Mr President, Commissioner, I will refer to the report on the institutions, namely the Council, the Court of Justice, the Court of Auditors, the Economic and Social Committee, the Committee of the Regions and the European Ombudsman. With regard to the Council, for the first time this Parliament is granting discharge. Until now, it had not been denied, but there was a gentleman's agreement that Parliament would not give its opinion in relation to discharge. Now, it has been proposed that soon, when the Convention completes its work, the foreign and defence policy, which currently falls to the Council, should be included within the Commission; from now on, this issue will be subject to discharge, in the same way as for other institutions which depend exclusively on the Commission. Therefore, the Committee on Budgetary Control has considered it appropriate that this year the discharge of the Council be included, with the clarifications which I will summarise next. The committee is pleased to note that cooperation in terms of responses and improvement during the next financial year are one of the Council's objectives, as well as overcoming the discrepancies between the physical inventory and the accounting inventory. We believe that the same internal reform criteria should be applied in the Council as in the Commission in relation to staff policy, that is to say that the qualifications of personnel and their remaining in high-level, and therefore high-responsibility, positions within the Council, should obey the same criteria as the Commission, in terms of not remaining for long periods and professional classifications. We do not currently have much knowledge with regard to foreign and defence policy. As I said before, until now the Council has been treated differently, and we believe it should be managed more effectively and more transparently. With regard to the Court of Justice, discharge is granted, also with some observations which I will point out in a moment. We note that there have been considerable improvements in accounting management of real estate and in the presentation of the inventory as had been requested. We also note that all the real estate problems relating to the Palais and all the buildings in which the Court of Justice is based have been resolved. There were many gaps in relation to information on these processes, but they have now been resolved and we are very pleased about this. We are also glad to see that cases dealt with have increased, but the Court still operates slowly, which leads us to believe that perhaps it lacks sufficient resources. We would like to know the exact situation and the requests of this institution, so that we can contribute to resolving the difficulties. Discharge is also granted to the Court of Auditors and we must express our pleasure at the public presentation of the report of that Court, which was presented in a timely manner, in November, to the European Parliament and to the press, which is a transparent and clear way to behave. We urge the Court of Auditors to maintain this policy. Although sometimes, as a result of translation difficulties, the moment can be delayed, the sooner this presentation is made the better. We are also pleased with the efforts it has made to make the declaration of reliability an instrument which provides information on improvements in management and control. We believe this effort should be maintained, because it is one of the best ways of gathering information on the situation the institutions are in. We also know that the Court of Auditors has staffing problems; its staff, which must be highly qualified, do not stay in their posts very long – perhaps for reasons of personal promotion or professional career – and we should consider how we can resolve these problems, so that this staff is more stable and in order to facilitate the work of the Court. We should also consider whether in certain cases it is appropriate to turn to temporary contracts or some type of externalisation. We also welcome the improvements relating to information on the work carried out by the Court of Auditors. I will refer very briefly to the Economic and Social Committee, to which we are also granting discharge. All the past problems have been resolved, which we are very pleased about. This committee has presented its accounts and all its management in a clear manner, and, in contrast with the past, we have no difficulty in granting it discharge this year. I regret to say that this has not been the case in relation to the Committee of the Regions, and that we cannot grant it discharge during this plenary session. We therefore request that it be delayed. With the time limit for reports to be carried out expired, after a series of items of information had been requested by means of a questionnaire – as for the other institutions – we have received an audit report relating to 2001 in which there are many serious deficiencies in all aspects relating to the payment and presentation of receipts, travelling, daily allowances and other types of emoluments. Therefore, despite the fact that the Committee of the Regions has delivered its modified Regulation with a later date, we believe it is more appropriate to postpone discharge until October and, meanwhile, to produce a report which gives us better and clearer knowledge of the accounts of the Committee of the Regions. With regard to the European Ombudsman, I would like to say that he has cooperated magnificently with this Parliament's Committee on Petitions and has done good work, despite the scant resources at his disposal. Naturally, he will also receive our discharge. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE