Mr President, I would like to say a few words about the reason for this question and for its urgency. Essentially it concerns the pace at which we will be able to open a full and proper debate on the standards for a single MHP, were we to have one. The Commissioner will, I think, be saying in his reply today when the necessary standards are going to be introduced and published. The reason for the urgency is that this subject also relates very much to the ongoing debate about media concentration and to development in the field of broadband communications, particularly in the light of what is happening in television and broadcasting at the moment. In my own Member State we have had ambitious plans, aiming to have the most competitive broadband system in the developed world by 2005. However, there have been stumbles along the way to the intended creation of a real competitive market for digital broadcasting and towards a measured advanced analogue switch-off. That serves as a warning to many of us – certainly those in the Committee on Culture, which is unanimous in the view that I am expressing – that the consumer and the citizen need to benefit from an open and wide debate, taking some account of the problems we have had in past attempts at regulation, as well as of those that we face now. There need to be clear markers on the ways in which a system of non-discriminatory interconnection and oversight of the gateways of broadband broadcasting and other systems can be operated in the public interest. I am painfully aware of the fact that one of the first attempts to set standards for early satellite broadcasting came adrift because the most powerful broadcasters in the field at the time – and they are still there today, but stronger and more powerful – deliberately decided to bypass these standards and to go their own way. With effective use of the market and less advanced technology, they were able effectively to end that first attempt at common standards. We do not want to make that mistake again, and I believe that in this situation we want to know how we are proceeding. I would ask the Commissioner to indicate how the European Union as a whole can take an active role, so that the operators of APIs are encouraged and helped to come together. He must know of the suspicions in this regard and precisely where they originate. The APIs are likely to be repeating in some ways what happened in the debate about conditional access and the gateways for satellite broadcasting. Many – particularly in my country would say that you do not need to have a single mandated standard, and that it would be better to encourage the APIs to come together. For the sceptics who believe that it would be very much against some of their interests to do so, and it has to be acknowledged that we would then be gambling everything on a strategy which some of the big operators, once again, would not want to cooperate with. How would the Commissioner square the need for competition that guarantees plurality with the technical advances which – according to those who operate it and profit by it – will come from the unregulated market? I do not believe that we can take this matter further without a proper consideration not just of the technical debate but also of the way in which monopolies are currently developing. Mr Rocard's questions, I hope, will take the debate further and I will at least be able to listen to the Commissioner in the time available to me. I do apologise again for the fact that I have to leave before the conclusion of this debate, which I am taking part in, as you can see, at very short notice.

Political group: PSE