Mr President, I should like to begin by thanking the members of the Committee on Citizen's Freedoms and Rights, Justice and Home Affairs for their unanimous support on this very important report. To provide a context, at present there is no EU-wide provision uniformly governing the repatriation of mortal remains from one Member State to another. In the absence of any such provisions, cross-border transportation of mortal remains is governed by two instruments of international law, but primarily the Strasbourg agreement concluded in 1973. The world, methods and technology have changed much since then. It is also interesting to note that only some Member States have actually acceded to this Strasbourg agreement, which, in many respects, is obsolete. On account of the above-mentioned agreements, the death of a Community citizen in a Member State other than his country of origin results in much more complex procedures, a longer period of time before burial or cremation takes place, and higher costs than if the death had occurred in the deceased person's country of origin. We encourage people to live, work and settle in states other than their own national Member State. Currently, over 5 million people reside outside their national Member State; add to this the millions of EU citizens who holiday throughout the European Union every year, and we are looking at a growing number of people who die abroad. Their relatives are faced with appalling bureaucracy through which they have to wade. The Commission has recently stated once again that EU citizens should be able to move between Member States on terms similar to those applicable to nationals of a Member State, and that additional administrative or legal obligations should be kept to the bare minimum required by the fact that the person in question is a non-national. As things stand at present, it is still far from true that a Community citizen who dies in a Member State other than his own is treated in the same way as a national who dies in his home country. This has been pointed out to the Commission and the Council on numerous occasions by many Members of the European Parliament. We are presented with the ludicrous situation that we are supposed to be a Europe without internal borders, yet as soon as somebody dies, when there is a great need for understanding and sympathy, we erect the borders merely because the body needs to be transported from one country to another. That means that a zinc coffin is required, at enormous expense. A family from Coventry in the UK had to repatriate their son who was tragically killed on his first night on holiday in Spain. They were given no help. They were given a mass of bureaucracy – in a foreign language – through which they had to wade. They were given no translation, no help from the consular services and had to meet the cost of over GBP 3000 for a zinc coffin alone. We are presented with a ludicrous situation in which the repatriation of a corpse from Salzburg to Freilassing – a distance of ten kilometres – requires a zinc coffin, but the transfer of a body from Ivalo to Helsinki – a distance of 1120 kilometres – requires no such coffin. It is quite clear that we need a uniform approach to this situation. We are currently 15 Member States, soon to be 25. We are encouraging people to live in other countries, to embrace other cultures; yet when they die, suddenly, the border is erected and the bureaucracy comes into play. It is very simple: in 1973, we were worried about the deterioration of corpses during transit. Embalming is now common, technology has moved on. We have to say to the reluctant Commission that this issue will not go away. All of us here are protected – we have organisations, trade unions and institutions that will return our bodies to where our families want them to be. But imagine for a moment the plight of a mother, Dolores Shambley, dealing with the death of her son, Kris Shambley – barely 20 in 1998. Dolores Shambley is a woman with very little money, who was given very little assistance. This is a fundamental right. If we are really interested in upholding the rights of our citizens, I urge the Commission to bring forward proposals and accept the principle of free movement. I believe that the right to move freely only ends when the body is interred. There has been a reluctance within the Commission to accept this own-initiative report. Be brave. Be courageous. Accept the challenge. The goodwill is there. I now want the political initiative. (Applause)

Political group: PSE