Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I would also like to start by thanking our rapporteur Mr Sjöstedt very warmly for his cooperation, which was positive and fair. However, my thanks are due equally to the Commission, the Danish and of course particularly the current Greek Presidency, which worked with great commitment to achieve a compromise between the Parliament and the Council. We are all keen to avoid a conciliation procedure for this report, for it deals, after all, with the transposition of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety and the protection of biological diversity, which is a subject close to everyone's heart. The European Union was indeed a key player in the negotiations on the Cartagena Protocol. This makes it all the more important to transpose the Protocol swiftly into Community law now, thus sending out a clear political signal of our continued commitment. The main priority of the draft before us is to find a solution, which has eluded us until now, to the issue of EU exports of living GMOs to third countries. Here, practicability must be the key imperative. We must achieve realistic legislation that can be applied in practice. This is why I am pleased that the Council has not incorporated, in this regulation, a number of amendments proposed at first reading, for example on the inclusion of aids. These amendments aimed to intervene in pending legislative processes through this report on the transposition of the Cartagena Protocol. By 'pending legislative processes', I mean the legislation on genetically-modified food and feed, their labelling and traceability. We debated and voted on this matter at second reading in committee just two weeks ago. The outcome was very close; opinions diverge widely and it still remains to be seen how the plenary will finally vote in July. It would therefore be quite wrong to try to anticipate the outcome. A vote on the environmental liability regulation has only just taken place at first reading as well. A final decision on this issue is certainly not yet in sight. For this reason, any statement on the liability issue in connection with traceability of GMOs and aids in the current report on transboundary movement had to be emphatically rejected. These issues have nothing to do with the transposition of the Cartagena Protocol into Community law. However, relevant amendments from the first reading did not make it to this second reading either. I am pleased that the Council has decided in principle to adopt my amendments on exemptions to the system of notification and information for GMOs in transit and in closed systems. We really do need these exemptions to ensure that there are no impediments to research. The Council has also made it clear that the so-called Advanced Informed Agreement procedure set out in the Cartagena Protocol should only apply to first movements. Conversely, this provides an exemption to the information procedure for GMO exports to a third country, if this third country has already given approval to another country for the import of the same GMO. These exemption provisions are necessary since the AIA procedure, as the information procedure in this case, does not promise any enhanced safety and would simply obstruct transboundary movement unnecessarily. I believe that the report before us, with all the compromises that we have drafted, is good and viable, and would ask all of you to vote for all the compromise amendments. This will set us on the right course and avoid a lengthy conciliation procedure.

Political group: PPE-DE