Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I admit that I am a little surprised by the Commission statement on the troika visit; perhaps I will have the opportunity, in the second half of my speech, to describe the situation in Algeria. General Morillon and myself are presenting a joint report on EU/Maghreb Arab Union relations. Mr Morillon, who is currently contesting an election campaign, is unfortunately unable to be here today, but his colleague, Mr Galeote Quecedo, will be standing in for him. The aim of the report is to define the nature and the structure of EU/Maghreb Arab Union relations. By this, I do mean Maghreb, and not the individual countries of Arab Maghreb. That is the fundamental idea behind the report. Although we state there is a need to draw up reports on the situation of and relations with the individual countries, such as Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Mauritania or other Maghreb countries, our original idea was to try to see if we could move forward relations between the South Mediterranean as a whole, as a possible collective subject, and the North Mediterranean, in other words, the European Union. I am aware that some Members were not or are not entirely in agreement with the position that has been adopted. Although we have not discussed the specific situation in certain countries in this report, this is not because we believe that this would be the wrong approach, but because we feel that this approach is not suited to the structure of our report. Our essential aim is to force the hand, as it were, of the Maghreb countries so that they create a Maghreb Union, in other words, so that they succeed in developing a form of cooperation and that they present themselves as Maghreb to the people of Europe. That is why we want, for example, the assessment of the association agreements of each country to be carried out within the framework of a structure that is common to the European Union and the Maghreb Union, in other words, a joint delegation, and that Members of Parliament also take part in this assessment and not simply governments or the Commission. As you know, Article 2 of the association agreements stipulates respect for human rights. To some extent, Article 2 is a phantom clause. It exists, but we do not really know how to apply it. To the best of my knowledge, there has, so far, been no genuine dialogue, no genuine assessment of the progress made in developing freedoms in the region, nor any debate in Parliament. What we want, first of all, is an initial debate on the development of democracy within the Maghreb countries, and secondly, a debate with the European Union on secularity. In my view, the main problem of all the Maghreb countries relates to the fact that, in the name of the fight against terrorism and against religious fundamentalism, increasing numbers of laws and government measures have been adopted whose ultimate effect is to suppress these freedoms. The idea of the report is to establish a structure, to create a Maghreb Union, as a whole, and to form an alliance between the collective of the Maghreb Union and that of the European Union. I would like to add some of my own thoughts on Algeria. It is still hard to believe that a troika has visited Algeria, and is discussing a situation where 45% of the population did not even participate in elections; where, in Algiers, this figure was not even 25%; where, in a region like Kabylia, the participation level was barely 2%. It is still hard to believe that the troika is telling us that yes, Sir, everything is going well, that democratic change has begun in Algeria. Algeria is experiencing economic crisis, Algeria is experiencing political crisis, it is experiencing democratic crisis, and the European Union must really ask itself whether it has chosen the right time to sign an association agreement that does not tackle any of these problems.

Political group: Verts-ALE