Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, we have just experienced the hottest and driest summer since records began and have found out for ourselves just how important water is, both for people and nature. We pampered Europeans are desperate for rain to replenish our rivers and reservoirs. Experts have calculated that it will take at least fourteen days of rain to restore our rivers and reservoirs to their normal levels. Fortunately, we still have enough clean water when we turn on the taps. The water supply in the EU is obviously secure, and, what is more, it is affordable for everyone. After this hot summer, we Europeans have some idea of what it means when we are told that three billion people around the world – i.e. more than one third of the global population – have no access to clean drinking water or sanitation. Admittedly, in the UN Millennium Declaration, 189 governments pledged to halve this figure by 2015, but at present, there is no prospect of this ambitious goal ever being achieved. Since 1990, water withdrawal has increased tenfold around the world. The largest consumer of water is agriculture, followed by industry, and only then by private households. The USA uses most water, consuming around 296 litres per person per day. Households in Germany and many other European countries, on the other hand, use only half this amount. In the Middle East and to some extent in Asia, but also in parts of Mexico and Africa, large sections of the population have less than 2.5 litres of water per person per day to meet their needs, and many people in the water-poor regions have even less than that. Almost 40% of the global population live in river catchments extending across more than two countries. Countries located upstream often exploit their natural advantages over the countries downstream. Today, we still have wars over oil; in the not too distant future, wars could break out over water as well. The situation in the Middle East is explosive. Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians find it difficult to share the River Jordan. Turkey, Syria and Iraq, which lie on the Euphrates and Tigris, are trying to control the water from these two rivers. Conflict over freshwater seems inevitable, and so UNESCO has designated 2003 the International Year of Freshwater. The European Commission and the European Parliament are aware of the scarcity of water resources and the associated problems, which primarily include a fair system of water management. This is why the important issue of fair water management was put on the agenda. The Group of the European People’s Party is working to ensure that water management is not exclusively a monopoly, either of the state or of major corporations operating on a global basis. A healthy mix of public and private sector involvement should ensure that the populations in those areas of the world that have water problems can be supplied with fresh water at affordable prices. We must not get to the stage where if you are rich, you have access to water, but if you are poor, you have no fresh water. In order to promote this public-private water supply mix, the Group of the European People’s Party has tabled various amendments to the annual report on the Commission communication on water management in developing countries, and I would ask all Members of this House to support them. Finally, I would like to thank my colleagues Mr Corrie and Mr Wijkman for their excellent cooperation and also convey my gratitude to our assistants and staff.

Political group: PPE-DE