Mr President, I would like to congratulate the Commission on its rapid response to the challenges set in Johannesburg on the issue of water and the lack of water, and also Mr Lannoye, whom I shall now address. Nevertheless, I believe that the report issued by the Commission on water does not go far enough and perhaps avoids some of the most important structural issues and fundamental problems which we are going to have and which we already have in relation to water. Firstly, I believe that the debate goes much further than privatisation or liberalisation. Europe is accustomed to providing general solutions, to laying down directives on everything relating to the European Union. I believe, furthermore, that we must fully accept that sustainable development must be approached in a made-to-measure fashion, that the problems are not the same in one place as they are in another and, therefore, we must, from the outset, establish flexible and open policies which allow for thousands of different solutions, hundreds of thousands of small projects, appropriate for the place in question. We must, moreover, introduce this philosophy into the investment criteria and the aid criteria amongst other things, because without local efforts and this adaptation of programmes to local projects we will not get anywhere. I therefore advocate this notion of flexibility, adaptability and numerous small projects, despite the fact that there are broad problems. Nevertheless, on the subject of the framework concept, there is another issue which I would like to comment on. If water is a universal resource, as necessary and indispensable as the air or the earth, it is also limited and, take note, ladies and gentlemen, it is a transportable resource, unlike the earth. It therefore requires protection and regulation not only by states, but also at international level. It is a resource which must be shared. Just as the great rivers are shared and enjoyed by peoples of different languages, religions and nationalities, it is a cross-border resource and therefore requires international agreements and conventions for the sake of justice and sustainability. As a universal resource, Europe must propose an international agreement, a convention which will allow rivers to be organised in accordance with river basins, as stated in the Directive on water, preventing a particular country from having the right to intervene in a manner which, as in the case of the Tigris and the Euphrates, leaves other nations in precarious situations. Europe must take decisions as well, and talk about the fact that water, being a universal resource, cannot belong only to those who live at the heads of river basins or the peoples who wish to use them along the length of their course; we must discuss the possibility of creating diversions without harming anybody, in order to resolve the problems of desertification and water stress; in order to resolve the problem of the development of peoples living at the mouths of rivers or along their course. I believe there are legal issues of great importance which Europe should promote and we should also introduce the concept of flexibility, sustainability and made-to-measure actions.

Political group: PPE-DE