Mr President, I would just like to start by expressing my gratitude to Mr Rothley, who has, with almost boundless patience, steered this tanker through the sandbanks ever since 1998, and has done so in a way that commands admiration. (Applause) I also think that, without him, this tanker would have ended up on the rocks more than once. Mr Rothley, in his speech earlier on, addressed in a few words the important issues, some of them of a constitutional nature, that this statute raises. I would like to say something about some rather more down-to-earth problems. I also believe that the statute, as it has emerged, is a very balanced piece of work. In the Committee on Legal Affairs, we were, essentially, guided by the instructions that we had been given by the experts and wise men that Parliament had mandated. The fifty per cent of a judge’s salary that is at issue here corresponds, more or less, to what an Austrian, French, German or British MEP currently receives, after health insurance and old age pension contributions have been taken into account. It is less than what our Italian Members currently get, and so I would like to express my thanks to them for their understanding and for their willingness to accept a reduction in income, as it were on behalf of future Italian MEPs and in the interests of common European rules. In addition, I would like to thank MEPs from the , the and the Liberals, who have not, in this part-session, submitted any amendments aimed at reducing the 50% or resubmitted the amendments put to the Legal Affairs Committee, as I believe there to be no objective argument against what it has produced. This has been unequivocally confirmed by the wise men, from whom we received clear guidance. There is, however, one amendment tabled by a number of Members who basically want future MEPs’ salaries to be based on those of their national counterparts. I regard that amendment as nonsensical, to put it mildly. The fact is that the whole point of the statute is to create equal conditions for this country’s parliamentarians in accordance with Article 190 (5). It follows that those who submit such amendments must, in order to be consistent, be opposed to the statute as a whole, in that they in fact seek to retain the legal status quo. Let me turn now to the issues of primary law. A number of Members have tabled amendments – Amendment No 28 is one example – aimed at adding to the Statute the old protocol on privileges and immunities. That, though, makes no sense. For example, Amendment No 28, which I have just mentioned, refers to MEPs’ customs privileges, which, as we are living in an internal market, no longer exist. That shows how old this law is. This issue calls for new law. I might add that it is also the case that the way is now at last clear for us to have transparent rights to indemnification. This is something on which the Bureau will decide. I will conclude with an appeal to the Council, which now has a real opportunity to ensure that we get a forward-looking Statute for Members of the European Parliament. Putting it simply, it must act swiftly to approve what this House has decided, and it should not block a decision by using flimsy and superficial arguments on tax law that have all been conjured up from nowhere. What I expect of the Council is that it should, as soon as possible – by which I mean before the elections – decide in favour of what Parliament demands. Once we have taken our decision tomorrow, the next move will be for the Council. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE