Mr President, it all sounded so terribly technical in your announcement, but in reality this legislation significantly improves the protection of those who are victims of a road accident in another country. I mention this because we are obviously no longer capable of expressing ourselves in such a way that people can understand what we are talking about. We can be proud of this directive. It is a joint effort on the part of the European Parliament, which took the initiative, but also the Commission which improved the original Parliament proposal considerably with the addition of the compensation body. We can, however, also be grateful to the Council for accepting the essential points contained in the proposal. As far as the recommendations for the second reading are concerned, I should like to concentrate on two points. The vast majority of the amendments concern drafting points and the legal text itself. Parts of the Council's common position are virtually incomprehensible. I am even convinced that the authors themselves do not know what on earth they have written. I should like to remind both the Commission and the Council of a very fine quotation from a 19th century German jurist, who said that the legislator must think like a philosopher and speak like a farmer, simply and clearly and so that people can understand. The artistry involved in trying to find a compromise is usually reflected in the legislation, and the principle of speaking simply and clearly becomes out of the question. Admittedly, there remains a problem of substance, where we in the European Parliament hold a different opinion from that of the Commission and the Council. I should like to remind the Commission and the Council that in this matter we have the support of the profession, the insurers, who incidentally are the ones affected by the provisions of the whole directive. We also have the support of the automobile associations and we have the support of the organisations of accident victims. The only people in the whole world who still oppose this are the Commission and the Council. What is it about? It is about this directive also applying if the accident has not taken place in a Member State of the EU but in a third country. There is not the slightest reason for excluding this case from the scope of the directive. Let us take the example of a Frenchman and an Italian who have an accident in Switzerland. Why should the directive not apply in this case? Why not indeed? The insurers shake their heads and say that of course it can be done. There is one insurance company which disagrees – a British company – but all the others are asking, why not? By adopting this directive, we are not making any changes to substantive law, we are not in any way changing the court of jurisdiction, we are not in any way changing judicial procedures. The one and only difference is that the accident victim from France – to use the same example – does not have to contact the Italian insurance company in Italy directly but the representative of the Italian insurance company in France. That is all. Wherever the accident has happened – for example in Switzerland – any further procedures, if there is no agreement, are not affected one jot by this directive. It only regulates the settlement of disputes before they reach the courts, not in court. Commissioner, that is why I am making this request. Clearly specific interests have been at work here. It was even claimed by the Commission in a trialogue that European insurers were against my solution. The truth is different. They are in favour of this solution. Hence my recommendation, Commissioner: I urge the Commission to rethink its position. It is untenable. I assume that the Council would then also accept this solution. I wish to emphasise once more that this is not a proposal which has been dreamt up in a bureaucratic ivory tower. This proposal is the result of countless discussions with all of those involved. That is also why I think that it is practicable, because those who have to deal with it in practice are after all telling us that it works, it works extremely well, and that is what they want. Usually the Commission takes account of the interests of those involved. Ask those involved then, and you will see that the solution proposed by the European Parliament meets with their approval. There is, therefore, no reason for the scope of this directive to be restricted. This is in fact only to the detriment of accident victims. We should not forget that! Surely what we want is to improve the protection of accident victims. That is why I make this plea: we should all reconsider this matter in the forthcoming conciliation procedure.

Political group: PSE