Mr President, I believe that both the rapporteur and Mrs Ferrer have highlighted the main points of Parliament’s position and the legislative procedure to date, and they have pointed out how the Council, Parliament and the Commission have worked together in order to arrive at a text that is correct and acceptable to everyone. I think that, once again, the conciliation procedure, which means agreement between the institutions, is working properly. However, there is an amendment that the Council rightly rejected. It is Amendment No 15, on fraud. A Customs Code is not the place for establishing rules on fraud. That is something that depends on the correct functioning of administration and, clearly, in a legislative debate we should not be discussing the subject of fraud. Taking advantage of the fact that the Commissioner responsible for the internal market, Mr Bolkestein, is here, I would like to point out that a few years ago the European Parliament established its first committee of inquiry, which was to investigate fraud in the transport of goods. There was a report by Mr Bouwman, an excellent report that we adopted, in which considerable fraud was revealed, for example, in the case of tobacco. There were goods, particularly tobacco, which were entering through a non-Community country in the European Economic Area zone, going through the Community zone and then mysteriously leaving the Community zone on paper, but without actually leaving. Currently, for example, there has been a drop in the price of bananas in the European Union. It seems that multinational companies are placing their excess bananas, those that they do not sell in the United States and Europe, in Eastern Europe. From Eastern Europe, certain ‘charitable’ organisations, that is mafias, introduce these bananas, which were practically given to them, into the Community market, competing with the prices of legal importers and Community producers. We could also mention the ongoing fraud in tomatoes, in which we see prices being continually undervalued because goods are being introduced through certain Community ports without authorisation. Therefore, while recognising, as the Council and the Commission have said, that this amendment was not appropriate in this case, I would like to, once again, take the opportunity to point out that the procedures for monitoring imports in the European Union are not working, that fraud is being committed and that this fraud is not only bad for Community taxpayers, but also for the functioning of the internal market, and even for loyalty to third countries. If we want third countries to accept commitments, the European Community must be the most zealous in ensuring that its own rules are being complied with, because if a country has the opportunity to place products in the Community by means of smuggling, why is it going to bother to negotiate with us for any sort of concessions? I therefore welcome the fact that we have reached an agreement on this subject. I think that the modifications are very positive, but I would like to take this opportunity to ask the Commission for greater vigilance and for stricter measures on fraud in Community customs.

Political group: PSE