Mr President, I would firstly like to state that I am speaking on behalf of my Mr Fernández Martín, who is not able to attend. I would like to make clear that among the wide range of regional associations or groups of countries with which the European Union maintains relations, the group of overseas countries and territories, the PTOMs to use the French term, is certainly the most heterogeneous of all. In actual fact, they are grouped together more for what they are not than for what they are. Hence the special merit offered, in my opinion, by the proposed Council Decision and the report which Mr Fruteau has produced in relation to it. Generally speaking, I agree with the rapporteur’s proposals, although I would certainly express some of them somewhat differently. However, I would like to announce that my group will vote in favour of them. The rapporteur proposes a series of measures which attempt to strengthen the association system which has linked the PTOMs to the Union since 1991, by stating that on this tenth anniversary of the said agreement, the Union should be more ambitious with regard to the most distant territories of the continent. I must point out that the PTOMs as a whole, and each one of them in particular, do not form part of the territory of the Union. Their inhabitants have European citizenship (French, British, Dutch or Danish, as the case may be) but the territories in which they live do not form part of the European Union itself – in the case of Greenland, for example, its citizens voted in a referendum to leave what we then called the European Communities; in the case of New Caledonia, in accordance with a plan drawn up with the French authorities, they have also begun a procedure which will lead them, in a few years’ time, to join the group of ACP countries. And I could cite in this way further examples of specific cases, almost as many as there are PTOM countries and territories. This heterogeneity is evident in many other respects and the most noteworthy of these is their sparse and irregularly distributed population. As the rapporteur rightly stresses, the population of the twenty overseas territories hardly exceeds one million inhabitants and three of them, the Dutch Antilles, French Polynesia and New Caledonia, have more than 150 000 inhabitants each, so these three territories alone account for almost half of the total population. Therefore, when almost three years ago we discussed the report produced at the time by our colleague Blaise Aldo, we wanted to place special emphasis on the development of the PTOMs’ trade relations with the ACP countries close to them and in some cases, such as that of the Caribbean, with equally close outermost regions. However, INTERREG did not meet the expectations raised as a basis for developing these trading relations. Perhaps this could be attempted again now with INTERREG III, and I agree with the rapporteur that the development of the PTOMs should be promoted through a specific fund to simplify the procedures for linking it to the EDF or to Cotonou – although I know that the Commission has its own opinion in this respect. In conclusion, I request an oral amendment which I hope can be accepted. In the first paragraph of the explanatory statement the rapporteur expressly mentions the seven outermost regions of the European Union, stating that they opted for full integration into the respective Member States, former colonial powers. That is not correct. The Azores, Madeira and the Canary Islands did not have any colonial status at any time in their history, which is why they should be expressly excluded from this statement by the rapporteur, and I hope that the House and the rapporteur himself can accept this request.

Political group: PPE-DE