Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, my thanks go to Mr Clegg for his excellent work. He has had a rather extraordinary time of it recently, but, despite all that, I must thank him. For the Commission this is an important and very successful achievement, it must be said. We have now a record in a field in which developments come so fast that records befit it rather well. Opening up local networks to competition is a 'fast-track' opportunity afforded by the Treaty of Amsterdam, which we are now taking full advantage of, as, otherwise, every day we will be losing money in the shape of exorbitant charges and creating barriers to the process. In just a few weeks we in the Committee on Industry, External Trade, Research and Energy have dealt with this issue and have, under the leadership of the rapporteur, succeeded in negotiating this proposal with the Commission and the Council, a proposal that must surely be adopted tomorrow without amendment. This is my firm belief. We have in practice thus discussed the issue simultaneously with the Commission and the Council, as well as amongst ourselves and with many other parties, and now we have achieved this result, which is nothing to be ashamed about. Local networks have, I would say, been the greatest bottleneck in the European telecommunications market and now it is being removed, and if it is not, then the national authorities can intervene, and if the prices are not right we then have recourse for compensation. Consumers and enterprises have lost millions and millions as a result of too high charges. Now charges for telephone calls, fast Internet connections and multimedia services will come down throughout Europe. This is just the right measure as far as consumers are concerned, and it will help us too. The networks have to open up with terms and conditions that are fair and non-discriminatory. That is very important. On the other hand, in the parliamentary amendments we have given consideration to the fact that the owners of the network and those who built it should not go penniless: they must receive a fair income for their work and, furthermore, their future investment in the network must be made possible for the future organisation of the infrastructure. The problem here of course is that privacy will suffer, as now anybody with the permission to do so can install their own equipment at exchanges and switchboards. Thus, the traditional secrecy of the sound telephone is now truly crumbling. The auction of radio frequencies, however, is promoting developments in the opposite direction. It is pushing up charges to the consumer and has led to something like chaos in the market. This is pushing up charges, as I said, and what is going to happen on the fourth and fifth generation mobile front? States are losing their ability to control matters. Already things are moving in such a way that an oligopolistic situation is developing, which will result in the market being carved up directly. It was the case in Holland, and just recently in Italy, that the number of players taking part in auctions was only equivalent to the number of licences available. This is therefore a matter of a sort of private agreement, which means that the market can no longer function properly. I propose that the Commission should give an account now, while there is so much data on this, of what all this means. This is development in the opposite direction to what we have achieved in connection with this regulation.

Political group: PSE