- Avant le vote sur l'amendement 10:

  Jacek Saryusz-Wolski (PPE). - Madam President, I am proposing an amendment because the situation has changed and the two Eastern Partnership countries, namely Armenia and Azerbaijan, are no longer seeking association with the European Union. For that reason I propose the following phrasing for this paragraph 16 which you have in your papers – if you wish I can read it – but in fact it eliminates the words about Association Agreements and brings together the first part of this paragraph with the second by adding the words ‘should comply with’. If the House would agree to that, it would mean that the split vote is not necessary – the further vote 1 and 2 is not necessary if this oral amendment eliminating some words and adding three words is accepted. That would fit the factual state of affairs on association.

(L'amendement oral est retenu)

  Jacek Saryusz-Wolski (PPE). - Madam President, given that the amendment on initialling has been approved by the House – which I am happy with – there is a need to amend paragraph 39 to make it refer to signing an Association Agreement with Georgia. In this new formulation, it would read ‘believes that Association Agreement signing should be conditional on tangible progress by Georgia in the area of the rule of law and of democracy and meeting European standards in the upcoming presidential elections’. The words ‘is supportive of initialling the Association Agreement but’ and ‘including the issue of political prisoners’ should be deleted. If this is approved, it would imply that in paragraph 40 we are deleting the word ‘immediately’ to make the whole thing logical.

(L'amendement oral est retenu)

  Jacek Saryusz-Wolski (PPE). - Madam President, if I understand properly, my proposal to delete the word ‘immediately’ from paragraph 40, while now voting in favour of paragraph 40, is accepted in order to make the whole thing logical. I proposed this today while speaking about paragraph 39, but I anticipated that if paragraph 39 in my oral formula is adopted, that would imply that the word ‘immediately’ will be deleted from paragraph 40.