Mr President, I do not know how convincing I can be in just four minutes. However, I shall at least try to make my position clear on some aspects of this report which have concerned Parliament in reaction to the Commission’s initiative and the commitments announced by the Council. Other Members have effectively summed up the most significant results of the Lisbon Summit already. The goal of full employment is once again proposed as the object of common attention and common commitment. We all know it will not be achieved tomorrow, but we declare it achievable under certain conditions. We have found a new determination to build the most open and competitive economic area in Europe based on the information and knowledge society, and updating the package of operational instruments which accompany that effort. But above all, we have asserted that these results can be achieved without adding a fourth process to the existing ones, through a solid combination of policies. There needs to be a complementary approach in economic policy, employment policy and social policy, and of course the policies being associated and combined to achieve the objectives must be compatible in terms of internal consistency. Finally, the special spring European Council provides a clear opportunity for everyone to take stock of progress made and of the effective implementation of the processes and decisions which have been taken, noting any successes and any delays, through the open method of coordination. I would like to talk about that for a moment, because open coordination is certainly different from superimposing Community policies and guidelines on the policies of the national states and societies that operate within that framework, but it is also something more than empty coordination. Open coordination cannot be a magic formula, nor can it be an empty declaration, and it should mobilise public opinion in support of a European project that guarantees transparency and effective opportunities for verification. It is not acceptable for the stability pact and convergence parameters to be backed by instruments and offices for checking, measuring and, where necessary, censure. They are backed by weapons and police forces, whereas economic policy choices consistent with the aims I referred to earlier, supporting competition and growth, active policies on employment, investment in human capital, investment in lifelong learning, equal opportunities and regaining regional structural advantages, are very often largely dependent on commitments that are so solemnly affirmed and proclaimed but so little verified or verifiable. That would disarm our advocacy, however prophetic, of the virtues of the European economic and social model. Instead, comparable data should be made available, together with a rigorous social glossary which would make it impossible to go on using the same words with different meanings, as has sometimes happened, but, most of all – which is worse – to go on using the same words and doing different things. Hence the importance of the proposal on indicators to stop us constantly changing policies to maintain the scientific phenomenon of perpetual motion, that strange experiment which keeps a process moving while at the same time preventing it from reaching any goal. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE