Mr President, comitology is a concept most people do not know how to handle and hardly anyone knows what it means. It makes them think of secret societies and conspiracies, which is the way things used to be. In fact, it implies nothing other than fixing the procedures for the exercise of the implementing powers conferred on the Commission. The procedures for exercising these implementing powers take the form of a limited number of committee procedures. Up until the Amsterdam Treaty, there were about 20 variations of these committee procedures, which created neither clarity in the implementation of legislation nor transparency for the citizens. On the contrary, for a long time even the European Parliament was not informed. For the European Parliament, the first step in the struggle for more transparency in this jungle of committees was to be informed, at least, of all that the European Commission intended to regulate in the context of these various committees. Agreement was reached in 1988 in the form of an exchange of letters between Lord Plumb and Mr Delors. A further step towards transparency and the involvement of the European Parliament came with what is known as the modus vivendi of 20 September 1994, which granted Parliament the right not only to be informed but also to intervene in certain cases. It also gave it the possibility of scrutiny. With the Amsterdam Treaty, the situation improved decidedly when the number of committee procedures was drastically reduced – as the European Parliament had long wanted – to three procedures, the administrative procedure, the regulatory procedure and the advisory procedure. Now, following the Amsterdam Treaty, the rights of information and control granted to the European Parliament in the past need to be enshrined anew in an interinstitutional agreement. Mrs Frassoni, our rapporteur, has done very careful work and identified the questions that have to be clarified in the context of that interinstitutional agreement and the administrative procedures that may have to be changed within Parliament. A key problem is the time factor. When the European Parliament is informed, it generally has to adopt a position within the very short timeframe of four weeks, should it so wish. In matters relating to the health and safety of the people of the European Union, the European Commission, as guardian of the Treaties and the only institution with the right of initiative, must be in a position to react very rapidly, if necessary within a few hours or days. Nevertheless, the European Parliament must retain the right to be informed and where appropriate also to react. Our rapporteur identifies very useful solutions to these difficulties, which I and my group can only support in full. I just have one more request. In the German version, paragraph 2 of the resolution has been translated rather misleadingly and I urgently ask for clarification, which I would also like to see in the printed version later. In my view, instead of “weitergeführt werden müssen” the wording should be “erhalten bleiben müssen”. The German version is not very clear here. I would ask for that to be checked again. For the rest, I warmly thank our rapporteur. It is a difficult subject and I hope we have managed to make it somewhat easier to deal with now.

Political group: PPE-DE