Mr President, Mr President of the Commission, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, let me start with sincere thanks to the rapporteurs, Mrs Gill and Mr Mulder, for the very good cooperation that we have already enjoyed over recent weeks. This is very early in the year to be setting down Budget lines, but the procedure has changed in such a way that we will always be doing this rather earlier in the future, which is not necessarily a disadvantage. If you see what discussions are going on at present in the European Union, you will know that, on the one hand, Europe is associated in the public mind with an enormous amount of hope, but that also, on the other hand, people are at present somewhat disconcerted by many aspects of it. The debates that we will be having this year, which will also have an influence on next year's Budget, will be on issues such as the Convention, enlargement, future economic progress, and the prospects for peace. It is also necessary that we, that Parliament, should be reliable in the work we do on the Budget, reliable as regards what we did in the past, and as regards what we want to carry forward into the future. Each individual issue has to be approached and discussed in a frank and transparent way. I have said in every Budget debate that we have to have equal rights in every area of the Budget, and I will stop saying this only when we actually are, and the Convention has a chance of making this happen and, in the Budget procedure too, even in matters of agricultural policy, of giving both parts of the budgetary authority equal powers. We have to ensure that transparency and clarity in matters concerning the European Budget are capable of being communicated to the public. We are on the threshold of enlargement. We want enlargement. The division of the continent of Europe into West and East, poor and rich, is a falsehood, but preparations for enlargement must be transparent, and the rationale behind them must be comprehensible, even when it comes to financial matters. Parliament is one of the two component parts of the decision-making authority, and we will not allow the Council to present us with faits accomplis in these matters. As far as Europe's economic development is concerned, many of those who have already spoken have said that we have to further develop the internal market – that internal market that many saw as pointing in the right direction and that raised their hopes; but unemployment in Europe is as much an issue now as ever it was. The means are available to us to do something about this. In recent years, we have refunded EUR 14 billion on one occasion, EUR 11 billion on another, and this year we will be refunding EUR 7 billion – resources that have not been used, in the Structural Funds for example, to combat unemployment. That is something we cannot accept. This tendency may have been alleviated somewhat, but it remains the case that far too much of the funds we have cannot be made use of. In order that we may make progress in this area, I ask you to take the simplification of administration further. As regards peace – both around the world and on the continent of Europe – it is only natural that we should take our past actions as the basis for future development, but, as it strives to develop a common foreign and security policy, Europe must not be understood to consist only of those who are currently engaged in developing joint military structures. Our approach must be that of avoiding and preventing conflicts and of disarming, as we have done with such things as landmines, and, if I may turn to developments in Palestine and Iraq, we are of course prepared to provide humanitarian aid there at a later date, but let nobody regard this as a licence to do whatever is possible on the basis that they can do their bit, and reconstruction can be left to the European Union. We have to make it abundantly clear that we are not giving anybody carte blanche. Now for the final point that I want to address. Europe is undergoing demographic change – and this is where we have to look slightly further ahead – in that it has an every-increasing number of older people and ever fewer young people. At European level, that will have an effect on pensions. We want all policies to be considered from the point of view of what these changes will mean in the future ... (The President cut off the speaker)

Political group: PSE