Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner Vitorino, it is cause for amazement that an institution such as the Commission should commit itself to the open coordination method. It is something of a Metternich method rather than a Monnet method, and the use of it by you – the European Commission – is an indication that your own approach to asylum policy has failed. That Mr Evans, the rapporteur, being British, should speak up for open coordination is not that surprising, but it is quite remarkable that you should adduce the Community employment policy as an example of how this method has been successfully used, as you have obviously not been following the current employment situation and the state of the labour market in the EU, otherwise you would be well aware of how open coordination has failed in this area. Let me make some comments on specific points. In the report, it is envisaged that asylum-seekers' biometric data will not be used in the investigation of crime until there is a separate system of European data protection in place for it. Vote for that, and you leave yourself open to the question as to why the general standard of data protection in the European Union and in its Member States is apparently not sufficient to offer asylum seekers adequate protection against the misuse of data. When it comes to data protection, we in Europe have the highest standards in the world. Why you should want to use such an absurd requirement to prevent the effective implementation of Eurodac and hence the protection of our citizens, remains a mystery. That this report should call for the procedure for acquiring refugee status to be speeded up is indeed a good thing. What we are dealing with here is indeed, in principle, just the checking of an application. That, too, is something the Group has been advocating for some time, yet it was your group, Mr Evans, that in various reports advocated one new appeals board after another, guarantees of legal redress that became ever more comprehensive and bureaucratic, the constant reduction of the State's right to submit evidence and hence, of course, more lengthy procedures. It would be nice if you were to back up the words in this report with actions in others. With my third observation, I come to what is our main problem. In this report, you have not a word to say about our society's real problems. You have not one word to say about how we should deal with those who support the committing of terrorist acts. What do we do when someone, with the provocation of our public in mind, wants to call his child Osama Bin Laden? What do we do with people who publicly rejoice in the images of 11 September? What do we do with Islamic preachers who preach hatred and violence? How do we respond to people who by their words trample our free and democratic system of government underfoot? Do we have to wait until these people commit a terrorist act before we are permitted to deport them, or before they cease to enjoy the rights of visitors? It is that question that is currently being asked over and over again in our societies in view of the situation in which we find ourselves. It is to these questions that we must give answers. There is in fact nothing whatever about that in your report, but these are questions we will have to resolve in many future debates. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE