Mr President, I shall not repeat the general criticism we expressed during the previous sitting of Parliament regarding the orientations of the European Commission’s work. The programme submitted to us for this year is generous, to say the least. It contains some positive elements and some less positive elements. I should like to draw attention to one area that I feel is rather deficient, the area of social policy. This would not be too serious if significant progress had been made during the five previous years, but this is not the case. Indeed, in terms of social policy, the Commission and Parliament have the opportunity to promote many things. According to the terms of Chapter I of Title 11 of the Treaty, in particular, I am thinking specifically of problems to do with working conditions and improving the working environment. Regarding, in particular, the health and safety of workers, we are now governed by the terms of a directive dating from 1989. In my opinion and in the opinion of my Group, this directive is due for re-evaluation, particularly in the light of a significant study published in 1997 by the Dublin Foundation. This shows a general decline in working conditions in a number of important sectors. This needs looking into and I would like to see the Commission investigate the matter thoroughly and assess what needs to be amended in this directive in order to improve the situation. I shall not go into these in depth. I would now like to take a few moments to examine the process itself, in connection with the legislative programme, i.e. the tabling of the programme and the execution of the programme. In this respect, I should like to make two firm requests on behalf of the Group of the . I should have liked to present these as demands from Parliament but it is enough, today, for them to be firm requests. Firstly, when a European Parliament resolution has been adopted, particularly within the framework of a Parliament initiative, it would seem to me to be democratic for the Commission to follow up this type of request properly within a reasonable time period. For example, in the environmental field, we have a White Paper on civil liability in environmental matters. This is an important step forwards, but let me remind you all the same that this White Paper is the follow-up to a Parliament resolution adopted in 1994, that is to say, six years ago. And after the White Paper we shall probably have to wait a long time before we have the directive. This shows just how slow the procedure is and, in order to give reasons for this slowness, I feel it would be important to have an interim report. My second point: when a legislative proposal is announced within the legislative programme and is not achieved by the end of the current year, then we should know the reasons why. Let me give one example of this. Today, a proposal for a directive on electrical and electronic waste has been announced. This proposal has already been put forward several times, but has never been tabled. We know that this is due to pressure from the American Government which is threatening to start proceedings within the WTO, but it would be appropriate, fair and democratic if the Commission were to explain to us just what was going on behind the scenes and why it is dragging its feet before tabling this directive.

Political group: Verts-ALE