Mr President, I should like to make one observation on behalf of the Committee on Development and Cooperation and one on behalf of the Socialist group as a whole. With regard to the development budget, the cooperation between Mrs Rühle and ourselves was excellent. Initially, the Committee on Budgetary Control and the Committee on Development and Cooperation kept themselves to themselves, according to their own focus. Later on, we joined forces and managed, in tandem with the Commission, to put certain things in order thanks to the action plan. This conceals, of course, a particularly grave situation, which cannot simply be attributed to one single person. In actual fact, we have a budget for the development fund and, in broader terms, the development sphere, where clear goals are lacking and where staffing levels are inadequate within the critical spheres, which need to be worked on. All of this sets the scene for enormous backlogs and for a control culture dominated by self-interest and fear, rather than actual results and a duty to achieve results and take action. I believe that we are on the brink of a cultural revolution, which will bring about this change. This means that the 2001 budget will make it possible to set clear goals within education and health care. Amounts will be made available which allow for sufficient personnel and which can subsequently be verified to see whether the plan actually worked. But this requires delegation, responsibility, and – in a word – a modern efficient budget coupled with a modern insight into how budgetary policy works within development policy. This is how I see the action plan; this is how I see our joint action. I see it as a joint effort with the Commission. I am thrilled about the fact that we can, as it were, close off a chapter of fear and a culture of self-interest. I know there are many motivated officials within the Commission who will now be given the opportunity to perform within the sphere which we would all like to see do well, namely to give people who live in difficult circumstances – one in five still have no access to clean drinking water or primary education – a better chance of a decent life. We in Europe want to play a key role in establishing this with the necessary resources. But this means that we need to actually make this change within the next couple of months. This brings me to the more general comment I wanted to make. The whole discussion here today will eventually culminate in the 1998 discharge. For the Socialist group, this will also signify, more generally, the closing off of the chapter of fear and working towards the chapter in which we as Commission and European Parliament take joint responsibility. In this respect, the Kinnock reforms, or the general internal reforms, are essential. After all, if we do not succeed in building a new system of financial control and Activity-Based Budgeting, and if we fail to reallocate sufficient personnel to those areas where we need more people, then all we do is create more paperwork, shift more bits of paper with more control and fail to come up with the goods at the end. And this is, at the end of the day, what the European citizen judges you as Commission and us as Parliament on. It would mean a great deal to me if in the course of the forthcoming budget, we could, as it were, set our good intentions on a new course for 2001. I wish the Commission every success in advance.

Political group: PSE