Mr President, on behalf of the Group of the European People’s Party, I should like to warmly congratulate Mrs Gebhardt on the way in which she has drawn up this report and also to reiterate something she has said: we hope the word ‘provisional’ can soon be dropped from the name of this Eurojust unit. Mr President, if I may link this debate to the previous one, we obviously have here another example of how this area of freedom, security and justice has grown lopsided. Area of freedom, but the freedoms, the guarantees for citizens are practically unheard of. The area of security is much more developed, with the growth of Europol over the years, to which we have today added the fight against organised crime; but this is the repressive function of the State. We have yet to develop the justice aspect – and this is now urgent – for it is the only way of counterbalancing this repressive function of the State with the function of administering justice or, as Mrs Gebhardt has so rightly said, of giving European citizens fundamental judicial security. The Gebhardt report places special emphasis on these three points. It sets out greater guarantees, that is, it goes towards creating this area of freedoms, as shown by Amendment No 3 or Amendment No 5, which ensure that the personal details of citizens, of the accused, of defendants are protected with the greatest care; and Amendment No 10, which ensures that only where the legislation of a Member State so permits may a police officer form part of this initial unit. This is the sense of the guarantees: to push forward this aspect of freedoms. But Mrs Gebhardt’s amendments also go towards improving effectiveness: being more effective, more reasonably effective. One example is her Amendment No 9, which moves that, in future, this initiative should be taken into account in the final decisions made on the Eurojust unit. Lastly, I believe there is an intention that we should be more consistent with this call to create an area of freedom, security and justice. This idea comes across quite clearly in the Gebhardt report. Thus, there are changes that will seem to many to be simply a matter of appearance, but in which the words betray what lies behind them: instead of contributing within the framework of respect there is an insistence on close collaboration; instead of coordination, there is talk of joint action: the report goes that one step further. Mr President, we come back again to the previous debate. If we are to develop this area we have to establish or strengthen that mutual trust between the States which allowed us to lay down common rules in the internal market. This mutual trust now has to take a further leap, and I realise it is a qualitative leap from the viewpoint of national cultures. This mutual trust has to reach this area of justice and go on from there to mutual recognition. There cannot be mutual recognition if there is no mutual trust between States on which to found it. In the previous debate a moment ago, Commissioner Vitorino highlighted it very well by calling it by its name: reasons of State. Countries must not exclude cooperation within the European Union by invoking reasons of State; they will have to treat each other equally. Moreover, this is the purpose of extrapolating the principles that have served to construct the internal market: no discrimination on grounds of nationality. If, according to the state of which we are nationals we give certain information to a national judge, then clearly if we want to be consistent with the idea of developing this area of freedom, security and justice we must also give it to a judge in the European Union when we are asked for it, because this is the only way we are going to mould this mutual trust between the States in a manner that reaches the citizens. Mr President, in conclusion, I believe this is one step, a timid step, which we hope will soon be consolidated in the Eurojust network; we hope it will soon no longer be provisional but will become a permanent network.

Political group: PPE-DE