Mr President, Commissioner Barnier, ladies and gentlemen, this is a report that takes a snapshot of a problem, identifies a risk and outlines some solutions. The problem is the outstanding commitments, this gap that is still too wide between commitments and payments, as regards both the Structural Funds and other fields, too. Outstanding commitments are a composite phenomenon: some are physiological whereas others are pathological, and it is on the latter that action needs to be taken. The risk is not just the loss of Structural Funds by the regions to which they are assigned; a greater risk is the loss of credibility for cohesion policy within the European Union. We firmly believe that the Union, and the enlarged Union to an even greater extent, needs an effective, consolidated, modern cohesion policy. The solutions we have outlined, on which we seem to have a good understanding with Mr Barnier, who has always been open to dialogue and debate, can be split into two groups: short-term and medium-term solutions. The former include, in particular, the solution of adjusting the level of the payments entered in the budget. Of course, this provision of resources must go hand in hand with a more effective working partnership between the Commission and governments, between governments and regions, and between regions and subregional and local entities. Moreover, the work of monitoring the new Member States, something that is already being done by the Commission, urgently needs to be stepped up. As regards medium-term solutions, the Commission should promptly present its guidelines on the regulation governing the next programming period so that future objectives and implementing arrangements can be laid down in a clear and readily comprehensible form. To this end, we believe the following approach will be necessary: firstly, stressing the Commission’s key role, which ought to be focused on defining development priorities, on the consistency of operations with those priorities and on monitoring the effectiveness of implementing systems, while responsibility for implementing and managing operations should be devolved to the Member States; secondly, being straightforward, clear and precise, and, in connection with this simplification objective, it would therefore appear vital to combine the funds and entrust management of the single fund to a single Commission department; thirdly, provide for programming arrangements to be decided upon in the context of a partnership between the Commission and the Member State concerned; fourthly, give the monitoring committee a greater role, so that decisions on the programme and programme changes can be taken over by the monitoring committee; and, lastly, maintain the incentive measures for effective implementation of operations, such as the n+2 automatic decommitment rule and the reserve for rewarding positive performance. I should like to finish by addressing the automatic decommitment issue. 31 December is nearly here and there is a new deadline. We believe the rule should still be retained for the next few years, since there is no doubt that it has had a major deterrent effect. It is true, however, as Commissioner Barnier has pointed out, that in many situations regions and national governments have adopted a number of devices in order to certify 100% expenditure and avoid losing the funds. We call on Commissioner Barnier to exercise the strictest surveillance on this issue and we invite him in the meantime to prevent resources released through so-called ‘side projects’ from being spent on anything other than the regional and national programmes. I shall conclude with an example: if the Italian Government – to speak of my home country – receives transport funds to carry out transport infrastructure work in southern Italy and then, after releasing resources through side projects, passes that saving on to infrastructure work in the north, we should intervene to prevent that from happening. I hope Parliament will grant this report a very broad consensus, since that would give the approaches it contains great political credibility. (Applause)

Political group: PSE