Mr President, I too would like to congratulate our rapporteur, the chairman of the committee, for having dealt with such a complex issue and brought us together around a compromise position which, on all but one or two little details which still need to be settled, can command the overwhelming majority of this House. Our European Union is not just a union of states, it is a union of citizens. The Treaties have always conferred certain rights directly on citizens and therefore on the way that citizens are governed within Member States. Subnational authorities therefore already have an important role to play, both in the application of European legislation – for instance much of our environmental legislation imposes requirements on local authorities to deal with packaging and waste – and even, in some cases, in the transposition of directives into domestic legislation, as is the situation in Belgium, for example. It is right that we should look at how our regions are involved in the running of this Union. What rights should we give to our regions? What responsibilities should we give them in the Treaties? The principle of subsidiarity does not stop with national governments, but nonetheless, by virtue of that principle of subsidiarity, it is not up to the Union itself to tell the Member States how to organise themselves internally. Nonetheless the Union must recognise the fact that many of our Member States are organised internally in a way that gives substantial responsibilities to regions and other subnational authorities. It is therefore right that we should look, as this report does, at how we should adapt to that reality, that we should recognise it in the Treaty, that we should provide for better consultation and information of the regions, that we should make fuller use of Article 203 of the Treaty where appropriate, and that we should give proper consideration to the views of the Committee of the Regions. On all these issues there is consensus. But one issue leaves us divided: should regions be able to appeal to the Court of Justice against acts which they dislike, notably because they feel they violate their own responsibilities or the principle of subsidiarity? On the one hand there is an argument to say that they too should be able to defend their prerogatives. On the other hand there is an argument that we would be overloading our Court, which is already facing the challenge of enlargement, with a whole raft of cases which may be brought sometimes for dubious political, rather than real legal, reasons. My group is offering a compromise on this question. Regions should be able to bring a case either via their national governments or via the Committee of the Regions. The committee would therefore be a sort of filter. It would check what level of support there would be for a court case. A case would not necessarily be brought if only one region were interested, but if several regions felt there was a real violation of their rights, then the Committee of the Regions would proceed and bring a case. That is a reasonable compromise: to allow regions the right to go to court, not individually, but to raise the matter and check, either via their national government or via the Committee of the Regions, whether there is a wider feeling that subsidiarity has been violated; if so, then a court case could be brought. I commend our amendment on this point to the House. I hope that other groups, even those for whom it is not their preferred amendment, will nonetheless rally behind this as an acceptable compromise and a workable one, which our Union would be wise to take on in its new Constitution.

Political group: PSE