Mr President, Commissioner, honourable Members, the FMD crisis has left deep scars. The culls have brought heartbreak to countless families. They have led to public indignation and rage, sometimes impotent rage at authorities and also rage at Europe, which blocked the vaccination of livestock. First of all, my sincere thanks to Mr Kreissl-Dörfler. Once again he has done an excellent job. After his report on the foot and mouth crisis he has worked hard to ensure that the list of recommendations that this House submitted last December has been incorporated into the Commission’s proposal. Meanwhile we are engaged in a legislative process. I believe that the proposal and the proposed amendments are all in all an acceptable response to the public outcry on the mass culling of livestock. I am in favour of the use of prophylactic emergency vaccinations, with animals being kept alive until slaughtered for consumption. I should like to stress two important points in the form of questions to the Commission and would like you to respond in a moment. The first concerns political responsibility. The foot and mouth crisis of 2001 heralded the political landslide of 2002. We must at any rate teach politicians a lesson too. Confidence in politics suffered a severe dent. One important reason was that political responsibility proved anything but transparent. Who was responsible for the no-vaccination policy – the government, the EU or the International Bureau for Infectious Diseases? Ministers pointed to the national governments and to the Bureau in Paris. For the ordinary citizen it was a complex structure of responsibilities and that led to the image of politicians, who while they were prepared to take a public stand, subsequently preferred to hide behind others. Politicians who take no responsibility deprive politics of its credibility. This buck-passing game has backfired badly on Europe. The hundreds of angry letters and e-mails were signals of the human and institutional tragedy. A future outbreak of foot and mouth must not lead to the mass slaughter of healthy livestock. We must make a massive effort to ensure this in the period ahead. This requires a foot and mouth policy in which there is a clear apportionment of responsibilities, regional, national, European and international and with the parliaments also involved. Our aim must be a foot and mouth policy that is not anonymous. Responsibilities for choices and compliance must be clearly established. It is our task to communicate on this matter. In an attempt to achieve such clarity, I should like to ask the Commissioner to make explicit once again here this evening where precisely the responsibility lies. Is it true that a Member State has the option of using prophylactic emergency vaccination and subsequently of keeping the vaccinated animals alive? Is it true that animal products from vaccinated livestock can be sold without any problem? This brings me to the second point, namely the marketing of animal products from vaccinated livestock. At the moment that a Member State decides to use prophylactic emergency vaccination and to keep the animals alive, it must be possible to sell the products. This requires a minimum of two things; supermarkets to sell the products and consumers to buy them. How does the Commission plan to create the correct boundary conditions in collaboration with Member States? It cannot, of course, be the intention to keep vaccinated animals alive and then to discover that there is no market for them. That would surely ultimately lead to the culling of vaccinated animals. I should like to hear your answer to both these questions.

Political group: PSE