Mr President, I would like to congratulate you on your election. Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, a lot of laws are like our favourite clothes. If we do not look after them, they rapidly become unsightly and end up being unusable. They no longer fulfil their purpose. So it is only a good thing that the Commission has taken in hand the law on the award of public contracts, which dates back to the Seventies, and that we are now engaged in doing justice to the requirements of modern times and of the Internal Market with two directives. A certain amount has already been said about the modernisation of the directives on the award of public contracts, and I do not need to add anything to that. I would, though, like to sound a clear warning that we may be improving the law on the award of public contracts in technical terms and making it more manageable, but at the same time causing its substance to deteriorate. That is what the Commission intends with its proposed text, in which the smoothly functioning internal market and competition sweep all before them. People's justifiable desires and interests are neglected. That is something this Parliament must not permit. Our duty is not to any old mechanism or economic ideology. Our duty is to the citizens of Europe and their needs, and we are, moreover, obliged to see to it that their taxes are not squandered. A well-functioning internal market can help in this if it adheres to people-friendly standards. Public contracts cannot, then, simply be awarded to the lowest bidder. Social requirements must, as criteria, be no less decisive than consideration for people's health and careful treatment of the environment. That is why there are amendments tabled by my group, and, in my view, if they are not adopted, it will be impossible to vote for the Directive on the award of public contracts. Let me give an example. It is, of course, obvious that contractors must abide by regulations on industrial safety and working conditions as well as by all the other collective and individual provisions of labour law. This also includes adherence to the wage agreements in force where the principal is located. Without that, we easily end up in a spiral of discrimination and wages dumping at the expense of many workers' families. Competition in the internal market must not be allowed to be like that. Competition must not be pursued at the expense of the environment, and so it is perfectly clear that public principals must require the maintenance of high environmental standards. Let me close with a word on the threshold values for European tendering. Since the existing threshold values have demonstrably failed to bring about any increase in cross-frontier exchange in the sphere of public contracting, we need have no qualms about raising them. Speaking personally, I have no problem with the idea of doubling them. Raised thresholds deter unjustifiably high expenditure on smaller projects, promote greater flexibility in the planning and realisation of manageable projects and contribute to the careful use of money raised from tax. The public will thank us if we do not oblige their mayors to throw the money out of the window with both hands. I would like to apologise to Mr Zappalà and also to the Commissioner for the fact that I cannot stay to the end; a party of visitors has been waiting for me since four o'clock, and I really must get to them, although I would actually have liked to stay to hear the Commissioner's reply.

Political group: PSE