Mr President, as Members know, it is customary in our speeches to congratulate the rapporteur. That I readily do in this case, but, like Mr Gemelli, the chairman of the committee, I want to go beyond what is conventional and especially place on record my appreciation of the work carried out over many years by Mrs González in the Committee on Petitions. She and I come from quite different points on the political spectrum but, in the Committee on Petitions, we all find that we share a common interest, regardless of nationality or politics, in protecting the rights of the individual citizen. Mrs González has undoubtedly been a doughty fighter for the citizens of Spain and particularly for the environment of her beloved country. The European Union is often accused of having a democratic deficit. Sometimes that is a fair criticism, sometimes perhaps it is over-stated, but the Committee on Petitions is a very real route by which citizens can bring their complaints to this Parliament and have them fully and properly addressed. I sometimes say that, in the Committee on Petitions, 'all human life is there'. I shall take some examples from my own country, the United Kingdom. We have British pensioners who retired to Spain – who is to blame them! – but the British Government did not want to give them the winter fuel allowance that they had paid for all their lives. It was only after petitioning this Parliament that they got that allowance. There is a German citizen currently living in my constituency who thought that he was entitled to a pension from the German Government. It refused to pay. He petitioned Parliament and the German Government consequently agreed to pay. Furthermore, the pension was back-paid to 1995, so that was a very welcome addition to his income. British customs services tried to stop British citizens using their rights to go to France to buy the fine wines for which that country is rightly renowned. As a result of petitions, that has been stopped and British Customs and Excise has been told that it must stop confiscating not just the wine, but also the cars of British citizens. Petitioning is a way of getting issues onto the floor of this House. Later on this morning, there will be a debate on the Lloyd's of London petitions. I too congratulate the Commission staff and officials. They respond very well to our requests. Unfortunately, the Council is not quite so agreeable. I look at the empty seats over there and see that the Council appears not to be interested either in the work of the Ombudsman or in the work of the Committee on Petitions. That is a shame. It is not the Italian presidency's fault; it is a long-standing problem involving all Councils. Before we are too congratulatory I would, however, draw attention to the problem of the Code of Good Administrative Behaviour. I heard what Commissioner de Palacio said. I am sure her heart is in the right place, but it is high time that we had a code of administrative behaviour that was binding on the institutions, not voluntary, and a code that was uniform across each of the institutions. I do not consider that 2005 is remotely good enough. We have waited far too long to get this code and if the Commission would only adopt it, I am sure many of the problems the institutions currently face could be resolved. I thank Mrs González for her work. This committee may not rank as the greatest committee in Parliament but, in terms of protecting the citizens, it is the best.

Political group: PPE-DE