Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Commissioner, I would firstly like to thank the President-in-Office for his straight-forward language, for he is simply saying ‘take it or leave it’. But first and foremost, I admire his enormous perseverance, particularly in the light of the fact that we have arrived at this result. I have to say that one important sentence in the speech of the President-in-Office stood out for me, namely the emphasis he placed on the internal market. Unfortunately, we have had to work for too long with a Council that no longer appeared to embrace the concept of internal market. Thanks to you, and I should say, thanks to many of my fellow MEPs here in the European Parliament, this has now been rectified, fortunately. Needless to say, what is at issue is that we will face more competition, more players, Mobile Virtual Network Operators, etc., and there is nothing wrong with that, of course. It is about striking a fine balance between rules on the one hand, and scope for further market development on the other. We are in this transitional phase, and we must aim for normality as quickly as possible, away from ex ante, towards ex post, to put it in simple terms. This means, therefore, that we must weigh up the whole set of rules and market interventions against the question as to whether this is really future-proof. In my opinion, this will need to be one of the assessment criteria for the Commission, to constantly monitor whether we could proceed any faster towards what I refer to as a more normal market, ex post, in other words. This also naturally leads on to the question: what will the consumer gain from this? Will we receive more service and lower prices, in particular? I am therefore pleased with the Council’s compromise proposal with regard to international roaming, and I would ask the Commissioner now: what steps will the Commission take in order to ensure that next year, during the summer holidays, we will not be inundated with complaints by our voters that it is still very expensive, that the cost of ringing from a landline to a mobile line is still too high. These are the questions which are important to our citizens, and we must simply get results on this score. Article 6 has been mentioned many times. One can appreciate it at different levels. I am pleased that the Council eventually took the bull by the horns and has stated that an internal market requires an independent role by the Commission. We will continue to fight in the next round, because what you are now offering is too little in my opinion, and more is needed for an internal market, but also on that score, we must of course establish a certain kind of realism. As I understand it, you have on that basis, in fact, interpreted the revision clause along the lines of ‘move towards this single internal market’. Although you have not adopted Amendment No 36, you have done so at a practical level, and I am extremely grateful to you for this. Finally, in my view, it is very important for us to hear from the Commission what steps it intends to take with regard to digital television, so as to be able to lay down this one European standard as soon as possible. This is about Europe’s future, about achieving the objective of Lisbon, and I believe that the Commission now also has a key role to play in this.

Political group: PPE-DE