Mr Vidal-Quadras Roca, Commissioner Reding, ladies and gentlemen, working hard and hitting precise targets is what I learnt as a smith, and I am glad that the three institutions – Parliament, the Council and also the Commission – have shown how rapidly and efficiently European legislation can work when there are important matters at stake, and when there is agreement on them. The proposal was submitted in December 2003. In January, three committees and a rapporteur were instructed by Parliament. On April 21 – today – we have found in the trialogue that we agree on this draft legislation, so that, from the first proposal to the entry into force of this important decision for small and medium-size firms, only four months have elapsed. We quite simply want this programme to facilitate investments in new technologies and above all in training – and so I am particularly pleased that Commissioner Reding is here, because we think that training, education and further training is an absolutely crucial basis for the success of a company and therefore at the end of the day the creditworthiness of a company and the securities required for receiving credits are also decisively improved by it. Our objective is quite simply to secure existing jobs and companies and to create new ones. I believe that this programme will enable us to achieve this objective quite efficiently. We also acknowledge that we want to promote collaboration, especially between companies – especially the smallest – and at the end of the day also the collaboration between businesses, but also with the organisations that promote them. We also believe that the Commission should report to us about the progress, obviously in the first place on the financial effect, but we are also interested in the benchmarks, which are imposed, and the best practice, as to how these programmes will in fact be put into practice, how they will be implemented, how we can learn from various country applications in order to exploit these programmes as optimally and 100% as possible, so that here in this area there is no administrative expenditure included, but that all the money provided – 100% – is passed on directly to the companies through the European Investment Bank . We know that in one of the three programmes, namely JEV, we have not achieved these objectives. I would like explicitly to thank the Commission for having had the courage officially to concede this and to say that this is a programme which is not being used to the full. However, we would like to use the funds which have become free here appropriately and we know that the subjects of Basel II – guarantees, equity loans and risk capital – will in future be even more the focus of attention. So even today I would like to demand from this body - and we will indeed provisionally resolve all this tomorrow in the plenary session - that the subject of Basel II is also taken seriously. Here we find that although a study has now been produced which is already recorded by the competent experts internally, with the results of which, however, we are apparently not satisfied, we would also like an impact study, which quite simply shows what problems we are expecting to get through the Basel II legislation, and we would like today to have an impact study by the Commission, and the Council has also insisted that we should get one. We would like to know what our finance ministers, what our national states, in the run-up to the introduction of Basel II, would like to do or will have to do, what proposals the various States are developing here, and above all there must be a programme of business re-engineering. However, it cannot be the case that we introduce Basel II with billions of euros in costs. We would like the opposite. We would like a rationalisation project. The costs for companies, for banks, must be reduced dramatically, and here everyone is looking to the financial markets supervisors, the finance ministries and the Commission. Parliament, too, will also do everything it can to make Basel II a success. We would like the Stability Pact, which we have accepted for our Europe, also to be shaped to fit our small businesses, and then they too would be looking at a secure future.

Political group: PPE-DE