mr president first of all let me begin by thanking the rapporteur for all her hard work on this report
what many of us felt at the beginning would be a dossier which would not cause us much of a problem turned out to be an awful lot more tricky than we thought
unfortunately the rapporteur had to take the brunt of most of the negotiations but she certainly had to work very hard to ensure this report got through within the necessary timeframe which was very important as we were under pressure to secure the extension of her derogation which was due to run out in june of this year
in my opinion this is a small but vital piece of legislation which will protect those areas and those countries that are concerned by the threat of rabies the disease continues to occur in some parts of the eu and hopefully by the end of twenty eleven vaccination programmes will have proved successful in eradicating the disease once and for all
until then however we have found a way which allows us to continue to enforce our own stricter requirements under the transitional period before we move in line with other eu member states to the general regime
