Mr President, Mr President of the Commission, Commissioner, I want to vigorously emphasise that nobody in this House underestimates the significance of the financial markets. We all know how important it is that we catch up on the United States' integrated market in terms of the productivity of capital. On the other hand, we are also aware that the European financial market has significance not only for enterprises but also for those who rely on proper provision for old age, in other words who are, as consumers, dependent on it in view of their small pensions. Parliament therefore bears a heavy responsibility for coming to the right decisions in the co-decision procedure. In today's proceedings, with our debate on the von Wogau report, we have an extremely sensitive topic to deal with. The rapporteur has attempted to find cautious formulations in order to give a chance to all the parties who are particularly sensitive to the effects of this legislative process. I wish to underline again that Parliament, which demands more and more rights of co-decision, will not refrain from doing so in the parliamentary legislative procedure and that today's compromise in the von Wogau report is without prejudice to the possibility of Parliament giving up this legal position. If we come to a transitional arrangement for secondary legislation today, that will only mean that we as a Parliament had previously been unable to push through the cementing of secondary legislation in the Treaty. That had previously been a matter for the Commission. In my capacity as Chairman of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, I wish to express my thanks to Mr Bolkestein for the fact that our negotiations on governance, laborious and difficult though they were, nonetheless succeeded in getting this formulation incorporated into the White Paper as a Commission proposal. That is a success in which we all share. Now we also have to achieve a successful conclusion to the next Intergovernmental Conference and the next amendment of the Treaties. That is, without a doubt, very important. One question, though, has not been answered – that of to what extent we can actually attribute real significance to the Lamfalussy procedure in all this legislation, because all of what has been described as technical, today, is very often political. Parliament cannot be satisfied with a role legislating only in outline; we must rather still hold on to our authority to define, item by item, detail by detail, paragraph by paragraph, and article by article. We shall pay attention to that. I think it should also be clear, Mr Prodi, following your statement and also Mr Bolkestein's, that we will also take care to ensure that Mr Bolkestein's letter of 2 October to the committee will also, as an interpretation, be part of this protocol. The third thing that is clear is that, by its two statements, the Commission is committing itself, today, in the implementation of the Lamfalussy procedure, not, under any circumstances, to follow the recommendations of the Securities Committee against a qualified majority. This was, fortunately, clear today. So I think we can be full of optimism and constructive spirit in approaching this form of cooperation on the basis of parity and equivalence. (Applause)

Political group: PSE