Madam President, as a member of the European Parliament from Salzburg, allow me to start by thanking you for your words of acknowledgement and comfort yesterday. When the memorial service of what was the worst disaster to befall my country over recent years is held in Salzburg Cathedral on Friday, I know that this Parliament will be among the mourners and I thank you for your words of sympathy and comfort for the relatives. Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, after nine months' work and a long struggle for consensus, we now have a draft European Charter of Fundamental Rights. Today is the day we have to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to this Charter and your rapporteurs recommend that plenary adopt and vote in favour of this Charter of Fundamental Rights. This recommendation is born of a firm conviction. Like many of you, I too regret that we are only allowed to say yes or no and are unable to send the Council any other political message which might have been called for in this context in order to express the critical support of this House for the Charter of Fundamental Rights, which is but a first step and is still a far cry from what Parliament demanded of this political project in March of this year. What we must also remember here is what gives this Charter its value, assuming that it is adopted. I think that it grants one initial fundamental right, one unwritten fundamental right and that is people's right to know their rights. This fundamental right has now been granted. Vague formulations and legal principles have given way to a clear system of fundamental rights which is binding on all the EU institutions and whenever European law is applied by the Member States. The value of this Charter is that it has transformed rights vested in international law – vested but not binding, vested but not enforceable, vested but not guaranteed – into legal principles, nay into the constitutional principles of the Union itself, setting up a dynamic process which will surely end one day with a legally binding Charter of Fundamental Rights. What has revolutionised the debate and the history of fundamental and human rights is that, for the first time, social rights have been listed in this Charter on a par with traditional human rights and traditional principles; no Member State has ever done that in its list of fundamental rights. This Charter is also the expression of a common set of basic values for all the candidate countries, for all the countries wishing to join the European Union, and it is precisely in the area of social rights that it sends candidate countries a clear message that they must comply with these social standards. It marks – and I am firmly convinced of this, even if many Heads of State and Government prefer not to admit it – the beginning of the constitutional process which this Parliament has called for so often and with such persistence. I am certain that, with this Charter of Fundamental Rights, we have laid the foundation stone for a future European constitution and constitutional process. I think that is reason enough for us to adopt this Charter, even though there are points at which it may be hard to accept that many rights, many basic rights which Parliament demanded for the people of Europe, and with good cause, have been left out of the Charter. It is hard to see why the right to a fair wage has been left out and why we came up against insurmountable resistance when it came to the right to a decent minimum standard of living, the right to work and the right to housing. This Charter will, I think, need to be supplemented in the future, if it is to become the foundation stone of a European constitution. But that should not deter us from taking this first decisive step. I hope that, even though it can only say yes to this Charter of Fundamental Rights, Parliament will clearly apprise the Council of its demand for this Charter to be made legally binding over coming weeks, so that it can open the way to the European Court of Justice for the citizens of Europe. I hope that this House will emphasise these demands by a large majority in its resolution on Nice. That is all I have to say. I should just like, if you will allow, firstly to thank my co-rapporteur for his committed approach and the vast amount of remarkable work which he carried out and secondly, to thank you for your support. (Applause)

Political group: Verts-ALE