Madam President, Mr President, your country has taken the leadership in European football and is now required to take leadership of the European Union at a key moment in its history. I know full well that a presidency must assure continuity in the running of the institutions, but there are times when necessary changes in direction have to be made. I think we shall be facing such times in the next six months. Your Berlin speech where you argued in favour of implementing a process to develop a European constitution is, like several of the suggestions you have made today, a positive sign for the future. I should like, for my part, to raise three issues on which your presidency ought to be focussing, in my opinion. I shall begin with something that is of prime importance to all of us: the institutional reform which is the necessary precondition to enlargement. This reform must be ambitious. It cannot be confined to technical amendments just to keep the European machine ticking over. To put it plainly, the three points left over from Amsterdam in no way represent an adequate agenda. Nor is the response of emphasising the mechanism of closer cooperation a satisfactory one, not – let me explain this – if one is really concerned to make up the significant democratic deficit which typifies the way the European Union operates at the moment. Intensified cooperation has one great merit, it makes it possible to avoid deadlock, but it is also a significant risk factor if careful attention is not paid, taking the European Parliament and the Commission out of the loop, and bringing the intergovernmental solution back with a vengeance, a solution which has for many years been identified as inadequate and, indeed, far from democratic. (Applause) Moreover, the ambitious and necessary plans for a European constitution and Charter of Fundamental Rights, one of which is being postponed indefinitely, the other being assigned a non-binding status, should not be used to conceal the paucity of the rights acquired in the coming months. You declared, Mr President, that we must reassert the values uniting us and defend the spirit of the founders of the European Union, whose goals were peace and stability in Europe. We have, admittedly, achieved peace and stability within the European Union, but let us not close our eyes to the facts. The globalisation of issues has gained the upper hand in the course of recent years. The imbalance between north and south has grown worse, as all the international reports confirm. Poverty in the world is not on the decline, quite the opposite. Sources of fresh conflict are making themselves felt throughout the world, as well as ecological chaos, particularly climate change, whose worst effects are felt in precisely those areas where the populations are most disadvantaged. In the face of uncontrollable events, the implications for the future are disconcerting, and the Hague Summit should represent a change in this respect. The European Union must take the offensive. I heard you say that you were in favour of this, under France’s leadership. This is where we run up against contradictions, however. I believe that it is not possible to wish for peace and sustainable development while actively endorsing the rationale of economic and commercial warfare worldwide, and that includes favouring the arms trade over conflict prevention. Our pattern of development is in question. We have to rethink our economic choices, in the knowledge that right now, instead of distributing current wealth, the industrialised countries are in fact stealing from the wealth of the future. In connection with this, and, in my view, this is the third crucial issue for the next few months, which I would like to outline briefly, we must fundamentally reconsider the so far harmful role of the World Trade Organisation, which acts more like a world trading organisation. Your country, Mr President, is one of the most critical European countries in this respect. It is also in France that the people are most hostile to the dictatorship of free trade. We await from you practical proposals for the WTO to be restored to its original role, that of a regulatory body for world trade, in a worldwide context dominated by the primacy of human and social rights, health and the quality of the environment. By achieving this, the European Union would gain credit not only within the European Union but also throughout the world. (Applause)

Political group: Verts-ALE