Mr President, I wish firstly, as other previous speakers have done, to congratulate President Prodi on his speech. The applause that rounded it off clearly demonstrates that when there is a specific political objective, this Parliament can be relied upon to support it. I would also like to congratulate Mr Moscovici. Mr Moscovici brilliantly presented the issue which I am going to focus on, and nobody will be surprised that I am going to focus on the question of the Charter of Fundamental Rights. His intervention was wonderful up until the final minute when I did not understand what he was saying. Why do I say that he gave an extraordinary speech? Because he acknowledged something which we are all satisfied with. The Convention method has worked and the truth is that it has been something of a miracle. I am not so surprised, but some of you will say that a Christian Democrat who does not believe in miracles is not a good Christian Democrat. Therefore, I do believe in miracles and the convention has been a miracle. Personal representatives of the governments, MEPs and national MPs, together with the Commission, reaching an agreement on the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, in ten months, seemed an impossible objective. We have done so, however, and I believe this is wonderful news for the European Union. It is wonderful that today we are celebrating the tenth anniversary of German unification and it is wonderful that we are today just a few years away from a great enlargement of the Union. The method has therefore worked, and so has the content of the Charter. Mr Moscovici has said so very expressively. The content of the Charter is good. At the Feira European Council, President Guterres told us: 'Do not worry about the legal value. Concentrate on the content of the Charter. Create a good Charter '. We have done so. I have not read any criticisms of the content of the Charter. Previous speakers have spoken well of the Charter because it is a good Charter which brings together the classic rights of the nineteenth Century and the modern rights of the twenty-first century. It is a Charter for the citizens, who have participated actively in its creation. It has been said here that this has been a virtual reality Charter. We now have a situation where, having created a Charter with good content and by means of an original method – and here I am reaching the last part of Mr Moscovici’s speech – we are now told that we are going to announce it and then wait and see what happens in the future. The argument of the President-in-Office of the Council is that there is a risk that the Charter will not be accepted by all the Member States as legally binding. That is a risk, it is true. But I believe things are changing, Mr Moscovici. I believe that at the beginning many governments had serious doubts, but now they have changed their minds. There are some – the Spanish Government has said this very clearly recently – who are in favour of incorporating the Charter into the Treaties. However, even if what you say is true, and there are some governments who do not want it incorporated into the Treaties, I must say very clearly that the citizens of Europe and the Members of this Parliament have the right to know who those governments are. We have the right to know. We must be told who does not want the Charter in the Treaties. Mr President of the Council, I therefore encourage you to continue the aims of a predecessor of yours in another convention and the French Presidency should have de l'audace, encore de l'audace et toujours de l'audace [boldness, again boldness and ever boldness].

Political group: PPE-DE