Mr President, I am speaking on behalf of the Committee on Constitutional Affairs, expressing the opinion that emerged on the institutional implications of enlargement. These implications, starting with the initial time frames, warrant a great deal of attention in our view, and they must be addressed with all due rigour. We cannot afford not to carry out a meticulous analysis with the excuse that these are political issues and that we therefore ought not to go into too much detail or that these are technical issues and it is not worth wasting time on them. The solutions must be sustainable, respect the Treaties, meet a number of institutional criteria and be decided upon by agreement between the Council, the Commission and Parliament, whereas the Council communication of 21 November sought to present us with faits accomplis. The Presidency representative, the President-in-Office of the Council, Mr Haarder, said that it is important for Parliament to be involved, but a debate – although the Committee on Constitutional Affairs has called for a debate – is not enough: a genuine, formal agreement needs to be reached between the three institutions. I will, however, specify the points which we consider to be essential. Firstly, we believe that transitional arrangements relating to the composition of both the Commission and the European Parliament must be kept to a minimum or avoided. The Council has specified the date of 1 May 2004 for the formal entry into the Union of the new Member States. That would mean the appointment of ten new Commissioners, taking the total number of Commissioners up to 30, and would clearly create problems, in that the Commission’s term of office should end on 20 January 2005 at the latest. What responsibilities, what special status could be conferred upon ten Commissioners for a few short months, ten Commissioners which the European Parliament would not have time to examine at the necessary hearings in May before its dissolution? We would have Commissioners whose appointment had not been approved, whose role in the Commission was uncertain and who would be in danger of not having their appointments renewed a few months thence. I do not believe that this can be in the interests of the candidate countries of the future Member States. Similarly, joining the European Parliament after 1 May, the representatives of the new Member States would only be in office for a few weeks, for a single part-session, before the election of the new Parliament. In conclusion, if we stick to the date of 1 May 2004, the most sensible solution would appear to be to bring the European Parliament elections forward and schedule them for that same month of May. The President-in-Office has told us that such attempts have failed in the past. We do not see why they should fail again and we feel that an effort must be made to adopt that solution. In particular, the European Parliament elections – why should they not be held on 9 May 2004, immediately after the accession of the new Member States – would assume particular importance and this might stimulate greater, more enthusiastic participation of the electorate. Moreover, it would allow us to carry out the election – if the Commission President is to be appointed by election, as we too hope – or, in any case, the vote on the appointment of the President of the Commission, during the June part-session of the European Parliament and to complete the process of examining the Members of the Commission and endorsing their appointment by the end of July, with the new Commission taking office on 1 August, without the need for dubious transitional measures and with all the Commissioners having full legitimacy and equal status. At the same time, a decision needs to be taken to bring forward the end of the Commission’s mandate. The result would be first and foremost – and we believe this too to be vital – to synchronise essentially the terms of office of the Commission and the European Parliament. To this end, we need an interinstitutional agreement which brings forward the end of the Commission’s term of office and the date of the European Parliament elections, and we call strongly for such an interinstitutional agreement. One last comment on the subject of the IGC. Mr Haarder, you said that the future new Member States must also be able to exercise the right of veto at the Intergovernmental Conference, in other words they must have exactly the same rights as the Member States without actually being Member States, only acquiring this status as of 1 May 2004. We would like to know how this tallies with Article 48 of the Treaty. We believe that an acceptable solution would be for them to have the same status for the purposes of the IGC that they have for the purposes of the Convention. (Applause)

Political group: PSE