Mr President, let me, in my capacity as my group’s shadow rapporteur, apologise to you, to the Commissioner, and to all my fellow Members for not having been present at the beginning of the debate. Together with Mr Bill Miller, I was trapped on a Strasbourg city bus, the driver of which could not find the way, initially to Frankfurt and then back to Strasbourg, and got us to Strasbourg via many German autobahns and with something of a delay. Belatedly, but not too late, I would like to thank the rapporteur for the great deal of work he has done and, in particular, for resisting his first temptation, that of giving in to quite understandable disappointment that the Council has taken up so little of what Parliament has proposed and therefore going all out for a rejection of the Common Position. This was something we discussed in the committee, where a majority of us took the view that – even if it proved a wearisome exercise – we should attempt to make improvements to the Common Position. The fact is, of course, that the debate about rejection of this Common Position is far from over. I do not know if, perhaps, another amendment has been tabled this evening with this in mind; that there is a great temptation to do so has to do with the fact that, whilst the Council took on board quite a bit of what Parliament had proposed, this tended to be harmless technical points, whilst the major issues of substance were utterly ignored. What still counts from my point of view is that, in both draft directives, I can see substantial improvements over against the current legal position, and certainly as regards modernisation, simplification, the introduction of electronic tendering procedures or the use of electronic media in the tendering process, and the ways in which things are made easier for specific sectors. For example, I am very glad that this Parliament’s initiative has succeeded in getting postal services included in the utilities directive. If though, on the one hand, we can speak in terms of progress, we should beware, at the same time, of ending up going backwards. There has already been much debate about the award criteria, and I would like to again shed light on something that is obviously not yet clear, namely that the text now provided in the Common Position represents a retrograde step vis-à-vis the current legal position and removes the legal basis on which the Court of Auditors could make very favourable judgments. The result is that these award criteria will be more restrictive in future. Being more restrictive in this area does not mean merely that I do not want options – of an ecological nature, for example – that are currently available to me; my concern is, rather, with the issue of democracy. Local authorities are among the most important bodies in Europe as a whole when it comes to awarding contracts. Mr Bouwman mentioned an example from the one where he lives. As institutions, local authorities enjoy direct democratic legitimacy, and if, for example, they come to realise that – even if it comes rather more expensive – they want wooden window frames produced by sustainable forestry, then let them in future be able to have them. They are responsible to their own citizens and to their auditors, and nowadays they do not exactly have much money sloshing around. That is also my objection to what Mr Karas said. If we are struggling to make improvements, our primary concern here is with restoring the current legal position rather than with going back to what preceded it; secondly, this is not about mandatory criteria along the lines of every contract-awarding body having to apply every conceivable criterion; rather, it is about them being able to do so if that is what they would like to do and if they are transparent in the way they do it. As it is at present framed, the obligatory part can have only one meaning, that these options are restricted. Although the recitals reintroduce the possibility of a number of things, I find that rather unpleasing from the point of view of legal policy, and I do not think it does much for legal certainty either. As reference has been made in this debate to the inconsistencies that remain, there is an offer I would like to renew. Perhaps we could, by aligning our voting lists tomorrow, recover something of what the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market produced? I can also announce that we will no longer be supporting all the amendments that we supported in the Committee on Legal Affairs; this will enable us to take with us rather fewer amendments into the conciliation procedure that now appears, unfortunately, to be unavoidable.

Political group: PSE