Mr President, freedom of the media lies at the heart of democracy. If the opposition has no opportunity to express its opinion, if a public debate about society is no longer possible, then you are looking at total dictatorship. And I know just how painful that is from personal experience. I also know how hard it is to act as opposition in this situation, and not to despair or give up. The transformation of society for which we are looking to the opposition there is virtually impossible under these circumstances. That much should be clear to us. It is virtually impossible because people stand a good chance of ending up in prison if they act in the interests of democracy. And it will be extremely difficult to intervene from outside, because the human right of freedom of expression is simply declared illegal. Therefore – and I am addressing this comment to the Commission in particular – we need all our imagination, flexibility and creativity to development instruments which will nevertheless enable us to support the opposition in this situation. It is not impossible to transform society even in these circumstances, as we saw 11 years ago. That is what we have to concentrate on. We should not always let bureaucratic obstacles get in the way. We really must find out what can be done under European mechanisms. And the answer is that they allow more to be done than has been evident up to now. It is also important to give these signals, because otherwise the opposition feels isolated and loses all its drive. If that happened things would be much, much more difficult and would take much longer. Mrs Pack has made it plain that the situation in the prisons is appalling and that for the inmates every day is one day too many. I therefore call on the Commission to take every opportunity, in all its talks with representatives of the Serbian Government or embassies, to present the list of prisoners and to request information on each prisoner. We are talking about human beings, and it is a humanitarian act to press for these people to be released and united with their families one day. I also wish to call on the Commission to offer indirect financial support to those organisations which are trying to draw up lists, to organise prison visits and to care for the families. It is enormously important to provide this humanitarian support, and this will also strengthen the democratic forces in Serbia. With regard to Kosovo, after one year that region has still not reached the position we would have liked to see. It is a great disappointment for me that there is such great hatred that it is not possible for Serbs, Roma and other minorities to live in peace in Kosovo although they are under an international protectorate. It is humiliating that we have not succeeded in promoting tolerance or at least cohabitation in this area. For the sake of the credibility of the international community it is therefore a matter of urgency for us to protect the minorities and give them genuine opportunities for living and working there. And this is also important for me because I believe that otherwise everything that happened a year ago will lose credibility. It is therefore vital for us to do more in this area and to endeavour to make it clear in the public arena that it is unacceptable for people belonging to a different race to be driven out of Kosovo. The Serbs, Roma and other minorities have a right to live there!

Political group: Verts-ALE