Chairman of the Committee on Budgets. – Mr President, at times we have sounded like a mutual admiration society in the way in which we have congratulated one another on this. I may just deviate from that trend slightly in relation to the Council – not necessarily the French Presidency – but the Council in general. Let us not kid ourselves, this is a good budget. It is not the budget that I or many of my colleagues would have wanted. However, we can be satisfied with it. In football terms it is like a l-1 draw. However, because of the flexibility instrument, we think we have won the penalty shoot-out. The Commission's original proposal for a revision of the financial perspective to take EUR 300 million from category 1 for category 4 was a worthy idea: worthy of support and eminently sensible. Unfortunately, a majority of my colleagues did not agree with me and therefore we could not go along with it. Neither was there a qualified majority within this House to revert to Article 272. Therefore, we had to find a solution within the means that the interinstitutional agreement affords us so that we could get a decent budget. That is what we have done: we have avoided a budgetary crisis by going to Article 272; the financial perspective has been maintained, even though we have used the flexibility instrument. The result is the best that we can hope for without either a revision or Article 272. Mr Colom i Naval made his remarks this morning because it was clear to those of us who were present when the IIA was agreed that the flexibility instrument should not be used for the same purposes in consecutive years. I admire the answer Mrs Parly gave this morning but we have turned a blind eye to that. Kosovo and Serbia are in effect the same thing. We have ignored what we agreed. We have also said that the flexibility instrument would not be an annual reserve for category 4 but that is exactly what it has become. That is why it is not only Mr Colom i Naval who is frustrated at the way things have developed over this budgetary procedure in the last two years. It must be said, and I put it on record, that the French presidency has been a good partner in trying to find solutions. On classification, I have no problem with the two points that were raised: pensions are compulsory expenditure. What we are talking about is an early-retirement scheme which as yet has no legal base; no one knows whether what will be proposed is compulsory or non-compulsory and it is, after all, a p.m. that is on the line. On the fisheries agreement, we have only changed the remarks for the A lines. In other words, the remarks which concern non-compulsory expenditure. In both cases we have not changed any figures. There should not be a clash on that. Just because we have a budget and we have agreed a deal at conciliation, let us not imagine that all our problems have disappeared. The problems will remain until we sort out what we are going to do about external expenditure. There are times when I foolishly assumed this year that once the Commission had made its proposals for a revision we could reach an agreement with the Council. I was wrong. Then when I discovered that there would be no discussions on that revision regarding Article 25 of the IIA, I was, to say the least, somewhat disappointed. The Council's attitude in this game of football seems to be not to worry about the ball but to get on with the game. Let me just say to the Council that, as far as this game is concerned, we have not run out of balls and this side intends playing until we get the right result. Finally, I thank all those who have been involved in this – not just the rapporteurs – but also the secretariat of the Commission, Parliament services and the political group staff.

Political group: PSE