Mr President, thirteen years after the liberation of Central and Eastern Europe and after a number of years of serious negotiation, we have now reached the penultimate stage prior to eight new Member States acceding from that region, and two from the Mediterranean Sea area. The candidates which, all things being equal, will be taking part in the European elections as fully-fledged members in 2004, will soon be able to send observers to this Parliament, something to which we are very much looking forward. The result presented to us by the Commission deserves warm congratulations, as especially does the person primarily responsible for this, Commissioner Verheugen. We said in Parliament at the time that the loose ends should be few and short. This is exactly what we are seeing in the transitional stage: loose ends that are few and short, except – understandably – for those that have to do with the environment. Casting our minds back to 1989, we can recall the general enthusiasm that greeted the return to Europe of peoples who had long been oppressed. This enthusiasm is still among us in copious amounts. It is therefore all the more painful to see how at some ministries, this return has been reduced to nothing but a money matter. Some hold the false, yet persistent, belief that the European Union, and particularly the addition of new Member States, would be costly and would require huge sacrifices on our part. Some xenophobic instincts also persist, and are the subject of shameless speculation. Communicating the truth, namely that the European Union only costs 1.27% of GNP and that, on account of internal savings, another 0.14% has been freed up for enlargement, that it has been settled in Berlin and fixed until 2006, in other words that the whole budgetary procedure is running smoothly, is a virtually impossible task. If some of this does manage to trickle through, there will always be some Finance Ministry or other which, by sketching worst-case scenarios, combined with strong exaggerations and their own interpretation of the figures, is prepared once again to awaken latent fears, put enlargement in a bad light and even to use the candidate countries as bargaining counters in the political wrangle with other Member States about the review of agricultural policy. This is transgressing the rules of decency. The care that the Commission has exercised on behalf of the Council is manifested in various ways, one being the statement that the permanent, sustainable implementation of the negotiation results must be monitored for the time being. In the coming years, there will certainly be reason to assist some new Member States, or show them the right way, particularly on an administrative level. What they have already achieved is indeed to be applauded. Such a clause was already used during the preparatory stages of the Treaty of Amsterdam. We then introduced the well-known article which even provides for sanctions if a Member strays from its path in terms of rule of law and democracy. This article applies to us all. As has often been established scientifically, including by our former fellow MEP Mr Burenstam Lindner, enlargements always bring economic benefits to all parties involved, to the existing Members more so than the new ones. More important, however, is the gain in terms of a fairer, more peaceful legal order in Europe and the establishment of a European community of values. The contribution to this by new members may be significant in this respect too. I hope that the same spirit which prevailed at the start of Europe's integration will also inspire the new and old Member States in future too.

Political group: PPE-DE