Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, one normally never gets this amount of time. I have no idea how I am going to fill the seven minutes allotted to me. But this is a very serious matter. Europe is becoming increasingly concerned with the role of the liberal professions. As they are part of the single market it is clear that issues concerning freedom in the single market are also extremely important for the liberal professions. Unfortunately, what one hears in European institutions is not always easy to understand, to interpret properly and to elucidate. We do know that, a few months ago, the Commissioner for Competition, Mario Monti, made a number of statements in this connection. Mr Monti was attending an international conference when he said that, in his view, setting tariffs for liberal professions, which up to a point is done according to the law in some Member States through such mechanisms as fee scales for lawyers, is not without its problems under competition law. He also announced at this conference that the Commission would look into this problem. We also have the situation in which an Italian court submitted a request to the European Court for an advance determination in relation to which a hearing took place last autumn, and now the European Court will have to rule on the admissibility of Italian fee scales for lawyers under European law. We have liberalised markets in many areas of the European Union. However, we have not normally liberalised them in such a way that we said from one day to the next, that’s it, we are now releasing you into a world of completely free competition. Usually there are transitional periods, statutory regulations for adjustment and so on, for example in energy policy and many other sectors. Only in the specific area of the liberal professions does it seem that there are no, or not enough, political considerations of this kind at the level of the European Union. I think it is extremely important that, in the future, the Commission takes a closer look at the liberal professions and starts to deal with their specific demands. They must deal not only with the people who work in the liberalised professions but, most decisively, with consumers as well. Fee scales were issued by national legislators in the Member States in order to provide reliable protection for consumers when they made use of the services provided by the liberal professionals. I think this aspect is gaining increasing influence in the policy of the European Union and must be integrated into any strategies that are developed. We know that the Commission has just presented a paper on the services sector and the problems posed by the single market. This is very much to be welcomed. It just strikes me that this paper follows a completely horizontal approach and does not deal with the specific interests of the individual branches in the services sector, which is very big. In my view, the medical and legal professions, for example, cannot be dealt with according to the same criteria as the supermarket round the corner whose social task is quite different. We must not forget that the liberal professions are largely subject to specific special provisions attached to their profession in terms of competition, advertising, standards of behaviour and other obligations. Today at midday, we voted in second reading on the money-laundering directive which dealt with such obligations. That is why I believe that a specific political approach for the liberal professions is appropriate. We want Parliament to deal with this issue and we want to force the Commission, by means of this oral question, to tackle the issue of the liberal professions head on, which it has so far failed to do. That is why we have introduced this oral question with the text you have before you, which you are all familiar with and which I do not intend to go into any further. I would now like to say a few words about the task my political group feels we have to take on, which is the reason why this resolution was introduced. It is not enough just to talk about it; we must take advantage of this part-session to announce our demands in a brief Commission resolution. From our experiences in committee, the Commission normally complies with such requests. On the basis of this resolution, therefore, I expect the Commission to make concrete proposals and statements on the development of policy with regard to the liberal professions. I also expect it to answer the question of how, from a political viewpoint, it intends to deal with the modern developments that society entails. The liberal professions cannot ignore progress; they must of course bear in mind that times change and the world moves on. I have one final comment. Most liberal professions are also small and medium-sized enterprises. That is why there is special interest in protecting these groups and also a special obligation on the part of the Commission to deal with this issue. I have now spoken for six minutes. I will forego my last minute.

Political group: PPE-DE