Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Mr President of the Commission, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, seldom can there have been an issue and a resolution of problems on which the Presidency of the Council, the Council of Ministers as a whole, the Commission and we in Parliament can have acted with such unanimity and common purpose. As far as the membership of the central European countries is concerned – theirs especially because of their Communist past, although Malta and Cyprus are also involved – they have earned the right to have this great and historic unanimity demonstrated by us here today. Mr President-in-Office of the Council, I was very favourably struck by the way that you put your remarks in this historic context, and I believe that this is what we have to do. I also want to add, however, that Europe will have successfully completed its probation only as and when the outcome of the Convention on a European constitutional treaty is greeted with the same unanimity by the governments, the Commission and by Parliament, so that Europe may, in the twenty-first century, have stable institutional structures, and the Council of Ministers' principal and greatest task will be to support a Community model, so that this enlarged community of twenty-five – and later even more – States will also have a solid foundation. That is what, right now, I urge you to do. (Applause) We very much welcome the fact that the way is now open for ten Central European states plus Malta and Cyprus, that the mandate is on the table, and that now the Commission's and the governments' hard work can be continued, enabling us, Mr President-in-Office, to actually achieve that of which you spoke: ‘From Copenhagen to Copenhagen!’ It will also enable you to say, on the 12 and 13 of December: ‘The Treaties are ready for signature.’ That is what I wish you; that is what I wish for all of us for the sake of Europe's future. We wish to encourage Bulgaria and Romania to persevere with their efforts. Our group currently maintains close contacts with both countries, but they have a long distance still to cover. As regards Turkey, I will be quite frank in saying that there are different positions in our group concerning its membership in the European Union, for our group is a very democratic one – and Conservatives could not be anything else – but I will tell you very clearly, Mr President-in-Office of the Council that there is one thing we do agree on, and that is that we do not believe that the time is right to specify a date for the commencement of negotiations in December and in Copenhagen. Of course we welcome the way that both the parties that have won the elections in Turkey are oriented towards Europe, but we also cannot but take note of a democratic deficit, in that 45% of Turkey's voters are not represented in its parliament at all. Let me remind you that the leader of the Justice and Development Party, Mr Erdogan, cannot become prime minister as he is facing charges that make it impossible for him to be the party's chairman. This is an absurd situation. I would also like to remind you of something that is a matter of European concern, even though it affects my own country, namely that political foundations from the Federal Republic of Germany, not only our own party's, but the ones associated with the Social Democrats, the and the Liberals, are accused of espionage in Turkey. This is an absurd way of going about things, and I ask you to note this as an example of how much more Turkey has to develop. (Applause) Mr Schulz, I am delighted that the Social Democrats are showing increasing agreement with what I have to say about Turkey, ... (Interruptions) ... and, I hope, also with what I have to say on other subjects. Mr Cohn-Bendit, I will return to the subject of how we took up common positions on the subject of Chechnya, and if our group is in reality to be taken as occupying the middle ground in Parliament on these issues, then that is something that we welcome. We did not understand why it was necessary to put the whole agricultural issue on the table in Brussels. Now, thank God, we have to some extent got things right, but we did not understand why a major Member State of the European Union chose that occasion to put the agriculture issue central stage, and I sometimes get the impression – and Mr Daul and Mr Goepel will have more to say on these points – that we do not actually know what was decided there. I hope that will eventually emerge, so that what was actually decided will be known after the event. I would like to call upon the Presidency of the Council and the Council itself – the Commission, of which we sometimes have criticisms that are not the point at issue today, is on our side in these matters – to involve Parliament in dealing with all the financial consequences for the current financial perspective – on which James Elles is our expert – and also for future financial perspectives, and to do so in such a way that the institutional preparations can be made in this area as well. Turning to Kaliningrad, it is my urgent recommendation, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, that we do not give Lithuania in particular the impression that we would make concessions to a large European country, one that does not belong to the European Union, on the back of this rather small future Member State, Lithuania. Lithuania's sovereignty is also at stake, and that is something we should always consider. My final point is this: We will shortly be debating Chechnya with Mr Solana. It really is depressing to read in major European newspapers that Sergei Kovalev, President Yeltsin's former representative on human rights, said yesterday in one of them that the barbaric behaviour of the Russian army continues in Chechnya today just as it did a number of years ago. We decisively reject any form of terrorism, even in Moscow, but we may not treat terror and terrorists and the people in Chechnya as one and the same thing! We urge you to have real courage at the summit that is to be held – not, unfortunately, in Copenhagen but in Brussels, because Russia wanted it that way – you may well have given in to pressure, but it is the substance that matters; real courage to find clear language in which to say that we have to negotiate in Chechnya, and that people there have a future within the Russian Federation without losing their identity. What I would like to see here is not only diplomatic talk from the Heads of State and of Government, but also a tough approach to this matter, because we, being a democratic Union, are under the obligation to stand up for human rights in Europe and throughout the world. I wish you much success in this. Quite apart from anything else, the Danish Presidency of the Council has so far done its job extraordinarily well, which also demonstrates that you do not have to be a big country to be a success in Europe. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE