Madam President, Mr President-in-Office, Mr President of the Commission, ladies and gentlemen, there is a good atmosphere in today's sitting, which is fitting in this pre-Christmas season. We have thanked our President, but we must also warmly thank the Council Presidency, and here first and foremost Mr Verhofstadt, the Prime Minister, for the success which you, which Europe, and all of us, achieved in Laeken with the adoption of the Laeken Declaration. Mr President-in-Office, you – and the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Michel, whom I should like to include in these words of thanks – have acted in the best Belgian tradition, as your predecessors – Leo Tindemans, who will be 80 years old in just a few months' time, Wilfried Martens, the President of the , and Jean-Luc Dehaene – also consistently did: with commitment, conviction and in the European spirit. This is also an example of how the government of a so-called smaller country can sometimes operate far more effectively and move Europe much further forward than so-called larger countries always claim to be capable of doing. (Applause) That is why I should like to thank you most sincerely. I should like to limit my comments to the Laeken Declaration, because many colleagues from our group will be addressing the other issues. Laeken is a great personal success for you, Prime Minister, and we very much welcome this. I should, however, also like to thank the Commission very much. After all, from time to time we do also express criticism of the Commission, even if it considers this to be unjustified. The President of the Commission, Romano Prodi, with the Member of the Commission responsible for reforming the European Union, Michel Barnier, at his side, have not only constantly monitored our progress along the road to reform, they have also trodden the road with us. It was our party, the , which proposed at its Congress in Berlin as early as January that a Convention be convened. We are glad that this is the position of the European Parliament as a whole and also that of the most important institutions. What is most significant, in my view, is our new working method, the fact that the reform of the European Union is being made into a parliamentary process. A majority of the Convention are members of parliament, and we hope that this will also mean that the media will contribute to actually making our work public, because it is all very well to hold public meetings, but this is not of course sufficient on its own; it is only effective if the media cover these meetings so that the public has access to them, and this is a request which we wish to make of the media today. There has been some debate over this tripartite chairmanship which has been created for the Convention. May I say, Mr President-in-Office, that I consider this to be a very wise move. Valéry Giscard d'Estaing was of course not only the French President, he was also a Member of the European Parliament, and in the end a Member of our group. At one time he was a Member of the but he subsequently came to us, which was of course a step up,... (Laughter) ... and above all he did something which does not come at all easily to a former French President; he wrote a report on subsidiarity. I say to you: it is better to have a chairman who is a little advanced in age and who has an alert, keen mind and an open European heart, than a young chairman who is a Euro-sceptic! That is why I think that this appointment, complemented by the appointments of Jean-Luc Dehaene, with whom we as a group have excellent relations, and also Giuliano Amato, who is a proven European, is a very sound one. There will be nine further members of the praesidium and I would have thought that the two European Parliament representatives would be drawn from the two large groups. It is precisely because this will probably be the case that I firmly believe that it would provide a good counterbalance if the next President of the European Parliament were to come from a smaller group, and that is why our group will be giving its full support to Pat Cox, the Chairman of the . (Laughter and applause from the right, protests and heckling from the left) Ladies and gentlemen, obviously this is still open for discussion and the final decision remains to be made, but I am fairly optimistic in this regard. As far as content goes, Mr President-in-Office, I thought it was very astute of you to pose questions. I do not wish to give our answers to these questions now. Issues included strengthening Parliament, Parliament's right of codecision, more openness, transparency in the Council of Ministers and obviously a role for the Commission which is based on the will of the electorate. This will all have to be negotiated. Another crucial factor is how the work of the Convention is structured, and I think that with our 16 representatives we in the European Parliament have a tremendous opportunity to be, as it were, in the vanguard here. I have just proposed to our group that our family of parties – I do not know how the other groups do this – meet together as a group, as befits a parliamentary process, that our Convention members from the EPP/ED Group and the members of the national parliaments meet together to do some preparatory work in an appropriate setting. I would call on the fifteen governments to send their best people to the Convention. These must not be people who think that they will be taking part in a seminar; the governments need to be represented by personalities who also have the ear of their government. If the Chairman, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, is supposed, pursuant to the Laeken Declaration, to report back to the Heads of State and Government at each summit, then it would only be sensible to introduce a similar reporting requirement for the national government representatives. They should report back to their respective national governments, thus ensuring that the Convention does not work in isolation and that constant feedback is provided. Whether this Laeken Declaration ultimately merits the epithet 'historic' – it is a good start, but unless the working method proves to be effective the result will not be either – whether all of this is ultimately of historic significance will of course only be known once the result is on the table and the Heads of State and Government and their governments have adopted it. I hope that their commitment to the process, as expressed through government representatives and parliamentary colleagues, whether from the European Parliament or national parliaments, is so strong that the result can also by and large be accepted. If we achieve this together then this European Union, our venerable Europe, which will then be renewed, will be capable of acting both internally and externally; it will be a democratic, convincing Europe which is representative of our values. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE