Mr President, this debate on the International Criminal Court has gone from one extreme to another. We heard one extreme earlier, in Mrs Cauquil's speech. Mrs Cauquil, I must say to you in all honesty that we do not want an international revolutionary tribunal. Putting forward theses such as yours is a sure-fire way of scuppering the whole idea of a criminal court. On the other hand – and here I do agree with you – we do not want a criminal court to be no more than a rubber stamp in the hands of the major powers. I am really sorry that the forces that, even if they are not willing or able to prevent this court completely, want to downgrade it to some sort of rubberstamp are gaining ground in the USA and China and Russia and other countries. We in the European Union are going the way of the law and I think that this forms part of a good and important tradition. The Council of Europe was founded as a human rights community here in Strasbourg over 50 years ago. The Human Rights Convention was adopted and the Court of Human Rights was created here in Strasbourg. For the last 50 years, the European Parliament has sat here in Strasbourg as the voice of the people, as the voice of the European rule of law and because we want to extend this rule of law to the whole continent, we quite deliberately set the idea of the Copenhagen criteria, democracy and the rule of the law, at the spearhead of the historic enlargement process, which is now approaching its culmination. This is a consequence of our history, which has, unfortunately, seen its own share of genocide, expulsion, disenfranchisement, suppressed minorities and crimes against humanity. We have no right to play teacher to the rest of the world, as we sometimes do, unless we take our own rule of law seriously. That does not just mean respecting the rule of law internally, it also means being the strong partner for others throughout the world, when it comes to the worldwide rule of law. The criminal court, like our founding treaty, was born in Rome and the idea of Rome is somehow bound up with the concept of law. The Rome Statute underlying the criminal court should not be undermined, weakened or watered down. If we do not want the courts needed for genocide and recurrent crimes against humanity to be wrongly denigrated as victor's justice or one-off justice, then we need a permanent criminal court to which all are equally subject, large and small states alike, whatever the nationality of the perpetrator or criminal. That is why we want to hold on to this Statute as it stands. We are severely critical of the Council of the European Union for skimping on clarity and dignity here, for repeatedly trying to get by with devious manoeuvres and for repeatedly giving in to the powers that be. If Europe wants to take itself seriously, it must fight for this criminal court and must say to the United States of America that they are indeed our most important ally, but that just such an ally has a duty within the free world to take the law seriously, however uncomfortable it may find it. We do not need more unilateralism in response to 11 September; we need to strengthen the rule of law throughout the world, which is why we are calling for fast, undiluted ratification of the Rome Statute. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE