Madam President, Mr President-in-Office, President-designate of the Commission and nominee Commissioners, you are very welcome to our Chamber this afternoon and we look forward to our hearings and our various communications over the next few weeks and eventually months and years. I want to make a few things clear here at the outset. Firstly, the Group in this House comes here in terms of a European vocation. We will not judge Commissioners on the basis of the national preferences of one or other party or group inside this Chamber. (Applause) I wish to say, Madame President, in respect of your helpful suggestion this morning that we should incorporate, as we prepare for the hearings, an understanding of the work and insight of the Committee of Experts that we, as an Institution, must say to the Experts ‘speed up what you do and deliver it in time'. If necessary, 'speed up the report' but by no means should we slow down the process of hearings as anticipated. (Applause) My group's essential and fundamental starting point in this debate is very clear. The outgoing Commission resigned last March and since I can hardly explain to myself why the rump part of that Commission is still there, how can we expect the citizens of Europe to understand that fact? It is therefore our overwhelming duty in this House to decouple Europe from this institutional embarrassment at the earliest available date and the only means to do that is to take the available Commission – and I do not prejudge how the hearings may go – and do our utmost to make sure that it takes up office at the earliest available date. By this means we should begin to decouple ourselves from what has been a very difficult, but useful experience, but one that remains, unfinished as it is, deeply embarrassing and complicated as we have seen recently by the deplorable choices of Dr Martin Bangemann. Could I say also in regard to the hearings process which will be in two parts, i.e. written and oral, that we in the will want to know from each of the candidate Commissioners: ‘What is the perspective that you will bring to Europe for Europe?' This will be important to us. We want to be able to talk to you and engage with you on the question of suitability for the portfolios and to understand the capacities that you bring to this prospect. We want to ask you about your willingness, your personal willingness, to accept that you are accountable and responsible to the public of Europe in whatever you do with your President and before this House and in clear and full public understanding that this is the public forum for European democracy to which you are accountable and have a public responsibility. I wish to say on behalf of my group that when the IGC comes we will continue to press for Treaty reform on the question of individual accountability. We recognise that within the current constraints Professor Prodi is taking some steps to improve the dreadful situation of the past, but we may need Professor Prodi to take some more steps. We propose that the hearings should be tough because we have learned from the lessons of the past five years that it is better to be tough at the outset than to regret it later. Our hearings also will be fair. There is one point I would ask the Commission President-designate to respond to. We have been so busy reconstituting ourselves we have not yet had the capacity to do our homework and our research, so if the hearings bring to light issues of substance and public concern about which we as yet know nothing, we in this House would have a duty to Europe to act and we will act – certainly, my group will. If such difficulties present themselves, I would make an appeal to you as President-designate of the Commission, Professor Prodi, please to make sure that difficulties do not become crises. We need a respectful dialogue between our institutions. This Parliament has matured in recent months and we have learned one basic lesson for the years ahead: we are no longer the junior partner in the European political institutions. We do not claim the status of ‘primus inter pares' but we expect and demand to be treated as an equal among equals in the European institutions. (Applause) Madam President, in September we have the hearings and, as I said, I do not wish to anticipate how they should proceed, but my group's strong preference is that in September – subject always to the reservations that we must see what emerges – we should take a decision and rid ourselves of a sense of crisis. If we have to have some difficult debates, for God's sake, let us have them in September and let us have it out in September so that we do not have some form of institutional guerilla warfare right through to December or January. Let us do the business early and let us do the business well! A final comment, Madam President; before he had this high office thrust on him some months ago, rather I think to his surprise, Mr Prodi had sought to contest the European elections in Italy. He had chosen as the symbol of his party the donkey. Well, the donkey has various traits – one of which we know is stubbornness. I wish to say to Professor Prodi, if he uses his stubbornness in this Parliament as a reliable partner for Europe, that is the kind of stubbornness we welcome. And if he uses his stubbornness to refuse to dialogue with us, if we have difficulties in the hearings, that is a stubbornness we will oppose. That is the message of my group today. We want to work with you as a reliable partner for Europe now and in the future and that requires respectful dialogue. We will give it. We believe in a strong Europe, we believe in a strong Commission and we believe we should be natural allies – let us work to that end. (Applause)

Political group: ELDR