Mr President, I, too, would like again to express my thanks to the rapporteurs, and also to the Chairman of the Committee. If you consider the conflicts that arose from attempts to pass budgets in the past few years, it seems as if greater calm prevails this year, as if the conflicts were not so evident to the public eye. But it must be recorded that, this year too, the Council is not actually facing up to its responsibilities. As a component part of the budgetary authority, it has the task of supporting a Budget with real commitment and in a politically explicable way. Whilst Parliament worked very carefully for a balanced budget, in long debates, discussions and negotiations with most of the interested parties, weighing needs against the duty to budget prudently in the taxpayers' interests, the Council again merely cut lump sums without any underlying political thought. At any rate, its political thinking is not clear to us, and the question arises of whether it ever engaged in any. Problems are needlessly exacerbated by the way the Council acts, for, this year too, the Budget is below the margin, far under 1.27% of Gross Social Product, despite special tasks, preparations for enlargement and many other problems. This year, the Council has cut payments by 10% across the board, something made all the more incomprehensible by the delay in implementing programmes in many areas. Parliament is now reinstating these figures. We cannot, on the one hand, build up expectations in areas such as the Structural Fund or overseas aid, but then live up to them only with great hesitation. This undermines trust in the institutions of the EU. So the Council must bear its share of responsibility for this if its action is to be approved. This action is particularly problematic in Category IV, foreign policy. Whilst the Foreign Ministers and Heads of Government make great speeches about the Common Foreign Policy, the Finance Ministers narrow-mindedly cut the supply of funds, without considering the prestige lost by the EU institutions. It is far from clear why the instrument of a flexible reserve is not fully available to us this year. We still have major problems in the Balkans, new tasks await us in Afghanistan and in its neighbouring states and more new tasks await us in the Middle East. We need a response from the Council too on the way that the EU is losing its capacity for flexible reaction. The Council must explain how the EU is to continue to be flexible and capable of political action. We, as a group, are more critical of the A30 lines procedure. The great number of individual motions – including those from Parliament – has led the two major groups to attempt a solution by dealing with them en bloc. Our committee would then no longer be able to do any fine-tuning in this area, and we would thus be inadequately performing our monitoring function. Now Mr Wynn has clearly mentioned that changes are to be made to the Budget process next year. I hope we will be able to work together to produce an intelligently thought-out procedure which will also enable Parliament to perform its function of monitoring the A30 lines. We must not lay ourselves open to the accusation that we are engaging in economics for the benefit of special interest groups. This really is not what we should be doing in the Budget. No, I do believe there must be a certain amount of self-criticism. I am perfectly aware of the fact that there is a great deal of pressure on the time available to us, but every individual item in this field in particular must be politically justifiable even to people outside this Parliament. I would like to sum up and end my speech by referring back to what previous speakers have said and, again, challenging Parliament to push ahead with its own reforms. Our demands to the Council and the Commission for reform will only be credible if we strive credibly for reform ourselves. Yesterday evening's decisions from the Chair did not, I believe, take sufficient account of that.

Political group: Verts-ALE