Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I thank you. We do indeed have before us a very important report, a very important piece of legislation for the very large number of people in the European Union who have joined together in common enterprises in order to pool their strengths and bring those strengths to market more effectively. In a European Union in which more and more work is done across borders, this sort of collaborative effort across borders is quite clearly very much needed and very deserving of support. It was as long ago as 13 April 1983 that Parliament first adopted a resolution on European Cooperative Societies, which fact shows what great importance Parliament has always attached to legislation in this area. The Commission also took on board our concerns, and, as Commissioner Schreyer has just said, we did indeed, after some time, have the beginnings of legislation. I find it very regrettable that the Council – after Parliament, in 1993, had given its position, and a very good position at that – took all of eleven years to adopt a resolution on the subject, and had ulterior motives, some of them quite unrelated to the matter in hand, for not taking action in this area. The fact is that we find that unacceptable, and so, above all, do the people that this is all about. I also have to say in relation to this that I cannot commend the Council for the way in which it simply changed the legal basis, and, when forwarding the new text to Parliament, did not even think it necessary to explain why this change had been made and on what arguments it was actually founded. At any rate, there is nothing on the subject in the official documents we have been given. I do not think this is any way for Parliament and the Council to work together. The fact is that, naturally enough, the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market gave particular attention to the legal basis, for what is at stake here is a weighty matter, namely the rights of Parliament, and it would be a strange parliament that simply said ‘yes’ and agreed to waive its right of codecision on the grounds that a unanimous Council resolution had to be respected. No parliament – not even this one – can afford to do such a thing, and so the Committee reaffirmed, and by a clear and unambiguous majority, that Article 95 was the right legal basis. There are eminently clear arguments in favour of that, as Commissioner Schreyer has just again confirmed, and they cannot simply be swept aside. The proposed Regulation creates an independent structure under Community law in parallel to national forms of association. Article 8 makes it clear that the regulation does not govern the structure by itself, but does so in conjunction with the statutes of the cooperative society in question and the company law of the Member State in which that cooperative society has its registered office. This is not, then, about superimposing a European model on the fifteen national company models, but about harmonisation, that is to say, the approximation of laws, thereby reducing the legal obstacles to the operation of the internal market. That is what it should be, and as such it should be adhered to! While I am still on this subject, please permit me to add a personal note, for, as rapporteur of the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market, I now of course have to recommend that, tomorrow, this House should vote against all the amendments with the exception of the first, as these are all resubmitted amendments that were rejected by the Committee. That is how it is, and a rapporteur’s duty is of course to reflect the views of his or her committee. What I say, though, on my own behalf is that I trust you will not mind if I vote, with my group, in favour of these amendments, on the grounds that they reinforce workers’ rights. The fact is that, as a Social Democrat, I regard the reinforcement of such rights as an obligation without the possibility of any exceptions, and so I will self-evidently vote in favour of it, even if, when we vote tomorrow, it will be said that I recommend that you do the opposite. Mr President, I would also ask to be allowed to repeat that before the vote tomorrow.

Political group: PSE