Mr President, I wish to say first of all that your work programme is also ours and that really your ambitions are also ours, and I am sure you will have the support of the House. I wish to make three distinct observations. Mr President, you spoke of a realistic and intelligent defence of the prerogatives of this House; you mentioned the Lamfalussy report; also, yesterday you decided not to attend the Court of Justice and to adopt a long-sighted approach on a matter vital to Europe’s citizens. I would say that this intelligent defence of our prerogatives – which are not our own, but which represent our responsibility towards the citizens – is a leitmotif that I wish to highlight. Within this defence of our prerogatives and this maintaining of better relations with the other two institutions, in which we all have an interest, there is, nevertheless, one aspect that you touched on briefly and on which I should like to focus: access to the ‘screening’ documents for the candidate countries which, to date, are being denied us. It makes no sense for us to ask our colleagues from the candidate countries to familiarise themselves with these ‘screening’ documents, whilst we ourselves do not have access to them. This is one of the practical issues, which should not simply be of concern to us, but which we should attend to immediately. The second aspect concerning this Parliament’s prerogatives is image. One image reveals more than a thousand words and the press conference held yesterday by the three institutions, together with the rapporteur, Mr von Wogau, will mean that, in future, we will not have to read, as has happened before, that a directive has been approved, when what has really been approved is a Council common position. The three institutions are committed to demonstrating responsibility towards the citizens to produce effective and good legislation. Which leads to the second aspect: the insistence on the rigour of this institution is important. The three institutions have to improve the quality of legislation. This has been said on various occasions and is one of the great challenges overall, not just for the European institutions. Legislation must be legible despite its complexity. We must eschew jargon and unintelligible expressions, as has been said. To this end, when it comes to reforming this House, I wish to point out that this is a House of committees. We must support your idea – expressed, amongst others, by the Provan group and by other working parties within Parliament’s Bureau – that the more technical work must be carried out by the committees, but without its visibility to the citizens suffering. It is important that the citizens understand the work we are undertaking, not only in Plenary, which is already happening, but also in the committees. This is why we have to improve the committee’s system of communication with our citizens. I shall finish by discussing a third aspect, which is dialogue with the citizens. Mr President, you are a magnificent representative of what this House stands for. Your personal skills will ensure that we are able to undertake a useful piece of work. I use this word carefully: we have worked constructively on European integration, on what the European institutions really do, on what this House does and on to what extent we in this House feel responsible for the extremely important task of representing Europe’s citizens.

Political group: PPE-DE