David Hammerstein, on behalf of the Verts/ALE Group. – (ES) Thank you, Mrs Napoletano, for this excellent report. A couple of days before the war broke out in Gaza, I was representing Parliament and the EMPA in Jordan, at the last ministerial conference that took place before activities were once again suspended due to the violence in the Middle East. It was a conference on water. It was a ministerial conference on one of the key issues on which there needs to be cooperation across the Mediterranean, which is going to create conflicts, is a question of survival and is also the target of some possible large projects in the Mediterranean, involving solar energy, transferring water and many other things.

This is how crucial it is. These activities have been suspended and I hope that soon the Union’s activities for the Mediterranean will resume and that there will be progress in the Middle East.

We have had some very ambitious objectives in the Mediterranean. The results have been much more modest, especially in the fields of human rights, democracy and the environment.

We also need to promote the South-South market and cooperation between the countries of the South, and not just be obsessed with a big free market in the Mediterranean, which is not preceded by cooperation between countries that have deeply entrenched conflicts, one after the other.

At the same time, we need to deal with the energy crisis. The energy crisis and the current economic crisis could represent an opportunity to move forward with very important projects, both for Europe and for our neighbours to the South, such as plans for thermosolar plants (high-temperature solar energy) and the creation of intelligent, clean networks to connect North Africa, the Middle East and Europe in a vast, clean plan to fight climate change and the economic crisis.