Bill Etheridge, on behalf of the EFDD Group. – Mr President, Wahhabi Saudi Arabia is undoubtedly a repressive regime. Their treatment of women and abuse of their rights is backward and uncivilised. What is worse, they seek to export their medieval values worldwide. I consider the best way to counter this is to export our values of freedom through trade. Free market capitalism has always been the gateway to free peoples, as we saw with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Any suggestion that the 6 000 UK firms exporting over GBP 7 billion worth of goods to Saudi be stopped is folly. What we must do is increase our trade and expose the Saudi people to the values of freedom through free markets. Trade sanctions and embargoes, as with other parts of the world, is merely cutting our nose off to spite our face. Freedom is an unstoppable, uncontrollable ideal. No repressive state or religious superstition can ever defeat it in the long run. Its promotion is our greatest weapon against the forces of darkness and repression, many of these forces so well highlighted by the regime in Saudi and the ideals that they export through their funding of mosques in other parts of the world. It is crucial that we stay strong, free and open, and that we expose people to our values, to our trade, to the free market. Through that, civilisation and free peoples will undoubtedly follow.