Madam President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Mr President of the Commission, my group would first like to acknowledge to those representing the Finnish Presidency that you, as compared with the European Parliament, have improved transparency and the flow of information. The Finnish Presidency has kept us better informed than former presidencies, which is obviously important, as it strengthens relations between the European Parliament and the Council with reference to the Treaty of Amsterdam. The conclusions of the Summit meeting declare, quite satisfactorily, that the Commission at last intends to issue a proposal in January regarding the conditions on which the public will be able to access the documents of the institutions. I would like to tell you that this draft regulation has been leaked to the public, and that is worrying. That does not make for a spirit of transparency; on the contrary, it might even weaken it, so I would ask you to give this matter your attention. The final proposal can surely yet be amended in such a way that it would really increase transparency. Regarding enlargement, I wish to say that we are very satisfied that the Council has now finally agreed that each candidate country must be assessed on their own merits. This is exactly the strategy we proposed from the outset. Now we have to ensure that we also achieve a balance in the progress we make in negotiations and that candidate countries give sufficient consideration to the issues of social security, equality between men and women, employment and environmental protection. With regard to Turkey, our opinion is that the European Council should mean what it says, in other words, that the same criteria should apply to Turkey as with the other countries that have been accorded candidate status. We call on you to look seriously into the question relating to the status of the Kurds. Islam is obviously already a European tradition, and so we have no fears of the European Union becoming more religiously diverse. We were not inclined to agree with those in the European Parliament who have been keen to narrowly define the borders of Europe in the belief that Islam is somehow non-European. On the contrary, we think it can indeed be a part of European culture. Th majority of our group would seem to agree that the European Union should also develop a system for military crisis management, to prevent humanitarian catastrophes. We are very dissatisfied with the way in which the European Council and preparatory discussions have paid little heed to public debate and public opinion. We want to point out that foreign and security policy, as any other, must be democratic, and you must open up this debate, so the public know what the next phases of the process are to be. We do not want the European Union to become NATO’s European military pillar. We want you to strengthen civil crisis management, because, as we all know, it is the wisest thing to do. The non-military prevention of conflicts is always more important, and for every euro invested in military crisis management at least as much must be spent on civil crisis management. Finally, your position on Chechnya was a step in the right direction. I am certain the European Parliament’s calls to put economic cooperation on ice have had an effect, and we believe that you will remain firm in your opinion that this is not a situation in which we can act as if nothing has happened. IN THE CHAIR: MR DAVID MARTINVice-President

Political group: Verts-ALE