Mr President, Mr President-in-Office, Mr President of the Commission, ladies and gentlemen, the Group of the , the part of which is today celebrating its fiftieth birthday, has consistently provided very positive support to the Greek Presidency, in close cooperation with our Greek colleagues under the chairmanship of Antonios Trakatellis, but also with our friends in Greece, Nea Demokratia under the leadership of Konstantinos Karamanlis. This is what we promised you in Athens, Prime Minister, and we have kept our word because we know that your success is our shared success. The highlight of the Greek Presidency – and you were able to build on the good preparatory work done by the Danish Presidency and also on the European Parliament's decision of 9 April – was unquestionably the signature of the accession treaties on 16 April in the Stoa Attalou. When we alighted from the bus – and I should particularly like to thank you for inviting the group chairmen to this event, something that should set a precedent for other ceremonial occasions in the European Union – I had the good fortune to be able to accompany the first freely elected prime minister of Poland, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, down the steps at the side of the Acropolis to the Stoa Attalou, and we talked about the great change in Europe and the desire of the people of Central and Eastern Europe to live in freedom. The fact that the end of this process was marked as it were with the signature of the treaties in Athens is something that will never be forgotten, and we are grateful that we now have 162 observers with us from the accession countries. Unfortunately, however, your presidency has not just been a presidency of high points. As you mentioned yourself, your presidency has been overshadowed by the war in Iraq. I do not wish to look back in anger today either: I prefer to look to the future, and we must learn the lessons from the mistakes that we have made. Our first conclusion is that if national positions are to be adopted on an issue of foreign policy or if two or three countries wish to take a stance, then they are obliged first to consult all of their European Union partners and to resolve the issues together. We must act together and Europe, the European Union, must not go into these difficult decisions when it is already divided into two, three or four camps. Europeans must act together! The second point concerns the Convention. On certain issues, including our foreign and security policy, we must have the courage to decide by majorities, albeit by large, qualified majorities. If we keep unanimity we will not be able to reach common positions and this is one of our demands. My third point is that clearly partnerships are not easy, particularly when one partner is a superpower. But it is precisely if we in Europe want to be on an equal footing with our American friends that this European Security and Defence Policy needs to be formulated in such a way that it does not see America as an opponent, but as a partner, a country together with which we wish to solve problems on this earth. You referred quite rightly, Mr President-in-Office, to the difficult issues of asylum and immigration, and the President of the Commission, Mr Prodi, whom I should also like to thank very warmly for his work, mentioned the joint administration of external borders. This is an important matter: we need to reach agreements with those countries from which these really pitiful people come, from which they set out in their boats, agreements in which they undertake to secure their borders. But I would insist that this is not solely a law enforcement issue, a task for the police. It is a problem that needs to be resolved above all in the countries of the Mediterranean and in North Africa, and that is why we need European Union assistance for these countries, and these countries have to reform so that the young people in them have a genuine future and do not put their lives in danger by setting off on their travels. We see this problem of immigration not only as a policing problem, but also as a fundamentally human problem and the key is to give people the chance of a future in their home countries. A further point is the Convention. I should particularly like to thank its President, Mr Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, for his work, but also the two Members in the Convention Praesidium, Iñigo Méndez de Vigo from our group and Klaus Hänsch from the Socialist Group, as well as our group spokesman, Elmar Brok. We must now call for this draft constitution to form the basis for the work in the Convention and for the decision to be made in the Convention now on the basis of this draft constitution. We very much hope – and I will be saying this again tomorrow to the future President of the Council – that we can reach a result by the end of this year, so that swift and speedy progress can be made, and we also hope that the European Parliament will enjoy appropriate and effective representation. When the Heads of State and Government meet, the President of Parliament must be present; when the foreign ministers act, our parliamentary representatives should be there and not be as it were consigned to the level of administrators. The task before us is immense, but I believe that we can achieve it. I should like to thank you in particular, Mr President-in-Office, for your contribution to the Statute for European political parties. Admittedly this still needs to be formally adopted under the Italian Presidency, but the approach adopted was, I believe, the right one. As far as the Members' Statute is concerned, I hope that it will be possible here too to make further progress in the next few weeks and months. Finally, may I say that this presidency has had its highs and lows: I did not envy your position as President during the Iraq crisis and all that went with it. I was pleased for you on 16 April; you did your duty, as we would expect from a presidency, and I should like to thank you very much for this. Our group has provided you with fair, objective and positive support; I hope that you share this impression, because this is our shared Europe and a success for Europe is a success for us all. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE