Fiorello Provera, on behalf of the EFD Group. – (IT) Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Baroness Ashton, Mr Albertini’s truly excellent report contains a passage that I consider to be of great political importance: the part connecting the phenomenon of immigration to the policy of cooperation with developing countries.

To control such enormous migratory flows by means of repressive measures and domestic policy alone would be unthinkable. Distributing migrants throughout European Member States would not resolve the problem either. On the contrary, it would encourage new arrivals. A key response for controlling migratory phenomena is the development of a cooperation policy, preferably coordinated at European level and aimed not only at economic progress, but also at social and democratic progress. Emigration must be a choice and not a necessity.

In order that this cooperation policy should be effective and reach those who really need it, it is crucial to promote good local governance, without which there would be inefficiency, corruption, wastage of resources and poor results. Ensuring local governance and the collaboration of governments is the goal of foreign policy, and cooperation must become an important instrument of European foreign policy: this is my personal message to Baroness Ashton within a sector that I hold very dear, in other words, cooperation.