Jean-Claude Martinez, on behalf of the ITS Group. – (FR) Mr President, we were told in 1990 that rate brackets were needed. In 1992, we were told that minimum rates were needed. Now we are being told that floating minimum rates are needed, and always for the same reason: the eugenics, the health neurosis of the Protestant Europe, which should lead us to impose internal customs duties, to erect fiscal barriers, of up to nearly two euros per litre of wine, in Denmark or in the United Kingdom for example. But if our British, Danish or Swedish friends wish to impose taxes, let them do so! The Mediterranean countries, Germany and Luxembourg impose zero excise duties on wine.

Everybody is free, if they so wish, to take drugs rather than to drink, but we do not try to solve the drug problem through taxation. And we do not create health safety, if I dare say so, by means of taxation. Let them drink, let them live! There are endless maximum limits: we do not need minimum limits!