Mr President, the European Parliament does not take part in Intergovernmental Conference negotiations. It plays a secondary role, as do all those who are not part of a national government. The Group of the has always maintained that the intergovernmental method, which excludes elected Members and does not allow public debate, is a very significant weakness of the reform of the Treaties and a substantial barrier to its success. Therefore, our assessment of this report is based on the fact that it is being presented in an unsatisfactory context, in which our priorities – an open, working democracy capable of rendering economic development environmentally sustainable, which ensures the respect and consolidation of the rights of the citizens and residents, and, most importantly, which is able to enlarge to include new Member countries in a short period of time – are not the same as those of the negotiating governments. The governments have one sole objective: to reach a unanimous agreement in Nice, whatever the outcome, so that they do not have to move on to some other city as obscure as Maastricht. Although Parliament cannot take part in negotiations, it has a duty to indicate the way, to define clear options for the future, without pretending to take part in the actual negotiations and without being conditioned by governmental pressure or pressure from artificial comparisons, such as the comparison between large and small countries. This report only partly achieves this objective, and this is why our Group was not able to be unanimous in its final assessment. But although the final decision was not unanimous, the Group was united in its view of the positive and negative points of this resolution. We fully support certain central points, but, unfortunately, our view is not shared by many national governments. The issues on which we agree are as follows: systematic extension, not extension on a case by case basis, of the majority vote to the Council; codecision; the urgent need to make the Charter of Fundamental Rights binding and to extend the possibility of recourse to the Court beyond the economic sphere; the provisions on closer cooperation and so forth. We are, however, very critical of the reduction of the constitution issue to a mere technical operation separating the Treaties into two parts, which, apart from anything else, would be very similar. This is not the constitutional process, which should bear no resemblance to convoluted diplomatic negotiations and which, we feel, is essential to give the necessary boost to the integration process which, alone, can mobilise the citizens to strive for a better Europe. We consider that the insistence on maintaining the limit on the number of Members at 700, even when we become a 20-State Europe, unnecessarily penalises the regions and those whose political orientations are neither nor conservative. In this regard, we hope that our amendment will find consensus in the House. The Group is divided over double majority, closer cooperation, the number of Commissioners and security policy. In particular, as regards the subject of the number of Commissioners, we will support the balanced position of those amendments which ensure both sufficient representation of the Member States and the efficiency of the Commission. To sum up, this report may well be useful in assisting our two representatives in their often extremely frustrating daily work at the Intergovernmental Conference where others take the decisions, but to our citizens, it will seem about as clear as an interministerial memorandum. Most importantly, in the same way as the 1984 Spinelli Treaty, this report does not live up to the challenge of being a milestone, a clear, unambiguous indication of where we want to be with those who wish to be there. IN THE CHAIR: MR MARINHOVice-President

Political group: Verts-ALE