Mr President, Mr President of the Commission, Mr President-in-Office, the Spanish Presidency has done a good job so far, but the Seville Summit will be the deciding factor in our final judgment of it. Mr President-in-Office, may I make a point of reiterating what the President of the European Parliament and the President of the Commission just said, that is, that our group expects a high-ranking political working party of all three institutions to be set up in Seville to advise us and reach conclusions as to how we can improve our legislation so that, as the President of the Commission said, we can reach an institutional agreement by the end of this year. Prime Minister and President-in-Office José María Aznar has promised this to Parliament and I really do implore you to pass a resolution for us in Seville setting up this sort of political working party. If you do, our final judgment of the Spanish Presidency will be even more positive than it has been so far. As far as the reform of the Council is concerned, I quite understand your reticence, Mr President-in-Office, and I assume it is because you do not as yet have a brief to discuss it. I am sure I am right in assuming that the Spanish Presidency will do everything in its power to ensure that the Council as a legislative body is distinguished from the Council as an executive body and that, where it acts as legislator, it does so transparently. This is what we expect from Seville. You said that the president of the convention, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, would be submitting a report. I would be delighted if all the governments of the Member States of the European Union were to follow suit, if their representatives to the convention also reported back to their cabinets and governments in the Member States of the European Union, in order to ensure there is direct feedback, just as we do at parliamentary level. I should like on behalf of our group to make it perfectly clear that the debates in the Council today and at the summit in Seville must be predicated on strengthening the European Community, because we need strong European institutions and must not slip back into intergovernmentalism. I say this in the light of my visit to the United States over the last two days. Unless we act as a European Union, and we are hardly even perceived as a European Union in America; unless we strengthen the European Union, then we shall lose more and more clout internationally, which is why our objective must be to strengthen the European Community. (Applause) We acknowledge the Spanish Presidency's determined approach to the fight against terrorism. Our perception in Europe is different from the perception in the United States. The United States feels it is at war, because it is the first time it has been attacked on home territory. We have to understand that and we must do everything we can in Europe to help destroy terrorist networks. But we also have to say that terrorism and the fight against terrorism cannot be used as an excuse to violate human rights, be it in Africa, Chechnya or anywhere else. And we must make a clear distinction between terrorists, on the one hand, and the Arab and Islamic world on the other. That is why it is so important that the European Union continue in its endeavours to help broker peace in the Middle East. That we say to the Israelis, you have the right to live within secure borders and anyone who attacks those secure borders must be prepared to meet decisive resistance. But we must also say to the Palestinians that they have their dignity and the right to live within secure borders in a Palestinian state. We welcome your efforts in the fight against terrorism, we welcome your efforts to set up a common European border police to protect the external borders of the European Union and we hope that Seville will bring results. We recognise that Spain's efforts on the Sixth Research Framework Programme have been a huge success and we also hope – and this will be discussed more thoroughly this afternoon – to confirm the timetable for the enlargement of the European Union. I can only reiterate what President Prodi said: that we, the European Parliament, the European Council, the European Commission, the European institutions, are encouraging the countries of central Europe to conclude negotiations on the basis of the acquis communautaire, so that we can achieve results within the planned time frame and the countries of central Europe which sign accession agreements, together with Malta and – hopefully – Cyprus, can take part in the next European elections. We, the European Parliament, we, the Group of the , see ourselves as the champion of the nations seeking to join the European Union and my only request, from the bottom of my heart, is that we all help to keep to this timetable. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE