Mr President, Commissioner, Mr President-in-Office, ladies and gentlemen, the WTO dispute between the European Union and the United States in the Havana Club case, in other words the dispute regarding section 211 of the U.S. Trademark Act, highlights the need for our Parliament to be informed and involved by the Council at crucial junctures in the pursuit of our common trade policy. Unlike the Commission, the Council failed to take steps to inform Parliament fully and promptly of the formulation of a common position, as it ought to have done. The Council would normally apply Article 300(2) and the last sentence of Article 300(3), mutatis mutandis, and brief us on such important matters. The point is that the Council, by persisting with its current practice, is evading its parliamentary accountability to the Member States and to ourselves. This situation cannot be tolerated indefinitely, and we demand changes. In the present case, as Erika Mann has said, the absence of information from the Council has prompted a host of individual expressions of opinion in the European Parliament. Most of these, I believe, have been inconsistent with the prevailing view in the Committee on External Trade, and their cumulative effect has been to undermine seriously the Council position in Parliament. In other words, by failing to provide information, the Council has sown the seeds of uncertainty and has given our trading partners – in this case the United States – an opportunity, if not to weaken the position adopted by the Commission then certainly to present it as rather less clear-cut than it actually is. I therefore believe that there is ultimately no alternative to a judicious change of procedure. In calling for change, we are merely exercising our parliamentary power of scrutiny. We are responsible as a Parliament for scrutinising the implementation of the common trade policy, and we should be better equipped in future to perform that function. Although the Commission keeps us informed, it is not enough for the Council, as it did through the Swedish Minister of Industry and Commerce, for example, to come to us and hold general discussions with us without involving us in consultation mechanisms such as the EU Trade Ministers’ informal talks. Under the Portuguese Presidency, for instance, we were invited to take part in these talks. I believe the Swedish Presidency still has a pledge to honour in this respect. As spokesman for the PPE Group, I should like to reaffirm emphatically that we do approve of the way in which the Commission has acted on the provision of information as well as in defending the interests of the European Union against the United States in the dispute-settlement procedure, as has now been shown. The Council, however – as I have already said – failed to inform us about this common position, contrary to the undertaking given by Mr Pagrotsky. I therefore believe that the practical conclusion to be drawn from this is that the Council should show, through its actions as well as its words, that it accepts Parliament as an equal partner on issues of common trade policy, particularly by using the proper legal basis for all the measures with which it implements the common trade policy, in other words Article 133 of the EC Treaty, which is now applicable in conjunction with Article 3, as well as Article 300(2) and (3) – new numbering – the latter being applicable by analogy, given the necessary will to cooperate. Secondly, the Council should enable the Commission to seek the opinion of Parliament prior to the conferment of a negotiating mandate, as in this Havana Club case, for example. We could then begin a dialogue and bring it to a satisfactory conclusion. We also believe there is a need for an interinstitutional agreement on this matter, like the one we concluded with the Commission, until such times as the Treaty is finally amended too. Lastly, I must urge the Council, when it next revises the Treaty of Nice, which I hope it will do at the forthcoming Laeken summit, to reword Article 133 so as to involve the European Parliament in the framing of policy and the negotiation and conclusion of agreements on important trade issues. This proposal is contained in paragraph 28 of the Mendéz de Vigo and Seguro report on the conclusions to be drawn from the Treaty of Nice, and we shall insist on the earliest possible introduction of this amendment to the EC Treaty.

Political group: PPE-DE