Mr President, President-in-Office of the Council, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, there really must now be a new phase in our relations with Russia. It is now a historic time – in Russia, in the Union, and in the world too – and we must act. We have only partly implemented this master document, the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement. Bureaucracy has obstructed reform, and inertia, the Kaliningrad question, environmental problems and the mass media have generally drained it of its strength. Terrorist attacks, whose victims’ relatives I want to express my deep condolences to – and my sympathies also go to the victims themselves – show that there is opposition to any political solution in Chechnya, although my understanding is that the Russian Government has gone down that path by actually organising elections. The human rights situation in Russia still needs a lot of work. It may be that if we are to deal with the Chechnya issue, which is souring relations between us, we need to provide a working group to plod on with the task in cooperation with Russia. Reforms in Russia have thus been slow to come about. Meanwhile, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe are gaining strength more rapidly and sustainably, being led in their progress by the European Union. Russia may lose its markets in the region, and Union enlargement, if the worst comes to the worst, may isolate Russia. For that reason I want to emphasise the need for a new approach: we need a new strategic partnership with Russia. The Iraq war has shown that Russia is part of a European area of cooperation. It is the most recent example of that. The spearhead of this partnership could be Russia’s modernisation and its civil society movement. Cooperation on energy, an area where still only a little has been achieved, could give a boost to its economy. An example of this might be the Northern Dimension, which, with the right financing, would strengthen this partnership. Russia must put the Investments Protection Agreement in order. The country must be made a member of the WTO as soon as possible, and given a certain role to play in European security cooperation. The fact is, the faster Russia ‘westernises’, the faster human rights will improve there. Russia is constructing no fewer than three oil ports in a remote part of the Gulf of Finland, which is known for its reefs and which forms one end of the Baltic Sea, the world’s most ecologically burdened sea. In winter the solid ice cover there is 70 centimetres thick and the pack ice is anything up to 20 metres high. This last winter dozens of ships were cast adrift by ice, there being no help available from an ice breaker – ships on their way to Russia. Vessels not strong enough to withstand the pressure of ice and in such an appalling condition as those are an environmental time bomb, just like the Prestige was. I want to ask the Council what action Greece, as the country to hold the Presidency, has taken to ensure that only double-hull, ice-strengthened tankers, which can get there safely, should travel to these three new oil ports in Russia. There is one thing about Russia that has often gone unremarked. That is the importance of its culture, about which still too little is known in Europe. Now that the machinery we work with, the information society, is crying out for content, Russian content production could diversify and enrich content production in Europe, which is engaged in global competition. Russia has turned westwards, but I think it has also turned to the north, which is apparent from Russian activity in the northern and northwestern regions. This means that a new opportunity has now been created for the European Union and Russia to swiftly improve their mutual cooperation, along with the chance for them both to benefit from it.

Political group: PSE