Alyn Smith, on behalf of the Verts/ALE Group. – Mr President, I would like to add my own congratulations to our rapporteur, Janusz Wojciechowski, for tackling a very complex and emotional dossier with some aplomb and dealing with a lot of conflicting viewpoints. In this speech, which is probably my last speech in this mandate, it is worth remarking to colleagues that this is what I call a classic European Parliament European dossier. It is technical, it is complex, it is a little bit distant from our citizens, but it is worth remembering that animal welfare is of crucial importance to our citizens, and fairness is of crucial importance to our producers, to our consumers and to our market.

I am particularly drawn to Amendments 45 and 46 on ensuring that third countries seeking to export to our territory match our standards. That is a crucial element of fairness for our producers and for consumer confidence in our markets, so it is very much to be welcomed.

Likewise, the proportionality of the measure in Amendments 65 to 67 allowing for on-the-job training is particularly to be welcomed for smaller slaughterhouses and smaller operations across the European Union. Also, the derogations allowing small abattoirs to be exempted from having the animal welfare officer present are very much to be welcomed.

On religious slaughter, I think the Commissioner is absolutely right. I do not think we need to regulate that in this package, so this is good news for consumers. This is good news for confidence in the EU meat market and it is a good job all round. My congratulations.