Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, you touched on the subject of immigration and we would like to know what progress has been made on the subject of illegal immigration, readmission and asylum. Similarly, what has happened to the recommendation for a European border guard. This issue has stagnated and so far there is no agreement between the Member States. I would even say that guarding external borders would be an important step for the common foreign policy, the security and defence policy, because it is not possible for us to want to adopt a common foreign security and defence policy unless we have adopted common external borders; we have the opportunity to make a start on illegal immigration by guarding these borders. Similarly, I would say, as far as economic solidarity and an equal division of the burden in the immigration sector is concerned, which was also an important priority of your programme, that we have no indication that it is moving in the right direction. I must say to you that the Treaty expressly provides for measures to be taken to seek a fair distribution of the burden between the Member States, as far as receiving and dealing with the consequences of receiving refugees and displaced persons is concerned. Another point which I would like to emphasise is that the question of public health was given an opportunity with the SARS epidemic. There is unanimity here in Parliament that the Commission should promote the Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, so that the European Union can respond in a coordinated manner to health threats and to terrorist threats. Of course, I did not see any progress in the Council of Ministers of 2 June, but we shall come back to this when we have another disease or another situation such as the mad cow crisis, and I cannot see the reason why the opportunity should not be taken to promote this centre. That brings me to a perhaps more important issue which the Thessaloniki Summit will address, the text to come out of the Constitutional Convention. I would say, as you too rightly said and others have pointed out, that this text contains very good points, excellent points, such as the incorporation of the Charter, increased powers for the European Parliament and codecision. It also makes provision in foreign policy for a Minister for Foreign Affairs. I would highlight three points, however: the first is that the preamble is of course satisfactory, because it makes note of our heritage from the Greek and Roman civilisation, but I find it incomprehensible that it makes no note of our Christian heritage. There are thousands of paintings in museums all over the world which are the product of inspiration and cultural products of Europe. There are musical oratorios, there is an abundance of works of art, a cultural treasure which clearly reflects the Christian heritage. We are talking about history, we are not talking about the future. No one knows what will happen in the future. But our heritage is from the Greek, Roman and Christian civilisation. The second point, on which we totally disagree, is the fact that there may be a Member State which is not represented by a Commissioner. We believe that all the Member States should have a Commissioner. It is not right that a Member State should be missing from the body of Commissioners and from the table around which, essentially, Community developments take place. It is unthinkable! It will upset the balance between the small and large states, a balance which is very important in my opinion. The third point, which is also unthinkable, is the saga about the presidency of the Council. This is a haze, it is incomprehensible. The current system is a thousand times better. Provision could be made for improving the current system. I prefer the current system, under which each country has the ambition to make its own contribution to European developments. We can see that your Presidency contributed and the Belgian presidency contributed and the Danish presidency contributed. So what is it that now makes us call for some person, who will be appointed goodness knows how and who, I foresee, will cause friction in the working of the institutions, because the balance between the institutions, between Council, Parliament and European Commission needs to be maintained. I fear greatly that the system of the presidency of the Council will upset it.

Political group: PPE-DE