Karamanou (PSE). – (EL) Mr President, to the dithyrambic comments by my honourable friends about the ability, sensitivity and efficiency of the Greek Presidency, I should just like to add the satisfaction of those of us with first hand experience of what President Prodi referred to as passion and ingenuity.
The agenda for Thessaloniki includes a series of burning issues which divide both the Member States and public opinion. The draft Constitutional Treaty is of primary importance and we hope the Convention will arrive at an integrated proposal which will get the European Union out of its identity crisis, rather than merely at a list of alternative solutions. I also hope, together with thousands of women's organisations throughout Europe, that the Constitutional Treaty will fully consolidate equality of the sexes in all sectors, abolish any exclusion on the basis of gender and safeguard the balanced participation of men and women in the European democratic institutions. Women will never accept a constitution which excludes equality of the sexes from the Union's values and objectives. Women will never accept that the escalating violence against them and the outbreak of trafficking and sexual exploitation cannot be dealt with due to a lack of clear legal basis in the Treaty.
On the question of asylum and immigration, the thinking behind the United Kingdom draft on asylum reform, which literally leaves the 1951 Geneva Convention in tatters, should be rejected. Any political decisions in Thessaloniki will need to take serious account of the proposals of the UN High Commissioner for refugees. As Mrs Terrón i Cusí also said, most immigrants in the European Union come in through legal channels. We therefore need to manage immigration flows better, not to further reinforce our borders, apply repressive measures and/or link immigration with the activities of criminal networks.
Finally, I think the agenda of the EU-USA summit should include: first, the abolition of the death penalty in the United States, secondly, the treatment of the prisoners in Guantanamo and, thirdly, what we called here in this House the lie of the century, by which I mean the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Mr President-in-Office, Thessaloniki must give the countries of the western Balkans a clear prospect of accession and we must start pre-accession preparations, which are the sine qua non for peace and stability in the region.