Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, pure self-righteousness and self-satisfaction make me want to be a bit sarcastic. ‘Lads, you were wonderful!’ I would also say to the ladies, who helped you, and are unfortunately not to be seen on these benches: ‘Ladies, you were wonderful! You did fantastically well!’ Enlargement is upon us – doubtless a great achievement on the part of the Commission, the Council, the Danish Presidency and the presidencies that have gone before it. It is a certainty that the coming presidency will have to shoulder the additional burden of making enlargement a reality, and that will be difficult. Not only because of all the votes that Mr Wurtz mentioned, that will then have to be held in the various countries, but because we will meet again and can only hope that enlargement does not give us the same hangover that the reunification of the Federal Republic of Germany did, because the finances do not work out quite right, and because people suddenly realise that what they had dreamt of has not become reality overnight. We will then get back to talking about the financial framework. Let me tell you, Mr Wurtz, that the problem is not our promise that there will be no direct payments before 2013, but our own inability to question why we have direct payments, our failure to make the necessary reform to our agriculture here and now in order to establish justice and take enlargement as the means of developing a new policy. There is no point in enlarging something that is wrong. The only thing that makes sense is using enlargement to change what is wrong and, together, doing the right thing. Very often, we have not managed to do that. That is why what I have to say to Turkey is very simple: ‘of course we will pay attention to the criteria’. But we have to say what they are. What we demand of the Commission is that, within the next few months, they tell us what the criteria are to be. What, in fact, will we have to discuss with Turkey over the next two years? Will we be discussing the issue of women wearing the headscarf? Is that one of the Copenhagen criteria? Of course it is not; instead, we will be discussing fundamental issues of democracy and of how to make it a reality again. This is where we need a road map. Finally, I would like to say something about Iraq. I approve of what the Council has said. The UN Resolution can be interpreted in this way and that. Unfortunately, the German Federal Government, for example, with which I have a great deal of sympathy, interprets it in such a way that it can also be read in the way the Americans do, to mean that there do not have to be further debates in the Security Council. I see this as the wrong approach, and hope that Europeans, as Europeans, will insist on further discussion and a vote in the Council if the resolution is considered as not having been complied with. It is not acceptable that compliance or non-compliance with the Resolution should be a matter for the Americans to decide on their own! At the end of the day – as Mr Poettering rightly said – yes, if we have to stand up to the Americans, then we have to try it out on the Russians. We have to tell the Russians that, however friendly we are – and we are very close – certain things will not do! I am grateful to the Danes for not deporting Mr Zakayev – that was the right thing to do, and I hope that the English will not be able to deport him either. If, though, Mr Zakayev can be granted political asylum in Europe, there must be something wrong in Chechnya. I do not think there should be any meeting with Russia without us telling them that what is going on in Chechnya is not only bad, it amounts to a colonial war. That is something that we in Europe never want to see again! (Applause)

Political group: Verts-ALE