Hiltrud Breyer, on behalf of the Verts/ALE Group. – (DE) Mr President, the vote, the day after tomorrow, will put to the test how seriously we take the Berlin Declaration, which had a lot to say about values, and of whether we are willing to express those values in European law, or whether they are only empty words and a waste of paper.

There are three principles that we see as indispensable. One is that the human body should not be exploited for commercial gain, and I have to tell Commissioner Verheugen that this is not laid down elsewhere; nowhere, in fact, is this principle laid down and made binding in law. I am amazed at the aggressiveness with which some seek to prevent it from being so.

Secondly, we do not want any interference in human beings’ genetic identity: we do not want tailor-made human beings. Not only is that laid down in the Charter of Fundamental Rights, but it is also present in the bio-patent directive. We do not want the choice of treatment to be determined by people’s wallets any more than we want, in the future, modifications of genetic material that would no longer be reversible.

Nor do we want monsters and hybrids; what we want is for these things to be quite explicitly banned. Were this House to unite against these three ethical principles, it would send a devastating message and would, indeed, in moral terms, represent a breach in the dam.

Since it is intolerable that naïve hopes and false promise of cures for conditions with which embryo therapies have next to nothing to do should be used as a means of sending this House down slippery ethical slopes, we must instead send out a clear signal for European values and ensure that …

(The President cut off the speaker)