Mr President, I should like, as others have done, to congratulate our two rapporteurs for introducing our budgets for 2002 and, in particular, referring first to that of Mr Costa Neves, perhaps as the bulk of my speech this morning, I would like to say to Mr Wurtz that he has indeed struck the right balance in terms of priorities, in terms of responsibilities which the European Union has to manage – agriculture is central to that – and social issues, as we noticed in the Lisbon run-up and the follow-on in Stockholm last week. These are essentially national responsibilities, national budgets. We can do very little at European level to have large social programmes of the kind to which I think you were referring. What strikes me most in these two budgets is the emergence of interinstitutional cooperation, which ten years ago was perhaps more of a wish than a practice. I have in front of me the Council priorities, although for the first time in history no one is here to represent the Council. It is somewhat ironic that it says in the first paragraph of their document: 'The Council welcomes the spirit of cooperation that governed work on preparation and emphasises the importance of continuing the good collaboration between the two arms of the budgetary authority and the Commission.' Nevertheless one has to take at face value the statement that the Council wishes to examine closely the report which the Commission is to submit before 30 June 2001 on progress in reducing outstanding commitments to bring them down to a normal level. Those who were present in December last year will remember that when Parliament put forward this joint declaration, no one in the Council actually welcomed it. On the contrary, they seemed somewhat hostile to it. So I certainly welcome the fact that they wish to cooperate with us in trying to reduce the backlog of commitments, in trying to make sure that there is a better parallel between the legislative and budgetary procedures and that performance targets are set, particularly in Category 4 in external policy. Another area which reflects interinstitutional cooperation, which is important in Mr Costa Neves' report, is information policy, where for years we have been trying to get good value for money, and for years we have met with little success, to say the least. No wonder we find 50% of the information funds still in reserve, still waiting for the Commission's proposals. I urge the Commission to come forward with these as soon as possible, hopefully having discussed things with Parliament's own administration before doing so. Lastly, on external policy, our rapporteur has indicated the need to set priorities. We know that scarce resources in the budget will be with us for the foreseeable future. In the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, Common Security and Defence Policy there is a very good idea, although not one taken up in Mr Costa Neves' report at the present time, that we should be seeking external advice on how to set priorities in foreign policy, so that we can begin to have some direction in the longer term as to how our money should be spent. We should investigate that more. Turning to the Buitenweg report, I should also like to emphasise the very clear emergence of interinstitutional cooperation in environmental and transport matters and as regards an interinstitutional recruitment office – which I very much hope will soon be up and running, to ensure that European citizens get the best value for money. There are one or two areas where perhaps there will be difficulties regarding interinstitutional cooperation, not least as regards early retirement. While we certainly support that, we would prefer to have a compulsory system, were that to be possible under the statute. We have had our discussions on the 2001 budget on that particular matter, and will certainly be looking to have these proposals applied within Parliament if possible. But most important – and here I address the Secretary-General of Parliament – is the letter which the president of my group sent to the President of Parliament yesterday about the absolute need to have a multi-annual plan for enlargement before the first reading of Parliament's budget so that we can get a grip on what is likely to come in terms of expenditure in linguistic services and a whole range of other matters. Please do not expect us to approve what you might propose later in the summer without having had a full debate with our political groups. That is highly unlikely to happen unless we are given the time to examine them effectively. To conclude, I welcome the fact that this interinstitutional spirit is emerging. We would like to promote that, respecting the fact that each institution has the right to take its own decisions. I hope that we will come to the right decisions concerning value-for-money for the citizens of Europe. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE