. – We voted against the EU Citizenship Report 2017. This report includes a paragraph (Recital G) that is completely unacceptable. Surprisingly enough, the EPP had collected 77 signatures to table an amendment to supress this paragraph, including 6 members of the Partido Popular who ended up withdrawing their signatures. However, by virtue of Rule 169(5) that establishes that where an amendment is withdrawn by its author it shall fall unless it is immediately taken over by another Member, 7 other MEPs stamped their signatures in support of the amendment and it was finally put to vote in plenary. The amendment fell by an extremely narrow margin (256 in favour vs. 285 against the deletion of that very paragraph, with 102 abstentions) and thus, Recital G remained in the final text of the resolution, which forced our vote against the whole report. We strongly deplore the wording and content of this paragraph. Changes in the borders of a Member State can happen as a result of a democratic exercise, when a majority of citizens express their will in a peaceful democratic mandate. Democracy is, after all, one of the values enshrined in Article 2 of the TEU.