Mr President, I find myself in a rather strange and uncomfortable situation because, despite having the unanimous support of the Committee on Budgets, I am convinced that at midday I will have to ask for the report to be returned to committee. Why? Because while we are debating this report here, the Council is also debating this same proposal and it is therefore possible that, if an agreement is reached, we will not be able to vote on the resolution today, but rather we will have to ask for the report to be returned to committee in order to ratify the agreement with the Council and vote on it on 2 and 3 May. Ladies and gentlemen, the subject of the report may seem excessively technical: it deals with the adjustment of the financial perspective to the implementing conditions. Clearly, the adjustment, as its name suggests, has to do with how the Structural Funds have been implemented in previous years, since the amounts in category 2 of the financial perspective do not only represent a spending ceiling, but also a spending target. In 2000, no less than EUR 14 000 million of the Structural Funds could not be implemented, since it was the first year of the new programming period; that is to say, EUR 14 billion, of which 8 billion was rebudgeted in 2001 and therefore around 6 billion remains to be rebudgeted, to put it in round figures. This EUR 6 billion can be rebudgeted, but we must remember that, given the new rules of the Structural Funds, this is the last time we will be able to operate in this way. Therefore, amounts which are not implemented in future years can very easily be cancelled. That is why we are concerned. It is in our interest that everything is implemented correctly and that there are no delays in programming. I believe that this objective is shared by the Commission, the Council – whose absence I regret, although I understand that it is holding a meeting in Brussels on the same issue – and Parliament. Our differences so far relate to two chapters. One lesser one: on whether a new budgeting of payment appropriations had to be included. We believe that this is important in order to prevent the problems which we have had in previous years. The other institutions do not agree. This will not be the central issue. And the other difference relates to the profile of this new budgeting. Originally, the Commission was in favour of more linear budgeting. Based on our experience, and advised by the Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism and the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs, we proposed a new way of budgeting for commitment appropriations in more of a bell-shaped manner: what is technically known as back loading, which involves allowing the large initial amount to be implemented now and then making another charge, a rather more significant one, at a later stage of the programming period. Because we are convinced, from experience, that the appropriations could not be implemented next year in the way the Commission proposes. We believe that a perspective such as this will allow a more harmonious development of the implementation of the Structural Funds. The specific figures we have proposed are not a question of principle. The question of principle is the profile of spending. And this is the question on which, after yesterday’s meeting – where we heard an intervention from the Commission in which it gave us details on the state of negotiations of the new programming – we believe that we are perfectly able to reach an agreement within a reasonable time scale, which the Council could accept and which would solve the problems of Greece, Spain and Italy in particular in relation to future programmes. I simply wish to defend these positions and say that, in the spirit of honest cooperation between institutions, it would in no way violate any article of the Treaty if the date set in the Interinstitutional Agreement, 1 May – which, by the way, is not a working day – were delayed until 2 May, which is the day Parliament meets. In the meantime, we have a meeting of the Committee on Budgets on 24 and 25 April, and, if the Council reaches an agreement this morning, the Committee on Budgets could approve the agreement definitively and, even without debate, approve it during the part-session of 2 and 3 May.

Political group: PSE