Protection of minors and human dignity President. The next item is the report (A5-0037/2002) by Mr Beazley, on behalf of the Committee on Culture, Youth, Education, the Media and Sport, on the evaluation report from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament on the application of the Council Recommendation of 24 September 1998 concerning the protection of minors and human dignity [COM(2001) 106 - C5-0191/2001 - 2001/2087(COS)]. Beazley (PPE-DE) Mr President, may I first pay credit to my colleague, Mr Heaton-Harris, for the initial work he did in drafting this report before he moved to another committee. The rapid development of the audio-visual media has brought many real benefits in terms of education, spreading greater awareness of public affairs around the world, and not least in the field of entertainment. However, along with the undoubted advantages, there have also been concerns that, given the generally greater adeptness of children at using audio-visual resources, in some areas there are dangers of their obtaining access to unsuitable or harmful material. This is most obvious in the fields of overt sexual material and gratuitous violence. The principles which have guided this report are to encourage greater public awareness of these issues and to support parental responsibility and to develop co-operation between the content providers, consumer organisations and the respective authorities, both national and European. Self-regulation is considered to be the main instrument, underpinned by legal requirements where necessary. The report, which analyses the Commission's evaluation report, is primarily concerned with the Internet and with video games, as it was felt important not to anticipate a possible future review of the Television without Frontiers directive. The report calls for user-friendly content filter systems to enable parents to predetermine the sort of content which they feel is unsuitable viewing for their children and, in this regard I very much welcome the fact that, since the report was first drafted, the Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA), has launched a filter system available free of charge, an initiative supported by the Commission. We also called for greater public awareness, for education campaigns and hotlines to be set up, as already exists in TV broadcasting, so that complaints about illegal or harmful content may be recorded by consumers, particularly by parents. We consider that so-called 'Internet Chat Rooms' should be subject to greater monitoring, both of the rules for their installation and in relation to their use. As far as video games are concerned, we call upon the Member States to continue to promote the rating of video games, again through self-regulation, but if that is considered to be inadequate in some cases, it should be backed up by the introduction of agreed minimum standards of content and promotion. It is also hoped that the Member States will continue to exchange best practice in this field and co-ordinate measures which are taken in co-operation with the industry and with content providers. The report does not seek to sensationalise or exaggerate perceived dangers, but it does provide a useful framework to encourage public awareness of the risks involved and to provide practical remedies. Finally, Parliament calls on the Commission to draw up a further report, preferably before the end of this year, on the implementation of the recommendation with specific reference to implementation in each Member State. I commend the report to the House. Sanders-ten Holte (ELDR). Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the protection of minors and human dignity is an issue that is close to the hearts of us all. It is therefore to be welcomed that the Commission has presented this evaluation report on the progress we are making in this area in relation to audio-visual media and the Internet. Mr Beazley, as Mr Heaton-Harris before him, has drafted a sterling report on the subject. Nevertheless, I should like to take this opportunity of drawing your attention once again to the fact that technical resources and legislation from above are not sufficient to guarantee this protection. There are always ways and means, devious or otherwise, to get round this, and certainly children are very resourceful in this area. Self-regulation, as is now being applied on a large scale, appears to be a very handy instrument. However, I want to point out again at this juncture that instilling awareness in minors themselves, as well as their parents and educators, is still the best way forward. This is possible by, on the one hand, paying ample attention to media education at school, so that minors can be taught to identify harmful content for themselves, and, on the other hand, by providing educators with a tool, such as the Dutch 'viewer guide' classification system. This is a system on which we had a very interesting hearing yesterday and in which I am also personally involved in the Netherlands. It is a well thought-out system which actually works, and by means of which children can handle audio-visual media products with awareness. The system is also accompanied by an age category. MG6 means: six years, parental guidance desirable, and, in this way, adults are reminded once again of their responsibilities, for uninterested parents produce vulnerable children. I would therefore call on the Member States and the Commission, when studying best practices, to keep this classification system in mind and, when planning school curricula, to make room for media education too. Echerer (Verts/ALE). Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, I would like first to congratulate Mr Beazley on his report and thank him for his good cooperation. This topic is, as my predecessor on the floor has confirmed, close to all our hearts. There are many points on which we agree, such as trust being a better fundamental premise for this common endeavour than overall control or even censorship, neither of which would serve as a good basis for cooperation. We also agree that we must advertise the hotlines more extensively in order for them to be used, as we desire, right across the whole of Europe, and in order for us to be able to establish where protection is needed. We agree, too, that we have to provide parents with the right tools to enable them, together with their children, to assess which TV programmes, computer games, and films are the right ones for their children, and in order to support them in their judgment of the programmes. On this I agree with Mrs Sanders-ten Holte, who spoke before me. This is where moving closer on a European level to a uniform system of classification for the whole audio-visual sector seems to be of the greatest and most urgent importance, as that would be a tool facilitating control by parents and young people themselves, one that could also function on the basis of trust and not tend towards either excessive control or censorship. I now come to what I believe is at the moment the most important point in connection with this 'box', namely that the Internet strikes many as a sort of 'wonderbox'; they stand in front of it and are simply overwhelmed by all the stuff that comes out of it, forgetting in the process what influences can come into play, especially on children and young people, if we do not consciously discern what is heading in our direction. Let me emphasise it three times, four times, ten times over: media literacy. Media literacy - we cannot start too soon on heightening awareness of it and on playing our part in developing it. To do this, we also need not only the political willingness; we also need more programmes. For them, we need money. Perhaps we will achieve some sort of collaboration with all the players at the European level, something which is, at the end of the day, in the interests of all. Papayannakis (GUE/NGL). Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, our experience following the quantum leap in the mass media, especially television, is increasing daily. I am sure you have all witnessed in your countries, as I have witnessed in mine, the boom in cheap 'big brother' type television programmes in which people agree to be imprisoned, for want of a better word, while viewers are invited to peep through the keyhole, waiting for something titillating to happen, usually - to be frank - a sex scene, or for something unexpected or interesting to happen. But, at the same time, this sort of programme encourages viewers - especially young viewers - to look on the people playing this sort of lottery, betting body and soul in the hope of winning money at the expense of the others, as role models. These programmes are objectionable and absurd but we cannot attack them through legislation or administrative intervention. As other speakers have said, technical rules do no good, nor does informing and educating children, because forbidden fruit does, of course, taste sweeter. None of this is enough especially, Commissioner, as everyone will be able to access this sort of programme on the Internet sooner or later. I think we need some sort of European legislation and regulations with more teeth than we have at present. I do not have a great deal of faith in self-regulation because competition lives by its own - very powerful - rules. However, it would be no bad thing if we could come up with some sort of more binding code of conduct than we have at present. If we were to give parents and consumers the right to lay siege to the producers of these cheap programmes, it would, perhaps, provide some small counterweight to competition. And, of course, we could look at the more technical question of watersheds to draw a dividing line between when children watch television and their bedtime and when these programmes go out. However, even with all this, unless we come up with something more original and imaginative, I shall persist in my pessimism as to the future and the success of this sort of programme. Blokland (EDD). Mr President, the Internet and television have changed the world. Knowledge and information at your fingertips, 24 hours a day and in large quantities. As I have indicated in previous speeches, however, the Internet and television are a reflection of society. The Commission evaluation report and the report by the rapporteur, Mr Beazley, confirm this. Both media are also used for criminal and degrading purposes. I am pleased with the Commission evaluation report and the rapporteur's report. It is encouraging that the Commission is able to conclude that, in many Member States, a great deal is being done to prevent the distribution of child pornography. This also applies to other degrading and illegal activities. Attention is rightly drawn to the need for the Commission to continue to urge the Member States to implement the provisions in the recommendation. The rapporteur is also right to draw attention to parental responsibility in the first place, but also to the responsibility of the government and of suppliers of Internet products. They must jointly ensure that human beings are valued as unique creatures and not as instruments to fulfil personal needs. Children, in particular, deserve protection in this area, so that they can develop a healthy image of human beings. This is not just about child pornography. This is also about racism, hatred and other forms of degrading excrescences which can so easily be spread via the Internet and television. The global reach of the Internet and television requires an international approach. The wish expressed by Member States to subject national legislative frameworks to minimum standards at European, and probably global, level receives my approval. In my view, the combination of national frameworks and international minimum standards makes sense. This does justice to the global problem and cultural diversity. Moreover, the maintenance of a national legislative framework does not give the Member States the opportunity of hiding behind international legislation. The proposal to consult all parties involved when drafting codes of conduct and other ways of preventing the distribution of pornography and