Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the initiative we have before us to create a European crime prevention network is intended as a response to the growing need to fight crime. The necessity for greater and more effective international cooperation in this area, especially at EU level, has been recognised. However, we know that such cooperation is weakened by differences in definitions, procedures, structures, and so forth. There is therefore a need for comparable data in terms of studies carried out, statistics, penal policy, structural factors and so on, and on crime, victims of crime and criminal justice in the European Union. The main objective is to evaluate the various activities, and to endeavour to identify the key measures that are both desirable and practicable in priority areas, thus improving the European Union's capacity for response and the effectiveness of crime prevention policies both at national and international level. These were the policy guidelines that emerged from the Tampere European Council, which led to the High Level Conference held in the Algarve in Portugal in May 2000 agreeing on the need for a multidisciplinary joint approach to crime prevention. It is vital to guarantee the safety of Europe's citizens, who wish to live in peace, and this increasingly means not only effectively fighting crime but also adopting intelligent crime prevention policies which also involve the capacity to understand and react to psychological and sociological phenomena which make people feel unsafe, or increase such feelings. Prevention of this kind, which is necessary to reduce crime and the causes of crime both quantitatively and qualitatively, should cover all forms of crime, including organised crime and not forgetting to pay special attention to the areas of urban, juvenile and drug-related crime. This is an important and ambitious project, because crime knows no borders. So this network is intended to promote cooperation and the exchange of information between Member States, and the collection and analysis of information on actions undertaken and best practice in the field of prevention, with the aim of assisting future decision-making in this area. It could be said that there were two different camps in the Committee on Citizens' Freedoms and Rights, Justice and Home Affairs. One camp was of the view that this network should be limited to intervention in areas with a direct European and international dimension, and the other focused exclusively on small-scale crime. I believe that the compromise amendment approved was a good solution, as it did not exclude any aspect of crime prevention. We are well aware that organised crime and small-scale crime are two distinct phenomena requiring different answers. Organised crime is a priority area for the Union and its Member States, whereas small-scale crime is primarily a matter for local, regional and national institutions. The role of the EU in preventing small-scale crime should be limited to promoting exchanges of information between national authorities so as to encourage an exchange of best practice and research while respecting the principle of subsidiarity. The citizens of the European Union are justified in calling on the Union to efficiently tackle the problem of the growing threat to their freedom and rights caused by crime.

Political group: PPE-DE