Mr President, Commissioner, honourable Members and those in the public gallery, the European Parliament is aiming to ensure that the Budget for 2003 is a real reforming budget. There are two perspectives at the heart of this. One is naturally the historic matter of enlargement, and the other is the need to reform the European Union in various areas. The bulk of the work on the Budget will, of course, take place in the autumn, but we hope to be able to solve a number of important issues at the conciliation in July in conjunction with the Council’s first reading. The document we are debating and shall be voting on today is about providing the European Parliament’s delegation with a special mandate ahead of this conciliation with the Danish Presidency and the Commission. The interinstitutional agreement governing these conciliations highlights three areas that are to be given particular attention. These are agriculture, the fisheries agreements and the Common Foreign and Security Policy. I suspect that we will not get very far this year on the issues of agriculture and fisheries policy. With regard to agriculture, we are awaiting the Commission’s draft mid-term review, and many practical details are still missing when it comes to the reform of fisheries policy. Naturally, we shall still be highlighting these issues. With regard to agriculture, there are a number of practical requirements which we wish to address, for reform of agricultural policy ought to mean transferring resources from the traditional organisations of the market to rural development. We shall also be putting forward a number of demands concerning environmental perspectives, the prevention of new disasters involving animal diseases, etc. We hope it will be possible for some points to be considered as early as July. With regard to fishing, we shall primarily be requesting all the information on the Council’s plans for the future. We hope to be able to identify the appropriations necessary for us to be able to maintain fisheries agreements with a number of important nations. We naturally hope that this can take place without the drama seen last year when the whole agreement with Morocco collapsed, creating a difficult situation where all the work on the Budget was concerned. We remain conscious of the fact that we also have to keep the promise we made last year of a further EUR 27 million to support the changeover from fishing to other industries in Spain and Portugal. I believe we shall be able to sort out some of the details pertaining to these issues, but we have also looked into a number of other main points. Let me start with the Common Foreign and Security Policy. We hope to be able to have a serious discussion on the appropriations required, particularly for the EU to be able to deploy a new police force in Bosnia to relieve the troops we have had there. We also hope to be able to bring about a preliminary discussion on a few other important points. We at least need a little more information on the Commission and the Council’s intentions regarding the initiatives in Afghanistan and the Middle East. That is crucial if we are to be able to solve the Budget problems concerning external assistance. In our view, there are too few resources. The fact that we have too few resources in category 4, i.e. external assistance, is a structural problem. We need some way of providing new resources. That could be done in accordance with the proposals which the Commission has put forward, but which we know the Council dislikes, concerning a special flexibility instrument for external assistance. The European Parliament has also put forward another alternative in this respect – a more active use of the emergency aid reserve. It would be excellent if we could find a solution to this issue in July. Discussions on the issue of enlargement are likely to dominate in July. We mainly have to discuss the administrative resources needed to prepare the EU institutions for enlargement. I want to stress that we are committed to this. The timetable for enlargement must be adhered to. Therefore, preparations have to commence as soon as possible. It is vital to reach agreement on the administrative costs in category 5 in July’s conciliation. However, the fact that we are prioritising enlargement does not mean that we can just automatically add more money for staff and other administrative costs. We also have to be able to show that we can actively implement new priorities, particularly within the field of administration. In the EU, as in every modern administration, we must show that we are able to develop our methods of working, to reprioritise and to become more efficient and modern before we request more money. The Committee on Budgets has therefore decided to reject the use of the flexibility instrument in category 5. We believe that such use is contrary to the rules. It should not be assumed from the outset that we must use flexibility instruments. We now know that the Commission is requesting funding for 500 new posts for the purpose of dealing with enlargement. I am convinced that these posts are necessary, but we must nevertheless ask a number of questions before we simply agree to such an increase. Over 800 people in the Commission are currently working on enlargement, of whom around 300 work for the Enlargement Directorate-General. Once the major round of enlargement is completed, it must be possible to redistribute these resources to work involving the enlarged EU. As such, we need more background information before we can just agree to automatically increasing the number of posts by 500. The same applies to the RELEX reform. The Reform of the Management of External Assistance promised as early as 2000 that further reform would be carried out in 2002 along with a review. The Commission’s annual policy statement has promised a further review of the RELEX Directorate-General’s cooperation and efficiency. We wish to see results on these points before we agree to 500 new posts. We are also launching two new projects –an expanded border region project with SME cooperation across the union and a project on simplifying the administration of the whole EU. This is an extraordinarily important project. (Applause)

Political group: PSE