Mr President, today is my mother's 97th birthday and in her lifetime she has seen wars and famines, poverty and plagues, and she has also seen our world find the knowledge to prevent and defeat these global ills. But she has not yet lived to see the leaders of our world unite, to use that knowledge to bring peace and health and the means to live for the 800 million of our fellow human beings who are hungry. She was 69 when the first World Food Conference pledged everyone must be free from hunger – not everyone except 400 million – everyone. She was 91 when the World Food Summit abandoned that pledge and set a target of halving the world's hungry to 400 million by 2015. Now we know that this appallingly modest target will not even be met until 2030. In the second half of my mother's life, 400 million people have died of hunger – three times the numbers killed in wars in her lifetime. On this her birthday another 24,000 will die. Surely we could have expected that the Rome Summit would have agreed an action plan to stop this slaughter. Surely the leaders of the western world would have supported a programme to address the causes of hunger: poverty, conflict, disease, sanitation, bad governance, man-made disasters, and inadequate local food production and distribution, the very points that you, Commissioner, raised in your letter of 20 June to Mr Diouf on the failings of the summit. You were right, but you were excessively polite. You might have started by condemning the EU Member States, of whom only Italy the host, and Spain the presidency, sent heads of government. The British Labour Government did not even send Mr Blair, did not send the passionate Clare Short. No, they sent a junior official, a member of the DFID's – quote – 'knowledge-sharing on special initiatives unit'. That is how much they cared. Where was the passion? The Italian press made it clear that the delegates were more interested in the dolce vita than in fighting world hunger. The summit took two and a half years to put together. It cost millions. It was so well organised that the final document was agreed before the summit began. And what a declaration! It recalls, recognises, reaffirms, reiterates and then goes on to do it all again. The new policy to help the hungry of the world is not 'Everything but Arms', but anything but lift your arms to do anything. One recommendation sums it up – and the Commissioner quoted it: 'We invite the FAO to establish an intergovernmental working group to elaborate in a period of two years a set of voluntary guidelines for Member States to achieve the progressive realisation of the right to adequate food'. What a message of hope for the hungry. What a cop-out. Think nothing, see nothing, do nothing. No new thoughts, no new vision, no new initiatives and no urgency. In 2015, and no doubt in 2030 too, we will be back regretting lack of progress, extending deadlines, reducing targets, setting up working parties and failing to help the hungry nations to solve their needs. Again we will issue emergency appeals for the consequences of our inaction today. Now we move to Johannesburg and our message must be: 'Wake up Europe, wake up the Western World'. For once overcome this political sleeping sickness that seems to paralyse us in the face of disasters that together we have the power to prevent.

Political group: PPE-DE