Mr President, with today’s debate and tomorrow’s vote, the eLearning programme is officially coming into being. The time has come to congratulate those responsible for this achievement. The mother of the programme is, without a doubt, the European Commission, which launched the first eLearning pilot action with its May 2000 communication, although, at that time, the action was not financed by its own budget line. Tomorrow, two years on, thanks to meticulous work characterised by cooperation between the institutions, the first multiannual eLearning programme will be put to the vote. It is not, therefore, difficult to understand that the measure had a father too, as well as a mother. It is always more difficult to identify the father, and a question mark remains in this case too, but I would say that the role belongs equally to Parliament and the Council. The endeavours of the Council, both under the Greek Presidency and, more conclusively, under the Italian Presidency, enabled Parliament to find a substantial opening for its requests and, therefore, to allocate to the eLearning programme sufficient funds for it to be launched. This multiannual programme, which stands alongside other historic programmes such as Socrates and Leonardo, meets the demands of the Lisbon, Stockholm and Barcelona European Councils. The main objectives are fighting the digital divide through implementing computer literacy methods, promoting virtual campuses, e-twinning of schools, promoting and disseminating good practice and cooperation between Community programmes and action instruments promoted at national level. The programme’s budget was, as I said, increased to EUR 44 million thanks to what I would like to call close cooperation between the institutions. As regards the e-twinning of European schools, in line with the objectives adopted in the previous European Parliament resolution, I wanted to stress once again how teacher training remains a priority. I would like us to reflect once again on the fact that, in 2003, on average, 90% of primary schools, 98% of secondary schools and 99% of vocational and technical schools in the Member States were connected to the Internet, but only 39% of primary school teachers, 50% of secondary school teachers and 58% of teachers in vocational and technical schools actually used the Internet as a teaching tool. There is, therefore, a great need for this programme. In actual fact, these averages conceal huge discrepancies between the Member States: while the average figure for Denmark is approximately 70%, the average figure for Greece is below 9%. From these figures, which are already, in themselves, quite clear, two things can be inferred. The first concerns the use of the Internet as a tool to facilitate teaching. It is not just a question of availability of infrastructure and school equipment but of teacher training, mentality and school organisation. The second concerns the use of technological resources. The setting up of virtual training rooms, for example, is one way of achieving the goal of exchanges of good practice between teachers in the different Member States, at both methodological and teaching level. For these reasons, I have attempted to stress in the report that the eLearning programme should attach greater importance to finding more effective methods that will help teachers incorporate the use of the Internet into their teaching and encourage the dissemination of good practice in this sector. Once again, I would like to thank the Commission and all the Commission staff who have contributed to the success of our work.

Political group: PPE-DE