Simon Busuttil, on behalf of the PPE Group. – Madam President, there is no doubt that the EPP Group condemns homophobia and we believe that homophobia must be fought. We have consistently made that clear and we are taking this opportunity to repeat it once again this week. In Europe, there is no room for discrimination of any kind, and that includes homophobia.

There are no two ways about this. Earlier today, all the political groups of this Chamber sat down together around one table to draw up a common resolution, in order to be able to speak against homophobia with one voice. Since this issue stirs up a great deal of emotion and controversy, the EPP wants to keep the debate focused on the real issue: that is, homophobia. Otherwise, it will be impossible to find common ground.

In this regard, the EPP would like to raise two points. Firstly, we must clearly keep in mind the limits of our competence: that is, what we can do and what we cannot do. We must respect the principle of subsidiarity, which is a basic principle of the European Union. This means that matters that are within the competence of national governments should be left to be handled at national level. Secondly, we must avoid condemning individual countries, especially in cases where it is not the government of a particular Member State that is responsible for a given initiative or incident.

Homophobia is unacceptable and we have to make sure that it is eradicated in Europe and beyond, but to do this in an effective manner, we must be credible, we must make sober, rather than emotional, assessments, and we must respect the limits of our mandate. Most of all, we must speak with one voice.