Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to start by expressing my appreciation for Baroness Ludford's question, which, being comprehensive in its scope, was a very good one. I cannot do other than endorse the rapporteur's constitutional thinking on the subject of asylum and immigration policy. We need majority voting in the Council, Parliament needs to have the power of codecision, and the right of the Member States to propose legislation needs to be limited, as it is mainly used for reasons of domestic policy and rarely advances the cause of European Union. She is also right in her conclusion that the EU is a long way from implementing what was decided at Tampere. Whilst Baroness Ludford regards the Council as being to blame for this, I take the contrary view that the Commission must shoulder a large share of the responsibility for it. Commissioner Vitorino, although the Treaties require minimum standards of you, you wanted to go ahead and generously broaden the scope of both the Convention on Refugees and the provisions of national law, and your attempts to do so failed at Council level on many occasions. It might be a good idea if you were to slowly learn the error of your ways; your new proposal on the reunification of families certainly gives us hope that you are willing to do so. It so happens, Baroness Ludford, that minimum standards are often the lowest common denominator. The Group of the welcomes the Commission's commitment to combating illegal immigration, which demonstrates, Commissioner Vitorino, that you can see that there are two sides to the coin and that you are getting down to work. Let us turn to counter-terrorism, an area in which 2002 has seen great progress made. The common definition of terrorism, the European arrest warrant, and the reinforcement of Europol were important milestones on the road towards terrorism being effectively combated in Europe. I would like to take this opportunity to specifically call upon the Council to make use of the funds we have allocated to Europol, which amount to over EUR 3 million, for if they do not do so, nobody will be in a position, in the event of one or more attacks in Europe, to coordinate or to lead police operations. Your disputes about competence will not, at any rate, meet with much public sympathy. Baroness Ludford has diagnosed an imbalance between the methods of counter-terrorism on the one hand and guaranteed fundamental rights on the other. I do not see that such is the case. Laws at national and European level have made very good provision for data protection, we have extensive systems for defence and legal protection, and direct intervention can, of course, still only be carried out at national level. She is right, however, to demand that Europol and Eurojust – which latter has had a successful start – should be brought within the Community sphere, for that, in the long term, is the only way to guarantee effective democratic and juridical control and to prevent duplication of structures. It is clear to see that, if Eurojust were to be brought within the Community sphere, it could take over OLAF's tasks as well as ensuring that the Community's financial interest was protected. As well as that, though, the Schengen Agreement and its associated information system have to be brought within the Community sphere. I might add, by the way, that the plethora of information systems will function effectively only when they are interconnected and equipped with standard rules on data protection, which could also be monitored by the new data protection commissioner. At the same time, we also need a new coordination body for the external borders, by which I mean a sort of ‘Eurobord’ or ‘Euroguard’. Open internal borders mean that it is in the interest of all Member States that Poland's eastern border, the waters of the Italian Adriatic, and the Straits of Gibraltar should be secured, and this calls for solidarity on their part. I might add that the EU has wasted years of valuable time when it comes to these matters, which are closely connected with its own enlargement. For far too long, Commissioner Verheugen has been lulling the EU to sleep and reassuring it that no reforms are needed. The second generation SIS has now been delayed, and frameworks for common border control are also only in their early stages – all this with enlargement one year away. These are issues where we have to work, even now, much more closely with the candidate countries than we have done before. We all have a long road ahead of us before we can present the Europe of freedom, security and justice to its citizens, but we have to take the first steps, and, Commissioner, let me add that the Convention has to become even more courageous.

Political group: PPE-DE