Mr President, Mr President of the Commission, ladies and gentlemen, it is an extraordinarily important debate that we are taking part in today. It is important to banks, insurance companies and investment funds, because this debate will make it clear that we are pressing onward – and that without delay – on the road that leads to a common European market in financial services. The debate is though, also important to the European Union's citizens, as we are removing obstacles from the path of cross-border competition in the field of financial services, in the granting of credits and the negotiation of insurance policies. Competition of this sort will put the citizen in a stronger position and enhance Europe's competitiveness. What, then, is this debate about? Alexandre Lamfalussy and his Committee of Wise Men have made proposals as to how we can speed up the great legislative package needed to make this common market in financial services a reality. In doing so, he made the wise suggestion that the legislator, that is Parliament and the Council, should focus on setting the essential objectives, whilst leaving to the Commission, working together with experts, the small print of the implementation provisions. That proposal is a very good one. Where, then, is the problem? The problem is that we have always found, in our experience as parliamentarians, that it is to us that the public and firms come with complaints about the European Union's bureaucracy, and that they are not complaining about the law, be it a directive or a regulation, that we have helped to enact, but about the provisions made for its implementation. That is why Parliament has insisted on being able, jointly with the Council, to carry out a kind of final check on whether the implementation provisions that are enacted actually correspond to what the legislator intended. What have our negotiations with the Commission and the Council now achieved? At this point, let me warmly thank President Prodi for his statement, but also Commissioner Bolkestein, Mr John Mogg and many others, as well as the secretariat of the Constitutional Committee. I have to tell you that the discussions lawyers had in this area occasionally reminded me of disputations in ancient Byzantium on the sex of angels. I wish to thank very warmly all those who helped me find my way judiciously through this labyrinth. What have we achieved? Transparency first of all. That is important, as we are informed about everything that goes on in the Commission. We also get to see preliminary drafts. Secondly, we have achieved the reduction of the mandate to four years, after which period it must be renewed by Parliament and the Council. We have, furthermore, gained the right to monitor outcomes, which is where President Prodi's statement was extraordinarily important. Like the Council, we have three months in which to do this, in which respect we are given equivalence with them. President Prodi, indeed, spoke of parity and equivalence, which adds up to an additional safeguard. Thirdly, we must be clear in our own minds about the actual relations between the powers. We are faced with a large number of legislative acts, which have to be adopted. Each time, Parliament and the Council together must give the Commission a mandate, and if the Commission were to fail to take Parliament's justified interests and objections into account in this respect, it would have cause to fear that it would not be granted that mandate when it came to the next legislative act. What this means is that, today in any case, we as a Parliament are in a very strong position in this context. To that extent I take the view that, in this context, or on the basis of President Prodi's statement, the equivalence we demanded has been granted. Something that strikes me as also especially important is the committee of market participants, which we decided on. This represents a first step towards the European Union's lawmaking becoming more modern. We must reach the situation in which legislation generally makes a clear distinction, as Alexandre Lamfalussy proposed, between the Parliament and the Council's intentions as joint legislators and the small print of the technical details. Here, for example, the supervisory authorities and the experts should be involved, but at the same time the market participants, too, should be included in the structures as purely practical issues are under discussion. In that sense I also believe that what we are deciding on today can also be a model for the Convention, the Intergovernmental Conference, and the improvement of the European Union's legislative procedure, and so I wish to ask you to adopt my report. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE