Mr President, this report concerns the recognition by one Member State of orders made by a court in another Member State on the freezing of assets or evidence within its territory in order to ensure the integrity of the legal process up to the final judgment. This framework decision, which is an initiative by the governments of France, Sweden and Belgium, is to enter into force by 31 December 2002 and will apply to all the Member States without any need for ratification, a very important point indeed. This is the general position regarding mechanisms for the recognition of criminal sentences which have existed up to now. In short this is about ensuring that an order made in one Member State automatically guarantees that assets and evidence essential for the prosecution and punishment of a crime and which may be located in any part of the European Union are not lost, do not disappear or are not concealed from criminal investigation. In the original version of the decision, this mutual recognition mechanism relates to cross-border crimes such as drug trafficking, fraud affecting the European Communities' financial interests, laundering of the proceeds of crime, counterfeiting of the euro, corruption and trafficking in human beings. However, the Committee on Citizens' Freedoms and Rights, Justice and Home Affairs considered that this classification of offences, which is limited to types of crime relating in particular to the functioning of the single market, excludes other criminal offences and especially, and this is indeed topical, the type of crime we are most concerned with now, crime relating to terrorism. I believe that the new version of Article 2, prepared with the invaluable help of Mrs Palácio Vallelersundi and approved by the Committee on Citizens' Freedoms and Rights, Justice and Home Affairs, is far more appropriate and effective in the context of an area of freedom, security and justice. It is a matter of strengthening the principle of mutual recognition which will be the basis for the prosecution of criminals and criminal organisations in the European Union. I think that we are now perfectly aware of the vital importance of this, and I therefore call on this Chamber to adopt Amendment No 5 on Article 2 of the original proposal for a decision, and ask the Commission and the Council to take this on board. This will bring the proposal for a decision before us in line with others which will soon follow in relation to the war on terrorism, as announced yesterday by Commissioner Vitorino. Mr President, this decision, in as far as it goes, will make a small contribution to the creation of a European area of justice, but it is these small things, these small stones, that will build the foundations of a European area of justice capable of protecting our citizens. In this way we can counter the judicial void that exists in Europe and thus fight against the inertia and bureaucracy of the institutions. It is our job to prove to the public that Europe is also there to protect them, and that a European civil and criminal legal system is possible. This is about promoting citizenship, of course, but it is also about fighting the anonymous and stateless crime which is so prevalent. Not even the greatest pessimists would deny that these are steps in the right direction. Isolationist sovereignty makes crime easier and helps criminals. As from tomorrow, and I mean tomorrow, the date of the Extraordinary European Council, we will be speeding up the creation of a Europe of freedoms, that is to say the largest area of democracy, freedom and justice in the world.

Political group: PSE