Madam President, my fellow MEP, Mrs Boogerd-Quaak and I having been on our own in the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs, I am happy to see that a number of fellow Members have in any event seen the light today. Today, we are adapting the coordination regulation on social security, which we do nearly every year because something changes in the Member States nearly every year. We are also adapting it to take due account of the decisions of the Court of Justice. The result is not necessarily a great gift for the people to whom the regulation applies. Something about which I, together with some other fellow MEPs, have remonstrated, is that the Netherlands has added to this list of non-exportable rights a benefit intended for one-income families, in an attempt to prevent the family from falling below the social minimum, namely a benefit of EUR 200 a month. By including this benefit in the list, this benefit is repealed immediately. The Netherlands is therefore saving that money. This means not only that 2 Danes, 193 Belgians, 395 Spanish people, 94 Italians and 55 French people are losing that benefit, it also means that the inclusion in the list is, in my view, not acceptable, because it creates discrimination between people within the European Union who no longer receive the benefit and people outside the European Union who do. It is true that I am campaigning as a candidate in the European elections, but quite apart from that, I think that an MEP simply cannot justify the fact that a European citizen is treated worse than third-country nationals. I can even give you the details: we export to Morocco 1 061 benefits, and a total of 1 300 within Europe. We export to Bosnia, Indonesia, the Czech Republic, the United States of America, Israel, and other countries. It is this unfair treatment that has caused me to include in my amendment a number of elements that I have also heard echoed in the discussion by fellow MEPs, and to submit this as a basis for a compromise. What this amendment boils down to – and with this, I am also addressing Mrs Van Lancker's remarks – is that the inclusion of the benefit in question on the list by the Netherlands should take effect from the moment that European and third countries are treated equally. The second condition is that arrangements should also have been made with regard to phasing out these benefits and compensation for them. I believe that, if those two elements are added to the compromise, a solution is within reach. I respect the Council, which has managed to mobilise people in this matter by creating the impression that something dreadful is happening here, while Parliament surely has the right to rubberstamp the text by ordinary qualified majority. It follows that this social dossier requires unanimity in the Council, but if we notice that certain things are going wrong, we are entitled to bare our teeth. The whole of my group supports Mrs Gillig's compromise amendment and it will also back the compromises and Mrs Van Lancker’s request for more precise wordings. I hope that this will enable us to reach agreement. Cross-border work is very important in my region. Mobility is also a topic within the framework of the Lisbon objectives. If we do not regulate mobility effectively, we might as well forget about the Lisbon objective.

Political group: PPE-DE