Mr President, Mr Kinnock, I would like to thank you for being here to reply to this question and you will agree with me that certain measures have the virtue of inspiring unanimity, even if, as in this case, the unanimity is in favour of rejection. You will not find anybody in this House prepared to defend this removal, you do not do so and the Commission in no way does so, I would say again. We are in a peculiar situation, which is curious, because in an atmosphere of budgetary forecasts, such as the one we are in at the moment, with conciliation scheduled for next Monday, we are seeing the story of a lack of budgetary foresight, in other words, that regulation, which enters into force on 1 January 2003 and which has not received the attention of any Commission body until the communication of 29 September in which the issue of subsidies for information centres was considered settled. I will not insist on the importance of information centres, since Mr Kinnock himself has pointed it out – in your words, this is an essential element. This morning in the joint debate it was expressed by Mrs Rühle and Mrs Hieronymi, it has just been expressed by Mrs Prets and I believe that we should all be in agreement. Furthermore, the European Parliament has highlighted it on several occasions, such as in the report on information and communication policy which it was my honour to present to this House. In that report I pointed out that information centres were useful in terms of reaching all corners of the European Union and how they could be useful meeting points and instruments for the work of MEPs in their respective constituencies. Amendment 42 of the Rühle report, which the Commission opposed this morning, also stressed the importance of these information centres. The effects of removal have also been stressed by Mr Kinnock, in the sense that 270 may be deprived of subsidies and some 1000 would be affected. I therefore feel it is important to seek a transitional provision, such as that of maintaining a kind of phasing-out of these subsidies during 2004. Furthermore, I would like to analyse a certain contradiction between the Commission’s position in the Interinstitutional Group on information and its attitude in relation to information centres. On 23 September of this year, we attended a meeting of the Interinstitutional Group on information and we observed once again Commissioner Vitorino's enthusiasm with regard to the need to arbitrate these measures and to coordinate the actions of all instruments in view of the three fundamental challenges facing us; enlargement, the new Constitution and the European elections. Six days later, it published the communication we are debating. It is difficult to believe that there was no knowledge of it and that there could have been no mention of it in the Interinstitutional Group on information. Mr Vidal-Quadras, chairman of that information group, stressed it in a letter addressed personally to Commissioner Vitorino. I therefore believe that there is legitimate doubt about what we should believe most, his fine words or the firmness of his actions, and we believe that the two things should be coherent. In view of the need to seek a legal basis for the invitations for offers of participation, I would suggest to the Commission that it introduce three principles. Firstly, the simplification of the procedure – information centres are small units, they are not multinationals which can dedicate a unit to filling in thousands of forms in order to obtain subsidies or Community funds; secondly, the staff in these information centres should be given professional status, making them true information and communication professionals, and not simply auxiliary staff to hand out brochures – as Mr Kinnock has said; and, thirdly, the criterion of proportionality in order to provide a policy such as information and communication policy, which is essential to the future of the European Union, with sufficient means.

Political group: PPE-DE