Mr President, first of all let me thank Marietta Giannakou most warmly because she has opened up the opportunity today by means of an exchange, to deal with the vote on Eurodac and thereby to create the conditions under which we can introduce this fingerprint checking. This is a very important report. I should first like to quote some figures so that you have an idea of the scale of the drug trade. First, we are dealing with the drug trade that in the meantime represents 8% of the volume of trade and makes billions in profits at the expense of young people and our families. Within the European Union we annually seize some 600 tonnes of cannabis. As far as the consumption of drugs is concerned, it is a fact that as many as 5 million young people take synthetic drugs and some 20% have tried cannabis. The legal position in Europe is extremely unsatisfactory. In the eyes of the citizens of Europe the battle against drug crime should be treated as an absolute priority. I therefore believe that Marietta Giannakou’s report is especially important and the action plan is something really fundamental that can help us in this field. It contains broad strategies, from prevention to repression to reintegration. It does not allow for any liberalisation or legalisation and sets priorities and brings domestic and foreign policy together in order to be able to combat drugs successfully. These are ambitious goals, but in reality it will not be easy, as up to now it has not been possible to obtain comparable data for individual Member States and to compare the methods and as long as we do not have this comparison of methods and dates it will also not be possible to achieve ‘best practice’ as a model. Prevention has little support and the youth programmes are not designed for support in combating drugs. The European Union makes relatively little money available. So what are the feasible and absolutely essential demands that we must make? The first thing for me is that it is vital for the prevention policy to be intensified. I can see that there is quite a good chance of us attempting on a voluntary basis to declare schools as drug-free areas, to make it clear to schoolchildren through education that a life without drugs should be their main goal. We therefore need the support of the European Union programmes such as SOCRATES and LEONARDO. Secondly, we must urge the Member States most emphatically that we should finally obtain a standardised system of data and method registration so that it is possible to find the best models in the battle against drugs We must encourage cooperation between the police and the judiciary in the countries of Europe in the battle against drug crime and to protect young people. We must make the European Union programmes such as FALQONE, GROTIUS or OISIN more productive, organise them more efficiently and make more funds available. So with the action plan we have a good programme. It is, however, a matter of getting to work on turning this programme into action in the battle against drugs and for young people and for a drug-free society as a whole. That must be the aim, even if it is very difficult to achieve. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE