Wuori (Verts/ALE). – (FI) Mr President, we can accept the changes in substance, despite the restricted emphasis on some details. At the same time, however, I want more generally to draw attention to the methods that have been used, which this time have been scandalous. Human rights must not be allowed to become hostage to short-sighted and often media-led day-to-day politics. Thus, their implementation requires political choices to be made and it will also have a political impact. They have intrinsic value.

Human rights work calls for an overall view of the situation and the systematic, sustained and consistent prioritisation of problems, both in thematic and geographical terms, that is based on its own system of logistics. We welcome this report’s overview of human rights work at the present time. At the same time, however, we need to look to the future. Unless we can improve the way we coordinate the EU’s internal and external human rights monitoring processes and put them on a par with one another, unless we are able to engage in more vigorous post-monitoring activity and disregard irrelevant political motives and hidden agendas, we will be leaving a sad legacy to the next Parliament. Only if we can put our own house in order can we in any credible way demand that Member States and the Council give up their attitude to trade policy and other narrow views on what they might gain from a situation, and create a consistent and lasting policy. In this sense human rights begins at home and that is mainly what the issue is now.