Mr President, Mr President of the Commission, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, I believe that the Greek Presidency will be forever associated with the picture at the foot of the Acropolis, where the reunification of Europe took place. We will also forever associate it with a sense of gratitude. We will also see, however, that this presidency saw a great failure on the part of Europe – not that the Greek Presidency is responsible for this; we all are – namely the inability of us Europeans to have a common position on an issue of war and peace. Lessons were learnt from this and it gave the Convention impetus to make perhaps greater progress on aspects of the foreign, security and defence policy than we had initially thought possible. This is also true of the discussions on a strategic concept for the European Union that have been taking place and will continue in Thessaloniki, so that we are better prepared in terms of content in the future and have our own system for weighing up interests, from which a better operational policy will emerge at Community level in the future. We must be aware that what has been achieved in the Convention is marred by several mistakes. At the last moment the Convention's courage failed it and in its final 14 days it clearly does not wish to try to move more foreign policy issues to majority voting. The idea that in the future one country would be able to block 25 others on an issue of foreign policy, with no way out, is a painful one, and there is the risk of an opportunity being missed. I would ask you once again, Mr President, to define what is meant in the Thessaloniki Conclusions in respect of Part III by purely technical work, so that we can make progress on majority decision-making – particularly in foreign policy but also in other areas – and so that this does not serve as an excuse for our not being able to discuss anything further. The proposals that have been made by government representatives in the Convention seem at least not to be technical, when I look at the proposal that the German Foreign Minister has tabled on behalf of the Federal Government about a foreign service. If a footnote in Part III – this being declared to be technical – leads to our own foreign service being set up, drawing its staff from the Commission or the Council and including national civil servants, under the exclusive competence of the foreign minister, this will constitute a dramatic change in the balance between the institutions and a dramatic weakening of the Commission and ultimately also of Parliament. It is unacceptable for us now to create further bureaucracy for the important position of foreign minister. Ours is a twofold task: we are to merge areas and not create anything new that will make life even more difficult in the future and will be harder to monitor. We do not need any new fiefdoms; instead we need to integrate areas and I hope that attempts will be made with your help to gain control of this. I would therefore urge you to help us in this matter, and I would ask you once again to define the word 'technical', so that we can still make progress in the Convention this week and next, and in this context also to tell us why Part IV cannot be touched. The Convention has not yet debated Parts III and IV. It should have the right to do so, and governments should not prevent it from doing so. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE