Madam President, I would just like to speak about the part for which Mrs Diamantopoulou is not responsible, namely culture, youth, education, media and sport. But I think you are also representing Mrs Reding here. Before the report was even planned by the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs, we had already made an enquiry to this effect, but then – for whatever reason – it was delayed for months. So at last we are getting together to debate this issue, and together we should try to make the best of it. We realise that these coordination procedures exist, and as a European politician I would actually be pleased if some people – people in positions of responsibility, politicians – would coordinate their activities. These people, however, are precisely the people who are usually trying to deny us our authority. They coordinate their activities in areas where they do not want to grant us any responsibility at all: in the field of culture and education. They are suddenly coordinating in these areas without being accountable to us. This strikes us as rather suspect. The problem is that we are being treated like NGOs in this area. We are not NGOs, however, but elected representatives, and we ought to know what exactly is being negotiated in our name behind the scenes. Moreover, it is not only the Council that is content with this; the Commission too, unfortunately, is very pleased about it. You see, in this way it has managed to oust an awkward player from the field. The Council and the Commission have joined forces here – which could even be a good thing, but I would like to use Machiavelli’s words here and say, ‘Not every end justifies the means’. For this reason, I believe that we have to be very cautious in this case, and that we should expect to be included. It has now transpired that what has developed is an intergovernmental method. And once something like this has got under way, is it very difficult to stop it again. Although we now know that the Convention, which has little to say about coordination, declared its opposition to the open variety of it, we also know that all national presidents should coordinate with each other, where the need arises, even in instances not necessarily covered by the Treaty. We really need to be careful, however, not to let ourselves be excluded. From the point of view of culture and education, I can actually say that it is really hypocritical that we are not allowed to be active in precisely those areas where we would be happy to be involved. Then, in a roundabout fashion, in the context of this open method of coordination, we have the same things that we would be happy to do, but we are not included. This is simply unacceptable, and we must fight against it. We should recall that an intergovernmental method may not be introduced indirectly. We should see to it – including by means of today’s debate – that this existing intergovernmental method, in other words open coordination, is converted into a Community method. If heads of governments or individual ministers recognise something to be right and necessary and important, then this too should be converted to the Community method, so that we, as elected representatives of our peoples, can participate. I ask that this be taken into account and thank all those who were involved. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE