Mr President, having devoted itself over the last 40 years to establishing a common internal market, the House now faces the major new task of creating an area of freedom, security and justice, a task which we will only be able to master successfully if all the institutions of the Union work together towards this ambitious goal with mutual respect and consideration for each other’s competence. Commissioner Vitorino, although I would describe cooperation with you as harmonious and profitable, words have often failed me in the past when faced with the conduct which the Council has demonstrated towards us. It looked, as Mr Schulz once aptly said in committee, as if the Council understood the area of freedom, security and justice to mean an area in which the Council has free rein, security from Parliament and the right to do and order as it will. Minister Gomes, I have, of course, heard what you have said and I hope that cooperation will clearly improve in this respect during the Portuguese Presidency. I should like to raise three points which for us, as Members of the PPE Group, must be focal points when such an area is created. First: a common asylum law must be created and the burden of absorbing refugees must be distributed. The Council must start by at long last ensuring that EURODAC is adopted in order to create the basic requirement for classifying asylum seekers. As far as a European asylum law is concerned, a start was in fact made at Vienna and Tampere. Unfortunately, however, it has highlighted the difficulties rather than proposing solutions. I therefore call on the Council representatives to look beyond their national boundaries and bring about a uniform asylum procedure for the whole Union. Similarly, it cannot be right for just a few Member States willing to provide help to bear the entire burden of refugee misery on our continent. Agreement on burden sharing must therefore be at the top of the agenda. Secondly: the introduction of a Europe-wide fight against organised crime, including by Europol and Eurojust. The planned introduction of Eurojust is one of our significant successes from Tampere and must now be implemented forthwith. We welcome the fact that Europol has finally been able to start work. However, the Council should also bear in mind that, if we are to improve the effectiveness of the fight against crime, we do not only need to widen Europol’s remit, as decided at Tampere; we also need to increase the number of officers and extend its remit to operational activities. We are not just calling for more control, and more control over Europol; our motto here is “Less is sometimes more!” With most of Europol employees currently engaged in self-control for the purposes of data protection laws and questions being asked by 15 national parliaments, we may have a great deal of control, but it is inefficient control. We want less confusing control and more parliamentary control by the European Parliament, without hampering the work of Europol. At the same time, we support the establishment of a European police academy as suggested in Tampere as a step in the right direction. Thirdly: the extension to Parliament’s rights in this context. If the establishment of such an area, in which the Union can also intervene in the basic rights of the citizens, is only decided by diplomats and bureaucrats, while the elected representatives of Europe are reduced to following developments like a rabbit watching a snake, then this area will not gain the acceptance of the citizens. There is therefore an urgent need to grant Parliament codecision rights in this respect and, as we have already said, to strengthen the principle of democratic control. We want an area of freedom, security and justice for the citizens of Europe, not against them.

Political group: PPE-DE