Mr President, Commissioner, firstly I would like to apologise for being a little hoarse today, but we Austrian MEPs have had a lot of explaining and talking to do. I would first like to say how indebted I am to the Commission for seizing the initiative, and for the two draft directives we are discussing here today. It has thereby succeeded in closing two serious loopholes in the internal market which are of great significance to the European economy and to 5 million third-country nationals in the European Union who are here as workers or on a self-employed basis. The current state of play – and we would do well to remind ourselves of this again – is that there are in fact judgements from the European Court of Justice relating to employees, I refer in particular to those relating to the Rush Portuguesa case and that of van der Elst. These have, in fact, clarified that the freedom to provide services must allow for third-country nationals to be taken on as employees of cross-border services and this without having to obtain work permits. However, the European Court of Justice did not make specific reference to the issue of visa requirements and conditions of residence and consequently the Member States were unable to clarify this issue. Furthermore, not all Member States have abided by the Court of Justice’s verdicts with regards to the lapsing of the work permit requirement, and they still have a multiplicity of unacceptable barriers in place in respect of cross-border services; barriers that are often impossible to overcome, especially for the smaller companies. The situation as far as self-employed people are concerned is that current Community invested legal rights do not afford third-country nationals the right to provide cross-border services. There is no doubt that we need a legislative act here. Both draft directives seek to facilitate the freedom to provide services for EU enterprises. It is not about establishing original rights for third-country nationals modelled on freedom of movement. All provisions, i.e. issues relating to entry into the EU and to the law pertaining to residence rights, should be regarded as ancillary to this freedom to provide services. I, together with the European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market, are therefore of the opinion that the Commission has chosen the right legal bases and that the opposite view, as expressed in the report produced by the Council’s Legal Service, is inappropriate. Consequently, I do not see that there is any real obstacle to the Council’s being able to move matters on quickly as far as these two draft directives are concerned. I also believe that Parliament’s proposed amendments should make it easier for the Council to adopt the directives as opposed to the Commission’s proposal. Many of our amendments relate back to concerns that were also voiced in the Council, and we are attempting to reconcile these concerns with the task that falls to us by dint of extant law and economic good sense. When it comes to acceptance by the Council, I can only urge the Commission to adopt as many of the amendments adopted by Parliament as possible, even if some of them deviate substantially from the original Commission proposals. I am absolutely convinced that it will be easier for us to achieve consensus in the Council on this basis. Turning now to the most important of our proposed amendments, one of the essential differences is that, in place of a “service provision card plus notification for each individual contract” system, provision is no longer made for being able to request the previous notification from the receiving state for each individual contract. This system appears to us to be unsuitable in practical terms. However, in order to compensate for this, all possible obstacles must be removed before the service provision card is issued, and as the Commission’s proposal would have it, more stringent conditions must be satisfied before a service provision card is issued. An individual is required to be in authorised employment and to have the right of residence and insurance protection, not just at the time of issue of the card but throughout its period of validity and for three months thereafter. This should serve as a guarantee for the receiving state that the employee or self-employed person will return to the sending state once the contract is completed and that they will be covered under insurance law in the event of illness or accident. Likewise, the situation with regard to right of entry and residence rights should be clarified before the service provision card is issued, namely under the terms of an opposition procedure. What we are proposing is that it should not just be a case of having to apply for the EU service provision card for all Member States, rather one should also have the option of applying for it for individual Member States. I believe this system is also more suited to practical needs. I would hope that the same holds true for the proposal to reduce the minimum period of duration for a first posting to three months, and to be flexible in adapting the period of validity of the service provision card to the duration of the first posting. However, we stand by our view that the maximum period of validity for the service provision card should be 12 months. When it comes to self-employed persons, in addition to the amendments already described, we propose that the domicile criteria should be made more stringent, and that we should make provision for the possibility of countering any abuse in the way of bogus self-employment. I would also just like to go into those of the proposed amendments that go beyond the proposed amendments put forward by the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market. Of course I would add that I continue to support this committee’s amendments, which they adopted unanimously. I have even submitted four amendments on behalf of my group that largely relate to the correct way of quoting Council decisions. I must say I have received extremely contradictory statements from Parliament’s services as to exactly how these Council decisions should be quoted; whether or not one should use the number or date alone, or both, and how extensively to quote from them. Two amendments were cancelled by the services because the content has supposedly already been given consideration to in the report. I withdraw the two other amendments – that is Amendment No 18 to the report on self-employed persons and Amendment No 21 on employed persons. I can only urge the Conference of Presidents to reach agreement as quickly as possible on the correct way to proceed in matters of comitology, i.e. the correct way to quote. This would make our rapporteur’s life considerably easier in the future. There is also a proposed amendment to both of Mrs De Palacio’s reports. Unfortunately I have to say that I am unable to support this proposed amendment because it in fact changes the substance of the outcome that we in the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market resolved on unanimously, and I would like to stand by this outcome, which we arrived at together after lengthy discussions. On a final note, I would like to thank all those in the Committee who supported me in compiling these reports, which were far from easy to produce. I would like to single Mr Wieland out for special mention, for he has the dubious honour of being the shadow rapporteur and was involved to a far greater extent than is customary in the drawing up of this report, contributing excellent and constructive ideas; and this without being in a position to receive the plaudits awarded a rapporteur. That is why he deserves special mention!

Political group: PSE