Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the historical factors that have brought us to this juncture, so well explained by Commissioner Vitorino, clearly justify this debate. It would indeed be hard to understand if, in the last debate evaluating the area of freedom, security and justice in this mandate, we should confine ourselves to holding what is merely an annual debate. It therefore makes perfect sense that we should take stock of the mandate and I congratulate Mr Ribeiro e Castro on the superb report he has presented to us, with which we broadly agree. We must indeed acknowledge that even though substantial progress has been made on legislative measures, on measures for operational cooperation and on measures for institutional structures, some of the progress made has been unable to meet the deadlines set at Tampere and, what is worse, other aims that have been defined have also not been met. I should like to highlight ten areas in which concrete measures must be adopted: firstly, legislation must be enacted in the field of data protection under the third pillar, providing guarantees equivalent to those set out in Directive 95/46/EC under the first pillar; secondly, a common integrated management policy for the Member States’ external borders must be created, with Community funding; thirdly, the Council must adopt the two remaining proposals for directives that are needed to be able to complete the first phase of the common European asylum system; fourthly, the Council must approve the proposals that are currently blocked and which are intended to establish a common policy in the field of immigration; my fifth point is that a tangible proposal must be submitted on developing the visa information system (VIS); sixthly, we must be presented with a proposal for a framework decision on procedural safeguards for suspects and defendants in EU criminal proceedings; seven: because bringing the Schengen acquis into the sphere of Community competence has enabled greater coordination to take place between the police and judicial services of the Member States in their fight against organised crime, it is now crucial that we move ahead, as swiftly as possible, on creating the new SIS II; my eighth point is that progress on police cooperation must be promoted, by means of a legal process, as Commissioner Vitorino pointed out, that is less complex and cumbersome than the Europol Convention, involving Union-level judicial and democratic scrutiny; my ninth point is that we must continue to conclude stabilisation and association agreements with the States in the Western Balkans region in the fields of combating organised crime, the power of the judiciary, the war on drugs, border management and immigration; my tenth and last point is that there must be supervision of the Community acquis’ implementation in the enlargement countries especially as regards the field of justice and home affairs, and the implementation of the Schengen mechanism and the acquis covering external border controls. I welcome the fact that, in its work programme, the Irish Presidency considers developing this area to be its top priority and I hope that we will be able to develop fruitful interinstitutional cooperation. I acknowledge that the task we have set ourselves is enormous and extremely ambitious, but unless the pace picks up and the Council’s decision-making ability is increased, we will reach the end of this five-year period having failed to meet the objectives set out in Tampere. I therefore hope that by the end of 2004, we will have adopted all the measures on which we are lagging behind and which are included in the objectives and timetables that have been set. Lastly, Mr President, we must deplore the initiative adopted by some Member States to send a letter to the Commission to persuade it to impose a substantial reduction of the Community budget in the financial perspectives for the period 2007-2013. As President Prodi has already stated, in other essential areas, particularly in the sphere of economic and social cohesion, this would prevent the Commission from carrying out its work in the field of Justice and Home Affairs.

Political group: PPE-DE