Timothy Kirkhope (PPE-DE). – Mr President, I wish to begin by congratulating Mrs Gál on her hard work, but I am afraid that I also have to strike a rather discordant note in these discussions.

As a former member of the Convention on the Charter of Fundamental Rights, I obviously have no problem with the development of human rights, but I have a problem with this proposal. I think this agency is unnecessary; if its powers were to be effective they could only be delivered either under a European constitution, which certainly is not imminent now, or some other legal treaty base, which it certainly will not have.

The Charter has always been contradictory, in my view, to the Council of Europe Convention on Human Rights, which also covers many countries outside the EU. The articles are very different in each case. Whatever anyone says, a new proliferation of European agencies and their functions will cause not only an overlap but also an unnecessary increase in bureaucracy. It will, of course, be expensive, and I would remind Mr Cashman, who says ‘put your money where your mouth is’, that this is not my money or his money – it is the money of the European citizens, and we have an obligation to be very careful indeed about how we spend their money when we take initiatives of this kind.

The current body on which, if it goes ahead, this will be built – the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia – has not actually shown itself to be that objective or that positive in its work. I have raised in this House on a number of occasions the issue in 2003 of the suppression of the anti-Semitism report. There was a lot of discussion about that, and it clearly showed that there was not the objectivity needed when looking at human or fundamental rights, but a rather subjective approach by a number of officials. I do not want to end up in a situation where we have not only conflict between two agencies – one of the Council of Europe and one of our own – but also a lack of objectivity in the handling of cases which, undoubtedly, are always going to be sensitive.

I think we have to be very careful. We can certainly have our dreams and hopes for the improvement of human rights, not only in the European Union but particularly in those states, such as Russia and elsewhere, where they are clearly now being ignored. However, it is important that we do not increase the number of agencies merely for the sake of it on a political basis. We should look at our existing agencies and our powers of persuasion at the highest level and use them to the full before we take this new adventure.