racist material is useful. I should, however, like to add that, in matters of censorship and handling illegal material, the police and justice departments are the legally competent authorities. Finally, I should like to urge the European Commission to encourage the Member States to continue to pay attention to evils which are distributed via television, video games and films. From the report, it is clear that less progress has been made in these areas than in the area of the Internet. Less clear-cut evils are still evils. And where the protection of minors and human dignity are concerned, we cannot be alert enough. de la Perriere (NI) . (FR) Mr President, the representatives of the MPF in this House welcome the European Parliament resolution on the evaluation report by the Commission concerning the protection of minors and human dignity, which they will be voting for. On this subject, which concerns the very essence of humanity, there are two main players involved: the family, first of all, which bears full responsibility for the upbringing of its children, and secondly, society, which must ensure that children are protected. It is, therefore, important - as emphasised in the resolution that we are discussing today - to do all we can to ensure that protective frameworks are established, in particular for the forms of media which are used freely by young consumers, be they audiovisual, written resources or on the Internet. It is also important for the victims of abuses of power to be able to turn to a moral authority that can help them. We must increase the means available to these organisations. Changing the behaviour of adults is something else that will enable us to protect our most vulnerable fellow citizens effectively. We must not be afraid; we must be prepared to go against the flow and to lay down new rules for a moral code that respects all aspects of the individual. We must condemn these counter-models of pleasure, who are all too often idolised by the young, whose points of reference some are seeking to destroy. We should also be inculcating a genuine appreciation of the beautiful, the good and the true in minors, so that they hold the keys to their protection in their own hands. To answer Mr Papayannakis, I would say that adopting this attitude demonstrates our optimism and I personally am not pessimistic about what society and what individuals can do to effectively protect minors. Zabell (PPE-DE). Mr President, I would firstly like to congratulate Mr Beazley on his report. The dangers children and young people are exposed to today are very different to those we were exposed to at that age. TV and the Internet have undoubtedly contributed to this, to a large extent, because they fill youngsters' heads with ideas that have very little to do with reality. A short time ago, a study was published in a Spanish newspaper, which stated that young people seeing, for example, a person throw themselves off the fourth floor of a building and yet run away unharmed or a person stop a speeding bullet with their bare hands without suffering any ill effects, contributes to many young people being unaware of the real danger of such situations. It is thought, furthermore, that such images put too many ideas in their heads and that this is, unfortunately, the cause of the increase in violence amongst young people and even children. Having said this, I would like to express my total support for the rapporteur when he calls on Member States to classify video games using self-regulatory mechanisms set up by the industry, and for them to establish 'abuse departments'. I would also like, of course, to congratulate the Commission on its intention to carry out a study on the classification of films distributed to cinemas, shown on TV, and available on DVD or video. Ladies and gentlemen, we need to be aware that we cannot expect to have a world without violence when the adults of the future spend their time watching cartoons, films and news stories that are of an increasingly violent nature. Junker (PSE). Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I want to focus on the actual task we are to perform as a European institution, but without neglecting the demands also made of the Member States. I believe that the digital age will see the acceleration of current developments in the services offered by the media, which are far from being limited to traditional television, or even to the Internet, but include many other services, and so it is right and necessary that we give thought to the legal form that control and the protection of young people might take, and also set up the means for dealing with them. There is no doubt that the legal framework must be adapted to these new developments, at both European and national level. I speak also for my group when I say that I consider self-regulation instruments to be an important addition to a legal framework. We cannot do without standards laid down in law, and these are a compelling necessity. Self-regulation instruments, too, need to be on a legal footing, which means that the promoters, those who provide the programmes, cannot be absolved of their responsibility. To put it another way, we cannot allow service providers to shirk responsibility for their programmes. That is the basic premise. As for how this can be put into practice, there may be - and indeed there are - many ways of going about that. Regulatory arrangements in the Member States are very diverse, which is ultimately due to the fact that they correspond to conventional media systems as these have evolved, and we are not about nullifying all that. I emphasise that self-regulation instruments as additions to the law are something we cannot do without. Technical systems, too, can be indispensable, but they cannot be a substitute for responsibility. We also know that many children and young people, in an age when adults have not mastered the whole range of technical options, are ahead of their parents in that respect. That will change in the long term, but that is the way things are today, and we all know that children can get