Jiří Maštálka, on behalf of the GUE/NGL Group. – (CS) Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I read the report with great interest and I can frankly state that it caused me a certain amount of confusion. The report is made up of 61 points and it is exhaustive but in my opinion very opaque. It completely loses or even fails to include issues which most affect ordinary people in the Czech Republic and in Europe. I can find no definite opinion on the current global economic crisis and the approach of the EU and the US. I can find no position on the war being waged very unsuccessfully by some EU states alongside the US in Afghanistan. The position taken in the report is unaccountably circumspect. What is meant by the call to ‘come up with a new strategic concept’? The assertion that ‘we welcome the appointment of Richard Holbrook as the sole special envoy to the Pakistan-Afghanistan region’ is wholly inappropriate in a report of this kind and is nothing more than a manifestation of back-scratching among the small group of politicians who made the decision to bomb Yugoslavia 10 years ago. There is also a complete lack here of a clear standpoint on the plan to construct elements of the US national anti-missile defence system in Central Europe, which by the way has become a bone of contention in international relations and is sparking off a militarisation programme in space.

Even though the report contains a noticeable shift away from the policy of double standards in relation to Eastern Europe and includes greater emphasis on international law, overall the report looks like a defence document for EU High Representative Javier Solana. The job was well done and there is no need for fundamental changes. The document includes calls to set up two new combined EU-US bodies and a proposal on this. In my opinion literary creations of this sort should not be submitted to the European Parliament. Instead we need a resolution on how to proceed over the fundamental issues affecting the world today.