Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, my group welcomes the Commission’s statement. I believe that it is an important step, and can also provide an integrated approach to various policies. As the Commissioner has said, this is about the integration of the Barcelona process with the ‘Wider Europe’ strategy and the issues related to the funding of MEDA and other programmes. These, I believe, must also include human rights and democracy, for lasting peace can come into being only if the state, civil society, the political forces and parties guarantee, in the long term, deep roots for democracy and the rule of law, which always provides the greatest certainty of peaceful development. This is of enormous significance for us, not only because of human rights, which should be guaranteed by other means, but also because stabilising regions like this on the basis of democracy and the rule of law is the best security policy we can pursue in our own interests; we should indeed ensure that stability prevails there in such a way that people have a future and do not fall prey to fundamentalism, as they would otherwise be justified in doing. This is what underlies many political problems in countries in the Middle East, making it more difficult to lead them towards a better future. It is specifically in matters such as these, Commissioner, that I see it as important that non-governmental organisations should be brought on board, but please allow me to comment on what you have just said in your conclusion. It strikes me as important that – as was previously the case in Central and Eastern Europe – such democracy programmes should increasingly draw on the experience of the European Parliament and of its MEPs, not only by consulting them, but also by involving them in the decision-making process. Whilst I am not defending a breach of the separation of powers, the fact is that we, with our own experience gained from the daily business of building up democracy, parties and grassroots democracy, have more knowledge than is to be found in an administrative body, in which people are trained to look at things from a completely different angle, and I do not believe that this is about simply coming up with theoretical concepts that cost a lot of money but produce no results. It is far more about setting up effective structures on the ground. Perhaps we should revert to this former practice; it would be an interesting area in which to experiment and see what progress this enables us to make. May I make a final comment? In the past, I believe, both the Commission and Parliament paid insufficient attention to whether or not our resolutions on human rights and democracy were actually implemented. In this respect, monitoring and implementation were our weak points. We came up with some tremendous resolutions, and then that was that. The possibility of checking whether or not anything is done about them seems to me to be acquiring ever-greater importance; it, too, is tied in with the integrative process of which I spoke at the beginning. I believe that many agreements should be linked to the establishment of human rights, and that much funding should be linked to the development of democracy, in order thereby to establish checks and balances that make possible the practical application of democracy and human rights, on which stability depends, and saves them from being merely fine-sounding words.

Political group: PPE-DE