Madam President, Madam President-in-Office, Mr President of the Commission, I would firstly like to draw attention to President-in-Office Anna Lindh’s statement that it was a pity not to be able to discuss human rights here today. I also welcome chairman Barón Crespo’s small penance, when he regretted that this discussion could not take place today. This is a very great pity as I know that Sweden is very dedicated to human rights policy and now this opportunity to enter into dialogue with Sweden has unfortunately passed. Madam President, to my group Gothenburg is above all a summit on sustainable development. We have waited for this for a long time and we do not want to lose this opportunity. The theme of sustainable development must not be overshadowed by a prominent guest but must now be taken seriously. In this context I must make a personal confession. I was a little impatient when the Commission did not seem to be preparing its own proposal on sustainable development and in conjunction with the Stockholm Summit I said that President of the Commission Romano Prodi was ecologically illiterate. Now I have to take back that statement as I have got to know the President of the Commission’s ideas on sustainable development and consider them to be very valuable. He is proposing binding targets and he is ready to commit to binding action in order, for example, to break the link between economic growth and growth in traffic. But unfortunately there is a risk that the summit will not be able to achieve this, i.e. set quantitative targets. Here I am perhaps a little disappointed with the efforts of Sweden as the holder of the presidency, which could have taken things further. The Kyoto Protocol is absolutely the key issue in Gothenburg. I welcome the fact that President of the Commission Romano Prodi wishes to hold a discussion which already looks at the period after the goals of Kyoto have been achieved. I disagree entirely with Mr Poettering, when he says that nuclear power must be included in the range of options. There is no more out-of-date technology than this and I would like to warn against nuclear power enjoying a second coming in the guise of climate policy. My group says a definitive no to this trend. We want to focus on the alternatives. Enlargement is also on the agenda at Gothenburg and my group would certainly like to emphasise that enlargement must continue irrespective of the result of the Irish referendum. It must be clearly stated and signalled to the candidate countries that the Irish people in no way wanted to reject enlargement. In my opinion, the result of the Irish referendum cannot, however, be ignored by thinking that we can continue as if nothing has happened. Instead it should be taken as a clear signal that the European Union must be democratised and citizens must be able to take part in drawing up constitutional issues. These can no longer be addressed behind closed doors. For this reason, we must make haste in adopting this convention model so that we are able to reach decisions on it before Laeken. This means that candidate countries too must be able to be fully included in this process. We need more democracy, more referendums, and more participation not less.

Political group: Verts-ALE