up to all sorts of tricks, for example when it comes to cracking something. That is why we cannot rely exclusively on technical systems, and why there is a need for contents to be monitored, in which respect there must be restrictions on content, which cannot relate only to real-time transmissions. The different time zones in a region over which a satellite broadcasts make that obsolete in any case, and so even that method has serious limitations. I am very glad that this report takes up my group's call for the continuation and extension of the action plan on the safe use of the Internet, which is due to come to an end at the end of the year. I see this as compellingly necessary. I will conclude by saying that we must take steps to impart media literacy to children, young people and their parents, as a sound capacity for judgment can only come into being if our measures help to develop it. McCarthy (PSE) Mr President, I want to concentrate on the need to tackle the growing phenomenon of child abuse on the Internet. We welcome initiatives by the Member States in the EU on safer Internet use for children but we need to step up our actions for a more coordinated campaign to fight against Internet paedophilia. When it comes to cybercrime, Member States rightly prioritise the campaign against global terrorism and, additionally, focus on Internet credit card fraud, but more can and should be done on Internet-paedophilia. Last week I met with the Abusive Images Unit of Greater Manchester Police, a small, committed team led by Terry Jones, leading the field in expertise in the UK on tracing and convicting child abusers on the net. The unit was launched in 1995, when 12 images were seized. In 1999, 41,000 images were seized and one recent conviction revealed a man with over 50,000 images of child abuse. This is not child pornography but gross and indecent sexual abuse. I have seen the pictures. Behind each image is a real child traumatised by their experiences. The police I met with are doing an excellent job and being assisted by new software technology designed again by a local company in my constituency, Surf Control. With this they monitored chat channels for 16 hours. They picked up 48 offenders right across the EU - offenders in positions of trust (teachers and scoutmasters, a foster parent in Germany and a Swedish army sergeant); babies as young as three months had been anally raped. Abuse is under-reported. So what should we do in the EU? We need to do more. We need hotlines and to make this a priority at EU and Member State level. This week we voted for a EU network of national monitoring centres on football hooliganism. That is a violent and visible form of abuse, but we can do more for those children who are suffering behind the scenes from fear and violent abuse. Yes, we need self-regulation and partnership, but Internet service providers have to prioritise this. AOL and NTL have excellent reputations, but others are not doing the job. They are not answering the request of police to track down these abusers and they are even beginning to ask to charge the police service for it. I want to see closer cooperation between Europol and EU law enforcement. I want better research and funding for Internet-tracing software. We can do more if we make this a priority and we can protect our children from this violent and heinous form of abuse. Hieronymi (PPE-DE). Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I would also like to start by offering my very special thanks to Mr Beazley for this report, because I think he has summed up Parliament's opinions in a particularly constructive way. You can tell that by the fact that we adopted this report unanimously in committee and that, today in Parliament, there are no amendments to this report left, and that on a topic that involves a very large number of problems and unanswered questions. So many thanks for it. The work we are going to do will be on a very good foundation. Our ongoing efforts will be particularly important because the future convergence of the media - television, computers, the Internet - will mean that we will have to find new ways to really guarantee that young people and human dignity will be protected. The proposals submitted by the Commission are therefore very much the right thing, and the Member States' support for them is urgently needed. I would like to again go over the three points that I see as being the most important. We need, firstly, new and more highly-developed models of self-regulation, enabling the industry and the responsible Governments to work together on a common basis. It is for this purpose that the model of jointly-coordinated self-regulation has been devised, and we need to develop it further. Secondly, it is not standards harmonised on a Europe-wide basis that we need, but Europe-wide minimum standards, particularly for video games and the Internet, in order to offer young people real protection. And, thirdly, media education is needed not only for children but also for their parents. All these tasks require involvement on the part of the Council, and it is to them, and for that, that I appeal. Wyn (Verts/ALE). Mr President, I would also like to add my thanks to the rapporteur for his work on this very important report. The explosion in broadcasting technologies has caused many parents to lose control over what their children watch, and the growth of digital, cable and satellite TV, as well as home computer technology, means that parents are increasingly powerless to monitor their children's viewing habits. According to some reports, parents were not aware of the facilities, such as the blocks on pay TV and Internet filters, which help them control what their children watch. Parents need to be given more information on how these work and how trustworthy they are. Children's welfare is primarily the responsibility of their legal guardians, but this does not absolve suppliers and distributors of audiovisual content of their responsibilities. Both sides must take full responsibility in this regard. The degree of self-regulation in broadcasting