Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to come back to the issue of the European Union’s signing of the additional Palermo protocol, entitled the ‘Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children’. The important part, of course, is ‘especially women and children’ and today we have Amendment No 1 in the report by Mrs Klamt, whom I would like to thank, which expressly states that we want to combat trafficking in human beings for the purpose of sexual exploitation and labour exploitation. In my view, it is not sufficient to mention trafficking in human beings alone. The clarification regarding women and children was proposed at Palermo. In my view, it is absolutely fair for this amendment to propose that the purpose of sexual exploitation should be mentioned before the purpose of labour exploitation, as we know only too well that trafficking primarily involves women and children, so let us avoid hypocrisy. If we had placed labour exploitation before sexual exploitation, we know that we would not really be facing up to the facts. That is why, in my view, Amendment No 1 is crucial and I hope that the Commission will take this on board. A point which I also believe to be important is that trafficking should be treated as a crime and not a misdemeanour. Everything relating to sexual exploitation is a crime and not simply a misdemeanour – we should acknowledge this, highlight this, be aware of this and should not play on this vagueness. I would like to thank the various committees and rapporteurs for having insisted on this. I would like to add that, out of all the amendments, I believe that the additions relating to the status of the victims are extremely important. These additions affect at least three points. First of all, there is the fact that we can talk about incitement, which can be one of the punishable causes. That means incitement and not just fraud. As you can see, there is a small difference between the two concepts. There is also the state of vulnerability of the victims, in addition to the pressures that we could easily pinpoint; the vulnerability of the victims is something I see as equally important. My last point, which was stressed by the Council of Europe in its recommendation published in May 2000, is that the argument of consent was not relevant. This is another important point. The consent or non-consent of the victim is not always relevant – in fact, it is far from being relevant. I believe that we must be vigilant on this issue, and we should recognise that consent should not be used as an argument for those involved in trafficking to escape punishment. That is why I believe that these reports are crucial. I would like to thank the two rapporteurs. I would like to say, unlike some Members, that I hope there will be, of course, more cooperation between Member States. How can we combat trafficking if there is no cooperation between Member States? Does this proposal allow for sufficient cooperation? Not exactly, and personally I would hope for more, so that we can identify all the victims, male and female, because men can, of course, also be victims of trafficking and sexual exploitation. Both men and women can be victims, but the main victims are women, especially, and children. I would like to reiterate that one of the amendments proposes we recognise that adulthood begins at the age of 18, and that those under the age of 18 must be considered to be children.

Political group: GUE-NGL