Verbatim report of proceedings

Thursday, 16 February 2006 - Strasbourg

6.4. Right to freedom of expression and respect for religious beliefs (vote)

- Before the vote on paragraph 13:

  Mario Mauro (PPE-DE). – (IT) Mr President, on behalf of my group too, I call for the term ‘denounces’ in paragraph 13 to be replaced with the term ‘condemns’, in view of the fact that the latter term is already used in paragraph 6 to judge violent acts committed against embassies. That is all the more reason why, in my opinion, the term ‘condemns’ should be used to judge violent acts committed against persons.

  Elmar Brok (PPE-DE). – (DE) Mr President, further to Mr Mauro’s suggestion and Mr Cohn-Bendit’s amendment, I propose that we should indeed opt for the word ‘condemns’ at that point and use the second part, as proposed by the Verts/ALE Group, as a paragraph 13a. I, too, would support it were it to be that. The consequence of that would be that we would have a two-part vote, which might well be a compromise solution to which the House could agree.

  Monica Frassoni (Verts/ALE). – (IT) Mr President, I should like to inform you that we accept this request and that we want to submit another one, which again relates to paragraph 13. The English text talks about ‘religious fanatics’ in the plural form. We call for the singular form to be used instead, because Father Santoro was in fact killed by only one religious fanatic.

(Parliament accepted the oral amendments)