Mr President, as a Spanish Member of this Parliament, as a Valencian and as a member of the European People’s Party, I shall not take too long to say that I consider the Valencia Summit to have been a success. I do wish to reiterate what other Members of this House have said, however. I consider it to be a success that the summit took place in such difficult circumstances; it is a success that it was attended by twenty-five of the twenty-seven Members who were invited; it was a success that a joint action plan was agreed on by consensus and I consider it to have been a success that a conclusion was reached – explained better than I can by Commissioner Patten: in order to speed up the Barcelona Process, the peace process in the Middle East must be speeded up but there will be no stable peace in the Middle East unless it is achieved within a framework of stability, development and cooperation such as the framework put forward in Barcelona. Having said this, I am not going to repeat any of the solutions that have been put forward for the Middle East. There clearly needs to be an end to the killings that we have condemned here so rigorously and with such sadness, and political dialogue must be re-established on the basis of international law. The President-in-Office of the Council has referred to all the statements detailing how this needs to be undertaken, from the Madrid Conference or the Oslo process to the United Nations resolutions. What is hard to explain to our voters, to the media or to our visitors is how the European Union, which is Israel’s largest trading partner and the main donor to the Palestinian Authority, is unable to do any more than it is currently doing. I agree that it was very positive that our positions were reaffirmed in Valencia. I also agree that our mission to the Middle East is a success, particularly because it is repairing the damage suffered by the previous mission but, I repeat, we will have to explain to our voters what we are going to do, how we are going to do it and when we are going to do it, as long as it is soon. With regard to the Barcelona Process, the action plan starts by acknowledging that what is needed is literally ‘momentum’, which simply means accepting that the 1995 Barcelona Process has made slower progress than originally expected and, of course, much slower progress than the needs we have been discussing here require, when we talk about the Mediterranean as a strategic border, when we talk about the 45 million new jobs that must be created on the southern shore of the Mediterranean in order to maintain current levels of unemployment. I repeat that in Valencia it was acknowledged that there is a gap – actually an enormous distance – between what we want to achieve, that is, what is needed, and what we are going to do. I welcome the fact that the fight against terrorism and the fight against drugs were discussed. I welcome the fact that the idea of establishing a free trade area by 2010 was reaffirmed, but I wish to emphasise that in order for there to be a free trade area, there must be goods to trade. We therefore need to be more effective and more flexible in our approach to the MEDA Plan, in economic cooperation, and to be less hesitant about setting up the Euro-Mediterranean Bank. Does this Parliament want such a bank? Do our partners in the southern Mediterranean want this? Do certain members of the Council? The Spanish Presidency wants it, of course; let us also convince everyone else that it is much needed. To conclude, Mr President, I wish to emphasise that a foundation working for multicultural dialogue is absolutely crucial. It is impossible, however, to create a foundation without financial support. Without financial support there can be neither a foundation nor spiritual exercises, however modest they may be.

Political group: PPE-DE