Mr President, Mr President of the Commission, I would first of all like to remind Parliament that we generally judge a tree by the fruit that it produces. The tree that you have described to us has strong and healthy branches which appear to us to be a good omen for the future of Europe. Certain people have obviously expressed – is this not the case, Mr Cox? – a degree of regret at seeing former Commissioners present in your Commission, but this perhaps proves that Mr Cox, driven by a desire for polemic, had not properly read the report of the Experts which fully exonerated those Commissioners. Of course, some people, such as Mr Poettering, have been carried away, and we are not surprised, by partisan spirit, to the point of turning this Parliament into an annex of the Bundestag, but a ‘stage ’ annex, of course. Our attitude in the Group is clearly extremely different. We are going to take care of your Commission and to those who doubt your independence, Mr President, because you will have too many Commissioners, I will reply by saying that, while you have been nominated by a majority of and social democratic governments, it is the Group which has been most surprised by your first public statements. This will be a good demonstration from the outset of your desire for independence and your desire to see to it that the Commission is what the Treaty wants it to be; that is, a Commission beyond countries, beyond national sentiments and also beyond the ideological preferences that we hold here within this Parliament. Of course, we have raised the spectre of the hearings. Certain people, no doubt through historical atavism, would like to turn them into an inquisition process. As for us, we would like to take the hearings for what they are, that is, as an opportunity to listen to the Commissioners, to question them, to ask them questions so that we might better understand their objective and above all to find out to what extent their expertise, competence and motivation are appropriate to their positions. It is on these bases that we will come to a certain number of conclusions, but it is not our job to treat you as if we were the judges at the final judgment. What is important for the Commission, apart from the hearings which your team will doubtlessly pass successfully, is to see what you are going to do, in other words the works which you are going to undertake. You have mentioned some of them today. From the outset, I would like to take up that of reforming the Commission. You have rightfully stressed the fact that the Commission must modernise its structures, its spirit and its working methods and I believe you have been given the means to effectively carry out that reform. I would, however, urge that, by acting in that way, the baby is not thrown out with the bath water, and that it is well understood that one of the causes of failure on the part of the previous Commission has sometimes been the loss of the notion of public service. It is important that the Commission is offered the means to take on, with its new structure, its officials, whose spirit will no doubt have changed, is offered the means to take on its tasks and that it shows no hesitation in saying to the Parliament or the Council, ‘you ask us to achieve these objectives, we ask you for the means’. Otherwise the fear is that you will re-live the difficulties of your predecessor. Secondly, the Intergovernmental Conference. I must confess that, of the decisions taken during the Summits of the German Presidency, the idea of establishing an Intergovernmental Conference has both pleased us and worried us. We are pleased by the desire for reform; we are worried by the fact that we are returning to an old method. I was therefore very happy to hear you say that now you are going to return to what I would call the Delors method, which stimulated the 1985 Intergovernmental Conference in Luxembourg, leading to that wonderful reform of the Single Market. Finally, since I am running out of time, I would simply like to make an appeal by saying that the Commission is not only an executor for the decisions of the Council and the European Parliament, and that we have now perhaps lost the taste for the discreet charm of standards for lift springs and we would prefer more initiatives from the Commission in the area of social problems. In that way you will truly be the European government that we all hope and pray for and which deserves our trust. (Applause)

Political group: PSE