differs from one Member State to another, but we all agree that we must work towards some commonality in this area and that self-regulation must be underpinned by some legal basis. Finally, child pornography on the Internet is unforgivable, and there are vast numbers of websites with illegal content located outside the European Union. I commend the report to the House and thank the rapporteur again for his excellent initiative in this regard. Sichrovsky (NI). Mr President, I too would like to congratulate the rapporteur on this report. The constantly growing range of multimedia services surely makes safety arrangements necessary - and of a comparable nature right across Europe - in order to protect our children and young people from harmful content and its consequences. We have heard about the introduction of technical measures such as filters and acoustic warning signals, and also about the possibility of direct intervention in services that offend against the dignity of young people or are a danger to them. These certainly deserve our full support and should be implemented to the same degree in every Member State. I would, though, like to remind you that - as the report also points out - many safety arrangements are not there to supplant the responsibilities of the parents, who must, at the end of the day, be the ultimate and most important regulators. We will otherwise not be able to prevent the situation arising where young people may well be unable to buy swastika banners over the Internet, but can do so in the nearest flea market. Preventing that is a task for the educator and not for the censor. Hermange (PPE-DE). Mr President, of course, we wish to thank the rapporteur and the Commission for this work and for the evaluation report. I am not going to repeat what other speakers have said but I should like to mention, Commissioner, three specific cases that have been brought to my attention this week. The first concerns the mother of a handicapped teenager who goes out to work. For some time, every evening, she has had to go and fetch him, because he is supposed to return home from work at around 5 p.m. but there, he has free access to pornographic sites. This is happening in a major city in France. As things stand, she cannot turn to the local police to close down these sites. Secondly, a letter that I received this week informed me of a site funded jointly by the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education. This site states that the role of adults is to allow children to sample everything, to try every experience. And there are a number of very specific examples - I shall provide the relevant documents later - funded from the public purse, of the type of thing our children are looking at these days. Thirdly, organisations that fight against paedophilia last week sent me a CD-ROM which brings together a large amount of information that is currently available. This CD-ROM was sent to authorities such as Europol over a year ago and no progress at all has yet been made on the matter. Soon, Commissioner, on 8 May, a world summit on children will take place. This afternoon, we will be voting on a resolution on the matter. We would like you, between now and this summit, to hold a meeting with all of the competent bodies to tell us what practical measures you intend to adopt in this field in order to combat this phenomenon. Reding Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I should like first of all to thank Parliament and its rapporteur, Mr Beazley, for having succeeded in reaching agreement on all the points under discussion. I must tell you that the Commission supports Parliament, just as Parliament supports the Commission. We have a shared aim, which is to protect our children. There are different ways of achieving this, as the honourable Members have rightly stated, and in order to accomplish this objective we must, therefore, join forces. I have listened with great interest to the specific and shocking examples provided by the speakers. There are thousands of such examples, which merely confirm our feeling that we must translate our words into action and that we will not be able to resolve the problems in the European institutions alone, but that concerted action by all key players is necessary, including the NGOs working to protect minors and human dignity, at both European as well as national or regional level. As the report states, progress has already been made in a very short time. For example, associations of Internet Service Providers have been established in most Member States and the ISPs in most Member States are members of the European Internet Service Providers' Association (EuroISPA), which has promoted the adoption of codes of conduct for the responsibility of providers. Hotlines have been set up in the vast majority of Member States to deal with complaints about illegal or offensive content. The European Commission is supporting the creation of these hotlines with its action plan for safer Internet use. According to the information provided by the Member States, it seems that the majority of Internet sites advocating political extremism or which depict sexual violence, and very many paedophile or pornographic sites are located outside the European Union, hence the importance of a strategy in this field that is not only European, but global. At the same time, the industry is also working on establishing classification and filtering systems, on the creation of protected areas or 'walled gardens'; portals in which ISPs guarantee the quality of the sites to which they provide access. The Community action plan for safer Internet use is also encouraging these initiatives. There have certainly been some very positive experiences, but there have also been sites which are, unfortunately, appalling, and which cannot be effectively closed down. With regard to the application of the recommendation by radio stations and television companies, all the Member States now have devices available which ensure that programmes likely to harm minors are preceded by a warning sound or have a symbol on the screen throughout the programme. We know full well that the times that are supposedly 'closed' to children no longer have any meaning today, because our children are perfectly capable of recording programmes that are broadcast whilst they are fast asleep. Furthermore, filter systems can only be used with digital television. It will, therefore, be easier to filter programmes when digital television is up and running, but for the moment, this is happening very slowly. In 1999, the Commission had a study produced on parental control of television programmes, which recommended giving the greatest emphasis to self-regulation whilst making filter devices available to families at an affordable price. I agree, on this point, with all Members of the House who approve of self-regulation, on condition that this is backed by legislation. This is the direction we must concentrate on in future. Mr President, I should like to close by answering some specific questions raised by honourable Members. First of all, I shall address my comments to the rapporteur, Mr Beazely: it would be premature to present a new report by the end of 2002, but under the review, we shall take all of Parliament's observations into account. We shall continue our work, but the report will probably not be ready by the end of 2002. Secondly, with regard to the system of classification, a new study on classification was started by my staff in January and should be completed by the second half of 2002. It will be forwarded to Parliament and we will discuss it and draw the relevant conclusions from it. Thirdly, media education: as I have said on many occasions, this is one of my competences, one of my objectives. Our children learn, to a greater or lesser degree, to read, write and to do arithmetic, but they never to learn to read and to gauge this society of images that surrounds them. This is why we have launched the first pilot projects for image education. This is also why the forthcoming 'Net-Days' in November 2002, which will link up hundreds of thousands of school classes in most of the Member States and, furthermore, in other parts of the world, will this year be dedicated to image education and image analysis. Our approach, therefore, is extremely practical. To conclude, I wish to draw your attention to the fact that a single Commissioner, the European Parliament or the Commission alone cannot deal with all of these issues. This is why the proposals will be studied in conjunction with all the Commissioners responsible for the areas affected by this issue, and with institutions other than the Commission that have responsibility in this area, such as Europol, for example. What is needed is concerted action, which we shall continue to implement. President. Thank you very much, Commissioner. The debate is closed. The vote will take place at 12 noon. President. The next item is the report (A5-0035/2002) by Mrs De Sarnez, on behalf of the Committee on Culture, Youth, Education, Media and Sport, on the Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council on strengthening cooperation with third countries in the field of higher education [COM(2001) 385 - C5-0538/2001 - 2001/2217(COS)]. De Sarnez (PPE-DE) Mr President, before presenting my report, I should like, first of all, to thank all my colleagues for their amendments, which have improved this text, and also the draftsman of the opinion of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, Common Security and Defence Policy, who has delivered an extremely good opinion. The aim of the report I am presenting is to consider, on the basis of the communication by the Commission, ways of making the Member States more competitive and attractive in the international training market. We all know that the issue of training is of great importance for the coming years. Students the whole world over are increasingly looking beyond their own borders for the training that offers them the best prospects. Consequently, we are seeing the burgeoning of a real international market in training. It so happens that in Europe we have fewer students from third countries than the United States, Australia or Canada, to give a few examples. We therefore have a great deal of ground to make up and this is why my report makes a number of proposals. Firstly, we must have a detailed survey on the international mobility of students, since none exists at the moment. It would, therefore, be useful if the European Commission, through the good offices of Eurostat, could work in close cooperation with Unesco and the OECD in order to give us a clear and detailed overview of the mobility of foreign students. And it is finally time, I believe, to propose a harmonised definition of what constitutes a foreign student. My second proposal is that we must move towards harmonising the quality of higher education and the recognition of diplomas and studies. The European Union must be able to provide high-quality training, whatever the university or the host country. It is crucial for students to be able to start a degree in one Member State and complete it in another with the guarantee of seeing the knowledge they have acquired validated by a diploma that is recognised in all Member States. I therefore propose that the Commission continue to improve and to promote the university studies validation system known as the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) and that this should inspire it to develop new programmes for mobility. We must also promote the creation of joint courses between Member State universities in order to achieve, wherever possible, the award of joint diplomas. Thirdly, I propose that a European university label be established, which would be awarded to training modules provided in higher education establishments recognised for the quality of their teaching and of the reception they give to students of third countries. This university label would focus less on the quality of the university as an institution than on the modules it teaches. I feel sure that this will enable us to help promote European higher education and will send a clear signal to foreign students. Fourthly, we must also encourage the promotion of language learning. Language learning is an undisputed factor of mobility and this is why it would be desirable for the Member States to systematically establish the teaching of foreign languages in the form of modules in all institutions of higher education and also for teaching of the language of the host country to be made available to foreign students. My fifth point is that we must also guarantee high-quality reception facilities. Universities must now focus their efforts on ensuring that they provide these high-quality reception facilities for foreign students. They must be helped to deal with the administrative arrangements that they will necessarily have to face. They must be helped to find accommodation and to obtain grants. These high-quality reception facilities will be one of the criteria on which the award of the European university label will depend. My sixth and final point is that we must make use of existing programmes of cooperation that have already proved their value, such as the ALFA programme. Consequently, the new programmes should take account of the enormous importance of the drawing up of joint study programmes and the development of systems for the reciprocal recognition of courses of study and diplomas and partnership with undertakings, with local authorities or with multilateral organisations. The aim of this report is, therefore, to urge the European Union and the Member States to take action to make European higher education dynamic, competitive and attractive. The competitiveness and attractiveness of European higher education must, of course, start taking shape in the Member States first of all. The Member States' Ministers of Education are aware of this and raise the point at every Education Council meeting. I am sure that the European Commission and Parliament are today willing to do everything they can in order to achieve the creation of a European area of knowledge that is attractive and competitive, and ultimately able to make its presence felt in international competition. Muscardini (UEN) Mr President, it has now become clear that an international training market does exist; the fact that the European Union's involvement in the evolution of the international market in education is very slight and not in keeping with its cultural traditions is something of which the Union itself is aware, and the Commission was right to raise the matter in its communication. Mrs De Sarnez's work is excellent and the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, Security and Defence Policy has made a positive contribution. In addition to the communication's huge technical content and the many considerations and proposals we are presenting to the Commission with a view to strengthening cooperation in the field of higher education, there is another, extremely important issue: the quality of the training provided. The draft resolution contains over ten paragraphs on guaranteeing high-quality higher education, but it can clearly go no further, given the technical nature of the suggestions and proposals. The issue of the quality of training warrants further analysis, for the quality depends on the extent to which the training fosters the human development of the young generations. Cultural and vocational development is based partly on the development of the human dimension, on respect for one's own life and the lives of others. When young people are committing suicide for what appears to be no reason at all - as happens in the West - or when they use their bodies as instruments of death to kill defenceless people - as happens in the Middle East - we must look closely at the causes of this distortion of values and at what we can do in terms of training, understood, not least, to mean fostering human development and an awareness of the dignity of the individual, in order to prevent such unusual behaviour. This is no longer just a technical issue: it is a question of philosophy and education too. In this regard, I wonder whether we should not start to extend the Union's responsibilities beyond the limits of harmonising rules and do more than just develop cooperation tools. We fully support the creation of centres of excellence, towards a European university label, just as we are in favour of the Union taking on a role in promoting high-quality university teaching. It is worth trying to set every possible wheel in motion to harness the high-quality human resources available in order to improve the quality of training, so that culture and education become sources of life-giving energy which remains with people throughout their lives. Quality in the sense of providing tools for intelligent living, then: that is the primary goal of training. Pack (PPE-DE). Mr President, Commissioner, I would like, on behalf of our group, to thank Mrs De Sarnez, who has drafted an excellent report. I would like to point out that this 'Europe of knowledge', which we have come to use as a common expression, has to give an account of itself at an international level. This is an important challenge, and the declarations at Lisbon and Barcelona, or what was adopted in Bologna or Prague, are also important. If, though, they only result in everything being done, at the end of the day, in a so-called open coordination that bypasses Parliament, then that is something we simply cannot agree to. We agree with the contents, but also want to be involved. The challenges we face are great. As I have said, we have to give an account of ourselves, and I agree with Mrs De Sarnez that we must increasingly see to it that our education becomes more appealing and more competitive. In the European Union, we need something like a community with a first-rate knowledge-based society, of which we can then make real use. For that, we need more mobility. As Mrs De Sarnez has already said, mobility and the quality of our education are the most important things, and so there are of course a number of things we have to do. We must also make it our concern that more languages are taught and learned in higher education institutions. We must make it our concern to have more common leaving certificates. The Franco-German college in Germany, at which common leaving certificates can be taken, could serve as an example for many other European higher education institutions. In competition, we should stand or fall by whether we get this on the move. The university label proposed by Mrs De Sarnez strikes me as excellent, and so we must work at making it a reality. We must also act more quickly than we have in the past to ensure that leaving certificates and diplomas are at last recognised. We have been saying this for ever and a day and yet progress is being made at a snail's pace. This is damaging our young people, and I do think this is a challenge for all of us and one that we should take up. Zrihen (PSE). Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, now that we have this report - for which I should like to thank Mrs de Sarnez - the time is right for the European Union to reflect on what it means by the right to education, and more specifically higher education, and how it intends to implement this right. The twentieth century has seen human rights universally accepted as the main guiding force behind what we do. Our responsibility has to be to see them fully respected and put into practice, because education is not only an individual right; it is also an essential means of promoting peace - a crucial issue today - and ensuring respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms in general. If its potential for building a world of peace is to be realised, education needs to be widely available and made equally accessible to all. It is a huge task, but let us not forget that even today we live in a world where there are more than 800 million illiterate adults and almost 100 million children of secondary school age who do not have access to a school. Moreover, millions of those in school today are not able to benefit from high-quality teaching that meets their basic educational needs. It is therefore increasingly urgent for us to meet these needs in a world where the upheaval caused by globalisation and by the revolution in information and communication technology is marginalising entire peoples, who have been plunged into the most extreme poverty and who are easy prey for extremists of all kinds. Making the right to education a reality is now less a question of access to education than of access to adequate training programmes for everyone so as to meet basic needs. From this point of view, the right to higher education is - on our own evidence - not yet a reality, in particular for women. Higher education shall, according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit, but in Africa and Asia fewer than one person in ten in the age group concerned is in higher education, and the gulf is continuing to widen between these regions on the one hand and Europe and North America on the other. There is no doubt that considerable progress has been made in the last 50 years towards making the right to higher education a reality throughout the world, but we should not forget that this vision, which is laid down in Article 26, is not only quantitative but also qualitative because it encompasses the aims and objectives of education and thus its content. Mindful of the task which remains to be accomplished - and with repeated thanks to Mrs De Sarnez for her report - I therefore think that it is essential, as far as those who are still excluded from any form of education are concerned, for us to be aware that it is not a question of choice, but that a great many people do not even know that they have a choice. If we are talking about dignity, demands, and equal and inalienable rights, I hope from the bottom of my heart that this report will enable the European Parliament to continue to fight for these things and that it will not stop fighting when the battle is only half won. Sanders-ten Holte (ELDR). Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, in Europe, we have been familiar with the phenomenon of the mobility of students and lecturers in higher education for a long time. Such mobility greatly contributes to mutual understanding within Europe. It is truly the shop floor on which understanding is shared. The Commission is now calling for this process to be extended and intensified so as to include third countries. In her thorough report, Mrs De Sarnez makes the correct assumption that high-quality higher education is required. That the European Credit Transfer System must be improved and promoted in this respect goes without saying. As does the fact that closer cooperation with third countries also requires the development of new cooperation programmes in higher education. The EU has already set up cooperation programmes with America and with Canada, but I should like to fight for cooperation in the field of higher education with the developing countries. According to the Commission, one of the objectives of cooperation with third countries is to train highly qualified people. This is certainly very important for developing countries. The mobility of people and ideas has an extremely stimulating effect on all participating institutions within and outside Europe. Education in general is the best way of eradicating poverty in the world, and this certainly applies to developing countries. Strict exchange arrangements will be needed to stave off a brain drain. I would therefore call on the Commission, in its incentives policy, to pay extra attention to cooperation in the field of higher education A second point I should like to bring up is the use of e-learning. For many universities, especially in Developing Countries, it is not always financially possible to fund extensive exchange programmes. Precisely for them, the use of e-learning is extremely important, with a view both to gathering knowledge and to spreading their own knowledge. The Commission should therefore pay extra attention to this aspect in its policy in the
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