Madam President, last week's attacks on innocent civilians in New York and Washington shocked and outraged the civilised people across the world. They show the difficulties faced by any state, especially a democracy, in defending its citizens against terrorists. These atrocities and the subsequent search for those responsible also highlight the weaknesses of our defence of the civilian population and throw into sharp relief the painfully slow progress of EU cooperation in justice and home affairs, so boldly trumpeted in Amsterdam and in Tampere. As the Americans seek the arrest of people on European soil who may be responsible, they must shake their heads in disbelief at the multitude of bilateral extradition agreements, which they will need to employ. I welcome Commissioner Vitorino's statement. The proposals he has put forward today take on board the key recommendations of the report we adopted on 5 September, to which Mr Poettering so kindly referred. They deserve urgent consideration and swift action by Justice and Home Affairs Ministers at their meeting tomorrow. If they are adopted by Council, they will represent a major step forward in forging a common EU anti-terrorism policy. I challenge any minister who may resist these proposals in the secrecy of the Council chamber to explain publicly to citizens in their own country, or across Europe, why they are holding up effective common action in this field. (Applause) However welcome and important the Commission's proposals are, they are clearly insufficient. They provide answers to the world as it was before last Tuesday. They deal with terrorist crimes within the Union but do nothing to improve cooperation with countries outside the EU. They fail to solve conflicts of competence between judicial authorities. They leave cooperation and the vital matter of police affairs subject to a national veto, as Commissioner Vitorino said. If the EU is serious about combating terrorism, we must gear up the operational instruments of common action. We must enable Europol to cooperate effectively with third countries. We must give an external dimension to Eurojust. We must act decisively too, to combat money laundering in the conciliation currently under way and we must develop common policies for the collection and sharing of criminal intelligence, as Mrs Neyts pointed out. Measures are needed too in foreign and security policy: greater cooperation in the UN, in the G8, in the Council of Europe, urging Member States to sign the UN Convention on the financing of terrorism; export controls on sensitive products and tighter association agreements with third countries. But we must guard against a blurring of the second and the third pillars, which last week's Council declaration suggested, and guard too against upsetting the delicate balance between the needs of security and the civil liberties, which our citizens enjoy. I ask whether now is not the time to consign to the rubble of history the clumsy, outdated second and third pillars of the EU cooperation and make their contents core competences of the European Union. (Applause) The fig leaf of national sovereignty serves only to hide the impotence of nation states. Democracy faces supranational challenges and these require a supranational response. Our policies will need public support, so our policymaking will need proper democratic oversight and control. I believe that this House stands ready to play its part. We must now call on our national leaders to show the courage and the vision which the moment demands. (Applause)

Political group: ELDR