Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, first of all, I should like, at this late hour, most particularly to thank my colleague, Mr van Velzen, for the work he has done as rapporteur. In the manner we have come to expect of him on the basis of many other such tasks, he has, at second reading too, been very committed and successfully thrown himself into getting his report adopted. Until literally the last minute, he has been fine-tuning the compromises in collaboration with the Council. In common, I am sure, with the majority of this House and of my political group, I share the view that public information should be made generally accessible in the interests of everyone involved. With the approval of the present directive, we are taking a sound and sensible step in this direction. The authorities in the Member States have vast amounts of information available, accumulated over long periods of time. People and companies ought to benefit from this wealth of information. General access to public information is capable of releasing important impulses for growth, competitiveness and employment within the European Union. With the help of public sector documents, new services and benefits may be generated in the IT sphere. In my opinion, the documents assembled by the administrations are, in any case, being made accessible by this Directive only in a very moderate way. The authorities therefore also have the time required to adjust to the new conditions. The Council and Parliament have taken account of the corresponding reservations from first reading. Let us not forget, in this connection, that differences still exist in the national traditions of administration and have to be taken into account. In those cases in which the Member States allow the publication of public sector documents, the directive now provides uniform ground rules on a Europe-wide basis. I should like here only to go into a few areas that should be particularly emphasised. Specific sensitive areas such as research, the arts and documents containing commercial secrets are rightly excluded from the scope of the directive. These exemption regulations guarantee that the directive will not infringe the rights of third parties. When funds are scarce, authorities should also, in my view, definitely be entitled to demand fees for making information available, as well as a suitable profit margin. Let us not forget that many authorities are, in part, self-financing. Moreover, the business of, for example, gathering, updating and looking after up-to-the-minute data also costs money. It is important, however, to maintain a suitable balance. The costs must not, of course, give rise to any excessive barriers to the re-use of documents, and I think that the directive now also makes this clear. Of extraordinary importance to the success of the directive is the preparation of central lists, providing people and companies with rapid overviews of the available documents. This, of course, is where, especially, use of the Internet comes in. If a particular authority no longer makes documents available or no longer updates them, its decision not to do so should be published as soon as possible. This would give those affected a bigger safety margin in terms of planning. The long fought-for cross-border use of public documents is to be welcomed. Let us not, however, overlook the existing language barriers that make such use more difficult. It would, in my view, be completely counter-productive to impose translation obligations upon the Member States in the long term. Let us protect ourselves against tendencies of that kind. Finally, I have to state that this directive constitutes an appropriate and well-balanced approach that takes account of people’s and companies’ interests, without however ignoring the national traditions of administration. Let us therefore vote tomorrow in favour of accepting the directive. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE