Mr President, as one of the two representatives of the European Parliament to the Intergovernmental Conference, I would like to thank the outgoing Portuguese Presidency for the warm welcome and outstanding teamwork which it organised for us. I only hope that the French Presidency will follow in its footsteps. The European Union is at the most crucial crossroads in its history. The Helsinki resolution on major enlargement raises the existential question of the institutional structure needed in order for the European Union to function with 28 Member States. And it is certainly not the present structure. I subscribe fully to Mr Seguro’s well-placed comments on the multiple successes of the Portuguese Presidency. However, apart from the question of closer cooperation, nothing was added to the Feira agenda, which was limited to the Amsterdam leftovers. This attitude on the part of the leaders of Europe causes a problem for the following reason: the purpose of this intergovernmental conference was supposedly to lay down the institutional requirements for enlargement. However, surely these institutional requirements include safeguarding the credibility of the European Union. And how can this credibility be safeguarded without a Charter of Fundamental Rights, without a radical legal response to the undemocratic conduct of certain countries, without a common foreign policy and defence policy and without turning the Treaties into a kind of constitution?. If no progress is made before Nice, this state of affairs will raise a huge dilemma for the European Parliament when it comes to approving enlargement. I have two comments to make on this. First, we perceive the power to approve or reject enlargement granted to us by the Treaties as an historic responsibility, not as the power to impose our views. Secondly, if our decision to approve or reject enlargement is to be historically responsible, it must be made on the basis of whether or not we consider that adequate institutional changes have been made in order for the European Parliament to welcome 10 or 11 new Member States. Shortly before Feira, and this was no coincidence, an extra-institutional dialogue was instigated by the Foreign Ministers of France and Germany. An extremely interesting dialogue, with new ideas which, overall, strengthened the European vision, irrespective of whether you agree or disagree with it. But, nonetheless, a dialogue which refutes the current logic on which the Intergovernmental Conference functions and, at the end of the day, a dialogue between France and Germany. But did this extra-institutional dialogue perhaps affect the wording of the Feira resolutions? Is that perhaps why the conclusions on institutional matters were so brief? Perhaps Feira, in conjunction with the Franco-German dialogue, means that the Intergovernmental Conference was bypassed before it even finished. I hope not. What stands out with Feira is that it limited itself to just one addition to the agenda: closer cooperation, which is therefore registered as an urgent and crucial issue. On that, I have this comment to make: I think that it is important for the future of the European Union that we debate the problems and I think it is right to protect it from the risk of being brought to a standstill by the current veto. I also think, however, that the institutional unity of the European Union needs to be protected. Mr Brok and I stressed this several times at the Intergovernmental Conference. However, I have one question: have we indeed made clear to the candidate countries that the debate on closer cooperation mainly applies to them at the moment and that we are in a hurry to complete the arrangements before new partners join the European Union? The central tenet of the Franco-German dialogue is clear: we need a two-speed Europe. I think that Feira will go down in the history books not so much for what it said but mainly for what it did not say on institutional issues.

Political group: PSE