Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, President of the Commission, first of all, I should share a saying with you. Pessimists are usually right, but progress is made thanks to optimists. I think this is the attitude we should adopt with regard to the forthcoming Council in Seville. There are a number of crucial points on the agenda for that summit. Topics on which clear and tangible progress must actually be made are the immigration issue, enlargement and the Council reforms. As enlargement will be debated this afternoon, I shall only make a brief reference to it now. In the past six months, a number of government leaders, including Prime Ministers Aznar and Blair, have come up with proposals on immigration. Remarkably, they have not done so before now. Where were they in the past three years following the agreements of Tampere? Indeed, since then, the Council has made little real progress following the highly verbose phraseology of space and freedom, security and justice. If the Council is so keen to keep this responsibility all to itself – after all, we as MEPs are only being heard out of politeness – it should also render account of its own role and responsibility. In fact, I should at this stage share with you an embarrassing example of the Council’s tardiness: the package of measures which this House adopted at the proposal of Mr Graham Watson around Christmas in order to find an effective European answer to the terrorist threats. The Ministers for Justice and Home Affairs have still not taken an effective decision on this matter. The immigration proposals, as these reach us via the media, very much smack of a cosy PR exercise between Great Britain and Spain. In all honesty, who expects a great deal of good to come from Her Majesty’s ship ‘Ark Royal’ sailing up and down the Mediterranean? Surely this will not be the ark that immigrants are waiting to board? No, we would be much better off looking into realistic, effective and, at the same time, forceful measures in order to achieve a common asylum and immigration policy. I would refer to the ideas of the Belgian Prime Minister, Mr Verhofstadt, on this matter. A number of his points have already been raised at Laeken, but unfortunately, they were apparently surplus to requirements at the time. We must set up a true common asylum and immigration policy. Crucial in this is, first of all, that immigration policy is linked to an integration policy and anti-discrimination policy. These are not self-contained issues. When a policy of this kind is set up, a great deal of attention should go to fundamental rights and freedoms. Central is therefore also parliamentary control and co-legislation. In addition, the Commission’s right of initiative and a majority decision-making process in the Council should not be absent; that much is obvious. In the policy itself, the focus should be on the fight against human trafficking and illegal immigration. The President of the Commission mentioned it a moment ago: plans are already drawn up for illegal immigration. What is needed, is implementation rather than clever new ideas. This can only be done properly if the external borders are closely monitored, whereby one common European border police force must be able to assist, where necessary. In the light of this, I should, in fact, share with you my serious concerns regarding control of the future eastern borders. As far as I am concerned, no compromises should be made in that respect. Mr President, you will have noticed that I do not always have a high opinion of the functioning of the Council. I am therefore delighted to see that various proposals will be submitted in Seville which relate to the Council’s reform. For the , it is of huge importance that the Council should, crucially, be democratic, open and subject to supervision. This is why I call for the Community method across the board and for Council meetings, in which the Council acts as co-legislator, to be open to the public. In fact, this openness should start with enlargement, so that everyone can see what the Council’s common position is on the matter. As things stand at the moment, we are receiving such unsatisfactory – and some would claim coloured – information from the Council and also from the Commission, in fact, that one would almost consider hiring independent experts in order to find out what the true state of affairs in the candidate countries is or how the negotiations are really going. You will really have to give us, along with the European citizen, better information, so that we can continue to trust in the role of the Commission and the Council. On a final note, I should like to say that I am not so fond of pessimists, but the saying is there for a reason. They are sometimes right. We could say, nothing will come of Seville, but we will not. I should like to say to the Spanish Presidency: show your bright, optimistic side. Do what you are good at: grab the bull by the horns and you will have us on your side. Pave the way for real progress, for that is what people want and what is desperately needed.

Political group: ELDR