Madam President, Commissioner, please excuse the absence of my colleague Mr Lipietz, who has had to stay in Paris this week because a loved one is very ill. Our committee was not, in actual fact, unanimous on the report I am about to present to you on his behalf, in contrast with its unanimity on the report on the European Investment Bank. That is why around 40 amendments, including, moreover, a dozen or so tabled by my own group, have been tabled for discussion in plenary. Despite the differences of opinion that are quite traditional within the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs on this type of report, I shall emphasise the points on which we agree, first of all highlighting our warm support for the work carried out by Commissioner Monti and his staff. Everyone in our committee is in favour of a well-organised European competition policy and the Commission’s report for 2001 bears witness to the efforts that you and your staff have made. International action, to which you have just referred, does not present any more of a problem. We are in favour of establishing global rules. The report therefore emphasises the need to strengthen international cooperation in the field of competition. The majority, if not all of our colleagues are opposed to renationalising competition policy, and this is a strong political message. You have just referred to the recent judgments of the European Court of Justice. Paragraphs 4 and 5 of our report clearly state: ‘the European Parliament does not consider the recent judgment of the Court of Justice (...) as disqualifying the work of the Commission’. The issue we should be raising instead is the reorganisation of the Court of Justice. You mentioned various alternatives. The report describes the creation of a new legal chamber. I do not know what your opinion is on the problem of state aid, which is the subject of the report by Mr Herzog. If I understand correctly, next year we shall have a single report on competition policy and state aid policy. I am delighted to hear it. Another point of agreement of great political importance concerns the fact that state aid should, as laid down by the Treaty, focus on horizontal objectives. In committee, the disagreements tended to concern the way in which the objectives were defined and implemented. We have already discussed this with you at length. A great deal of progress remains to be made. I have just learnt of the conclusions of the Competition Council in this regard. We must work towards making the various actions of the Commission compatible and coherent with European policies. In this context, the opportunity for recourse to state aid in order to achieve these horizontal objectives should be reiterated. There is one last point of agreement between Members: we need to strengthen the legislative role of the European Parliament in all aspects of competition policy. The report specifically calls – this work is naturally the responsibility of the Commission – for Parliament to have the right of codecision with regard to legislative procedures concerning competition. Two points have caused a great deal of controversy and a number of amendments concerning them have been tabled in plenary. The first concerns our stance with regard to the candidate countries. There is a consensus within the committee that competition rules should be considered to apply without discrimination to all the Member States. The effective implementation of competition policy, however, has led to debate. Although we must be strict in combating corruption – and the Commission’s reports emphasise how serious these problems still are in many of the candidate countries – some of us would like to see a degree of flexibility in the assessment of this state aid, along the lines of the attitude of the European Union during German reunification, when it seems that we adopted a particular attitude towards the new, reunified Länder. The last point of agreement between committee members is their favourable view of the liberalisation of several economic sectors. Some consider that the processes underway are generally balanced and satisfactory, while others believe that these liberalisation processes do not comply with all the objectives of the European Union. Madam President, in order to avoid having to speak again, I would like very briefly, on behalf of my group, to highlight the importance we give to a number of amendments we have tabled on our assessment of the examination of state aid in the candidate countries. Then there are our Amendments Nos 19 and 22 on services of general interest, both at international level – WTO negotiations – and national level. Lastly, Commissioner, I would like to hear from you. As you know, the Convention has already received a number of contributions on the subject of services of general interest. Others will follow and I believe it would be appropriate politically for the Commission, also, to communicate to the Convention a contribution on the way in which it envisages the relationship between competition policy and services of general interest. IN THE CHAIR: MR COLOM I NAVALVice–President

Political group: Verts-ALE