Translation of "Duff sign " (English → French) :

– (DE Mr President, the rapporteurs Duff and Voggenhuber, as well as the Committee on Constitutional Affairs, have done some sterling work. The report itself is sound because it conveys the key messages without going so far as to anticipate the work of the fundamental rights convention. I therefore nurture the hope that tomorrow in plenary sitting, this report will be adopted in the form we in the Committee on Citizens’ Freedoms and Rights drafted it in. However there is one point which I would like to be amended. I have tabled an amendment to this effect on behalf of my group. It concerns the question, raised repeatedly today, as to whe ...[+++]ther the European Union should sign up to the European Convention on Human Rights. This was an important goal in the past. It was an important and appropriate goal in the past precisely because there was no intention, at that stage, to create our own, autonomous catalogue of fundamental rights at European Union level; viewed in this light, it was far better to have that, as a second-best solution, than nothing at all.

In order to reply specifically to Mr Duff’s question, following the coup d’état, the Union cancelled the signing of the new cooperation agreement between the Community and Pakistan, and we suspended our political dialogue so as to send a message, loud and clear, to the new masters in Pakistan regarding our concerns about the coup d’état and its consequences.

The area delineated by Professor Duff's map, signed by my learned friend and by me, is a limited area and I simply want to say that the plaintiffs do not give up their claim to the larger area referred to in paragraph 8 of the statement of claim but are limiting their claim for purposes of this action only to the area delineated in the map.