Mr President, I would like to start my speech by thanking and congratulating the rapporteurs for the work they have carried out, with a particular mention to Mr McCartin, who has done some magnificent work in a very short time, the result of which is a good definition of the form the discharge in respect of the implementation of the general budget of the European Union for the financial year 2000 should take. There are still some problems, however. Generally speaking, there is a unanimous call for the modernisation of public authorities and for the process to be further simplified, which would give rise to greater transparency and better public understanding as a whole, whilst bringing this important process closer to the EU citizens. Whilst we gave our support to the rest of the reports, I would like to make a particular reference to a report on which our group, the Group of the Europe People’s Party , abstained – the Morgan report. With regard to this report, we do not agree with the rapporteur or with the committee outcome in several regards. We understand all that has been said in this House with regard to the irregularities of the Economic and Social Committee in 1996 and 1997. This period, when there were some administrators who did not do their job properly, when many investigations were carried out, when documentary proof was requested and that which was available was surrendered seems like a long time ago. It is true to say that today there are new administrators and new procedures; there is now no problem, as demonstrated by the 1998, 1999 and 2000 discharge. We do not believe that we can accept this slur on an organisation which cooperates with the other institutions, such as the European Parliament, particularly when the current administrators have done all they can to clear up all of these irregularities. We believe, however, that the best thing that we can do is to draw a line under this whole affair, put this case of poor administration behind us and to give the Economic and Social Committee a new opportunity to maintain a good relationship with Parliament in the future, a good relationship with Parliament and to properly represent all social administration – as it has up until now – and for it to be one of the most effective bodies in the European Union – one of the oldest, if not the oldest – of all those we are analysing today in this report. This is a discrepancy that we therefore hope will be cleared up when we vote in plenary. We also disagree with the rapporteur’s proposals with regard to the Council. We believe that the Council discharge should be approved. Foreign and defence policy are recent issues. We have to look at things from a different perspective. I believe that the rapporteur could take steps to facilitate a more appropriate solution by taking the opinions of the Group of the Europe People’s Party into account. If this is not the case, we will have to vote against the report. We hope that this matter is cleared up and that, if this is not the case, this part of the report can be sent back to the committee, in order to facilitate the development of the aforementioned foreign and defence policy for, as I say, we should not continue with the current approach, given that we have to achieve a better understanding and a better clarification of procedures carried out to date.

Political group: PPE-DE