Mr President, the European Council accepted the Union’s strategy on Ukraine in Helsinki in December 1999. Now, more than a year later, we can say that the basic premise of the strategy is the right one. The report that was adopted in the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, Common Security and Defence Policy only features certain proposals connected with the implementation of the strategy and some supplementary proposals. In my report I have adopted the same general approach as Parliament did with regard to Mr Oostlander’s report as a basis for the Union’s policy on Russia. Thus the report openly criticises Ukraine for its shortcomings regarding the implementation of democracy, human rights, freedom of speech and the market economy. On the other hand, it recommends that the Union should improve cooperation to help Ukraine solve these problems. Ukraine, however, is very different from Russia. It has a major strategic importance both for Russia and the West. Ukraine is split internally. The western parts of the country were, for a long time, part of Poland or Austria-Hungary, and there the Russian population is relatively small. The country’s central and eastern parts have long been under the influence of Russia and many Russians live there. The Union must seek to bring about a situation where Ukraine can unify and have balanced relations with Russia, on the one hand, and the West, the European Union and NATO, on the other. Ukraine now clearly orientates itself towards Europe. We have to encourage and support the country in this. I have tried in my report to place Ukraine in a wider pan-European context. My basic reason for this was the views adopted in Elmar Brok’s report on enlargement. Paragraph 56 of the report reiterates the idea of a new European area that would be based on a market economy and free trade, protection of the environment, democracy, human rights and security. Paragraph 57 calls on the Council to develop a comprehensive pan-European policy for the Union by combining the enlargement process with the bilateral and multilateral external relations of the Union. It goes on to propose that the EU should make systematic use of both the Council of Europe and the OSCE for preparing the present and future candidate countries for membership and for promoting the goals of the CFSP and integration on the pan-European level. These paragraphs are, to some extent, open to interpretation. It is clear that Parliament hopes that a comprehensive pan-European policy will be created for the Union. But the new European area’s connection with the proposal that the Union should start using the Council of Europe and the OSCE as a tool of pan-European policy remains open to interpretation. My own thoughts are that creating a new European area as a separate organisation could easily come into conflict with the fora that already exist. For that reason, we should first make use of existent organisations and act without prejudice in this regard. Finally, I would like to thank the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, Common Security and Defence Policy, and, especially, the ‘shadow’ rapporteurs for their constructive attitude to the report. I would like to make one criticism, however. The committee adopted too many amendments, in my opinion. As rapporteur, I prepared a draft version which already exceeded the set length. The 21 paragraphs of the draft contained everything that was essential, in my view. In the vote on the report, however, 37 paragraphs in all were added – many of them against the recommendations of the rapporteur. I think we should consider together ways of preventing adopted reports from being made too bulky or fragmented in committees and in plenary. On this basis I am wary of amendments which would only serve to increase the report’s length.

Political group: ELDR