Mr President, President of the Commission, President-in-Office of the Council, Commissioner, we are preparing to take an historic decision. The headlines of a Brussels newspaper yesterday said that in just over a year we will have to talk about the Twenty-five instead of the Fifteen. This is in itself good news. I think I speak for my group as a whole in welcoming all these European nations. We shall have to rise to the common challenge of successful enlargement. In order to succeed, however, we must address each and every problem if we want to avoid providing grist to the mill for people-pleasers or the shameful opponents of enlargement. And there is the rub. President of the Commission, I feel your presentation failed to address some serious problems. Let us take as an example the Community acquis, the most taboo subject of all. To you, and to many of my fellow Members here present, it is all or nothing. Any candidate country that questions any part of it would be excluded from negotiations. We all know, however, that some implications of the acquis will lead to acute, serious, dangerous social crises in these countries. We will not solve these problems by burying our heads in the sand. Quite the opposite. Transposal under pressure will solve nothing in the long run. There are some States among the Fifteen that have obtained compromises on matters concerning their specific identity, and even among the founding countries of the Community, there are signed texts that are now being called into question again, such as the Stability and Growth Pact. The citizens of the Union, meanwhile, as you know, are contesting the acquis even more. The liberal structure of Europe, and the non-transparent way it is being created from the top down without the involvement of the people, is increasingly unacceptable. Such debates are also taking place within the candidate countries, at the highest levels. This is borne out, for example, by the essential conflict between the Polish Government and parliament and the Polish Central Bank, which is considered too liberal and too independent. For her part, the President of Latvia goes so far as to express her feeling, and I quote, 'of colonisation' within the population with regard to the Commission’s position on the agricultural chapter. You are aware of all that, yet you say nothing. I think that this is a mistake. You cannot bring down a fever by breaking the thermometer. There is another aspect that I would like to highlight. Our counterparts in the candidate countries have told me about some unfortunate incidents. Apparently, a Commission negotiator, when faced with a few reservations, settled the debate in substance with these words: 'either you sign, or you wait'. What is achieved by the arrogance of the strong towards the weak? You achieve a signature now and ill feeling later. That is not the solution. We need to talk about this. I shall simply note a third problem, since everyone is familiar with it, but I do think we need to talk about it because overall success depends on it to a great extent. This is the problem of funding for enlargement. If my memory serves me correctly, the Commission, in 1999, set aside EUR 40 billion for the period 2004-2006, when six countries were involved. The same sum is now set aside for ten countries. How can that work? And why are we not publicly reminding Member States which refuse the necessary financial solidarity that, over ten years, they, together with these countries, have benefited from an outrageous trade surplus of EUR 100 billion and that their companies are making substantial profits, the details of which we would like to know. Forgive me for being so frank, but our only chance of achieving successful enlargement in future is to address real problems now.

Political group: GUE-NGL