Aparicio Sánchez (PSE). – (ES) Mr President, I would like to protest at the absurd nocturnal and almost clandestine hour allocated to a debate which should be one of the most important debates of the year.

Mr President, we are dealing with a great report, which is timely and of a high quality, on which my fellow Member, Mr Bayona de Perogordo, deserves the congratulations of the Socialist Group, and I am very happy to express them. In the Andreasen report this Parliament has already defined, together with the Commission, an information strategy intended to reach all the citizens. However, despite the fact that we are in the middle of the process of creating a Constitution, opinion polls are still indicating a certain lack of interest in European construction. We could sum up the situation by saying, like Marianne Thyssen, ‘Europe has been created, now let us create the Europeans’.

To this end, the information flowing from our institutions must not be neutral, we must create feelings of citizenship and of belonging to Europe in every European. We Europeans have an historic duty: we can and we must identify with each other and this must be accompanied, promoted or even provoked, if necessary, by the European institutions.

In contrast with what happens in the individual countries, European construction is not the result of feelings, but of reasons. It is not driven by peoples, but by political, economic or media elites. Many things are still lacking, including a European civil society, in other words, a system of intermediary organisations, which are relatively independent from the States and from the market, which are able to gather information, to deliberate, to make decisions and to act in a joint and cross-border manner. The priority tasks for the Commission, for the European media and for opinion-formers in general – including us in this Parliament – must be empowering the European political area, the development of a European image and identity, strengthening – as the Commissioner has said – a core of common values, the debate on the future of Europe and the European approach in all types of information.

In summary, the task must not be to restate the identity of Europe over and over again, but to seek, define and consolidate the bases on which the Europeans can identify with each other.

Mr President, the approval of this report and the fact that Commissioner Vitorino has been charged with implementing these policies, are, in my view, significant reasons for us to be hopeful.