman of our Committee on Citizens’ Freedom and Rights, Justice and Home Affairs, I would plead for this committee to be given additional resources in terms of staffing. After many struggles, including a decision this Chamber adopted unanimously, we have managed to acquire one extra member of staff for the committee, although this person is in fact employed by DG IV; meanwhile the Committee on Foreign Affairs has nine members of staff assigned to human rights. I find it irresponsible that if a Parliament wants to give its Committee on Citizens’ Freedoms the resources to do its job, it does not to give it the staff needed to assist the colleagues who are responsible for the committee’s reports.

Political group: PPE-DE