Mr President, my group, the , also support the reform of the Commission as set out in the White Paper, and we urge its speedy implementation. Time and again in today's debate on Nice, we heard that the EU is facing enormous challenges and that the enlargement of the EU to an eventual total of 27 or more Member States will test the resilience of the European institutions. At the same time, however, the prestige of the European institutions has sunk to a new low in the eyes of the public, beset as they are between a lack of confidence on the one hand and the pressure generated by a growing number of problems on the other; by way of example, I need only name three of the most pressing problems at the present time – the oil crisis, climate change and BSE. We urgently need reform of the institutions, the sort of reform that will rebuild confidence and enable the Union to act more effectively. We need legitimacy, which is born of greater efficiency, activity-based management, the creation of a culture of accountability, greater transparency, user-friendly administrative services and decentralisation. We can only endorse these aims that the Commission has set itself. We do fear, however, that the required degree of courage is still lacking in certain areas. Let me take the example of transparency. The Commission made great promises about transparency when it took office. Sadly, the reality of the situation is quite different, as is shown by the framework agreement with Parliament and the rules on access to information. We can see that some ground still needs to be made up here, and we hope that the Commission will take a bolder approach to the transparency problem. As for disciplinary procedures, pledges have been made here too, but no clear rules have been formulated so far, nor have we seen or heard any clear statements as to how such rules would be enforced, nor has the question of external agencies been conclusively resolved. We are hoping for an unequivocal statement on this at an early date. With regard to 'whistle-blowers', I should like to subscribe to Mr van Hulten's earlier remarks. On this matter too, we should have welcomed a less diffident approach from the Commission and greater courage on its part to address this problem openly, because whistle-blowers, of course, contributed in no small measure to the fact that reform process was finally set in motion. The implementation of the budget is another area in which the Commission – and Parliament too, for that matter – must consider in future what to do about the problem of backlogs, how to ensure that we start to address the question of budgetary commitments in the implementation of new programmes too, so that we do not always have this huge discrepancy between commitments and payments. In the domain of personnel too, we in the Group of the – of all groups – had imagined that Parliament might have been more accommodating towards the Commission. Indeed, we believe that the establishment of new posts has been very tentative; given the current tasks of the Commission and the forthcoming eastward enlargement, there will certainly be a need to increase the rate of staff recruitment in future. But, as I have said, there has been a regrettable lack of support from Parliament. The European Parliament needs to take a good look at itself here too. In general, we consider the basic approach taken in the White Paper to be right and proper, and we hope that the Commission has staying power and further reserves of courage on which it can draw in the course of the implementation process.

Political group: Verts-ALE